Whew...

I have officially survived my first grad school exam.

I won't know how I did until Tuesday, but I do know that everybody (or at least everybody who took the test on the dowtown campus) came out of the test feeling a little jangly. It bodes well that we all found it difficult... at least, I'm taking heart. It makes the 5 points lost for totally blanking on the identity of a single protein more palatable. Seriously, two questions dependent entirely on our recall of one tiny molecule, which by the way took up about 7.3 seconds of lecture time this whole semester?? I guess that's grad school for you.

Until Tuesday then, I'm going to have a great weekend!

Winter again? Already???

It was 30-odd degrees outside yesterday, and I got snowed on while waiting at the bus stop. This and the never-ending German winter of last year (dragging through, oh, March) make this past summer, officially, the shortest of my life. Not to mention the last, since grad school and real life apparently expect me in lab, working, year-round. Not that I didn't work over summers in college... but I still call it the end of an era.

In more positive news, I'm definitely recovering from the killer cold that hit me this weekend. I'm not quite 100%, still coughing and secreting, but I've managed to catch my classes, get work done and spend some time in lab. Hopefully the upwards trajectory will continue.

At least there's clear blue sky outside my lab window at the moment. Maybe I'll just pretend it's still warm out...

Sicky McSickerson

All hail the first cold of the season, and is it ever a doozy. It possibly didn't help that I had a late night on Friday with friends and didn't make it home until 2am, and then spent Saturday afternoon and evening riding rollercoasters with Mike and his brother Pete at Six Flags Great America. The payment for my enjoyment, sadly, has been more-than-sufficiently extracted over the course of last night and today. I even had to call in sick on my very first Sunday singing with the church choir, when I was supposed to do the psalm, too. On the plus side, it was a fun weekend, and Mike's folks were kind enough to stock me up on soup and orange juice on the way home last night, for which I'm abjectly grateful. I also got a few other snacks, my leather coat, a couple of throw pillows, and two decorative glass thingamajigs. Hear that, germs?? I have objets d'art, and I'm not afraid to use them!

For future reference: Sudafed 12-hour and several mugs of Earl Gray are diametrically opposed to my pursuit of a nap.

Also: Remember to disinfect, fumigate, autoclave, and/or exorcise belongings later. Particularly keyboard.

I'm a lazy blogger

Well, lazy may not be the best descriptor since I am, in fact, keeping fairly busy with school, lab, and all that good stuff. What's new, you ask?

I've joined the graduate school a cappella group, "the Catatonics." We've had a rehearsal or two so far, and it's low-key and fun. It's just one night a week, which is apparently just about right for my schedule. Oh, and I've already been made assistant VP and - get this - assistant webmaster. I haven't even seen the website yet, but hopefully it's got a good template I can work off of. (Tim, expect an email if I'm in over my head...)

The Fundamentals class has a homework set every week for the first unit. We've had two so far, and they're fairly intense... like, Itagaki take-home exam intense. (Kenyon neurobio/cell bio survivors know what I'm talking about, right? "Try to do the whole thing in one sitting." Ha!) The good news is that the powers-that-be are fine with credited group work, so the new tradition is a Monday night group. The first iteration consisted of a quick dinner at a restaurant in Evanston followed by hard-core work at a local coffee shop, which was fun. The second meeting, though, was awesome. I decided to take a cue from my Kiel friends' fabulous dinners and invited everybody over to my (handily central) place for a fajita fiesta, with fresh salsa and all the trimmings. I didn't make my own tortillas or guacamole from scratch like the amazing Mikey and Leslie, but I must credit that historic, nay, epic meal as my inspiration, particularly where the joys of fresh cilantro are concerned. I hope that I've started a regular tradition. Not everybody has the space to cook for 5 or so people, but maybe if we make it a potluck next time...

Mike and I have also started an alternating weekend visit between Chicago and DeKalb, which is simply lovely. Running errands together, cooking and doing dishes, watching movies and going to church together may seem rather quaint, but it's the together part that makes it special, particularly after last year. I love the fact that he can be a part of my regular life, even once a week. My current task is to get used to the new pattern... I need to titrate my emotional response to hellos and goodbyes down to an acceptable level, now that they happen just about every single week. Five years is a whole lot of pent-up missing someone to tap into, but thankfully it's already getting easier now that that chapter is finally coming to an end, however slowly.

Weather has been stormy this week, but I'm hoping for a few more chances to get out on my new bike before it gets too nasty out. I've already made one ride from my apartment all the way downtown, about an hour's ride, with someone from my program, and I want to try to learn the safest street route to Evanston and make that trip as well. I don't know that I'll ever regain the amazing biking muscles I developed in Göttingen with that city's ubiquitous dedicated bike lanes and trails, but I'd rather not lose them altogether sitting on buses and the El!

Class starts in half an hour and then I have to get up to Evanston for Catatonics rehearsal, but I still intend to complete my online photo collection from Germany and take (and post) some shots of my apartment, Chicago, and DeKalb. Expect that soon!