Settling Back Down

I apologize for my lack of posts of late. It's been a very hectic couple of weeks! A quick recap:

Three weeks ago, I went to Notre Dame to give a talk and talk with people there. I got some great ideas for future projects, and I got to spend a little time with my friend C.R. Now few people may recall, but this friendship was instrumental in the formation of the Talbot Conference. This made it all the nicer to see him, especially since two days after I returned to Boston, I headed to North Conway, NH to attend said conference. It lasted a week, during which time I gave a talk, attended a few, skied a bit, fell down, tubed a bit, and chilled in the hot tub. Quite an amusing time, all told. I returned home, a bit exhausted, on Saturday, and on Sunday, I hopped on a plane to go to Baltimore to give a talk at Johns Hopkins. Since I'd been on the road for so long, I only stayed a few days. I did, however, have a fantastic time there, meeting really nice people and talking with old colleagues. On Tuesday, I returned home, hopefully to stay for a bit.

Truth be told, I'm kinda traveled out. I should go down to FL to visit my grandmother, but I'm not exactly sure when I can schedule that. I'm just really beat! Plus, with each passing day, my thesis weighs a little more on me. What makes it all the harder is that I've got a number of projects just boiling away in the back of my mind, none of which I can work on until the thesis is done! With Cherry Bomb's help, though, I was able to put my various parts and papers into the required format for MIT. That seems to be a good bit of the work, since now I can focus on things like the introduction and polishing things. One of my goals for this weekend is to find all of the things that I must prove before I can turn it in. Ugh!

Speaking of weekend goals, I've already accomplished one: setting up my windowbox garden! I have two small planters that sit on my porch, and today I turned over the soil, ripped out all of the dead plants (burying them in the hopes that they become mini-compost), bought seeds, and planted them! I also filled an extra flower pot I had with the last of my potting soil (which has lasted me 3 years), making a bit of extra space. In the large box, I planted some small tomatoes, some sage, and some rosemary. In the small box, I planted thyme, and in the pot, I planted lavender. I think that the pot will mainly stay inside, so it seemed like a nice addition. I'm excited about this, since I really like gardening, and it's finally warm enough for me to get things started. I hope the weather holds out.

I'm a little behind on my reading. Since my last post, I've only read one book: Ptolemy's Gate. It's the last in the series of books I'd `blogged about earlier, and I think that it was in many ways better than the earlier ones. At times it dragged along, but like many of the books I most enjoy, it is essentially a big tale of redemption.

I'm sure there are huge things I am missing. I can only say that much of my brain has gone to mush in the last few weeks. I'm sleeping so deeply at this point that even my Senate Contact's kitty has trouble waking me up. When everything is back to normal in my life, then I should be more on my game!