ring, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

Ben asked me to marry him, and I said yes.

( Read more... )

ben and me, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

Six years ago, on a Friday night, was when I met Ben for the first time. We met through chih, talked online a lot, and then he came to Berkeley to meet me. Since then we've both changed, definitely for the better, and I'm happy to say that we've both improved ourselves quite a bit for each other. We were long-distance for almost five years, with a few summers off, and now we've been living together for about a year. Ha, I mistyped that as 'loving together'. :)

I could say a lot of things, and I've said a lot of them a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, four years ago , five years ago. It is incredible to think that I've been with Ben more than a quarter of my life, and yet not, because it's hard to imagine not being with him. For a long time, we loved each other and we were so perfect together, but there was also this element of story. We were apart, it was tragic, and there was this ideal of someday, when we'd be together and live in the same place and cuddle up every night. And it seemed unachievable, and during my last year in Berkeley it started to wear on us, and yet here we are.

There are always more things for us to discover together, and Ben is so knowledgeable and so fun that I really feel I have the perfect companion. I love walking to campus together, watching weird shows together, going places and singing Feeling Groovy about a cemetery or something. I love how last night, as I was reading the New Yorker in bed, he snuggled into my back and fell asleep. I love Ben so much, and I'm so happy! There aren't words, but I don't need them anyways. :)

path, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

This weekend, Ben and I spent the first two days doing chores and various things, mostly around the house stuff because I want my house to look nice for my mom. We're expanding our basement storage, we made coq au vin with this wine that tastes much more awful than last year, and we cleaned up a lot. And watched the 60s movie Bedazzled, which was strange and funny. Then on Monday, we drove up to the Poconos, to the Thunder Swamp trail. It's a 50-mile trail system, which we hiked about five miles of, in a very green and pretty, gently-rolling-hills kind of area. It's the sort of hiking environment that Ben loves: lush, fertile, with no particular destination. We saw several tiny frogs, a very large black snake, and small fish in a stream that flowed backwards under a bridge, making it terrible for pooh-sticks. And we found ourselves someplace quiet, where if you stop you can only hear insects, birds, and the wind.

creek falls, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

houses, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

My my my it’s a beautiful world
I like swimming in the sea
I like to go out beyond the white breakers
Where a man can still be free
(or a woman if you are one)
I like swimming in the sea

I drove up to Providence Friday night, and Steph and I drove to Cape Cod for the day on Saturday. I had heard it was a blast, and I expected to have fun. But I had, seriously, one of the best days ever. It was SO fun. ( Read more... )

It's been interesting, living apart from Ben after living together for nine months. ( reflections on compromise )

So as of right now, it's been five weeks since I saw Ben, and I'll be seeing him and lots of friends in Seattle this weekend. Then only four weeks until he moves back here. I'm happy and fine and enjoying myself without him, but it's so nice to talk to him on the phone or on WoW, and I'm really excited to see him. I've been going to dinner, doing laundry, running by the Schuylkill, packing, reading papers, and thinking about how wonderful it will be to hold him.

Skipping beats, flashing jeeps
I am struggling
Daydreaming, been sitting, the corner cafe
And I'm left in bits, recovered tectonic, trembling
You get me everytime

Why'd you have to be so cute
It's impossible to ignore you
Must you make me laugh so much
It's bad enough we get along so well
Say goodnight and go

One thing that's great about Philadelphia is if somebody visits you who likes to walk. When Joao and Gersende visited in October, we walked around the city a lot, and this time with Steph I had a pretty good idea of what routes to take that went by nice things. So we basically walked around and talked non-stop the two days she was here. :)

Saturday was beautiful, as previously mentioned, and after I met her at the train station and we had lunch at my house, we walked over to the Penn campus so she could see where I work. We popped into Ben's building to take a peek at the piece of ENIAC they have there (Ben works in the room where it operated, actually!), and then walked down Locust Walk and to the biopond. We sat and talked there, in the warmth of the late afternoon, and saw a blue heron! It was beautiful, but kind of a bully to the other birds. We saw it eat a fish, which was amazing because the fish looked way too big to fit down its throat but it slowly swallowed it, and the tail was still flapping as it disappeared into the heron's beak. There were also tiny cute sparrows bathing in the dirt, which I love to see. When the sun was starting to go down, we went back to my house and ate out at Grace, a nearby pub with great burgers, great spicy fries, and great Pennsylvania beer on tap. Then back home to sit in my backyard and watch fireflies and talk, though we were a little late for the fireflies so we didn't see many.

