Sometimes I wonder if I'm missing the point of grad school: maybe to learn enough about your field, and the investigative methods employed in it, to be productive when you graduate; or maybe to do good, solid research while you're in school, just to learn what that feels like; or maybe just to learn to think a certain way. Or maybe none of the above. Right now I'm starting to feel like I'm in limbo - I've gone from knowing nothing about my newly-adopted field (how to improve the plastic parts of artificial hips and knees, for those of you tring to keep track) to knowing enough that reading more articles provides progressively diminishing returns. But Istill ahve yet to do an experiment, or even learn to use an instrument, and that won't change for several weeks, what with spring break and my advisor currently being in Italy. So I'm sort of back to wondering what to do with myself all day, though at least this time it's temporary.
Being me, I've found plenty of other ways to amuse myself. I spent the weekend in Seattle, a glorious 70 degrees and sunny, and had a wonderful time with Craig and a few hours with Lisa - but I get to spend four days wih her in a week and a half, skiing in Salt Lake. Until then, I can continue today's pursuits: reading up on food, as always, in particular the excellent blog Chocolate and Zucchini, as well as Wine Spectator (terribly pretentious, but I have a free subscription for a few months) and the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, which might finally provide me with an alternative to gross supermarket chocolate pudding mix. And I'm finally delving into old building restoration, something that's interested me since I started poking around all the old apartments we all lived in in Baltimore, via Old House Web. Actually, that's one thing that kind of bothers me about California, compared to the East Coast (or Europe): not enough history in the buildings. There are early-1900s apartments in Berkeley, just like in Baltimore, and they are beautiful for some of the same reasons (high ceilings, big windows, wood floors, old moldings), but there are no old brick neighborhoods from the 1700s like Fells Point, or like so much of Boston or New York or Philadelphia. Well, there's really almost no brick at all, and it's just as well because it would crumble in an earthquake (or maybe already did, the real estate equivalent or Darwinism at work). Anyway, California sometimes feels too new. But one of these days I'll find an old place somewhere, and I'll sand down the wood floors and oil and varnish them, and I'll replace the warped, rotting window frames, and light fires in the fireplace. And until then I'll read, so I'll be ready when I get the opportunity.
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