general update

You know how it goes. When things are busy, there's no time to write.

My parents are here in ROC now, staying at my uncle's house right now.

I received another letter from my peace corps friend in Africa. She compared various poisonous snakes, and other peace corps volunteers' boughts with malaria, and the one or two that may or may not have died of it. (!)

In the morning us physics students are meeting at Mt. Hope diner for breakfast. I'm happy that we're having weekly social activities in the department—something to keep life livable as a grad student.

Acquired for myself a copy of Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics.

I dug up a spiffy red bicycle out of one of the basements for Bree. Surprisingly enough pretty much the only thing it needs is the liner that goes between the innertube and the rim on one of the wheels.

My classes are going pretty well. I've attended every lecture, taken notes, organized them in a binder... (!) I like them all except Hagen's 415 course—I just can't understand the man. Alonso asked me if I wanted to be graded on exams only, because the homeworks will be the same this year and I took the class last year. I was surprised that he knew my name. I'm not too thrilled by the idea, actually—it seems like an unnecessary risk. Shapir's 509 ("nonrelativistic many-body quantum mechanics") class is great.

Ryan (four) is still living with me, sleeping on the floor of my room (he insists he doesn't want a mattress--we have several available). I see him surprisingly seldom.

I stayed up all night last night last night with my housemade Bree who is an actual insomniac. It was pretty fun--hanging out in the attic, nocturnal tour of our gardens, etc--but will probably be my undoing. (-: Reminds me of late nights talking with night-owl conversationalist easwaran.

Okay. Time to sleep. Maybe.

Vi ses.