Week 75 - Cold

It was officially bitter cold out last week. There is snow on the ground, the winds have ripped the loose branches and resistant leaves from the trees and there is no cloud cover. Clear nights, ripping wind and bitter, bitter cold. With windchills reaching below -35F, I can only remember one other week in my history that was so cold. Spring semester of 2007, early February.

View from my dorm in 2007 with the sun trying to cut through the snow.

My walk to class in 2007. -45F but classes weren't cancelled, just the bus routes.

Well, this time around we were blessed with class cancellings and delays for work, but that was really last week. I still went to work to finish my proposal and get it turned in. What matters this week is that the cold hasn't really broken and the wind certainly has not. With temperatures in the single digits and windchills fluctuating from nothing to -30F, we have seen a few 60+ degree shifts in the past week or two. So when the sun broke out when my wife and I were headed home from a birthday party, we drove home as fast as possible to get the camera. It felt so warm with the sunlight streaming and the wind lightening - or at least it felt warm for a few minutes. My wife has the better pictures but when she got cold I ran out on the edge of the lake and tried to catch the snow that was floating across the ice. It looked like the fog from dry ice as it swept towards me, and with the sun dropping fast with its diverse color palate, the scene was an eerie reminder that this break in the weather is only a break. The winter storms will return.

Silhouette of my wife walking to another spot for pictures on the lake.

The color paling as the sun disappeared.

Hannah is finally up to her knees and working on her ability to stand up! It's so funny to see her sitting back on her knees. She looks so comfortable, as if she has always just been sitting back on her heels waiting for people to play with her. Sitting up from laying on the floor is still a challenge, but she has found the work-around by rolling and grabbing things around her. This also means she has become a bit more interesting to Betsy. Now that the baby in her life seems to be more like a human, Betsy seems to think that she is just a human puppy here to play with her. We have to be careful to make sure that Betsy doesn't paw at Hannah, because she doesn't mean to hurt her but those claws can scratch her if we aren't careful. Of course, Hannah doesn't care. She just loves Betsy sitting so close to her and sharing her toys and food with Betsy. The two of them will be an inseparable pair in just a couple short years.

My Spartans may have had a great year in football, but it seems to have come at the cost of offending the basketball gods. Just when I thought we had suffered enough injuries for one year, Dawson is sidelined with a broken hand. And get this, his hand was broken because he punched a table!! Now, for most of you Dawson doesn't mean a thing. Even some commentators said it wasn't as big a deal as some of the injuries. But Dawson is the catalyst. In my field, we talk about catalysts as the thing that speeds up the reactions, maybe making them viable in otherwise limiting conditions. But in this case, Dawson is the spark (maybe activation energy would be a more appropriate term). He lights up the team and puts the fight in their eyes. He knows what it means to win and he knows what it means to have the game taken away from you. Lately his fire has been lacking, so I can only hope that at least with this energy he will return with renewed zeal for the game. Like Boeheim said about the 'Cuse/Duke game, "It's all about the game," - love of the game.

My proposal was completed and mailed out to the committee at the end of last week, giving enough time for people to send in comments or corrections before the candidacy exams. I know that many people struggle with the amount of corrections, but I received none. Granted, I had already worked extensively with a grant writing specialist in our department, and passed the concepts by my advisor. But out of the other three committee members, I received only one person's written comments and they were minimal. That leaves me just a bit uncomfortable as we approach the written exams. So I am just reading up on the previous work done by my committee members and trying to keep my head in other work so that I can remain calm. Writtens are scheduled for Jan. 30th (my advisor), Jan. 31st (microbiology), Feb. 3rd (modeling and nutrition) and Feb. 4th (statistics and science). It's hard to believe that in only a few days it will be over. I am either going to be acceptable or not. I guess in the end I am not worried about passing. My advisor had me over to his house on Monday and took the time to ask me a lot of questions over a couple beers. He helped me pinpoint things I was weaker on and gave me a bit of coaching on how to answer questions more efficiently. He said not to worry, but then asked me to impress him. So I'm not worried about passing, but I am worried about being a disappointment. Throughout my academic career I have found myself raised on a pedestal and in my undergraduate I am confident that I did not impress my advisors at all. In my masters, I always felt as if my work didn't excite my committee or impress them like I had hoped. So this is my last chance to leave a lasting mark. And the bar has been set high. I just want to make my advisor proud to have me as a student.