So first off, I apologize for not posting more often these past months: I was extremely busy with one of the most intense semesters of my life. To give you the highlights:
- Found Nemo
- Campus Shutdown Because of Shooter Scare
- Jaunted around to 5 major US Cities for Two Weeks
- Was a block away from one of the Boston Bombs
- Lockdown of Boston in the Ensuing Manhunt
- Ran the Graduate Association of Mechanical Engineers at MIT
- Lost ~16 pounds
This was while I was taking two very time-intensive MIT graduate classes (one you can see here: http://www.levilentz.com/2.37/ ). Lets put it this way: I had my last final on 05/20/2013, and immediately passed out for twelve (12!) hours. It felt as if a whole semester of stress hit me at once and I could only sleep.
So lets get right to it:
Nemo was the huge snowstorm that hit the North Eastern Seaboard. It shutdown Boston for about 4 days while shutting down MIT for one day of classes. I grew up in San Diego, so seeing ~30inches of snow was a sobering experience. Hats off to the Boston Public Services as they had the city completely usable by the end of the weekend.
In addition to missing the days for Nemo, I also missed two weeks for two different conferences: APS in Baltimore and MRS in San Francisco. Each of the conferences were a week apiece with the spring break in the middle; essentially I did not attend three weeks of classes. I was extremely lucky as I was able to see the SDSU MBB program play in the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament in Philadelphia. Unfortunately we lost, but it was great to see Philly and make it to another NCAA tournament. If you ever have the chance, just go; the environment is just astounding. I also made it to NYC for an astounding 1.5 hours and San Diego for a weekend.
The craziest thing that happened was the Boston Bombings. One of the big traditions that revolves around the marathon is to do the pub-crawl down Boylston, and you only have to tell me once if there is alcohol involved. We were on our way down to the end of the race when we stopped into The Cactus Club (~1.5 blocks from the second explosion) about 10 minutes before the explosion. Had we not stopped there, we would have kept on walking and would have been right in the mist of the everything.
I also put myself on a strict diet the whole semester, and successfully lost ~16 pounds, going from 215 to 199lbs. I am hoping to be down to 190lbs by the end of summer, a weight that I have not been at since 7th grade. Go Diets! I am going to make another post outlining my diet and workout routine for anyone that is interested.
And now it is summer. I am hoping to make it to Las Vegas once this summer and back to beautiful San Diego to see all my family and friends. Stay tuned as I will be updating this blog much more regularly this summer and next semester.