Updates from the Northern Front
The Mayhouse service auction was last night. By definition, no one here at Millikab lives in May House anymore, but a good number of us trooped out there to offer up our services to raise money for our old home. My item went for the highest amount: two first-years paid $110 (!) for me to show them the sights on campus that no one else knows. The roofs, the sub-basements, the tunnel systems, the abandoned half-completed floors, etc. If you're reading this, you probably can ask me to show you any of this stuff for free, so I encourage you to do so: fun times will be had, and I guarantee you'll see something new.
Also, Grandpa Pete and Nonnie's fudge arrived two (three now, I guess) days ago, and was finished off tonight. I'm stunned it took so long. A good friend who previously laid claim to 'relative with the best fudge' admitted that Nonnie "might have the same recipe"; all I'll say was that it was delicious.
Seven inches of snow fell last night, and tomorrow morning I'm going to try and make the first snowman in a long time (second ever -- the first occasion was in Fort Wayne when I was, hmm, six? Elizabeth still had her baby blanket, at least).
And Elizabeth (Finn, not Williams) is in Princeton, visiting grad schools. She says it's going well, and sounds supremely excited. I feel a little bad that the best grad schools in the country didn't all pay for me to fly out and visit them over weekends, but I suppose that's what I get for not being as excellent at Stat as she is at Molecular Biology. Only one of my friends is another grad student, and while usually the distinction never comes up, events like this remind me that my college time has passed. All too soon!
Sitting here in the grim, grey and white hinterland that is the University of Chicago in winter, I hear news from my friends abroad in Oaxaca, Capetown, California, and Tallahassee. I do love the snow, and *real cold*, but I admit that their cheeriness makes me wish I had the disposable cash to trot around and visit them on particularly harsh stretches!
Finally, so you can see what a serious business grad school is, I excerpt from the most recent homework that I turned in. The only good part is the parenthetical aside, but I include the rest for context:
"My second objection is to the difference between sword length and sword presence. Basolo’s test confirmed that X. maculatus prefers swords to swordlessness, but says nothing about longer or shorter sword length, which is the mechanism she observed among X. helleri in her previous article. Again, it is reasonable to assume that these are part of the same sexual preference (analogously, given that humans of both sexes often find the greater size of certain organs in their counterparts to be sexually preferential, the presence or lack thereof can be seen as extremes of the same scale), but it has not been proven -- and Basolo has the means to do so, by amputating the swords from X. helleri or varying the prosthetic sword lengths of X. maculatus."
Also, Grandpa Pete and Nonnie's fudge arrived two (three now, I guess) days ago, and was finished off tonight. I'm stunned it took so long. A good friend who previously laid claim to 'relative with the best fudge' admitted that Nonnie "might have the same recipe"; all I'll say was that it was delicious.
Seven inches of snow fell last night, and tomorrow morning I'm going to try and make the first snowman in a long time (second ever -- the first occasion was in Fort Wayne when I was, hmm, six? Elizabeth still had her baby blanket, at least).
And Elizabeth (Finn, not Williams) is in Princeton, visiting grad schools. She says it's going well, and sounds supremely excited. I feel a little bad that the best grad schools in the country didn't all pay for me to fly out and visit them over weekends, but I suppose that's what I get for not being as excellent at Stat as she is at Molecular Biology. Only one of my friends is another grad student, and while usually the distinction never comes up, events like this remind me that my college time has passed. All too soon!
Sitting here in the grim, grey and white hinterland that is the University of Chicago in winter, I hear news from my friends abroad in Oaxaca, Capetown, California, and Tallahassee. I do love the snow, and *real cold*, but I admit that their cheeriness makes me wish I had the disposable cash to trot around and visit them on particularly harsh stretches!
Finally, so you can see what a serious business grad school is, I excerpt from the most recent homework that I turned in. The only good part is the parenthetical aside, but I include the rest for context:
"My second objection is to the difference between sword length and sword presence. Basolo’s test confirmed that X. maculatus prefers swords to swordlessness, but says nothing about longer or shorter sword length, which is the mechanism she observed among X. helleri in her previous article. Again, it is reasonable to assume that these are part of the same sexual preference (analogously, given that humans of both sexes often find the greater size of certain organs in their counterparts to be sexually preferential, the presence or lack thereof can be seen as extremes of the same scale), but it has not been proven -- and Basolo has the means to do so, by amputating the swords from X. helleri or varying the prosthetic sword lengths of X. maculatus."