This title is a work in progress.

After my last post, I was told that my blogposts needed to include more baby pictures and less “other stuff.” This is the only other baby picture I have access to until I go back home next Monday.

Toes are fascinating things.

Ramadan started a bit less than a week ago, which has reminded me that the sun in this country is borked and needs to be fixed, since it seems to have forgotten how to set correctly and in a timely manner. No proper sun should be setting past 8pm. It also meant that I needed to acquire some number of chocolate-covered raisins. I don’t eat chocolate-covered raisins all that often, but every Ramadan, chocolate-covered raisins are among the first things I crave. Tabbouleh, Vimto, and cheese sambousak (“samosas”), also make frequent appearances as cravings, since those are things we often consume in ridiculous quantities during Ramadan. Those last few cravings are usually followed by pangs of homesickness, which are somewhat dampened by the fact that I’ll be home in about a week (!).

My current side-project:  a useless machine made out of LEGO.

Waterwaterwater!

Last weekend, I went waterfall-touring along with Adam, Caitlin, Shaun, and Sophie. During finals week, I mentioned in passing that I had never seen a waterfall before, and this quickly lead to us planning a trip to NH to see how many waterfall visits we could stuff into one weekend. We ended up touring a number of caves, a maple sugar ‘museum’ that consisted of one room followed by a gift shop, and, of course, a lot of waterfalls. Getting right up close to a waterfall and looking straight up was one of the most terrifying and fascinating things I've done in a while. Definitely the highlight of my summer.

Link Dump #2:

Here’s a matrix of videos, somewhat similar to Click the Squares from my last post. Some combinations aren’t that great, while others are fantastic.

A box plot of the average length of a dissertation indifferent fields. I love box plots.

A visual representation of the frequency of words appearing in presidents’ speeches over the years, presented as if it was an eye exam (for some reason). Unusual choice of graphic, but interesting information.  Move your mouse over the small boxes at the bottom to see what were the most frequently used words in speeches given publicly by presidents going all the way back to Washington.

 
(note: I started writing this post last Monday, so the times in the first section of the blogpost are a bit off)