Start of the Semester

It was very very cold this weekend. Like 24 degrees with gusting winds cold. So I spent a good amount of time in the apartment huddled under a blanket, watching movies and reading. Little Miss Sunshine is a funny, quirky movie with its emotional parts as well. I also saw A Star is Born, with Judy Garland. I was amazed, it's kinda long but really good. I recommend it to anybody who likes old movies or musicals. On another note, I just started reading "The Physics of Buffyverse" last night, which Mike gave me for Christmas. Here's a fun tidbit from the book: "Stakes were often secured above corpses upon burial, so the creature would impale itself if it tried to escape." That was probably one reason why Poe wanted them to rig a bell to his grave.....

Classes started today, and we had a light dusting of snow to welcome in the new school year. I'm finishing up my classes this semester, and hope to defend and finish in the fall. Yikes. That's scary, because even though I'm ready to be done and get out of here, I'm nervous about the whole writing a huge thesis and defending it part. Plus, I have very little data to work with. Which also really sucks. I'm hoping I can beg my way onto the June cruise, although Rui has assured me that I can catch lots of Loligo squid in April, do experiments on those and just compare the two. Still, I have so little Dosidicus data that I'm not even sure I could legitimately compare it. But I really shouldn't be worrying so much about that right now. My committee hasn't even read my proposal yet! I should worry about that instead....

Like I said, I finish up classes this semester, and here's my schedule so far:
MWF 9:00 - 9:50 Stats 409 (I'm allowed to take a couple undergrad courses if they're
needed, and I've never had a stats class so...)
MW 1:00 - 1:50 Comparative Physiology (It seems right that I should take a physiology course
since my research focuses on it, yet I've never had a class in it...)
TH 12:00 - 12:50 Seminar in Neurobiology (I needed 1 more hour, and Brad recommended it)

I still don't know when I"m going to teach, but BIO 101 labs are only being taught on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, so sometime on those days I'll teach three labs. I wasn't trying to arrange my schedule any particular sort of way, but Tuesdays and Thursdays seem kind of open (at least, until I know when I"m teaching), which is good. I think I'm going to try to leave Tuesdays open, or at least Tuesday and Thursday mornings, to read more papers for my research.

Well, I just heard that our teaching evaluations from last semester are in, so I'm gonna go check mine out.