Post-prelim sum up

Well, folks, it's time for me to come back out of the cave for a few minutes. Last week I took my prelim exam, which is big news. I passed, which is even bigger news. The prelim exam is a rite of passage/hazing type experience. In order to be a "PhD candidate" you have to pass the test at the end of your second year in the program. I proposed a course of research and a committee of 3 professors assessed it and me. Oddly (at least I assume it's odd to people who don't go through it - it's not odd to me), my committee didn't care at all about the research I proposed, but more about the thought behind it. In other words, my committee told me that my proposal was stupid and I should never ever ever do it, but I still passed. They cared about the fact that I had thought through experiments and written some well-reasoned plans, even though those plans were to do something tremendously stupid. In my defense, I totally agreed with them - I thought it was stupid, too. Not as stupid as they thought, but I thought it was dumb. I guess I just misunderstood the idea of what we were supposed to do for the prelim. There were some miscommunications and whatnot to blame for that, but mostly I think it's just the hush-hush frat initiation nature of the thing. If somebody could have given me some input early on, I could have seen that it was bad. But, that doesn't matter much because I am done and I don't have to do those experiments. Which is good because they're pretty dumb. So, what else have I done with my life while I haven't been blogging? Well, lots of things that I plan on posting about retroactively. Kate and I bought a car and are working on selling both Lenny and Clifford (which is sad because I love Lenny). We've spent lots of time training Majzy (which is going very well). We've done some homey-crafty stuff (which is always fun and sometimes useful). Hopefully I'll post some more stories and pictures as the next couple days pass. This weekend Kate's parents are coming to visit us, so we'll be spending some family time. Should be fun.