Elmira!

I'll be back in Elmira acting like a 'Mung for a week starting on Saturday. Minneapolis folks, have a good Thanksgiving wherever you happen to be. Elmira folks, I'll be back and shooting up the woods with rifle fire and warming you parlors with my especial charms and strange ways before flying away again.

Anniversary!

Well, this past Monday was my 4th anniversary with Rachel, so I had to find something suitable to mark the passage of time... and what better way than with Time Lords?

 

The minis came from Heresy Miniatures, and they are quite excellently crafted. There's even an Eccleston look alike available if you want to be complete in your collection.

The girl was very pleased. :)

We also spent our anniversary by going to Saffron, which was an excellent mediterranean dining experience. Some highlights: truffle oil with steak, terragon and tahini ice cream, and scallops made amazing-er.

Until next time...

"What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light. Anniversaries are very well up to a certain point, while one's babies are in the process of growing up: they are joy-flags that make gay the road and prove progress; and one looks down the fluttering rank with pride. Then presently one notices that the flagstaffs are in process of a mysterious change of some sort--change of shape. Yes, they are turning into milestones. They are marking something lost now, not gained. From that time on it were best to suppress taking notice of anniversaries."

- Notebook, 1896

GRE- Revanquished!

Let cries of rejoicing reach to the heavens- the dreaded Physics GRE has been vanquished once more! I felt much better about this one, as the answers kept flowing and if I didn't know something I really didn't know it, so didn't even hazard the guess.

But let's skip back a few days from that shall we, and I shall regale with the full tale. A few weeks ago I found out that a) Rachel had signed up for the test in Northfield due to justified paranoia, b) I had stupidly forgotten this and signed myself up for the test in St. Paul, and c) it was too late to switch test centers as the deadline for this was before we had not taken the October test.

But all was well- it was just one more symptom of the test hating us, no? I would drive Rachel down on Friday evening and pick her up again on Saturday. No biggy. Rachel made a reservation at the Archer House and all seemed well... until her hotel accidentally lost her accommodations. This lead to approximately two hours of us sitting worried and depressed in Northfield waiting for the staff to find another suitably close hotel room. Of course, being Northfield, most of the rooms were booked in every single hotel in town. The only relatively close hotel that could be found was a Motel 8 way down the road, and the only rooms that they had were smoking rooms. Rachel rightly got a taxi out of the deal to transport her to the test the next morning and I had to head out as I had not yet found my testing location, and I am paranoid.

After finding my testing site I called Rachel who, with our freaky ESP in full swing, was calling me at exactly the same time, causing us to leave messages on each others phones. Apparently the management had forgotten to tell her that they had another room with a jacuzzi and "a bed large enough to sleep 6 people" according to Rach, that was non-smoking. Huzzah!

So the test came... in St Paul they not only had signs this time (see above) but there were plenty of people exactly where the test was! We were all jam packed into one lecture hall for three hours and released, with at least my own self in triumphant pride. I proceeded to head to the Bulldog for a victory feast of a steakhouse burger, truffle fries (yes, TRUFFLE fries) and a ridiculous Belgian beer called Kwak, as pictured here:

 

Around dinner time I picked up Rachel from Northfield and we had a great chat with Alison, one of the people responsible for the theaters at Carleton and someone with whom I had worked closely while involved in the Carleton theater scene. We then headed northwards, were treated to drinks and dessert by our gracious landlord and celebrated the rest of the night with friends at a week-late Halloween party.

Now I am in the midst of deciding my future... updates to come as they do.

Until next time...

"Trusting in Providence is a very good thing, as far as it goes, but a chart and a compass are worth six of it, any time. Statistics have shown this to be true."
- remark written in manuscript for Life on the Mississippi. Quoted in Mark Twain and Human Nature by Tom Quirk (Univ. of Mo. Press, 2007).

Happy Halloween!

Rach and I decided to Deutsch it up for the holiday

 

 

We then went to a zombie themed pub!

 

Until next time...

"Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval--a thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wolves and death."
- "The United States of Lyncherdom"by Mark Twain