nawl

Life has been busy.

There are school things.

I'm TAing this semester, the introductory programming course, which is called rather unspecifically "General Computer Science". I'm responsible for a "precept" (discussion section) of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed undergrads who are being taken on a super-fast-paced tour through everything in CS. In Java. Standing in front of a class is not nearly as difficult as I had thought it might be. My students are all really nice and smart and hard-working, and they ask lots of really good questions during class, and the light-speed pace of the class means that none of the material really sinks in enough for them to start asking hard questions.

Teaching is taking up almost all of my time.

I'm taking one course, algebraic methods in combinatorics. The mathematicians are startled that so many computer scientists have infiltrated their tower. The book, "Linear Algebra Methods in Combinatorics" is just one check for $30.15 to the University of Chicago away from your doorstep and is really beautiful.

I'm also taking introductory Russian, on the solemn promise to myself that I wouldn't work too hard in it. (Princeton offers neither Hungarian nor Norwegian, and Spanish was full.) I now know how to write my name in Cyrillic (Надя). Learning to write cursive Cyrillic is kind of a mind-bending experience: 't' is written 'm', 'd' is written 'g', that backwards N is written 'u' and pronounced 'i', that sort of thing. I'm recognizing a lot of words that must have been borrowed into Hungarian from Russian. In fact, it's extremely difficult to overcome the urge to speak Hungarian all the time while in Russian class.

But in actuality, I'm doing super-important research. Yeah.

I've started to get regular migraines. This is not pleasant. I've also been sleeping 10, 12, 16 hours a day, which oddly enough becomes as commendable to fellow grad students as sleep deprivation used to be. "Way to just... check out."

Last weekend I cut off about a foot of hair, taking it back to tailbone length. I did this by taking a pair of scissors to a party.

I have my own room in the old graduate college, and for the first time in a year and a half, some actual items of furniture that I own myself. Theoretically, my room could sleep up to six people on soft surfaces, so you should all come visit me.

This is Princeton. I live in a castle. My room overlooks the main courtyard and tower.

It's really quite pleasant when the construction isn't going on both sides of my room.

I eat breakfast and dinner every day in Proctor hall, which is really too magnificent for the food that is served in it. Last Thursday our dinner clique dressed up in our nicest clothes for dinner, thoroughly confusing many grad students who had difficulty understanding "just because".

I've been dancing a lot: the international social at Ballroom on Fifth, tango in Central Park, Millennium Hustle, tango in Philadelphia, ballroom lessons on Monday, tango lessons on Thursday. I own more pairs of dancing shoes than I do street shoes.

The weather is slipping gently into fall. It was late summer when I arrived, humid, warm, crickets and cicadas and birds and squirrels blending into a constant hum day and night, one particularly spectacular thunderstorm that took out the power for a good portion of the evening. The near-freezing temperatures that came along with the snowstorm that took out upstate New York last week appear to have quieted the last of the crickets.

The leaves have begun to turn.

When it's sunny it's like a blessing, these absolutely sparkling fall days that are not humid, not warm, not cold, just perfect. We went for a ride along the tow path on one of these.