Update!

So it's been a while since I last posted. Let's see if I can remember what I've been up to the past few weeks.

On Nov. 19 I went curling for the first time ever. A few Mat Sci grad students started a Northwestern club last year, and apparently the guy who's in charge of college recruitment for the curling sport in the entire US is letting us use his facility for free. I've got to say, it's a lot harder than it looks to hurl a rock down the ice with any accuracy. For those of you not familiar with curling, it's basically a form of ice shuffleboard. There are two teams with 4 members and 8 stones. Each member of the team has to slide 2 rocks down the ice and the teams take turns going to get their rock closest to the middle. If your team is closest to the middle, you get 1 point for every rock that you have in the target area, and the other team gets 0. Atleast that's how I think it works. I'm still kind of new, but that's what I gathered when I was there. There's a bonspiel this weekend (I guess that's what they call a curling tournament), so we don't have practice this week, but I'll probably go next time we have it.

Last week of course was Thanksgiving. I took the Amtrak down to Champaign to spend the 5-day holiday with my extended family. Thanksgiving day was a blast- I helped get the food ready for Thanksgiving dinner, and got to play croquet and the bean bag toss with my cousins in 60 degree weather. Later that night, we all watched family videos and laughed hysterically at all of our past idiosyncrasies (like 80's short shorts!).

For the ensuing few days, I worked on some homework (a travesty!) and took it easy. I went to go see For Your Consideration with Grandma James and briefly stopped by the mall to pick up a few things on Friday. Saturday afternoon I helped Grandma Sollars with her exterior Christmas decorations, and then did some Christmas shopping with Danielle and Kelley later that night. I really had a great time during my stay, and I'm glad that I live close enough now that I can come down for a short visit without much of a hassle. I think I missed out on Thanksgiving with the extended family for about 8 years. Definitely doesn't seem that long....

On a side note, it was also nice to see Grandpa Sollars out of the hospital and recovering from a bit of a nasty bout with pneumonia. His recovery has been a bit slow, but positive, so hopefully that trend will continue.

This week was pretty bad in terms of work. I had two homework sets to finish, a group meeting presentation, and two practice final exams to finish. I worked almost non-stop Monday through Wednesday to get it all done, and it feels great to have that behind me. Now I'm left with final exams and then CHRISTMAS!!! My group meeting presentation went well I think, even though I haven't actually started research yet. It was about what I had proposed to do in my NSF proposal, and my advisor came down to my office afterward and said he was very pleased with what he saw and said I did a great job. He's a very encouraging, laid-back guy, which I think will be very conducive to me getting work done.

Well, that's it for now. It's supposed to snow about a foot tonight, and it's started to sleet already. I'm hoping to wake up to huge sheet of white in the morning. I hope everybody is doing well and enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday.