Adventures adventures

Wow, so a lot has happened since I wrote last. In particular, I've driven more than a thousand miles over the course of 4 days, including one 12 hour day of snow-storm awfulness. I rarely swear, but during one part of the trip was heard to repeatedly exclaim (with feeling), "Just get me the hell out of ____". Sometimes you couldn't tell if you were on a three lane highway, or if maybe there were only supposed to be two lanes and people had invented the third. Other times you'd wonder why you were paying tens of dollars in road tolls, to drive on roads that were not being plowed at all. I had new firsts, like "first time ever driving on an 8 lane highway"(!!!!). I'm home now though, and got to visit a lot of great people along the way (fellow alumn and physics grad student, old housemate + lady friend, and Eugenie :-D...).

Oh yeah, and the trip almost got off to an interesting start. As is rather customary prior to packing up your life and apartment and moving, I'd been focusing on consuming as many edible things in my fridge as possible, to avoid wasting or moving food. This included a third of a carton of eggnog, which I downed while packing up my apartment. I generally very much enjoy a bit of eggnog around this time of year (sprinkled of course with some ground nutmeg). Talking with Eugenie, I learned two important things:

1) There are some kinds of eggnog that are alcoholic.
2) "Southern Comfort" is a kind of alcohol. I thought it just sounded homey and was probably a brand name. After all, I was in the south.

Who knew? Alcoholic eggnog? What will they think of next???? Adding vodka to kids' juiceboxes?

After a bit of panicked scrounging in the trash, and secretly wondering if this is why I enjoy eggnog so much, I managed to retrieve the carton. In fine print, it declared "non-alcoholic". Whew, crisis averted. Starting off a major roadtrip by accidentally getting a buzz would not have been a good sign.

Packing up my car was a challenge too. I remain quite pleased with myself for how much stuff I got in that car, even now as I look at the mound it has made in my room here at home. I had to leave enough room in "Cosette", my 4-door sedan car, to pick up a passenger - a friend of mine who lives in the same state - as I was giving him a ride home for the holidays. This wasn't going to be a problem, until I opened up the last closet in our appartment, and discovered a stack of five or six boxes containing all of the glass bottles I've been saving for the last 3 months. We couldn't recycle glass where I was, and it pained me immensley to see them thrown out... glass is so easy to recycle comparatively!!! I called up my friend, and learned that he could recycle glass... so into the car all of the (beer, wine, peanut butter, microbrewery gingerale) bottles went, most coming to rest in the front passenger seat where there was still room left. After arriving and disposing of the bottles, it occured to me that it's a good thing I didn't get pulled over or something. I can just imagine the conversation... "No officer, I have no idea how those got there, but I assure you I haven't just consumed three bottles of wine and close to 40 some odd beers"... "Only the gingerale was mine"..."It's really good stuff, just enough bite to it; wanna try some"?

I also stopped by a big state school in a major city to visit a potential grad school advisor, and check out the facilities and program. It was a fun time. I had been quite thoroughly nervous, worried that I'd seem like an idiot, or generally clueless. When I showed up, they had a whole schedule figured out for me, and I drifted back and forth between meetings with different faculty members, and grad students, talking about science and sort of repeating the same things about mysel over and over again. Once I relaxed, (which happened almost as soon as I started talking about math and bifurcation diagrams with the potential advisor), and realized no one was out to get me, everything went smoothly and I started having fun. Made me excited to finish my grad school applications, and now I'm really looking forward to "official" grad school interviews at other schools. Especially now that I've gotten some practice.

Incidentally, I've been invited for the first of those as well (yay!). Looks like things might really come together. Which means I may have some tough decisions to make in the future... eek. Today I finished off another application (yay for recycling personal statements), so now I'm more than halfway done. I might be able to finish them all off before x-mas with a little luck, so I can get back to doing fun work, or maybe even a little plain old having fun.

For now though, it's good to be home, and not driving anywhere in particular for the near future.