Shear Madness and People in Trees

Awesome DME day today. I'm one of the slower more careful people in DME, but even I am nearly finished by now. I even got this really awesome picture of me studiously at work, except when I say really awesome I mean totally staged.


Also, my team has been dubbed the Fantastic Four. There's four of us, we're team number four...it was destined to happen. We're even the right genders too, three guys and one girl. In retrospect, Teenage Mutant Ninja Engineers would have been a great name too, but I guess you can't have everything.

Anyway, in addition to our usual time in the lab, today we also explored some of the actual research laboratories here at MIT! We ended up going to three different labs - the Sloan Automotive Lab, the BioInstrumentation Lab, and the famous Media Lab! They were all amazing, but especially the BioI Lab and the Media Lab. I can't really pick between the two of them, because they are simply so different...anything and everything can happen in the Media Lab though. It's sort of like MIT's playground, and that's why I love it.

For tonight's entertainment, we ventured into Boston's Theater District to see Shear Madness, which is half-comedy, half-mystery, half-improv. (Yes, I know that makes three halves; no, I don't care.) Regardless of what genre you put it in, the show is simply hilarious - mostly through innuendo and double entendre, though they also made plenty of jokes about Boston, Britney Spears, and even MIT! At a specific point in the play the audience gets to interact with the actors, and Snively actually ended up getting into an argument with one of the characters. Needless to say, the other guy had no chance at all.

The great thing about Shear Madness is that the script changes frequently, and because it's part-improv it's never quite the same twice. I won't give away the ending, but the audience really does control some of the action, which is truly enjoyable. I saw the play once before when I was in Washington, D.C., and in my humble opinion Boston's version was much better. :)

After the show we all got some amazing ice cream from J.P. Licks, conveniently located right by the Hynes T station. I got a cone of Oreo, and it was hands-down one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. Back on campus, I first ended up hanging out with some DME kids in their Baker quad. Then a couple other DME'ers wanted to see Simmons, so I took them up to my room and we ended up talking for over an hour.

Oh yeah, before I forget, remember that I mentioned people in trees? Basically, there was this amazing tree in the courtyard on Georges Island that four different people spontaneously decided to climb. And it wasn't an easy tree to get into, either. Although I would have loved to join my friends in celebrating our simian ancestry, I decided my interests would be best put to use if I stayed safe on the ground took some pictures.

Here's Jake, one of the most skilled tree-climbers in this part of Boston:


Diandra '11 smiles for the camera:


Counselor Dan '09 jumps up onto a low-lying limb:


There's been so much crazy stuff going these past few days, I can't believe tomorrow is actually Friday!