Getting to work

On New Year's Eve, I had not yet begun work, but came to the office for contact with the outside world. I did begin looking at some of what my supervisor had sent me, but more interesting was several hours' conversation with most of my family, who I wished a happy New Year.

After dinner, I played a couple more practice games of AOE2 (still waiting for that game, Tom!) until shortly before midnight. I watched the fireworks from my bedroom - I have a pretty good view of the Chicago skyline - and then went straight to bed.

New Year's Day was spent almost entirely working on papers from MIT. I made a lot of progress, but it didn't feel like a holiday. The most holidayish thing I did was cook a nice dinner (stir fry).

The next day was my first official day of work. I spent much of it staring at my computer screen, getting a sense of the problem and how I should enter it. Although I didn't make much progress on anything that day, it did help get me started and things have progressed well since.

I also went to Chase to set up a bank account. They were far more attentive than I expected: the branch manager introduced himself and thanked me for joining them. The fact that the sign-in sheet requested title and surname may have helped, but I got the impression that they are that polite to all their customers. Certainly more interested in me than the MIT credit union!

In the evening, Matt and Theresa visited for dinner. I cooked a very easy but yummy salmon (well, tuna) pie (thanks for the recipe, Mum!), and Theresa had baked cookies. We had a very pleasant dinner and chat about Chicago and Cambridge.

On Saturday morning I did some more shopping. In the afternoon I watched the start of the NFL playoffs and did some planning for Mum and Dad's trip here in June, before chatting with Carl in the evening.

On Sunday morning, I went to Mass at Calvert House. The congregation was still very small: classes didn't begin until the following day. But I was at least able to introduce myself to a couple of people there, and start to get to know who is (and would be) around. I watched a little more of the playoffs and had an early night. Several times recently it's got to 9 pm and felt like 6 pm, but on that day it was the opposite!

Monday morning, I was ready to begin work in earnest. I had had the idea that spatial structure and not marginality (isostaticity) was important in determining the transmission of signals through a granular material, and began to write a program to test this idea. With just one thing to focus on (projects tend to accumulate as one stays at an institution, and I had made the decision not to work on MIT papers during normal work hours, so I could maintain unity of focus), I progressed fairly quickly. Things are looking good for a productive year here.