Week in Review

Happy Thursday, all! It's been a scattered week so far, and I've been negligent with my blog. Sorry, guys! I'll write a quick post to update all the goings on of the aforementioned scattered week.

Life

I went home to the great state of Pennsylvania this past weekend. As my mom's birthday was on Friday and Mother's Day was on Sunday, I thought it was a good excuse to go home for a few days. I haven't been home since the holidays. I actually didn't realize it had been that long. It's funny how we get so caught up in day to day life that all of a sudden, poof! five months have gone by. In addition to seeing my mom and dad (and my dog Lola!), I was also able to meet up with some friends from home. It also struck me how disconnected I've been from the East Coast. A lot of people seem like they haven't really left or have left and moved back. I guess I'm the one getting farther and farther away. Each move I've made has been further west. Pretty soon I'll have moved so far west that I'll be back in PA again!

We ate out a lot and ate lots of cake (ice cream cake! why waste time eating them separately when you can GET THEM TOGETHER?!) for my mom's birthday. We were also able to go to the Michener Art Museum where my parents are members to see a special exhibit Offering of the Angels, which features lots of Italian Renaissance art from the Uffizi gallery in Florence. Apparently, the Michener was one of only a handful of museums in the US to get this exhibit, so I felt really fortunate to be able to go see the works. The art was truly breathtaking. Renaissance art has such subtleties to it, which aren't often seen in more modern pieces. The exhibit also had a really nice audio tour, which I usually think are kind of hokey, but which was really insightful and informative.

This weekend, Andy and I are fleeing to the Cleve to see his sister graduate from Case Western Reserve University. All this travel is very exciting, but I'm definitely going to napping hardcore when I get home.

Grad School

I promised some more grad school-ish things in my updates, so here they are. Research has been super frustrating lately. I feel like for every moderate success I have, I have about 50 failures. That may sound somewhat pessimistic, but such is life. The grad student mentality must sound so funny if you aren't a grad student. "Hey, I just failed for the 30th time, so let me get started on way number 31 of trying to get this to work!" Ah, well. At least I can set my own schedule.

Today is arguably our department's banner event of the year: The Hilliard Symposium. This event consists of two keynote speakers and a bunch of twenty minute talks from the graduate students who are defending this year. The morning keynote was John Cahn, an ex-Northwestern affiliate who is a big wig in phase transformations in materials science. I was super excited to see someone speak who actually created something I've used in my classes. Euler? Fourier? Dead. Never going to meet them. But Cahn of the Cahn-Hilliard equation in the flesh? Magic! He gave a nice conversational talk that wasn't very technical, but instead chronicled his interactions with Hilliard and some research things. All in all, a very cool way to start the day.

Food!

ALSO in reading my blog roll, I saw this delicious Mexican mole dish over at What's Good at Trader Joe's? I LOVE mole sauce. Like, more than I can describe. I will be jumping over to my local TJ's. I still need to buy pork buns, too!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! See ya on the other side.