Coming home soon.

First of all I'm in a cafe that actually charges for internet so I shall not be staying long. The result of this being a disjointed sounding entry.

Well it did snow...a lot. It was really really cold but very pretty everywhere.

Finals have been most stressful mostly from non-finals related things, such as family and my students who seem to be able to find me at all hours of the day no matter where I hide. I am weeks behind with my grading so I'll be doing a lot of that when I get home for winter break. I did find out that I passed my grad class. Surprising considering the events of the final. I was the second person to finish the test, I went up to hand it in and in front of the class in a whisper that nevertheless carried to the whole room he started orally grading my paper. Flipping through and going "No no, that's not right." Then he started discussing with me why things were wrong which was mortifying because the entire class was listening in trying to get hints for their own tests. I ended up getting a D on the final, but in a grad engineering class that curves to a 3.4/4.0. I needed a 3.2 to pass so I was happy with that. The thing that helped me pass was my paper probably. It took me weeks to write and was entitled "Structure-Property Characteristics of Iron Disulfide and their Relations to Bonding and Symmetry."

I did attend a Hannukah party with Eli's neighbors, the Gettlemans. Latkas were wonderful but there was a horrible woman there who said that Archie was the ugliest thing she had ever seen. I gave her such a death glare. Then we discussed the fact that she had been laid off work and I was a full-time TA at the University of Washington pursueing my PhD at the ripe old age of 23 with a full scholarship and fellowship. Horrible woman.

I got my Hanukkah presents to myself too. A beautiful new watch (rose gold), a new rainproof backpack that will let me take my laptop to school, and my new snow boots (Thanks mom and dad).

My last junior lab of the quarter starts in 20 minutes, it'll be nice to finally be done teaching optical and X-ray diffraction. Although I must say I really like teaching, but I think I am too accomodating to my students, I need to be a little meaner so they don't ask me questions at all hours of the day. I also heard through the grapevine that there was a facebook discussion about me at 3am the night before my lab was due.

I am in the process of checking out new advisors in case it turns out that I want to leave the Ginger group indefinitely. I have talked to a variety of people in the department from biologists to chemists to physicists to materials scientists. I'm not sure what I will be pursueing exactly.

Last night Eli and I went to the Botanical gardens where I guess each christmas they decorate it with thousands of lights. Dad would have liked it, it was way over the top but still very pretty. Luckily it hasn't been too cold recently, not even that wet to tell you the truth.

Oh and I got an awesome hat!

No one insults Archie, no one.