On Sunday we did a downtown walk, going up South St. to 6th, up 6th St. to Independence National Historic Park, then northwest to Chinatown, southwest to City Hall, southwest to Rittenhouse Square, and back home. Along the way we saw the Liberty Bell, ate tasty lunch at Mai Lei Wah, got boba, looked along the sightline from City Hall to the Museum of Art, popped in to the Victoria's Secret sale to paw through the bra bins, went to H&M for the first time, and sat in Rittenhouse, where every bench was taken, to talk. The weather was perfect and it was a lot of fun. When we got home we ended up making chocolate mousse at 11:30 at night, with cherries and walnuts, and watching videos on youtube.

Steph's train left around noon yesterday, so in the morning we went to the Italian Market. I hadn't wanted to go on Sunday because I drive there, but I also live near two churches so if I move my car on a Sunday I'm not getting a space near my house when I get back. And I had seen produce stands set up there on weekdays, so we went... but it was really dead, a big disappointment. There were a few produce stands, but maybe a fourth of what's there on weekends, and a lot of stores were closed for Monday (many of the butchers, the spice store, the sandwich place). We did end up having coffee at a really nice place, and going to the less awesome spice store, and getting things at Giordano's, which was open. But we'll have to go again the next time she's here, and now I know not to take people there on Mondays.

I had such a fun weekend!

It's beautiful today, blue sky and warm but not hot, and soon I'm going to the train station to pick up Steph. This last week in particular has made me realize that I am really coming to love Philly.

Some of it is getting out more, seeing the fun neighborhoods and things to do, the culmination of slowly trying to get to know the city over the last year. It's also partly the weather... I was really dreading living here for the summer, because when we moved here permanently last August it was just miserable, in terms of both temperature and humidity, and I dreaded three months a year like that. But even though I know I still have July and August to get to, I was surprised to find that June hasn't been that bad. In New Mexico, I always found June to be the worst month, where it was straight hot and no breaks. But July and August there are monsoon season, with thunderstorms every afternoon, which is actually pretty fun. Here June isn't like that; sometimes there are really hot and humid days, like the day I left for LA when it was 95 and very humid. But mostly it's been tolerable, with sometimes weeks of mid-70s and cold at night! I can take the occasional hot day, which is all we've gotten so far. Of course, I'm inside all day on weekdays, in a heavily air-conditioned building. But I do have a twenty minute walk to and from work each day. Anyhow, it's a relief to know that I only have to deal with two months of yucky summer.

Another thing that has certainly contributed is our house, which I love, and our garden, which I am coming to love. Now, our initial plans ended up gang agley, probably because the seeds weren't watered enough while we were both gone for a week. So most of the exciting and wonderful things we planted don't seem to have sprouted, though we do have peas, tomatoes, cilantro, and parsley at the very least. But some things are growing, and I'm thinking of getting cheap tiny pots and starting some seedlings in those for the herbs we really wanted that didn't come up. I mean, we still have loads of seeds. The rest of our yard is a profusion of weeds, beautiful thriving ones. And in fact, I spent a lot of time weeding the patch where stuff is planted, which is sort of enjoyable. It's sort of like my backyard is offended that we put seeds in it, and killed off our seeds and replaced them with morning glories in a massive attempt to give us the finger. 'You think I need help to grow things?!'

Something that occurred to me with the roses I bought last weekend is that they will probably get really big. See, my mom grew many roses in New Mexico, and is an excellent gardener, and almost without exception all of her roses are two or three feet high. So I thought this was the height that mature roses get to, until I saw roses growing around London and Philly in the last few months and saw ones that are six or seven feet high. Gigantic! At first I thought it was some sort of super-rose breed, until I realized that New Mexico is a desert, and the only wild roses you see there are those tiny ground-cover ones, and probably if you grow a plant in the environment it's suited to, it'll get much bigger. Something to look forward to!

