Random Rants and Raves

These are all recent observations....

-An Irish woman in my program told me that I was very brave to wear my cowgirl hat. When I asked why, she mentioned Texas and the west. Ah, more regionalism. It's very annoying and keeping the left in the country from winning.

-I talked to M in the studio lab. She has two young kids and we commiserated how simultaneously nice it is not to have to talk about kid stuff all of the time but also nice having someone else who understands how exciting it is when you're kid starts pooping in the potty. Of course, though, this only came up after a military guy (Chris has made friends with his wife) commented how impressed he is with Kalian's pottying.

- The last Friday of the summer session there was a tour of Harvard. I would have loved to have gone but I had to choose not to because I needed to spend more time with the kids. This concept of trying to take a sip of water from the firehose will only continue throughout the year....

-My econ instructor keeps making serious yet playful jabs at how heartless economists are - but she's not criticizing herself in the process, she's really saying that economists need to seem heartless so everyone will benefit from the free market in the long run - hah! Since it was post-final, I wasn't paying a lot of attention when she explained, in theoretically clear economic terms, why ceo's get paid so much money.

-I've realized that I feel a lot of shame around not doing so well on my quant exam.

-I was very humbled, wow'ed and completely sucked into the sanctity of the main Harvard library - Widener. I couldn't help but feel a tad of pride as I was able to go into the building with my student ID while all of the tourists weren't. I ran into Mc and Tv there, and it was nice to know folks already enough to run "into" them. I loved the quiet and the echoes in the walking and even whispering in the building.

-Kathleen Hannan, our dear friend, came for a vist. Unfortunately, it was too short and right before my exams, so it was tough to be as present as I wanted to be with her. She is such a joy and graciously played music with the kids. It made me realize that Rinat was right on in her description of how challenging on friendships motherhood and graduate school can be.

-Last week-end, we finally got the week-end day trip "right." Trying to figure out family time and study time on the week-ends has been tough. I studied in the morning and then we threw the kids in the car for a nap. When they woke up, we had just arrived in Salem. We walked around on what turned out to be a gorgeous day. We were bummed because we had planned on going to a K school student organized trip down to "World's End" and then back to Sn's house for a gathering. But Chris' choice was perfect. It was nice walking around. Liam was able to check out an old boat, and I fell in love with everything witch. We even ended up striking up a conversation with a local dad, who had gone to Duke, and suggested a great place to take the kids for dinner - an Irish pub which has Celtic music on Sunday nights. The kids had a blast dancing, and we, of course, ate too much and ordered too much food.