Rain

February 18, 2026
By Aathreya Kadambi

Day 1: 02/15/2026

For the first time in a while, it’s raining in the bay area. I was thinking about what I could do today to actually make the day meaningful, considering I’ve basically been sitting around all day.

There’s definitely a few things I want to try to do today:

1. Learn some cool math/ML/generative modeling type stuff,
2. Do something performatively cool (photography, music, etc),
3. Make aesthetic and good tasting food.

To be honest, considering it’s already 5pm and I’ve wasted the whole day, this might be tough. My idea is: clean up around my place, make some good food, and arrange it on my table in a way that looks nice.

One interesting thing, and a note for future me: square plates don’t look as nice on circular tables, but tons of circular plates on a circular table reminds me of an Apollonian gasket. Unfortunately, it’s not something I can go for today cause I only have 1 circular plate, but we make do with what we have.

Right now, I’m trying to have something a bit crunchy, warm, and nice smelling.

• 6pm. I cleaned my table, but it’s time to plan out the meal.

• I was feeling that my room was really dusty, so I vaccumed it really quick and turned on the fan. Now it’s 6:53pm.
• I’m starting to get hungry, so I’m going to eat some Oikos Yogurt as an appetizer and then figure out what to make. I’m kind of feeling pasta, but also feeling some kind of dhal or lentil based soupy dish with a side of jalepeno chips or something else that’s crunchy and savory.
• 7:27pm now, I got a bit distracted with some photography but I also washed my big pot in preparation for pasta. I was thinking of making a special sauce but already have a sauce, so I think I’ll just focus on making a good second dish that’s high in protein.
• 8:05pm, I cleaned the pot even better, made a protein smoothie, and am currently boiling water for the pasta.

My finalized idea for today:

1. Pasta w/ heightened sauce
2. Palak tofu
3. Potato-based crunchy/crispy/salty dish.

There isn’t much cohesion to be honest between the second dish and the others, but I wanted a good sauce to put with the tofu to give it better color. I’m also curious about how the creamy texture will combine with potentially crispy tofu (I’m planning on baking it).

• 9:30pm, I got back home from the store, feeling pretty tired and low key not really hungry.
• 9:58pm, I’m really feeling an itch to exercise and run… Ok change of plans. Since I’m so full, I’m going to go for a run and watch ML videos.
• 10:42pm, I did some stretches, got Strava, learned more about running from friends, am going to leave now.
• 11:21pm, I’m back from my run, my lungs are so cooked.

That run was pretty slow, I did like 10 minute miles and only ran 2 miles, but it definitely hurt my lungs and right knee. According to my friend, that means I was running too fast.

• 11:40pm. pasta’s a-cooking.

Kind of a funny story, I added the rosemary directly to the sauce without cutting it or chopping it etc… so now I have to strain it out. I made the palak tofu, I used cheese to thicken the sauce since I was using tofu instead of paneer.

The final meal:

I would say that I achieved goals two and three, but goal one is still to be accomplished.

Day 2: 02/16/2026

To bring some balance to my life, I’m going to focus on that first goal today, along with an event I planned with my club.

I’m pretty awake at 12:51pm today, which is better than my doomscrolling problem yesterday. I’ll probably go to a cafe to study until I bring some friends to Victory Point Cafe at 4, and then work on research tonight.

• Ok well… now it’s 1:30pm. Time to go.
• 1:51pm: It’s kind of rainy, but Cafe Etoile was still pretty crowded. I decided it was probably a better idea to study at home today.
• 2:43pm and I still haven’t done anything. I just don’t know how to start. Note to self: next time you finish a task, write down how to start next time.
• 3:05pm. Successfully got started by opening up Word and continuing my file.
• 3:15pm. Am rerunning the figure plotting script. What’s missing now though is actually running their code. They’re taking a while so I’m going to take a second to clean the bathroom
• 3:35pm, I finished a light clean of the bathroom (mainly the toilet area) but it’s honestly really bad. I’m going to have to go back and do a deeper clean later.
• 3:47pm. Gave myself some action items, now I need to go but I’ll come back to finish up some analysis tonight. I should honestly clean up our edrnn work to mirror the way that they break up their analysis and figure generation.
• 6:40pm. Back home. Kind of tired, but probably should lock in.
• 7:04pm. Ate some stuff and was thinking, but I didn’t make actual progress honestly.
• 8:11pm. I’ve reorganized a lot, and now have a better idea of how to flow.
• 8:30pm. Making solid conceptual and logistical progress, though I haven’t accomplished anything fascinating yet.
• 9:48pm. I’ve basically organized all my real-world datasets in nicer files.
• 11:04pm. I now have a good, well-organized script for training the neural networks on the real datasets, and was able to remove some bad code.
• 12:06pm. Ran some more experiments, interesting results but no progress yet, am going to take a break to eat a little bit and then draft emails.

I went out for a walk, and this guy was walking around. He asked me for my phone to call someone, and I said sorry, I couldn’t give it to him. I felt really bad because he seemed like a nice guy, but post-midnight without many people around isn’t the best place to give a stranger your phone. I also thought he could probably just ask the McDonalds, which was right nearby and much less risky. And if he was a local, couldn’t he find a friend nearby?

Anyway, I felt guilty and went back with a pen and index card to get the number he wanted to call down or take him to the McDonalds, so that I could maybe help him out. Unfortunately, he was nowhere to be found. Hope he’s okay.

• 12:38am has arrived, and I’m needing some coffee to lock in on the next few emails I need to write. In the meantime, running some basic training scripts. I also need to make some better visualizations from the scripts in order to improve the work.

To be honest, one thing I’m realizing is that healthiness sort of needs abundance in the sense that if you have a bunch of crunchy items nearby, you’re not going to be as likely to bail out and go out to get some crunchy snack.

Even though I practiced abundance for the first time yesterday by cooking way more food than I needed, I didn’t make that food accessible throughout the day. It’s making me realize: motivation is most important in the morning. Tomorrow, the goal will be to maximize morning motivation by priming myself the night before (clean up room, write motivational messages). That way, I should try to make my meals ahead of time and lay them out for the day by noon.

• 1:48am. I made a latte (or cappucino? I’m still figuring out the difference). It tastes not bad, but I think I need fresher milk. But I just learned so much more about coffee from this video.

Even without adding sugar, the coffee is actually quite sweet because of heating the milk!

• 3:11am. Definitely wasted a lot of time, but learned a lot about coffee. Honestly, I am not that sure how I just spent the past hour, but I found a spider on my neck along the way which was crazy.

I actually made very solid progress in organizing code and experimentation which I believe will pay off tomorrow and in the next week of research (when I make visualizations and start our paper draft).

On another note, tomorrow morning I’ll have to really wrap up my map of all the research done at different labs. It’s 4:10am now though, so I should really sleep.

Day 3: 02/17/2026

I’m not even in school but the fact that this is a school day made me feel tired. It’s also because I actually have work in the sense that I have to teach today, which I feel makes me less productive in the morning because I know I’ll have to be productive in the evening.

But we resist that. Today I actually made a solid meal for myself, and handled a lot of logistical things like emails, car rental info for a trip, graduation, and all.

Anyway, I really need to work on research today. But I’m not mentally prepared at all… I’m going to take a shower to recalibrate (and I need to shower today anyway) and then go to main stacks to work.

In the end I got some work done, and went to the group meeting today and everything.

At the time I’m writing these words, it’s 02/18, and I’ve decided to come up with a last 10 days of February plan to meet my goals for the month.