Happy Valentine's.... WTF?

Valentine's Day is apparently destined to be significant to me for every reason EXCEPT the traditional one.

It is the anniversary of my grandmother's death.
It is the day I closed on my first house.

And, this year, on Feburary 14th, I will have my first PhD committee meeting.

Yay! It ought to be short and relatively painless. At this point, all we need to do is sit down and decide what classes I'll be required to take to earn my degree. The University has official guidelines of how many hours you have to have, but that's just fluff: It's the committee that decides how much work a student has to put into their classes. So I'm hoping for a very short list.

In the meantime, I ought to get shot down hear back from NSF sometime in March, I've got a research proposal to the National Park Service for my project in the works (but they've already said, unofficially, that they want the study conducted, so hopefully that's just a formality), and by all estimates, I am on schedule with my degree. This is good. And I hooked up with the Gamers' Association (hi, sonicshadow :P) and the Anime Club on Wednesday night, which is awesome... even if they make me feel a little bit old.

Life is good.