A Busy Schedule

Here are things in which I am actively participating right now:

Research: Going very well!! A bunch of abstracts submitted. Some big projects on the horizon. I will start writing manuscripts soon for the abstracts which I submitted. That could be kind of a drudgery, but I think it will be a great experience. It'll take a while for the first manuscript, but hopefully it gets easier after that. I'm excited about this and I'm feeling productive.

Soccer: We are on Game 3 of our session and so far haven't lost a game. I'm the "captain" of the team and I put it in quotes because all that is is administrative responsibilities (i.e. emailing the team reminding them of the game, deciding team name, etc...). It's not really a reflection of my playing ability. One thing that is cool is that a lot of my teammates are also my schoolmates. So it's much more of a social game.

Rowing: I've gone three weeks in a row now. I'm learning the lingo. I'm feathering and squaring okay. BUT, my last time out, I did catch three crabs and it was very embarassing. It's very nice however to be out on the lake on the boat during sunset.

Frisbee: We have an ultimate frisbee team!! We're playing every weekend AND we're even scrimmaging local college clubs. I'm meeting new people and getting lenty of exercise.

Cooking: I've successfully cooked an awesome steak, some seared sea scallops, and pulled pork. The steak and scallops were cooked on the Cape (I'm just gonna post the link to pictures tomorrow or something). The pulled pork was cooked this past weekend while I was in New York. That took 7.5 hours of low temperature roasting of pork shoulder. It was awesome. I have a knife skills class tomorrow night (before a soccer game at 11PM!!) so I think that will round out my skills. I'll try to post something about that (jeez, I've said that a lot in past posts, huh?).

Salsa / Ballroom Dance: Ok, so this is actually picking up too. I've joined a ballroom dance society. I'm finishing up swing dancing and learning other dances as well (tango and cha-cha for example). I have been attending salsa socials. The next one is this Saturday night at WPI right here in Worcester. I have also decided to take a few private lessons in salsa. I figured this is my year off, screw the money, if I want to do it, I should just do it because the opportunity will never again arise. I really want to work on the fundamentals and get those down. I'll post how these go.

OK, so those things I am actively participating in RIGHT NOW!!!! It's a lot. And a few of those will be ending soon (frisbee and rowing actually have a season's end). I'd like to add a few things to my plate. First, I would like to take up photography and as such would finally like to buy a DSLR. Just waiting for a great deal. Second, I need to start to work out seriously at a gym. I've been running (did I mention my 5k race?) and playing, but I need to get some concentrated exrecise.

Ok, enough for now...I think I can dispense with the progress posts and start to post on some real posts. This blog is really the only thing that's not actually getting done right now!