I am back in Oregon; my last paper of the semester is submitted; and I am done with my first year of my PhD program.

At home, I revert to old habits. I drink a cup of coffee every morning before breakfast, without the teaspoon of brown sugar to which I've become accustomed. I rise before 8am and go to bed by 11pm. Not sure what to read next, I scour the shelves for my favorite E.L. Konigsburg books. I'm rereading The View From Saturday right now. I would say something about how much I love Konigsburg, but I already have: here, here, here, here, and here.

It is beautiful in Oregon, as always. The scotch broom is a swarm of yellow across the green fields, and the days alternate between blue and gray with dashes of rain. In New Haven, the humidity was already beginning to settle into the city, but here the air is light, still full of spring.

When I return to my other home next week, it will be first to a reading group and a presentation on the Hippias Major and then to Latin classes. When I am next in Oregon, in August, it will be to celebrate the birth of my first nephew. How wonderful is that?

Happy early summer, friends!

Oregon tomorrow!

(and just this one one paper left)

Oh, spring

Don't go.

Everything is bursting into bloom here, and the breezes are warm and fresh. This morning I walked straight down Orange to the Green Well, where I've ordered a ginger-peach smoothie and found an unoccupied window-side table. (Ginger and peach, by the way, are a prime combination. Also good: the asparagus-bacon pita pizzas I made for dinner the other night: spread pitas with tomato sauce; saute asparagus and green onion, adding arugula at the end; fry the bacon; and top pitas with the saute, bacon, and goat cheese; bake for 10 minutes or until hot. So easy, and so delicious!)

My cold is finally gone (only sniffles remain); I turned in my last problem set for Mathematical Logic on Thursday (my dreams have been full of induction and homomorphisms); and now all that's left of the semester is a Greek final and a term paper for Stoic Logic. And after that?

I'll be Oregon-bound for two weeks of graduate celebrations and happy reunions with friends and family.

It was about time for Spring. I can do this!

Reductio

In every tight spot, I invoke it:
Suppose x is not the case,
and see what happens
to the neat lines marching down the page.
See how the hypothesis fares
beside the unfolding contradiction.
It's absurd:
how appealing to the very thing I don't want
proves the truth of exactly what I need.

In bloom

Finish-line blues

We are down to the last two and a half weeks of the semester, and I have come down with a cold. I could feel it coming on last week. So I decided to take it easy. I went to bed early and postponed some of my work. Best laid plans notwithstanding, I still got sick. When I am not sleeping, I am miserable, and when I sleep it's for half-days at a time (I really mean this: last night I slept for 10 hours; the night before, for 12, plus a 2-hour afternoon nap). Poor logic take-home final. Poor 25-page Stoic logic paper (not a word yet written). Poor me.

I know if this doesn't kill me, it will make me stronger.
The trouble is that I don't know yet if I'll survive the onslaught.

(Of course I can. Anyhow, I will.)

Almost

Here is the truth: now that the long-distancing is nearly over and done with, I am impatient. When you're in the middle of it, the distance is a burden to be borne--a familiar, almost-comfortable weight that you sometimes forget. And now that the end is in sight (five months? four?), it's all I can do to shoulder his absence. We're almost there, but all I want to know is Are we there yet?