Tales from the Steppes

2004-12-16

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Who will go down to those shady groves, And summon the shadows there

Yahoo! The semester is over! If the school agrees with me (a big if), I am now ABT - all but thesis. This is a wonderful thing for me.

Now I just have to write the pesky thesis. I do have to say that I am getting tired of people telling me how short it was/how quickly they wrote their thesis. The SU wrote his in two weeks. It was 50 pages long. Not comparable at all. My cubicle neighbor tells me she wrote hers in a month. Of course, she doesn't have children and was not working. And hers was a 30 credit program and mine is a 90 credit terminal masters. Not that I think mine is anything any more special - just different expectations. I have been told by all involved that the professors will not accept anything less than fabulous. No pressure here at all.

But we will leave that for after Christmas. Yes, a whole 9 days of not listening to me whining about my research. True bliss.

Today started out with another round of oral surgery. Because, if it's December, I must be having stuff done to my mouth. But the end is in sight for this as well. Soon my bite will be completely realigned and reconstructed. And all for just about the price of a large SUV. What a bragain. Snort. But no more splitting headaches, cracked teeth, and other ills.

So tonight I am celebrating by drinking wine and making cookies. Last year, the only cookies I made were those for Mel's cookie exchange. But it was really cool to trade and get a whole variety. This year, I am hoping that I get a reasonable quantity made.

I am making some sugar cookies that I am going to dust with gold powder, as they have raised suns on them. I had forgotten how to use the gold dust (tells you how much I have been baking recently) so I googled to find some directions. As I was reading through various recipes to figure it out, I found one listed on a Welsh-named B&B. I was intrigued so I investigated further. Turns out it is located in Baltimore. And run by the man (and his wife) who taught my grading and drainage class. A bizarre coincedence.

I thought about dropping him a note to tell him, but then I remembered a strange conversation I had recently. I had gone downstairs at work to stare at the vending machines, as if my looking at them would cause good snackage to appear. This guy came up to me and said "I saw you on tv." Hrrrrrm. I was not certain how to interpret this, so I asked the only thing I could think of. "Was that this weeks PHED committee being televised?" He didn't know and just repeated that he saw me on tv. Totally freakish. So, no dropping this adjunct professor a note to say that I found his website. Maybe next time I see him, I'll mention it casually.

I think one of the funniest googles I had a few months ago was the words "quick mead recipe." We were making some quick mead and I wanted to look at some recipes. If you hit "I feel lucky", it takes you straight to Terafan's page with Gyrth's recipe for quick mead on it. At the time, I thought it was just too cool.