Summertime

And the living is easier. Congratulations on finishing your semester! You are probably at this moment off in Boston about to start your Co-op and new adventures for the next few months. Firstly, I am so excited for you to explore Boston. You should catalog the best pizza places and if it as cool of a city as I think it is, we can wander it together someday. Secondly, by you starting this new chapter it has made me realize just how much closer we are to being reunited! That makes me very happy. Thirdly, go kick butt. Be as awesome as you are and learn tons of really cool things. I hope this is a really good experience for you. Now for some send off reading material, I shall recount some of my summer adventures for you.

The last time you heard from me, I was settling into my house with boxes strewn across my room and nothing put in a proper place. At that time my room was still white with a large hole in the wall, I owned neither sheets nor a laundry basket, and I owned about half as many books as I currently do. Much has changed about my surroundings since then, though most of the improvements have happened at a snail's pace. My room is now a pretty blue, the wall has been patched (including the large chunk of wall I managed to tear out while removing an outlet cover), and many items that I needed have been acquired. Along with those items came a slough of things that I didn't *need*, but have loved getting nonetheless. My bookshelf is now completely full with even some books spilling over onto the dining room bookshelf. I have yet to read many of the books I've bought this summer, but I'm looking forward to perusing them all before the school year starts and I will no longer have time for such things. My most recent acquisitions are probably the best of them all though, two pristine I-SPY books that I read through the very day I got them. Now I just need to collect the Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein books and I will be set.

There have been improvements happening around my house as well. Bathrooms have been painted, dishes and curtains purchased, and proper couches moved in. I also tore up a strip of grass outside the front of our house and planted some more attractive plants instead. You should have seen the look on the neighbors' faces. I kid you not, on the day I was digging up the grass, six different groups of people stopped to congratulate me. There were names and pleasantries exchanged and now I have become a sort of ambassador to some of the neighbors. The second time I was outside gardening and planting the new plants, two more groups stopped by. Trudy from next door came outside despite her arthritis, and said hello to both me and my neighbor Cam across the street. Cam is the resident gardener of the neighborhood, and Trudy jokingly likes to call her our Cam-petition. Apparently if you want to meet and impress your neighborhood, gardening is the way to go. Later at the neighborhood block party I got to meet some of the other neighbors and realized that our street is full of 80 year olds and young couples with small children. Two of the young mothers jokingly asked us if we were a party house, and when I reassured them that we don't drink they instantly turned serious and asked if we were open to babysitting. I hope this means we have made a good impression on the people around us and that they will enjoy our company for what will probably be the next two years. As far as college kids go, they really didn't wind up with a bad group to live next to.

We are college kids though, and have had some learning to do (including how to make a really good fruit fly trap). It has been interesting adjusting to living with this group of people. For as adaptable as I am, I can't help but miss all of the amazing people that I lived with at my last house. I learned a lot about myself living with them and miss their company. And getting used to my new house will start again at the end of the summer when the faces of the house change a little bit as subletters move out. In the large scheme of things though, it won't really be that different. I will still be busy with school every day and trying to balance seeing the people I care about with doing the things that interest me.

Most of the new things I have done this summer haven't been around the house though. It has actually surprised me how little time I spend at home. Each day, I do some sort of head TA thing on campus, but physically being there actually requires very little of my time. Mostly, I figured I would be at home and working on new projects. Instead, I have managed to fill my free time by adventuring with other people and learning new things. I just got back from my first backpacking trip ever, a two day backpacking trip into the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Man, this is a really beautiful part of the country, and every time I go out into nature, I see how amazing it is. I also went cliff jumping earlier this summer and learned how not to land in a bad way after falling 30 feet off of a rock wall into water. It was really fun though, and some of my friends are thinking of a repeat before summer is out. Another activity I tried for the first time this summer is hot yoga. One of the friends I made in the CS department decided to take me to the hot yoga studio she goes to for two weeks straight and it was a lot of fun. I don't think I'll ever really have the time or patience to take it up during the school year, but dripping sweat in a hot room doing impossible poses made me not care if I sweat in day to day life and realize how much I need to work on stretching. The last of my trying new things adventures I can think of to tell you about is ice blocking. Even though we had friends in high school who liked to slide down hills on large blocks of ice, I never actually had partaken in this particular activity. That is until recently, when I slid down the slopes of Gasworks park with a group of friends in interesting formations. Pyramids were probably the best, and this is definitely a thing we should try together at some point.

I'm sure I have tried other new things and learned other lessons this summer, but those are some of the big ones that jump out to me. Otherwise, I have been spending my time trying to explore Seattle a little bit, going climbing every once in a while, seeing friends, and enjoying the heat while it is here. By the next time you hear from me, I will hopefully have tried more new things to tell you about. Maybe by that point, I will have hung pictures on my wall and convinced my housemates to do their dishes. The latter is not likely, but I can dream.

Lots of love,
Riley