Только Ольга наверно знает!

Posting this on all of my social media, because yay!:

My left leg (post-ACL reconstruction leg) is officially Good Enough For Sports. In fact, it's better in most ways (except for the hamstring).

Woo!

1. What did you do in 2015 that you'd never done before?

- Shoveled aaaalllll the snow.
- Made and presented my first scientific poster.
- Passed my Ph.D. comprehensive exams.
- Made a cheesecake. Also, multiple pies (cranberry and pumpkin). Also, profiteroles (aka creampuffs). Cinnamon swirl bread. And probably some other baking projects that I forgot about.
- Visited Canada! Twice!
- Saw Niagara Falls.
- Learned how to change a bicycle tire.
- Made my own pulled pork in the oven! I don't cook much meat, but when I do, I go all in.
- Tore my ACL (boo). Got surgery on my knee. Went to physical therapy.
- Taught someone else how to drive a stick-shift (in this case, my boyfriend needed to be able to drive my car when I got knee surgery).
- Wrote a research proposal for a fellowship application.
- Joined a community orchestra in Rochester!

( More under the cut, including a giant picture of a fat pony )

In celebration of me passing my first-year comprehensive exam and the recent SCOTUS ruling (and because I like rainbows and baking), I made a rainbow cheesecake! This was my first time ever making a cheesecake, and I think it turned out pretty well! I used this recipe.

Pictures are not the best quality because I don't have a real camera.



( Two more pictures behind the cut )

Update:

Mad Max was great! I wouldn't go so far as to blanket-recommend it to everyone, but it's surprisingly tasteful for an action movie, is mostly about women, does a lot of show-not-tell worldbuilding, and also has awesome car chases and explosions (and guy whose sole job was to ride on the front of a car and play a flame-throwing guitar? Yeah, I don't know either).

Homemade granola is also delicious, although I took the salt down to 2 tsp.

I was going to post about how I had a great time in Colorado with my boyfriend C.'s family the week after Christmas, but...well, maybe I still will talk (briefly) about that and then post a new year's meme shortly after.

His family is seriously great, all of them. They clearly tried very hard to welcome me, but even if they hadn't, I feel like I would've gotten along with them well. I was afraid before going that I would be horrible at cross-country skiing or that I wouldn't have anyone with me during the day of downhill skiing (since I stuck mostly to intermediate slopes), but those things were both false. Cross-country skiing was kind of like walking or hiking, and I liked it a lot. On downhill day, I was accompanied by people for the entire time I was there (and they never made me feel like I was holding them back, even though they're all more practiced than I am). The times at the vacation house - playing games, doing abstract art with C.'s mom, reading, cookie decorating, etc. - were also fun.

New Year's Eve in Denver was probably the worst part of the entire trip (C.'s friends were having a rare bit of drama/grumpiness, evidently), but I got over it. It helped that the friend I had most wanted to meet (and who was most curious about meeting me) came over to play Dixit with us on New Year's Day.

We (C., his sister, and me) also made croissants! They were surprisingly forgiving; even after we started with an overly sticky dough, messed up the timing at several stages of the process, and very slightly underbaked the first batch, they still turned out pretty well.

Basically, boyfriend has an A+ family and I really enjoyed spending time with him/them.

One of the first-year classes in my program requires everyone to find a professor to write a grant proposal with. Which is a great idea! Most of the proposals probably won’t receive funding, but it’ll be good practice for the future.

My problem is that I’m having trouble narrowing down my list of professors to talk to! I keep on going on faculty pages and reading about the cool research people are doing and adding to my list of potential people to work with.

Okay.

Emailed professors, sent job application follow-up.

Now to commit to the GRE, finalize my list of grad programs, and apply for more jobs. And also keep up with NaNoWriMo, which has been going relatively smoothly this year.

Even if I end up waiting another year to do the whole grad school thing, it feels like I should at least try. The worst that can happen is that I don't get in, or get in somewhere and decide not to go, in which case I won't be any worse off than I would by not applying at all.

It's snowing outside and it's not even November yet!

Today was a good day. It was a day for wrestling with tomato plants. And picking apples! I mostly grabbed the fruits I could reach (either from the ground or the Kubota), but I got to climb one of the trees and shake its branches! Tiring, but much more fun than the day of pulling ALL the turnips in 90-degree heat. (I filled most of a garage with those.)



This picture sucks because my (dumb)phone took it, but we picked enough apples today to cover a sizeable portion of the cellar floor. Some of them will become desserts. More will become cider!

So far, things are good here. I'm glad that E. (the daughter of M., who I'm working for) is here right now; she's been helping out and showing me how to do a lot of things (because I do not know how gardening works).

C. has already visited once; he biked from over an hour away to come and see me at this very remote place, and it was wonderful. I think that I get to have weekends with him, too.

I'm going to Wisconsin in a week or two and it's exciting but also a little bit scary.

I'll be working on a farm-type thing? That's also a spiritual/artistic center, with its annual meeting in October? They grow grapes for wine and have a garden.

The main thing making me nervous is that I should be there for two months (maybe more), and most of it will just be me and the institute's founder. I hope that we'll get along well. My S.O.'s aunt (who is wonderful) is the one who put us in contact, though, and I trust her.