Of course, something that's helping me immensely to enjoy Philly more is the lack of problem sets I have now. And while I probably will take one or two more problem set classes, I'll never take more than one at once, so this is a condition I will happily continue in. :)

The last few days have been really, really good. I went to a big get-together with a lot of food on Saturday night, and saw people I haven't seen in ages (Jeanine, Andrew, Steph, Scott, Sam, Caroline, Ken, Mike, Brian, Ashley). Yesterday I went sledding and had a blast, and then cooked massaman curry and played Trivial Pursuit with my dad, and gave him the best present I've ever thought of, which made him (and me) really happy. I came over to my mom's today and had delicious food, and also managed to give her and Kevin nice presents, which I'm really proud of. I've finally managed to come home without being overwhelmed, stressed, weirded out, or unhappy. It's really great.

It's times like this I can't help but feel incredibly lucky. I try to appreciate what I have, though... I'll talk more about how this year in particular ties in to that later. For now, Merry Christmas, friends.

Snow! Lots of snow! Hooray!

My flight home last night almost continued on to Phoenix without stopping in Albuquerque, because of the ice and then the fog, but we did manage to land eventually. Then I got to drive slowly back on icy roads with my dad, but the weather cleared up some while we were driving. This morning it continues to snow, big fat dense flakes.

The last few years I was living here, New Mexico was in the grip of a very bad drought, so the winters were cold but dry, and the skiing in town was pathetic. But it's improved since then, and recent yeras have had pretty good snows, although whenever I visit there seems to be little snow. So it is indescribably nice to come home to snow; it reminds me of being very young and enchanted with everything. :)

sun, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun! On Wednesday Ben and I went up to Queens to stay with Ben's grandparents, and on Thursday we drove with them to Norwalk, CT to partake in a huge dinner with the family of Ben's uncle's wife (this is Barry, the uncle who is barely older than Ben). It was a lot of fun, and then Friday we went to the Met and spent pretty much all day there. On Saturday we went to Chinatown and Little Italy, had really good dim sum at a place on Mott Street, and then walked around Central Park for some time. And then we returned to Connecticut for dinner with Barry, Mandy, Ben's sister Aimee, and her friend Walleigh. It was a really good time, and then today we gradually worked our way back here, with a little more dim sum thrown in for good measure. We had a really nice time.

I identify a lot with the spirit of Thanksgiving, because the idea of keeping in mind the things you should be happy about is definitely a solid one. But especially this year, which has gone so blazingly, improbably well for me. Maybe you remember, not even a year and a half ago, things were going definitively poorly, and it surprised me the other day to realize that I recall the exact date that I got my first acceptance to graduate school, and more so the moment when I found out I could go to Penn. Fragile, carefully wrought things can be exquisitely beautiful, and it is gratifying to think how carefully I planned so that my life could be this way, even though from where I'm standing now it's quite stable. Sometimes it is easy to be grateful.

sarcophagi, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

The Met was a lot of fun, and I would hope this is the first of many visits. We saw the sections on musical instruments, American art, Egyptian art, modern art, Weimar German art, and we saw parts of Chinese painting, Japanese painting, and Indian art. Especially noteworthy were the Frank Lloyd Wright room and the Temple of Dendur. And what was surprisingly cool was the German thing, a special exhibition on art, mostly portraiture, between the two world wars. It featured prominently the work of Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, and George Grosz, and was very moving.

Oh, and the stupidest thing at the Met was Sean Scully's Wall of Light, which was about fifty copies of the same painting, which was not that good to begin with. I am an open-minded person, but in modern art exhibits I find myself in awe half the time and wisecracking the other half the time. Now that I've stopped being serious about the Met, let me say how great it was that we checked our bags there Saturday, when we didn't go to the Met, so that we wouldn't have to schlep them around Manhattan.

central park skyline, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

So all in all, a very good weekend, with an abundance of good food and company. I hope you guys had fun too.

Joao and I walked around Philadelphia today, going down South Street to 6th, having cheesesteaks, walking up to Independence Hall. They have massive security screening to see the Liberty Bell, so we didn't go (Joao being the owner of a small pocketknife), but did see the visitor's center. Then we went to Chinatown, and I was surprised to find that the Philadelphia Chinatown is actually pretty cool, with a big gate and lots of interesting places. We went through City Hall, Rittenhouse Square, and then came back. It was cool to hang out with and talk to Joao... I miss my Berkeley friends. It's really nice to have them visit. It's also a good excuse to get out and see the place where I live.

