I flew out to Boston on Saturday. Left the house at 6:00am and arrived in Boston at 5:00pm. Met Nina at the airport and we hung out all evening. Ate dinner with her family at Anna's Taqeria, food objective #1: check.

Sunday we all went to a good dim sum place in chinatown, then Nina and I went for a drive. I tried to do the Worcester county highpoint (again) but the drive-up was closed for the season (again). We weren't properly equipped for the short hike so we bailed and drove up the nearby highpoint of Hillsborough County, NH--Pack Monadnock Mountain. It's a nice state park with a $3/person entrance fee and a pleasant short drive to the summit. The clouds were pretty low and obscured most of the view, but what we could see was nice. Also stopped by Cruftlabs, which has really turned into something amazing.

Monday, I went in to MIT early and got all the technical details of my defense sorted out. When 10:00am rolled around, the only person who had arrived was Chris. The rest of the committee was late and there was apparently no one else coming. Nina's dad came in along with the rest of the committee at about 10:05 and one student joined in about 10 minutes into the talk. So a total audience of 6, one more than I was expecting.

The talk went well, there were a few background questions early on that I fumbled a bit but otherwise the questions were easy and on-topic. Basically a cake walk. When they kicked us out to deliberate on my future, I talked with Nina's dad about the political goings-on at the lab. After five minutes, they invited me back in and congratulated me and that was that.

The committee rapidly dispersed and no one ate any of the cookies or champaign that Nina's mom had sent along. We packed it back up and took it home for future use. I spent the rest of the day doing legwork gathering signatures and printing out the various what-nots that are required to actually graduate.

Now it's Tuesday and I'm doing the same thing. We'll see how long all of this takes. At this point the real bottleneck is going to be finding Molvig so he can sign my cover sheets. But first I have to print and bind a copy of the thesis for him, which I am waiting for now.

At noon, I eat at Border India -- all you can eat (food objective #2). Dinner tonight is with my old roommate Evan.