I am a firm believer in the motivational and efficiency-inducing power of lists. Without them, I wouldn't get around to doing half the stuff I mean to do and enjoy doing, and with them I manage 90% or so. And since I am likely to move away from the east coast after graduate school, I want to see a lot of things in this area during my time here. With these things in mind, here is my list of things to see this year; feel free to chime in if you can think of something really cool (or many things!) that I don't know about.

1. Hiking in Shenandoah National Park. It isn't too far from here, it looks lovely, and it is one of the only national parks on this coast (since the parks system wasn't introduced until the mid to late 1800s).
2. Seeing more things in NYC (MOMA, Whitney, Statue of Liberty, Greenwich Village, Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum... probably a lot more).
3. Boston! Never been there, though we tried to go last March but it ended up being sub-zero and windy.
4. DC! I was there in eighth grade for a school trip, but obviously I could get a lot more out of it, and I remember we were so pressed for time that we had to sprint through the bottom floor of the Holocaust Museum.
5. I would like to visit a beach in New Jersey that isn't ugly and doesn't have mean lifeguards (or alternately, no strong rip currents).
6. It would be great to go to Cape Cod again.
7. Vermont/New Hampshire during fall colors!
8. Backpacking in the Adirondacks!
9. More canoeing, someplace other than the Delaware river.
10. It would probably be fun to drive up to Maine, where my great-aunt Pat lives. I haven't been there since I was really little.
11. Montreal! I would love to go there, though I'm not sure it will happen this year because it would be more expensive, and we will be trying not to spend too much before the wedding.
12. I really want to go to Falling Water, which is on the other side of the state. We may drive to Indiana to see Jeanine and Andrew at some point, in which case it would be right along the way.
13. My aunt and uncle have a place out in the woods in New Jersey, and they have told us it's really beautiful and we're free to spend a weekend with them and hike around and such. It would probably be a lot of fun, and I haven't seen them in ages.

There is my list! If I have done 75% of these things at the end of the year (10/13, ha) then it will have been a good year, and if I haven't, well, there's always next year!

This week is a little weird, because I'm trying to get started with my research but I won't be here next week. I'm really excited to be going to London. But you see, two days after I leave for London, Ben leaves for Los Angeles, to return August 15th. So I feel excited about my trip but melancholy about us being apart. Already I'm counting out our remaining time together.

Unfortunately, cross-country travel makes it harder to just take a weekend with each other, since flying from west to east coast takes a day. And I'm more at liberty to take a day off than Ben is, so it looks like I'll be going out there twice, and one time Ben will pay for it. I already have my tickets for LAX in mid-June, but we talked tentatively about having our second meetup be in Seattle, where Chih/James/Adam are. We would have to see if the prices make it feasible, but if we did that, would you consider visiting Seattle too, Erin/Josh/Laura(/Joe?!)?

Things I really need to do this summer:
*run regularly
*swim regularly
*piano regularly
*go hiking a few times
*do neat cultural things, like at Philly I-House
*suppress hate for humidity

Believe in yourself, and love one another.

I think everyone needs to know that I now have a sari, and it rocks. Thank you Juhi!

I'm unsure what exactly I can do with my sari, though. It's a bit much for everyday wear. I could wear it at a fancy dress ball, certainly... I go to lots of those. Really. I could get a black wig and be Aishwarya Rai or someone less obnoxious for Halloween. I could encourage a foreign costume night at the BFC, although since I'm the only American that would come off a bit gauche, I think. And I'd be afraid that everyone else would show up in their American costumes, i.e., normal clothes.

This makes me want to visit India. Someday, maybe, I'll find someone to go with me, and a time to go, and then it will be loads of fun. I'm a little jealous of elliptic_curve, who is on her way to a big, long adventure in Thailand. Someday!

For the record, over the summer, I would like to go to Germany and France, and maybe England, and I'd also like to go to places in the U.S. like Yellowstone and Crater Lake, and I want to do some backpacks in Colorado and maybe a couple more fourteeners. And Mexico. I want to go to Latin America but first I should really learn some Spanish.

There are other places that I'd like to go to eventually, but are really expensive... I guess most of Europe qualifies as that, but especially things like Iceland, which is supposed to be amazing. Oh, and Japan, which can be pretty pricey. But since I've been to so few places, I guess it's easy to pick cool, cheap places, or try to find cheapening measures in expensive places (hostels, for example). I can't really make any summer plans until I know the graduate school thing, though, and even then I'm guessing I'll be hard-pressed to find someone to travel with... everyone's schedules are so tricky and hard to manage, and some people who'd make great travelling buddies are currently broke. I'm guessing it would be easy to find people for the states stuff (Mika and Tosha for some of the backpacks, Steph for some, Jeanine for a Boundary Waters trip in Minnesota), but airfare out of the country is so expensive. I can't wait until I have more money for this sort of thing, and the fact that I want it so badly is probably what makes me so encouraging towards Ron's giant world trip.

My quantum final is in thirty minutes. My grade thus far is solid, if not quite as stellar as I wanted it to be. I feel very good about the material, but I also have the acute knowledge that it does not matter at all, to graduate schools, whether I know the material or not, just that I do well gradewise. I don't know that I've ever been so anxious about an exam, especially one I feel so solid on. But in two hours, when it's over, I'm going to really try to enjoy my vacation (some time in Mammoth, New Mexico, and the East Coast visiting my grandparents), and fall semester will be much more laid back.

Thank you to those of you who have supported me and suffered with me through this. I get the feeling sometimes that I'm not the same person I used to be, because my attitude now includes more frustration and anxiety than it ever used to. I have a hard time looking at things the same, because the stakes are so different. But I think it's more that all the parts of my personality that were really evident before all this graduate school bullshit happened, the parts with music and cooking and physics and happiness, are still there, and still do come out frequently. They're just more subdued, bullied into quiet by my pain, which is this stupid obnoxious thing that won't listen to any attempt I make to send it away. I do think it'll go away, though, and I keep working towards that, even when my apparent progress is minimal.

At least I feel good about quantum mechanics.