Vacation, had to get away

This is it, I've survived my first "year" (that is, two semesters) of graduate school! The last week was awfully rough, with two take-home exams pretty much kicking my butt.

Friday night, after finishing my last final, I braved severe weather to go out for a drink with friends, and thus began this nice but tiring week of vacation. On Saturday, after shopping (I got a new swimsuit for the outdoor pool), I made some cookies, and spent the rest of the evening peddling them off to whatever friends were left in town.

(46) These are very crunchy coconut cookies with nutmeg added, which I think pair nicely. The recipe claims that the flavor palette is Jamaican. I wouldn't know this because I'm not familiar with Jamaican flavors, but I think that coconut and nutmeg pair together nicely. As I've said, these are very crunchy - in fact, the recipe doesn't have eggs, butter, or oil in it. There's just sugar, coconut, some baking soda, nutmeg, and probably a couple dry ingredients I've forgotten, plus enough water to make it into an actual dough. I think I added too much dough when I made these because when I rolled them out and tried to cut them into circles, they were way too sticky to work with. Instead, I ended up grabbing dough and forming them into disks by hand.

But that was Saturday. On Sunday I took a very long drive (6.5 hours!) and ended up at my dad's house to spend the week. It's a relief to be close to water again, and a little taxing to deal with my entire family at once, but it's still great to be here. Today I went bike riding through town with my brother and we spent some time scrubbing my grandpa's sailboat and catching sun. Tomorrow I think I might go to the beach and jump in Lake Huron. If I do, however, it'll only be for a quick dip, because the water is still something like 42˚F. We'll see. I kind of want to do it, just for bragging rights.

The schedule for next weekend should be interesting - I plan to be in Ann Arbor for all of Saturday, so I may make my cookies early, or I may make them late. I will definitely be making them at some point for the weekend, but I'm just not sure when.

All that said, I think I'm going to go back to enjoying my time off, before research kicks in for the weekend.