I'm blowing off some grading and homework that'll have to get done later, but for now it's great. And I have two more days off school for fall break! Also two more days with Joao and Gersende. :)

Earlier this week, I was walking home from swimming at around 9 PM. It had been raining off and on all evening, and my clothes were still wet from a previous downpour I'd had to walk through (I didn't know it was going to rain, so I had no umbrella or anything). I was starting down our block when it started raining again, and I rushed towards our building fumbling for my keys, hoping to get inside before I got more wet. But when I was almost to our door, no keys in hand, it opened, and Ben poked his head out and pulls me inside. He hugged me and immediately gave me a blanket and some hot chocolate and snuggled me while I drank it. Ben has been saying how, this being his first winter outside southern California, he will focus on hibernating activities, like accumulating nesting and eating. I think this will work well for me.

Today, my only class was serendipitously cancelled, so we went to the Morris Arboretum. It's more like a 92-acre park than an arboretum, but with labeled trees and different areas landscaped differently (there's an English Garden, an Azalea Meadow, a Japanese Hill, a Swan Pond, etc.). It was brisk but incredibly clear, and we walked around looking at many beautiful things before lying down in the grass and napping in the sun.

Soon I will have a mostly-new computer, thanks to birthday gifts from my mom and Ben which upgrade my power supply, motherboard, CPU, graphics card, and case. I think this will mostly be good for World of Warcraft, though the power suply should help with overall stability.

And while I'm very excited about Joao and Gersende visiting next weekend, I'm also excited about Ben's and my imminent departure for New York City, where we'll stay with Ben's grandparents and hang out during the day with Steph and Scott!

To sum up, I can't remember a previous birthday when I've been so content with how my life is going. :)

Did you know that today is the fifth anniversary of the day that I met Ben in person? We had chatted online before, but five years ago today is when we met and first started dating. It's also the anniversary of our first kiss.

We're celebrating it tomorrow, but since it's an odd year I have no idea what we'll be doing. Maybe you remember that last year I planned a weekend for us in Monterey, which was a really great time. I spent a lot of time on it, finding the cheapest nice hotel there, picking a fancy restaurant (which ended up being great), and finding lots of stuff to do, much more than we ended up doing. It's a beautiful area and we had fun. But there was also something kind of strange about that weekend... keep in mind that at the time, I was retaking quantum, less than a month from retaking the physics GRE, and worrying about reapplying to graduate school after getting rejected everywhere. And on top of that, it was looking nigh on impossible for Ben and I to attend the same school for our Ph.D.'s, and we knew it. We talked about it a lot, tearfully and reasonably, and each felt we had done the most we could, but for our relationship to progress, we needed to be actually together. And neither of us wanted to stay apart any longer, though we couldn't bear the idea of breaking up. Things felt desperate, and I was really afraid that I had found the love of my life and I was going to lose him to circumstance.

I felt that whole weekend like I was trying to win Ben over from something, even though he was in the same boat that I was. I wanted everything to go so amazingly well, to prove to the universe that I deserved Ben and could I please finally have him now? Even though everything went off without a hitch, at the end of the weekend I felt desolate, because we had to leave now and did one fantastic weekend bring us any closer to being together? A lot of the weekends we spent together, when the end came and one of us had to leave, I would cry. I loved being with Ben and I never wanted it to stop. And that happened on our anniversary weekend, but it was terrible, it was so much worse. I couldn't stop crying, and it felt like there was a huge hole being ripped inside me, because everything was great, but how was this going to work? We couldn't keep on being apart, but I felt like there was no chance of us ever being together. We got in our separate cars and I sobbed and sobbed, and made Ben drive back up the freeway and hold me again, and he left and I cried more... I knew I had to drive back to Berkeley, but it felt so hopeless. I did it eventually, playing happy music to try to keep myself from crying in the car.

Here we are, a year later. It's our anniversary today, though we're celebrating it tomorrow. I had a lot of class and teaching today, and I was sort of worn out and walking home to have dinner with Ben. And it's so amazing to think, isn't it, that this is the sort of thing I was fighting for, the chance to come home to Ben cooking, to meet him for lunch outside my building, to go grocery shopping together and do chores together and sleep exhausted but together. This is the only anniversary present I want! I daydreamed about it so much, and probably idealized it quite a lot, but you know, it's better than I imagined! It's so wonderful and we're so happy, and I want to scream out that sometimes the world is nothing but joy, and sometimes there are happy endings, and sometimes everything is beautiful and nothing hurts! Sometimes things click and they happen and it all falls into place! Sometimes there is meaning! Sometimes romance persists! Sometimes love comes and fills you and you overflow, forever and ever! Sometimes dreams do come true!

