In Which I Dress Semi Formally

November 27, 2014

Wednesday was a mad rush to get enough homework done. Normal onslaught of classes. Crypto has been good recently in that I’m starting to understand some of the abstract algebra underlying the harder bits. Wednesday night was the usual rehearsal and work combo.

Thursday was back to Physics and an attempt to be productive. My interest in the physics died down a little this week as we were focused mainly on computing some coefficients I didn’t have too much interest in (Clebsch-Gordan). However, Thursday night was a little different. I ended up chatting to Nadia in the lab till quite late, and then pretty much ran back to my room to get dressed. I donned my 70s style shirt, binary tie, pants and jacket and walked to the Radian to accompany Natalie Eisner to drinks before Glee Club and Penn Dance’s annual semi formal.

Teddy, Natalie and I

Teddy, Natalie and I

Drinks were at Jane Dobkin’s place with the Junior class (and the lone grad student!) It was a nice chance to actually get to talk a little more with a number of them with whom until that point I’d had limited interaction.

Following that, I and a few of the PD girls and their dates caught the SEPTA (south eastern pennsylvanian public transit authority) train to Pulse Bar, Center City where our function was being held. For once I actually spent the largest chunk on the dance floor, and though it was not my regular choice of environs I managed to have quite a good time. One further point of note was that there were three Australians present! The other two being the dates of Katrina and Arjun respectively.

At just past midnight Natalie and I cabbed home and then I promptly went to sleep before my 9AM machine learning class.

In Which Things Progress As Usual

October 30, 2014

Sadly enough, there is little to report on today. Classes were fine, but not inspiring. Everything was moving in the right direction, no drama there.

Late in the afternoon, I spent around an hour and a half with Nadia and Luke starting to plan the next year ahead in terms of coursework, chatting about conferences, and getting a broad view of the path to PhD.

Glee Club rehearsal was fairly empty. Too many people had fallen ill in the post show period. The baritones were still there in full force but the tenor section was a bit meager. Following rehearsal, I took Mack Finkel and Josh Gutzmann to Hillel for dinner, picking up Kendra from Penn Dance along the way. We had a pleasant ‘newman’ interview and dinner though I had to end it a little early when I realized the package room back at my building was closing and I needed to run to pick up a birthday present for a friend.

That evening I went to bed early, in order to get a head start the next day.

In Which My Blog Misses Choir

October 2, 2014

This week was much shorter than usual due to the presence of Rosh Hashana. This meant that the start of my week was fairly hectic work wise. In addition, my blog went down while I was on retreat and I was struggling to bring it back up. To combination of exhaustion and technical frustrating led me to miss Choral Society on Monday night and spend a few hours on server administration instead, finally bringing my blog back up and starting to get back to my writing routine.

Homework seemed to be going a little better, although there was still constant deadline pressure and not nearly enough time to get everything done.

At this point, I started to get sick. The next day I woke up and something definitely wasn’t quite right. My body was drained, my eyes blurry and my nose and throat a mess. I struggled through the day, regretting the time spent practicing piano and not sleeping. Finally, when it came time for Glee Club rehearsal I just couldn’t do it anymore. After an hour I let Tony the section leader know that I wasn’t up to the rest and went to my room to pack my bags for my flight early the next day to Chicago. Given the state I was in, I did really pay much attention to the packing and would pay for it later, but gladly, at 9.30PM I was fast asleep.

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