Random driving

Next week is Thanksgiving break, and for those of us who attend fancy private Ivy schools, we get the ENTIRE WEEK OFF. This is a new thing for me, and if I had money I would definitely have flown somewhere. Probably home, but you never know.

Anyway, money is tight, so no flying. Today I was going to get in my little car and drive in a random direction, like I did in August when I found that beach in Rhode Island. But it rained, and I slept in, and I ended up not driving anywhere. So. Since I'm not going anywhere for Thanksgiving break, I've come up with a brilliant idea.

I will pack up the tent I still have, and about a million blankets and pillows, and I'll put sandwhichy things into the cooler, and pack everything into said little car, and I'll strike out in a random direction on Saturday. And I'll have a multi-day driving adventure, in which I will probably get horribly lost and will end up somewhere terribly boring.

Of course, by random direction I mean I think I'll head north this time. It would be neat if I could have a list of cool things I might want to stop by and see, if my random driving gets boring and I want some directed driving. Do you recommend anything? Anything in Vermont or Massachussetts or upstate New York, or any of the other New Englandy states? Or should I strike out south and check out Maryland and all that nonsense? I'm pretty easily distracted, so any sort of thing is of possible interest. Including things like corn palaces and giant balls of twine. Do they have that sort of absurdity on the east coast?

I'm also in the process of attempting to convince a friend to come along, but my hopes are not high that that will work out.

It's beginning to look a lot like....

This week is starting out much better than last week.

For one thing, there's no more NSF grant, and I just can't emphasize enough how happy that makes me. I hate that thing. I don't even want to think about doing it again next year.

For another thing, the city put up lights downtown. And since I live absurdly close to downtown and walk through it every day, this makes me very happy. There are now lit-up snowflakes on every lamppost on Broadway! And lights draped over the fences! And supposedly there's a giant Christmas tree somewhere around the Green, which I haven't been over to see yet, but just knowing it's there adds to my happiness. I love the Christmas season. I'm not as crazy about Christmas itself, but I love the season. It's warm and cozy and everyone starts being NICE to everyone else, and you get to drape pretty lights all over everything and no one calls you crazy.

Also, today I bought another long-sleeve t-shirt thingy, which will help keep me from freezing in the coming winter. My dad also bought and sent me a winter coat and a pair of gloves, and while I think I might try to exchange them for smaller sizes, they are my new favorite clothing articles. They're brown and softly fuzzy and soooo smooth and probably really warm. I'm super excited. I haven't had gloves or a winter coat since... um... early high school or middle school?

I thought I was being stupid in lab, but it turns out I wasn't. My grad student (the one training me) was out sick on Thursday and Friday, and I sort of flailed about the lab in despair, but it turns out that all the stuff I did was right. I have to re-do one thing because my culture was undergrown when I transformed it, but beyond that I did everything right. I'm awfully proud of myself for sitting down and reading my lab notebook and figuring out what the hell I was doing all on my own.
Even if I did assemble the spectrophotometer backwards on Friday and spend an hour trying to figure out why I had -0.0007 DNA.

Anyway. Life is good. Or at least, life is much, much better.
Can't thank you guys enough for your support. You rock.

*****
P.S. I need new icons. I need winter icons and icons about friendship and icons about happiness and maybe a couple about sadness. Where are your favorite icon-getting places, besides obsessive_icons?

P.P.S. This article in the Harvard Crimson, about persuading Yalies to attend The Game next week despite the suckage that is the Harvard laundry list of restrictions for tailgating, is absolutely hilarious. Someone can write.