The Hinternet: A thousand words are worth a picture, and they load a heck of a lot faster. -Unknown

I personally am of the opinion that pictures are worth 346 words, thus for each 346 words in this blog, you will be treated with a picture. Well done readers.

Some silly people have asked me to post stuff about what I'm actually like doing out here normally, as opposed to loads of stuff about gaming and not much else... This seemed like a thoroughly strange idea to me, but what the heck, I'll try and keep it interesting in my own special way.

So, a week in the life of New Haven Matt. Where do I start? Monday probably makes sense, I mean, starting in the middle of the week would be a bit odd...

anyway...

On Monday I get into work at The Wright Nuclear Structure lab at around 9 (9:30 if I can't find my glasses) ready for the group meeting, where we discuss what we will be doing that week, go off topic for a bit, figure out who is doing what to set-up the experiment, maybe go off topic again, assign shifts and then possibly talk about something unrelated for a while. At the moment we take around 3 8-hour shifts a week, which basically involve being in the control room making sure that everything is going smoothly with the current experiment. So, on a Monday the experiment usually ends up starting at around 8pm, in a perfect world...

On Tuesdays I generally go to the Yale games club (Nexus), I won't talk about gaming too much, since I said I wouldn't but this is 4 hours of really good fun, mainly playing Euro-games as most of the people there are massive Agricola fans. It's not as big as my beloved GameSoc back in Surrey and there is no wargaming whatsoever, which gives me a massive sadface, but I'll just have to get my fill of Warhammer when I return. :)

Wednesdays is time for badminton, down at the Yale badminton club. This is a fairly small club since badminton isn't too big here in the states. Still, the club is

Yay! Picture Time!

of fairly decent standard and helps to keep me fit. I also try to go swimming at least once during the week, since I can use Yale's 3rd floor (2nd floor to you guys in the UK) pool. I'm not entirely sure why it's built on the 3rd floor except for it being a cool anecdote for people's blogs.

On Thursdays I play D&D with some people I found through Nexus at a place called Guilford! This is just a short drive (the DM picks us up) from New Haven and we generally play for most of the eve intermittently due to the small children running around the room! For those of you who happen to be interested, I play a Grey Orc Monk, who says heavily meaningless philosophical things, often at the most inopportune moments!

Friday usually gives me my first night off of the week, but there is the oppertunity for more badminton if I wish to play more. Hence I usually spend this evening watching whatever film I have from Netflix at the time. Michael (my roommate) usually returns home from work in New Jersey on Friday eve, so I am attempting to get him into Firefly, since it is amazing!

Penultimatly, Saturday involves sleeping, usually to catch up on missed sleep due to night shifts or just staying up too late... I try and get down to the pool if I'm not completely over-sleeping and also use the weekend time to play some pc games and catch up with some lovely people back in the UK!

and finally... Sunday!

Michael and I are planning on playing badminton at the Yale gym on sundays, but we haven't managed to find the time as of yet, far too busy! Again, I try and sleep a fair amount so that I'm not too tired for my next jam-packed week.

So hopefully that was an interesting insight into a week in the life of New Haven Matt! I hope you enjoyed reading it about as much as I am enjoying living it! I'm looking forward to the weather getting a bit better, which it seems to be. However, apparently it only stays at a

Lol

bearable temperature for about 2 weeks and then becomes very hot, since we are at the same latitude as Mid-Italy!

Just as a final note, I thought I would add an extra pic to the end, since this weekend just gone I biked up to the top of East Rock Park, which is a small park just north of where I live. It has fantastic views of New Haven, as shown below, which means that the bike ride back down is great fun (especially compared to biking up).

I know that it hasn't quite been 346 words yet in this bit, but maybe it will be by the time I finish this segment about how I haven't quite reached 346 words. At the end of the day, I could always insert some Lorem Ipsum into this paragraph and see how many people actually notice, but that wouldn't be very sportsmanlike of me now would it?

Maybe I could add a short story to this segment... especially since I would like to go to bed soon and also want to finish this before bed. I will advertise again that people are very welcome to come and visit me if they want to, most of you will know that Soph is coming here for 3 weeks on the 18th April (right after our birthdays so I might post another blog after that, unless anything spectacular happens between now and then (apart from my birthday) I'm gonna be 21, which means that I can drink in the US! (it has been quite strange not being allowed to drink)

I hope everybody at home has a fantastic Easter break! Enjoy the massive amount of holidays that you are getting off in the UK, which you are all of course going to be using to watch the Royal Wedding. Yay! Maybe not...

Anyway, there was going to be a short story but it seems like we are out of time, and it was about a rapacious glowworm who sets off to discover Asia, but finds much more than he can handle...