Happy new year! Still in grad school

This comic (from PhD comics) pretty much sums up how my new year feels. I went to Maryjo's and Lance's house in Lancaster and then came home to work on a draft of a conference paper. Today I had a meeting with my advisor, and have to send him an updated version of this draft by tonight. Plus I really need to start writing the lectures and assignments for my class. Absolutely no fun there.

It's snowing still/again, and now that the holidays are over we've moved into the standard post-holiday bitter, dead cold. Thanksgiving is a tease with occasional 50-degree days, and even earlier in December it's not so bad. Then we come back and it's hard to bear. It may be sunny, but the "feels like" temperature is 8 degrees right now, it's windy, and it's so dry and cold that even the snow just blows up in the wind like dust. Just three more months of this....