Tuesday, July 12, 2022
By:
This week started off with 4th of July celebrations, so Monday was a day off from work. I have enjoyed the festivities quite a bit during the last couple of years at Colgate, but I was very excited to experience it in the middle of the political capital of the U.S. We decided to get to the National Mall 3 hours before the fireworks started and were able to get some very good spots close to the Washington Monument. The hours passed by very quickly through a combination of great conversation, looking for food, and some fun games. The fireworks lasted about 20 minutes, and we made our way back soon after. I was quite tired, so I went to bed early in anticipation of going back to work.
On Tuesday, we had our second session of DnD, where a basic slime almost murdered our entire group. This gave us quite a bit of experience in terms of how combat works, so I’m hoping that we can do better next session. We had a kayaking trip planned for Wednesday, but this got postponed to next week because of the rain D.C. has been experiencing recently. I went to watch the new Thor movie on Thursday, and thought it was quite decent, but definitely did not reach the heights that Ragnarok did. Friday came with another trip to Quigley’s, and then hanging out after. I had quite a few plans for the weekend, so I called it in early.
On Saturday, I slept in until the afternoon, which was a nice change of pace. We had our second potluck scheduled for Sunday, so Valeria and I went shopping for the ingredients for the dish we were making. After having Peruvian food last week, we decided to try our hand at replicating Aji de Gallina for the potluck. This grocery trip ended up taking around 3 hours as we went to a few different stores searching for all the ingredients. For some reason, I find grocery stores quite therapeutic to walk around in, so I saw this as a good use of my weekend! After coming back to Amsterdam Hall later that night, we whipped up a quick Bailey’s hot chocolate and played Magic: the Gathering with Taylor and Anthony. The games lasted a while, and before we knew it, it was already 2 am. One of my friends from Colgate was in D.C. over the weekend, so I had to wake up early in order to meet them. After getting a full 5 hours of sleep, I made my way to the Lincoln Memorial in the morning. I didn’t have a concrete plan for the day, so we walked over to the Wharf for some breakfast, where I was served the largest burrito I had ever seen. We were near the Artechouse where they had an exhibition called AṢẸ: AFRO FREQUENCIES, so we decided to check it out. It was a short but very immersive experience, with screens covering entire walls, and some pretty interesting visuals. After that, we went through a couple of the Smithsonians, catching up on the last few months. I only had the morning to hang out though, since we had to start cooking at 4 for the food to be ready for the potluck. The potluck went even better than last time, with a wide variety of foods, and some incredible deserts. It was a good end to what had been a relatively long week at work.
My week at NIST has been a bit bumpy as I try to tackle an LCR meter to make capacitance measurements. While I got the program to work after a couple of days, the measurements are very different from what is expected, and I have spent most of my time testing, troubleshooting, and doing literature review. I hope to have everything up and running by next week, so that I can move on with further testing and preparing for our upcoming presentations.
Divyansh Chamria