Spring Break

It's beginning to look a lot like springtime around here. I took that picture up top yesterday in the Shakespeare garden on campus. That was the first tulip. It took me a while to get this page just right, I don't think the previous versions really suited me.

Spring break is here at last. I finished my last final on Thursday. That was intense. Probably the hardest test I've ever taken. As long as I'm in the mix with everyone else I should be fine. That's really all you need to aim for in grad school.

I love Sundays. David was over for breakfast today and I made chocolate chip pancakes before I went to church. I managed to make a disaster area out of my kitchen though. I can make a pretty mean pancake with the right equipment, but in my apartment all I have is a small skillet and a stupid plastic spatula that's way too wide to even be functional. So that's going to take some practice.

My phone is all wacked up. I'm going in later to get it fixed/replaced. It's been having some problems for a while, but yesterday it just quit all together and now I'm just about fed up with it. Unfortunately the stupid Verizon store in Evanston can't replace it, so poor Dave has to drive me out to Skokie this afternoon. What a headache.

I've had a pretty exciting weekend. This past weekend was the first of three visit weekends for prospective chem grad students. It's so weird to think that a year has already gone by since I visited, and even weirder to see how it all works from the other side. I definitely feel more legitimate, but it's pretty surreal not being the new kid on the block anymore. Karl, my adviser, is the new man in charge of graduate admissions, so our group has been recruiting our brains out. Yes, that's right. Karl manages to even make social occasions a stressful time. But in all honesty I had a fun weekend. A bunch of us took some of the students around the city yesterday. Dave and I were in charge of the Millenium Park group, and Jon and Rikki (two friends of ours) went to the Art Institute. I was originally supposed to chaperone the Shed Aquarium tour, but things got shuffled around quite a bit. The best part of the day was the lunch at the top of the Hancock building. The view was absolutely incredible.

Working on getting my taxes started today. I also need to do some research for my first group meeting presentation in a few weeks. Yikes. Luckily, I can do presentations without getting too nervous. The only thing I'm worried about is getting all the chemistry up to scratch. Hopefully starting so much in advance will iron all those things out for me.

Back to work.