So busy!

Before the weekend was tying up loose ends before starting the new job. This was domianted by a media rating project involving foreign-language articles which took a lot of time, given that (a) most of the special characters were stripped, requiring some work to replace with the letter minus its accent, and (b) we used a translator program that gave "gisted" translations, meaning more literal and less idiomatic. So it was a lot of the European equivalent of Engrish.

The weekend brought us up to Maine, which was pretty restful until Sunday morning, when I went with the wife and the sister in law for a hike in the Camden Hills State Park. We did something between 3 and 4 miles on rocky, tree root-infested trails. I also got to give a quick course in reading terrain maps which boiled down to "close lines=steep climbing."

Even with the leg-shattering climbs, we weren't all that sore afterwards. Perhaps more hiking in the future, though perhaps on gentler, clearer trails.

Today was my first day at the new job, which went pretty well. The commute was pretty smooth, though if we are going to stay in our current weather pattern I may risk taking the Green Line given that I'd spend less time walking through humidity. As for actual job stuff, it was the usual first day experience where you get a ton of information and hope a quarter of it sticks. We're about two week away from the biggest graduation ceremony (due to co-op requirements, though there is a smaller May ceremony), so I'm getting in at just the right time to see how things work in practice. Even better, my first graduation is in February, which is the smallest of the three (it doesn't even get its own ceremony).

Everything else is good so far - like the work environment, and the people are great.

After work, the wife and I had a birthday dinner at The Continental on Route 1. For those of you planning your SNL joke for the comments, don't, because this place is pretty much what you'd get if you transmogrified Christopher Walken in an ascot into a restaurant. The whole place feels like it's from 1973, from the decor to the very traditional menu. That being said, we both enjoyed our meals and the prices extremely reasonable. We've paid more for less at chain restaurants. I don't know if we'd go there regularly, but I could see it being in the rotation. Especially if we're with the in-laws.

Not too much else to report. Sad to see Peter Jennings go (we were an ABC household), but perhaps not unexpected with the lung cancer and all. Think happy thoughts for the Discovery crew, and hope that that thermal blanket thing isn't too serious. Really, it may be time we either build some new, less problematic Shuttles or bring back more traditional rocket-based systems. It doesn't do you much good to have a re-useable space plane if you have to keep grounding them or spend half the mission making repairs.