I didn't have one. Instead, I taught and did research and got entirely too little sleep.

I taught the qualifier preparation course, the real purpose of which is to give the students some structure and a schedule so they don't become either overwhelmed or undermotivated. In practice this involves giving a few review lectures, running through some example problems at the board, and giving lots and lots of other practice problems as homework.

Constructing, or even selecting, good problems at the right level of difficulty that illustrate the keys principles was a good deal harder and more time consuming than I had expected. Plus, of course, I had to make sure that I understood the material well enough to solve these problems and explain the solutions.

Everyone who took the quals passed, so I guess I did something right. Or at least I managed not to do anything so wrong that it got in the way of the students doing the real work.

On the research front, I've been continuing my work with the gravitational wave group and enjoying it a great deal. I've been working on data-analysis related problems, in particular on improving the way we look for gravitational waves produced when two black holes collide in the LIGO data. Fun!

There hasn't been time for much else, but I have watched a little anime. I was watching Cartoon Network's run of Death Note, which for the most part I liked a great deal. It flounders a bit in the second half, but that's more than made up for by the brilliant first half and the last episode. The last episode bothered me deeply, for reasons I still can't quite put my finger on. It's certainly not because I was rooting for Light.

On the other end of the spectrum (although I'm not sure exactly what spectrum that would be) I also watched Azumanga Daioh. I utterly and unreservedly adored this. I laughed, I cried, I suspect that like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya this is a series I will keep coming back to.

Speaking of Haruhi, I also read the last few light novels. The translations read a bit awkwardly, but the stories work. I'm now waiting for the tenth novel and/or second season, neither of which seems likely to happen any time soon.

As for the more immediate future: this term I'm on research money and don't need to teach, so I'm just taking one class (Quantum Field Theory II) and continuing to do research, and hopefully getting enough sleep. There's also a few non-school-related things I'd like to do, but I can't quite bring myself to believe I'll have time to do them.

I also can't quite bring myself to believe that I'll update this thing any more regularly than I have been. But hey, sometimes life surprises us. Although more often it doesn't.

So far I have spent 90% of my vacation tied to my computer, analyzing gravitational waveforms. Nifty? Sure. But it means not only have I gotten no rest, I have also not had time to start next week's homework, or the end-of-term report for one of the classes, or get my taxes done, or go shopping, or...

In other words, at the end of this week "off" I'm going to be more tired and further behind than I started.

The only other thing I've accomplished, and I use that term extremely loosely, has been to extract the cell phone sounds from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei for use in my email client.

(Update, 3:21 am: The programs finally finished running, the plots are finally plotted, and I'm going to bed. Unless I decide that's too much effort and I just fall asleep in the desk chair).

Although all that means is that I won't be taking or teaching any classes this week, and no new work will be coming in. I still have ample accumulated work to do, however.

The most notable aspect of this semester (apart from how insanely busy its been) is that my research plans have changed. It turned out the cosmology group wasn't able to take on any new students, so I'm now working with the gravitational wave group. It's a direction in which I wouldn't have initially expected to go, but I'm finding it very much to my liking. A couple of weeks ago I helped assemble our new supercomputer!

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.