I've sort of hit the jackpot with professors this semester. My quantum prof is pretty good: clear and organized. My stat mech prof is great: ebullient, knowledgeable, eminently enthusiastic. And my liquid crystals prof is hilarious and really loves his subject. He jokes a lot, calls on people a lot, and teaches engagingly about a fascinating subject. I'm really excited for this semester.

( life with ben )

Also, the Penn campus is just beautiful. It has a lot of lovely Gothic architecture, which I love, and many beautiful green areas. The physics building itself isn't the loveliest, but I am getting the hang of the layout. The wiki entry on it is kind of funny; I checked it out a couple weeks ago and it was more... vitriolic. It's much nicer than LeConte, though.

+ finding the physics library is right around the corner from my office

+ going to the physics welcome party with lots of free food and beer

+ Ben breaking down and trying WoW with me

:D

This is one of those moments where you realize the world always has more to show you.

Last night, Ben had made a molasses pie. We had taken the screen out of our kitchen window so that the pie could cool on the windowsill, and as a result of this a rather large bug had flown in and landed on the refrigerator. I noticed it and asked Ben to put it outside, and he was trying to get it onto a paper towel to go out the window. As he was about to touch the bug, and as I was watching closely, there was suddenly a bright flash of green light, and the incandescent bug flew out the window.

I haven't seen fireflies for more than fifteen years, since I lived in Tennessee!

It was incredible.

Ben and I came back on Thursday night, after being awake for 24 hours and taking three planes, two trains, and a bus to get back from Berlin to Philadelphia. We had our two weeks in France, two weeks in Italy, and a week in Germany, and they were so full of experiences and adventure that I have a hard time thinking of a single word to describe everything. I kept a travel journal of daily events, but I think it's too boring and long to put in here. I'll deal with things topically, as I think of them, and I'll post pictures when I'm able.

We aren't quite moved into our house yet, because our stuff, which was being shipped cross-country, was a couple of days delayed. We got the keys to the house (one of which was missing, so we had to watch them drill off the deadbolt and replace it) and set up most of our utilities. But we don't have internet because we have to see if Verizon will be able to do it at our address (Comcast could for four times the price). We spent today oiling our hardwood floors, bug-bombing our basement, and exploring the menu of a nearby Italian-American-Lebanese diner. Anyhow, I can't post pictures until we're set up there with internet, though I have around 800. :)

It was great. It was all great. And it's wonderful to come back to so many exciting things, like moving into my house with Ben and starting classes at Penn in a month. We are busy and happy and changed, if fundamentally the same.

Everything we could remember is taken care of; we signed the apartment lease, set up the utilities, packed what we wanted to take into two backpacks. I'm very, very excited.

:)

We're really going! Have a good month while I'm gone, everybody!

We've been short-distance before, but always for a limited period of time. I always knew in the back of my mind that after some date, we'd become long-distance again and the long-distance was the indefinite part. So it's very... strange to suddenly have none of that. Realize, I've been in a long-distance relationship for four and a half years. And there was an end! The distance ended and the relationship lasted! We did it!

It's like a second honeymoon, or something of that nature, to finally be free of something that's been holding us back for so long. It's the end of an era, the end of so many things, and the beginning of something totally new. I have to admit that I'm a little scared... long distance isn't good, but it's something we're very good at dealing with. We're going into new water here. But it feels so good to be together, finally, permanently. It's hard not to feel so happy that I just keep smiling, and it makes it so much better to see how happy Ben is too. We're silly and cute and mushy and it's great, it feels so simple and carefree. I feel so carefree.

This is a happy ending and a beautiful beginning and the best of all possible outcomes. Thank you world, friends, Ben, self. It finally worked.

