The thing about living out here is that it always rounds down to 70. I think the weather for the entire time I've been here has been no higher than 74 and no lower than 66. It hasn't rained once, and well, the smog makes for better sunsets anyway. So it's delightful.

I went out tonight with a "COLUMBIA" shirt on, which elicited many responses, ranging from "Oh, I want to go there for grad school" to "You rock, did you know '____'" -- the response to which was of course, "No, I went elsewhere."

I met a good assortment of History graduate students a few nights ago. I've always assumed that I'd rather be in that circle -- that I could perhaps relate better to the lives of history graduate students than those in science. After all, those of us in science only pretend -- we're all aspirants of one thing or another. Anyhow, moral of the story is that I was quite the pontificator. To the grad student studying the history of pysochoanalysis, I could only speak of Freud and Jung. To this history of medieval economics, I could only mention how much I thought serfdom would suck. Slowly, it dawned on me that I really can't BS with the best of them, and that spending extendended periods of time with historyfolk really lead to senseless pontification on my behalf.

Anyhow, life in my new lab has started up, and I'm learning about quantum dots. Most exciting. Hope all's well with everyone.