thanksgiving

Thank my mother sister father brother, (the brother i never had). thank the little people and the big people, the tall people and the short people, the fat people, the ugly people, the pretty people, the naked people and most importantly the clothed people. the pedophiles and the rapists, the saints and the do gooders, the average people who keep the world going without even knowing. i would like to thank a very special dead cat fetus named Ulysses and his brother and sister who are in washington (i hope). i would like to thank the heavens hells and the agnostics who prove their existence. thank you. thank you so much.

Homeward Bound...

...in an hour or so. I'm shockingly excited - I'm really thankful for a temporary reprieve from the city and dorms so I can get work done and spend time with my family. I really, really, really miss my parents. I think I'm cooking soup tonight for them.

Last weekend was my 19th birthday! On the Friday, a rather large group of us hit Big Daddy's, on Park avenue by the dorm, and I had a pretty decent French Dip sandwich (although nothing beats L.A.'s Phillipe's, just like no NYC fast food beats IN-N-OUT). Afterwards we hit Yoshi Sushi, our typical haunt, on Avenue A between 8th and 9th. Or maybe it's between 7th and 8th. I don't know.

Am meinem Geburstag, der Samstag war, sind ich und fünf Freundinnen ins ein Deutsch Restaurant, das Rolf's heißt, gegangen. Es war ein bißchen teuer, aber es war sehr wünderbar! Die Spätzle waren fast gut als meine Mutters, aber die Rösti waren ganz appetitlich! (Ich hoffe, das jemand diesen Paragraf lesen kann.)

Work has picked up this week - I spent 6 hours on Wednesday/Thursday working on a CHC project, and I have an immense amount of reading to do. I'm also giving a presentation on Persuasion on Monday, and I need to do a lot of planning.

Betsy is out of office, and I think work will be a lot less fun without her =(

Bis zum nächsten Mal,

Katharine

P.S. You're Welcome

I Love Free Food. I Cannot Stress This Enough.

Helloo. That was not a typo. I am feeling quirky, so I said "helloo" instead of "hello." Aren't I creative?

Anywho, I'm pretty excited because tonight at 7:30 Hunter Hillel is holding a dinner in the dorms for Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath). I usually spend Shabbat with NYU, but these dinners occur once a month, and I loved the last two. This one's theme is "greening" your dorm. I'm not particularly eco-friendly, but I am interested to see what they recommend. The last two speakers (first hope in street art, than Jewish gangsters) were really interesting.

The dinner gets pretty crowded by Jews and non-Jews alike, since there's free food. With no meal plan, it's a pretty tasty offer. My secret? I bring down tupperware to the dinner and hoard like a Collyer brother.

Have a good Shabbat, or weekend, or month, or whatever floats your boat!

Your obedient servant,
O.G. (No, it's just me, Gaby, but I hope someone out there likes the reference)

About that dorm bill

Felt obligated to note, since I'd complained earlier this week about Hunter sending me a dorm bill, that within a day of my contacting the Bursar's Office I got an email saying they'd updated things and I'm now listed as an Honors College student and don't have to worry about it. So yay, Hunter bureaucracy works, for once. In unrelated news, I've started Moby-Dick for my American Lit class, and am finding it unexpectedly amusing. Ishmael is actually a kind of funny narrator.

Time for the post-midterm recuperation...

Today started bright and early with a chem test at 9 o'clock - and that thing was really long and really hard. On the one hand, tests are always kind of fu (at least to my weird brain) cause of the puzzle aspect, but on the other, trying to fit 58 chemistry questions, some of which probably only make conceptual sense to chem PhD's, into 2 hours is an exhausting way to spend one's Tuesday. I left the lecture hall feeling decidedly dizzy, which unfortunately persists. But the upshot - no more midterms! There's now a test lull until finals, giving me an great chance to wrap up my CHC and independent study papers - yay! More importantly, I've now got a chance to get some real work done in lab, which has been somewhat on hold for the past few weeks. Today I'll be talking with our collaborating professor at SUNY Downstate medical school and doing reverse transcription on some mRNA - just as soon as I get my brain back together.

I'M DONE WITH MY RESEARCH PAPER!

Had to brag about it somewhere, this seemed like the spot. 12 pages arguing that Hawthorne made the fate of Hester Prynne's daughter deliberately ambiguous at the end of The Scarlet Letter because she was so closely based on his own daughter that to specify what happens to her would mean to confront his own mixed feelings about the radical feminist revolution proposed by Hester. Incidentally, wrote it while trying out the free demo version of Scrivener, which may be the bestest word-processing program ever. Perfect for research papers because you can import PDFs, notes, etc and have them all there to look at. No page-layout features, though, so I found it best to export to MS Word for printing. Anyway, for what it's worth, I recommend it. And if you're struggling with writer's block, consider Write Or Die, which does all sorts of amusing things if you don't keep typing.

In other news, Hunter's inimitable Bursar's Office sent me a bill for my dorm room. I must now figure out how to explain to them that I don't actually have to pay for it, thank you very much. Fun!

Hey guys - I just recently got back from the Executive in Residence with Sy Sternberg. Tonight's discussion was about the economy, and it was as lively and thought provoking as this year's earlier Executive in Residence discussion on health care. However, the best part is the free dinner! If no one's said it yet, Macaulay always has great food at its events.