Smiles :D

           Today we’re going to try something a little bit different (to go along with the new layout I'm trying out... Let me know what you think). I think it must get rather boring hearing a list of everything I do every week... and I try to make it fun, but there’s really only so much you can do with a list of events. So today, instead, I’m going to present you with a list of an entirely different nature: a list of things that have made me smile over the past week (not in chronological order, because it’s all a bit confused in my brain...)

The police officer cheering for runners this morning. 

This morning, after working my desk shift, I went into my UROP lab to run an

experiment (before you freak out that I’m skipping school, I’ll point out that we had a day off today, for Columbus Day, which is also a thing that made me smile). Since the test only took about two hours, I was on my way back to the dorm right when the Columbus Day 10k was passing by. At one of the intersections on my way back, there was a police car blocking the intersection so that cars didn’t try to get onto the race route. Standing by the police car, continuously clapping his hands and yelling encouragement, was the police officer that I assume was driving the car. He could have easily sat in his car, drinking his coffee and staying warm while he was waiting for the last runners to go by. But instead, he was outside cheering them on, shouting encouragements that probably got some of the women (it was a women’s race) past the evil halfway point and into the home stretch. It’s little things like that that remind how good people are, in general.

Skyping with my mom

It’s my mom’s birthday this week, and since I’ll probably be pretty busy on

the actual day of her birthday, and I’ll definitely be busy next weekend, after her birthday, we had a pre-birthday Skype session. It was super relaxing to take some time out to just talk about random things that had been going on in our lives (and it was nice to see her smiling face :P ).

Watching two utterly ridiculous, but wonderful, movies

On Saturday night, we were sitting around not doing much, so we decided to

watch a movie. I’m not totally sure how it happened, but we ended up watching Hot Fuzz, which is not exactly the typical movie for my friend group. However, it was totally awesome. It may have been because of the group watching the movie, because I’m pretty sure that the movie itself is not something I’d usually enjoy. But for whatever reason, Hot Fuzz was completely hilarious, and suspenseful up until the last minute, and I loved it.

           On Sunday night (which wasn’t a school night because of the aforementioned day off) I went to one of the other floors in Burton Conner to watch Pacific Rim with one of my course 20 friends. Again, Pacific Rim isn’t a movie that I would have thought I would enjoy, but I actually liked it a lot. I knew from various people over the summer that it was a good movie, but it was a lot better than I had expected. The graphics were amazing, and although it was mostly a giant-robots-fighting-giant-lizards-from-under-the-ocean movie, it actually had a good plot and message to it. In case anyone is planning to watch it, I won’t give you any spoilers, but we’ll sum it up by saying that I thought it was a very worthwhile movie.

Professors who are willing to make time to talk to students

This one requires a bit of explanation... My 20.320 (Computational Analysis

of Biological Systems) professor holds office hours at a time when I have another class. I wanted to discuss the problems I had missed on my exam with him though, so I emailed him to ask if we could set up an alternate time to meet. Even though he had gone to a meeting in Florida, and was probably super busy, he took the time to respond to all of my emails requesting a meeting, and we managed to set up a time that works for both of us to meet this week.

Fall weather

The past couple of days in Boston have been gorgeous, and exactly the type of

days you would expect of a stereotypical fall season- crisp temperatures that are just starting to require a jacket, bright clear skies, and gorgeous fall colors on the trees. It’s the kind of day that makes you want to curl up with a hot mug of apple cider and marvel at how crazy nature is.

Speaking of apple cider...

I had something of an incident with apple cider this week... I was trying to

make a mug of that powdered apple cider. Since I didn’t want to lose any powder when I opened the packet, I was shaking the packet. Usually, this goes off without a hitch. Usually, I have absolutely no problems, and I get all of the powder to the bottom of the packet. This time, not so much. As I was shaking the packet, the corner suddenly ripped off, and the packet went flying across the room. This wouldn’t have been a huge deal, except that the corner I was holding onto contained some of the actual packet, rather than just the sealed part, so the packet that flew across the room was open... and it spilled powder all over the room. I kind of cracked up at this one.

Creative people

In addition to being filled with ridiculous things and very little sleep, this

week was filled with creative people. So many people I know have been drawing, or writing, or making music (I went to an MIT Symphony Orchestra concert on Friday... it was pretty much amazing) or just generally creating. My favorite thing I learned this week though, was that one of the freshmen who lives in my suite spent a month this summer crocheting a mantis shrimp. For reference, here’s a picture of a mantis shrimp:

Source

The level of detail required is ridiculous... I was extremely impressed with the finished product. Also, mantis shrimp are incredible for many reasons other than that they're beautiful... there's a web comic that explains some of them here (Warning: there's a little bit of fish-y violence that occurs). 

The reminder that it’s actually really easy to make someone happy

Probably my favorite comment of the week happened on Saturday night,

after we were done watching Hot Fuzz. We were all squished onto the futon in my room, which is probably only meant to hold three people, but was holding four in this case. It was late, and I was tired, so I had my head on one of my friend’s shoulders. At some point, I realized that I’ve got at least six inches and several pounds on her, and it was highly likely that I was squishing her, or at least making her shoulder rather uncomfortable. But when I asked if she wanted me to move, she said something along the lines of, “It’s okay. It makes me feel loved”, which was pretty much the sweetest thing ever, and also reminded me that it’s the little things in life that matter. I doubt that this is a moment that we’ll remember five or ten years in the future, and in the grand scheme of things it’s a fairly insignificant moment. But right then, and remembering it now, it made me happy to think that it’s so easy to brighten someone’s day. We are, as humans, actually incredibly simple, which gets lost in the shuffle sometimes. This was a good reminder that happiness, and love, can be found everywhere, as long as you know where to look.

There’s a ton of other things I smiled about this week... but continuing on for longer would probably test your patience as readers, and my patience as a writer. :P Also, I’m Skyping with a friend in about 20 minutes, so I kind of need to wrap this up... I hope everyone finds a lot to smile about this week!