Location update: I'm now in Los Angeles, helping Ben pack up. We're renting a truck and moving his stuff up to Douglas and Nancy's place in Ojai tomorrow, and on Tuesday we start our cross-country drive. I think we expect to be in Philadelphia on Saturday evening; we're spending an extra day in Bryce, and an evening with Jeanine and Andrew. I just spent a week in Indiana and Michigan, seeing West Lafayette where Jeanine and Andrew live and going up to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, on the northern part of Michigan's lower peninsula.

south manitou bay, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

Sleeping Bear Dunes was really awesome. Jeanine and I took a one and a half hour ferry ride out to South Manitou Island and backpacked there for three days. We stayed at Popple Campground, wehich was about 3.5 miles from the ferry landing and was the furthest, most deserted campsite. It had some patches of poison ivy (which I can now identify but had never before seen), but not in our campsite and not on the path. Our campsite had a short trail, less than 100 yards, down to the beach. The water in Lake Michigan was cold and clear, and the bottom was these big smooth rocks. I swam in it a few times, at our campsite, near the lighthouse, and just off the mainland. The hiking was beautiful, green and full of colors and sounds. We saw wild orchids, wild lilies, wild roses, and verdant birch-maple forests. There were also a lot of animals: lots of toads, snakes, turtles, fish, a black squirrel, chipmunks, ducks, seagulls, and a huge majestic wild swan. We hiked all around until our feet hurt and our muscles were sore, and sang old Girl Scout songs. It was fantastic.

abandoned building, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

South Manitou Island has one of the only natural harbors between Chicago and the Mackinaw Straits on Lake Michigan, so it was settled pretty early in the 19th century. A lighthouse and life-saving station were established near the harbor, which saved many lives. Nonetheless, the island is surrounded by shipwrecks, and there are actually many shipwrecks all over the Great Lakes. Originally, both South and North Manitou Islands had huge pine forests, which were quickly logged out for lumber and to power the ships travelling the Great Lakes. (North Manitou Island is bigger and less developed, but had less ferry service so we didn't go there this time.) When the lumber forests were cleared, inhabitants (max. population, 100) used the cleared land for agriculture, and apple and cherry orchards did especially well. But the services on the island started to decrease, and I think only around 20-30 people were living on the island when the Park Service bought it in the early 70s. At that point, most of the island was still cleared for agriculture. In the early 80s it was incorporated into Sleeping Bear Dunes, and for the last thirty years vegetation and birch-maple forests have been overtaking the island. There are still some relatively young pine forests on the south side of the island, though.

lake sunset, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

We also had an especially good food trip. The easiest food to take backpacking is dried or reconsituted, things like Lipton noodle packets, dried fruit, nuts, crackers, etc. These are great until you've been eating them for a few days. Luckily, when you're backpacking all food tastes amazing. But we brought a lot of semi-perishable stuff... ravioli, Gruyere, hummus, and onions, tomatoes, and avocados for vegetarian fajitas. There was also a pretty funny moment after we had spent the return ferry trip daydreaming about food, and cheese in particular, and how much we wanted it. But the towns near Sleeping Bear Dunes are small and limited, so we figured our chances of getting good cheese were slim. The ferry docked, we put on our packs, and not 50 feet from the dock did we see an old wooden building with a big sign: 'CHEESE'. It was a gourmet cheese store right by the dock! We didn't have any cash on us, but we ran back to the car, grabbed some, and bought local raclette and chocolate-covered cherries. We had the raclette that night, melted on garlicky toasted bagels, and it was awesome.

birch-maple forest, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

The day after we got back from backpacking, we rented a canoe and canoed the Lower Platte River. It was our first time in a canoe, but we didn't capsize and didn't really hit anything, though there was a close call with a fish weir and some miscommunication. We floated over lots of cool-looking fish, and since it was early-ish in the morning, the river was pretty much empty. It was extremely quiet and peaceful, and a lot of fun, and it's interesting being the steerer for the canoe. It made Jeanine and I both want to try a longer canoe trip, maybe on the Wabash or the Manistee, though it would have to be pretty easy because we're both still beginners.

in the lake, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

It was also cool to see where Jeanine and Andrew are lviing now. I saw the Wabash Valley Historical Trust, where Jeanine is working, and some of the cool older buildings in Lafayette, like the courthouse. I also saw a lot of the Purdue campus, and the acoustics lab that Andrew works in, which is really cool. There's a horticultural park across the street from their apartment which has lots of trails through beautiful woods, though many of the plants have labels. It's just nice to see where your close friends are living and working, and what they do all day.

south manitou lighthouse, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

Overall, the trip was great. It's so much fun to go backpacking, so nice to be out in nature, so good to see old friends. And so strange yet wonderful to come back at the end to Los Angeles, fly into LAX for the last time, and finally have a relationship without the long distance.