a long day

aughh what a long day. I am so tired. so it started off like a normal wednesday, i.e. nothing too exciting. went to work, had my tea and pretended to be really busy. normally on wednesday, I go to a physics education research (per) reading group at ucsd with some of my old professors and some other grad students. well, this week, one of the grad students, my friend liz, was doing her oral topic defense on a paper that we had recently read and she had wanted me to go to it and be there for moral support. I almost didn't go (I actually had a lot of stuff to do at work), but I decided to go anyway, and I'm glad I did. [for those of you that aren't familiar with the inner workings of getting a phd, it basically goes like this: you take some classes and get your ass kicked. and then you take a really really hard written test (call the qual - short for qualifying exam) which is basically the hardest test you will ever take in your entire life. when you pass that (you only get two tries), then you pick your research area and you start to form your review committee. you then have to research topics in your area and present a published (by someone else) paper to your committee and they ask you questions about it and other related topics in the field. once you pass that you are advanced to what is called candicacy and then you can start working on your phd thesis and all that fun stuff. when that is finished, you have to give another oral presentation on your thesis and then defend that. sounds like fun, huh? it's a little bit different at every school, but that's the general idea, for physics anyway, and my guess is for most science programs and probably some others.]
well, the presentation was good and she did well (and passed) and then we all went to the pub afterwards to celebrate. while I was a the pub, Laura left me a message and so after the pub I met her in la jolla at karl strauss for dinner. we had a nice long talk, just like old times, and had some yummy pizza. then we decided that we also needed golden spoon, so we stopped there afterwards and then laura drove back up to northridge.
when I got home, I decided to finish reading harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban since I had started it on monday and wanted to finish it before tomorrow when the movie comes out (hopefully I am going at midnight to see it since I will be gone all weekend). the movie looks amazing and I just can't wait. this is one of my favorite books, the beginning of the best part of the series and it will be so cool to see it on the big screen. expecto patronum!