Patrick's on his way back to California. Now it's time to get back to real life and get ready to go to work on Monday. This past week has been kind of surreal. I'm glad Patrick was here to take care of me and entertain me. I wish it were time for us to live together already!

I made myself some gumbolaya for dinner tonight (this time with scallops!). It's good because it has meat and vegetables in it, and it'll feed me for the next 4 or 5 days. I'm sure I'll be sick of it by that time. I ate it with buttered sandwich bread, but it'd be better with real bread.

We've been having some nice weather these past few days! It's been making my room pretty hot, and since I spent all day doing web programming with my laptop resting on my legs, I'm all overheating and sweaty. Ugh! Oh well, it's better than having it still be winter! And I feel so accomplished :) Now I just have to do something useful at work tomorrow, and I'll be back in the saddle again...

Yep, we're back to me writing boring entries about work. Hopefully there won't be any more hospital visits in the near future :) Although I do have a dentist appointment tomorrow.

Well, no dentist appointment today after all. I got as far as reclining in the dentist's chair with a bib around my neck and having the dentist poke at my tooth, but that's it. See, the power went out for the entire MIT campus for about 2 hours, and it only came back on right before my appointment. And their air compressor didn't come back on with the power, so the dentist couldn't do anything to my teeth. At least he didn't inject me with novocaine before noticing the compressor problem!

Oh, and I also found out that I'm going to get a filling (I thought it was just replacing a loose sealant). I have a cavity? I never get cavities! I guess my loose sealant was the perfect home for a cavity. Oh well, I had a good track record. Funny that the things that were supposed to prevent cavities actually caused one.

So now I'm looking forward to my rescheduled appointment even less. Novocaine and who knows what else. Oh well, it could be much much worse. At least they're not pulling out any teeth this time (that was a popular thing to do during dentist's visits when I was a teenager).

I did some good catching up on work and bureaucratic stuff (involving my graduation date) this morning. This afternoon, my productivity went way downhill because of the power outage, but I'll do better tomorrow. Boy, I sure could do with another week-long vacation (but I'm not ready to sacrifice any more internal organs for it)!

Dammit! Super eggplant's latest sewing project makes me want to sew myself a skirt! I could totally make something that would go for $100 at J. Crew (I just happened to get a J. Crew catalogue in the mail today with a cute but expensive striped skirt in it). I mean, I'm sure it'd have crooked seams and mismatched stripes and all, but I'd be the only one who would notice such imperfections. But this is a bad time to start a sewing project, Caitlin! Bad, bad, bad! I should wait until I'm in California anyway, so I can go someplace like JoAnn, where they have lots of patterns and fabrics. Yeah! I can be patient...

Oh, and as I emailed Patrick earlier tonight, if we have the kind of wedding where we give the guests favors (which probably won't be happening), it would be cool to give them little jars of homemade jam with the recipe for Patrick's favorite jam cookies attached. I could make those jars look so freaking cute :) And everybody loves jam, right? Well, I could always make my own jam even if it weren't part of the wedding. Good thing there are so many occasions for gift-giving :) I just have to get over my fear of sanitizing jars. What if I don't do it right and the jam gets moldy? That'd be a shame...

Hmm, maybe I should try other recipes for jam cookies. I've only tried the one recipe up there, and it made tasty cookies, so I never tried anything else. But other jam cookies could be even better!

Mmm, I just made a pan of eggplant and zucchini lasagna, one of our favorite recipes (we're becoming grown ups!). Patrick is also planning on making some tonight, way over in California. It's like we're having dinner together :) I believe this is the second time we've had unplanned lasagna synchronicity. Whoa...

I threw in some Gruyere, in addition to the normal mozzarella, and it didn't make a big difference in the taste, but I'd add it again given the opportunity. I like cheese, especially when it's melty and browned and bubbly :)

Oh! And I made myself an artichoke when I got home, to keep from being ravenous while preparing the lasagna. I like artichokes, especially with lots of mayonnaise for dipping (it's a family tradition; I guess most people don't eat them that way).

I did not enjoy being at work today. While running my filtration, I started worrying that I'd never reach a good stopping point in my research, and I'd just end up leaving on August 15th (when my housing runs out) with no degree. That would suck majorly, having nothing to show for my time here. But hopefully that won't happen. I'll be very very happy once I know when exactly I'll be graduating. Then I'll have an actual date to look forward to. It's hard being patient, but you already knew that. The weird thing is that I know I'll miss MIT and Cambridge and everything after the fact. I have some good memories here...