The quals (or, as _akenokoru called them, the chuunin exams) are over. I don't like speculating on how I did on tests, so I won't. I'll know within two weeks, probably sooner.

Afterwards I was in the mood to not think about anything for a while, so I took a bus to the (yuch) mall and caught The Simpsons Movie. I really enjoyed it! Perhaps that's due in part to the euphoria of having put the quals behind me, but mostly I think it's because it's actually good. There's nothing profound in it, nor even anything particularly new, but I found it solidly funny and fun in a way the series itself largely isn't lately.

That was the entirety of my break, as the semester started today. And this semester looks like it's going to be even more insanely busy than last year:

• I'm TAing Physics 101, the huge 300+ person intro course. I'll be running three two-hour "studios" (a combination of recitation and lab) per week, each with about 18 students, and grading their weekly homework and lab reports. Plus I'll run the physics "clinic" (a room where students can come for help in any course at any time) two hours a week.
• I'm taking Quantum Mechanics III. Relativistic QM, fun!
• I'm also taking graduate laboratory. Although I'm beginning to think that I should put it off for next term.
• I'm auditing the General Relativity course. I did a GR reading course/independent study with this professor last semester, but it's an important and beautiful subject that I'd like to spend more time with.
• Finally, the most exciting news, I'm starting research! Well, sort of. I'll be working with a professor in the cosmology group on his studies of the cosmic microwave background, but officially I'm doing it as a one-semester independent study and not "research" in the this-will-turn-into-my-thesis sense. However, this did happen as a result of my asking to join the cosmology group officially, so I suspect, or at least hope, that this will evolve into something larger.

So if none of you hear from me for the next 15 weeks, this is why.

Last weekend was full of productive studying, and by Tuesday I was not only beginning to feel more confident about the quals but was even remembering that I actually enjoy this stuff.

Then I received the TA training schedule.

Most grad students go through training before their first year, I didn't because of the way my fellowship works. I knew I'd have to do it around the time of the quals this year, but based on the TA training at Yale I figured it would be short and wouldn't interfere with studying too much.

Turns out, here, it's seven days, a rather sizable chunk of the time I have left before the exams. That news got me all panicky again, which ended up costing me a few more days, and then we had our first practice exam and that was about as unpleasant as you'd expect.

I admit my natural tendency when faced with adversity is to think "I'm old, I'm tired, bugger this I'm gonna go get a job I don't actually care about too much and enjoy relaxing in the evenings." So I'm working on staying focused on the fact that I do want to do this and finding ways to gather my strength and just get on with it. It would probably help if there were some grad-student equivalent of "I will be the next hokage — believe it!" that I could yell at random intervals.

Okay, moving on to other subjects, I have a hornet update! Although after further consulting the big page of things what can sting you it turns out they're yellowjackets, not hornets. Smaller colony, more aggressive, no more welcome.

I had blocked off the tops of the windows with a combination of plastic bags and duct tape, which worked but was clearly not going to last. So as a more permanent solution I ordered some of that foaming insulation stuff. Which worked perfectly, inasmuch as no yellowjacket born of Earth is going to get through it. However I was sloppy and didn't get to a couple of spills fast enough, so I now have very noticeable blobby yellow streaks on my screens.

These are, so far as I can tell, permanent. No commercial solvent will dissolve them. They can be sanded down from the inside, but extend outside as well. They can't be burned off, at least not with any flame I'd be comfortable using. Maybe a pressure washer would get them off, but it seems more likely it'd just rip the screens out entirely and blast them across the street. Replacing the screens would either require dismantling the windows, a four-story ladder, or spider-powers.

So I guess I win, but probably at the cost of my deposit (at least). I can't help thinking that, unable to sting me, the yellowjackets instead attacked me through my own stupidity.

This, by the way, is why I'm not an experimentalist or artist. I like to think I'm pretty good at understanding things, but I'm incredibly and consistently ham-fisted when it comes to working with the physical world to accomplish anything.

On the plus side, the heat wave has passed and temperatures are more like I'd expect in central New York. Not always cool enough to be comfortable, but always enough to be functional.