Back on the NaBloPoMo Bandwagon

Hope the summer has been treating everyone well!   I know I've been off enjoying summer (though that makes it sound like I haven't been on the internet; I've been on the internet plenty), and thought that doing another NaBloPoMo month of blogging would be a good kickstart to get me back on the blogging wagon.  So what have I been up to while not spending much time round these parts?

• I took and passed all my Ph.D. General Exams (written and oral exams in three different fields...glad to be done with that!)  Basically, the general exams involved picking three areas of study, getting a committee of people who knew those areas, designing lengthy reading lists spanning those areas, and then several months later being tested in an oral exam, two written exams, and a journal-level paper about anything in those fields.   

• I spent a vacation with the boyfriend and his family by a lake in Northern Wisconsin.  Lots of water-skiing and other water sports ensued.  I appear to have gotten better than I was last year.

• I've been doing a fair amount of cooking to handle the various farm share vegetables (as we have a CSA again this year).  Fortunately, I've also found that I do enjoy roasted beets, especially with goat cheese, so I have something to do with the weekly influx of beets...

• I weathered several heatwaves through Boston.  Normally we get a few sporadic days in the high 90's, one or two days that will hit 100, but this year has had weeks when it didn't get any cooler than that.  Very hard to deal with, especially since the air conditioning in my lab would then be 30+ degrees colder than it was outside.  

• I've done a lot of housecleaning, decluttering, and reading back archives of the UFYH blog.  I think I'm slowly moving toward a cleaner and more organized apartment!  One of the things that has been helping a lot is the idea of getting rid of at least one thing every day...moving something to the Goodwill box, generally.  It shifts the focus from "should I get rid of this specific thing?" to "what do I own that I least want to keep owning?"

• I read a number of books, including random fiction books, which is really exciting.  It's been a long time since I was regularly reading things that had nothing to do with work (perhaps because my general exams required me to read a ton of things for work, so that took up the majority of my reading time).

Hope everyone has been enjoying the summer so far!  I can't believe it's August already...this month is going to go very, very fast, I suspect.

Edit: clearly, it's now August 2.  Wrote the post yesterday, waited to add the waterskiing picture later, and ended up helping a friend move and completely forgetting that this still wasn't up!