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The last few days have been a bit crazy. Work was expecting me to do the impossible, which was made moreso by the fact I'm on a lot of meds to get rid of a terrible lingering cough. But I think I got my PI on my side, so things will be less crazy.
I also came within 26 hours of missing a deadline for a grad school application because I misplaced the sheet of paper with all the dates on them. But I didn't, and that's what matters.
On Thursday, I came home to an email from one of the schools I applied to telling me that they'd like to offer me a flight-and-expenses paid trip to their department open house in March. I'm not accepted into the program yet, so the invite is a little baffling, but I'm taking it as a good sign.
And then I've probably slept about 18 hours in the last 4 days. Because, see, it was the annual MIT Mystery Hunt. Last year, I was on team with the name [the entire text of Atlas Shrugged] (we, uh, discovered there was no character limit on the team name submission box. Someone suggested we take advantage of this), and won the 2013 Hunt. Our reward was writing the next one.
I don't really write puzzles, but I've been testsolving some of them for the past year. And in an attack of guilt for not doing more during writing (due to attacks of real life), I signed myself up to be available for whatever during runtime. So I spent the last four days running around campus doing NPC and organizer interactions for various teams. And since this hunt had the theme Alice in Wonderland, that meant I threw dignity to the wind and allowed myself to be crammed into costumes to play the stoner Caterpillar, the Tweedles, voice the Jabberwock, and very nearly was stuffed into a dress to play the Queen of Hearts (I couldn't fit the costume. So a guy much skinner than me was the Queen of Hearts in drag). I also almost had to be the Cheshire Cat, but the boss realized I'd been limping at that point (before even I had) and asked if I really wanted to try running around for the next 4 straight hours after 20 hours awake at that point. (The people on the team are some fantastic human beings, for a lot of reasons.)
(The writing team and hunt name was [Alice Shrugged] for what should be fairly obvious reasons at this point.)
So this is what I've been up to for the past year. And now can cross that off my list of obligations.
I also came within 26 hours of missing a deadline for a grad school application because I misplaced the sheet of paper with all the dates on them. But I didn't, and that's what matters.
On Thursday, I came home to an email from one of the schools I applied to telling me that they'd like to offer me a flight-and-expenses paid trip to their department open house in March. I'm not accepted into the program yet, so the invite is a little baffling, but I'm taking it as a good sign.
And then I've probably slept about 18 hours in the last 4 days. Because, see, it was the annual MIT Mystery Hunt. Last year, I was on team with the name [the entire text of Atlas Shrugged] (we, uh, discovered there was no character limit on the team name submission box. Someone suggested we take advantage of this), and won the 2013 Hunt. Our reward was writing the next one.
I don't really write puzzles, but I've been testsolving some of them for the past year. And in an attack of guilt for not doing more during writing (due to attacks of real life), I signed myself up to be available for whatever during runtime. So I spent the last four days running around campus doing NPC and organizer interactions for various teams. And since this hunt had the theme Alice in Wonderland, that meant I threw dignity to the wind and allowed myself to be crammed into costumes to play the stoner Caterpillar, the Tweedles, voice the Jabberwock, and very nearly was stuffed into a dress to play the Queen of Hearts (I couldn't fit the costume. So a guy much skinner than me was the Queen of Hearts in drag). I also almost had to be the Cheshire Cat, but the boss realized I'd been limping at that point (before even I had) and asked if I really wanted to try running around for the next 4 straight hours after 20 hours awake at that point. (The people on the team are some fantastic human beings, for a lot of reasons.)
(The writing team and hunt name was [Alice Shrugged] for what should be fairly obvious reasons at this point.)
So this is what I've been up to for the past year. And now can cross that off my list of obligations.
