there was an article in the washington post last week that did a nice job of describing part of what goes on in a u.s. embassy overseas, and what my job is likely to be like. though, i'm *not* likely to be in london, sadly.

the full article will probably only be up for another week, fyi.

i've spent the past week, and will spend the following week, being the "cruise director" for the summer workshop in cognitive science that occurs each summer. 28 undergraduates from around the country get a full scholarship to come to penn for 2 weeks, tuition, room, and board is all taken care of. they hear lectures from professors in the various fields in cognitive science (e.g. psychology, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, neurology) and participate in lab tours, data collection, and data analysis. in other words, summer camp for nerds. with another grad student, it's my job to organize evening social activities--movie night, phillies game night, bowling, etc. what this means in practice is that i haven't been home before about 9pm any day this week, and am dragging. karl and i are both getting stressed about the big change that's about to happen in our lives, with me starting a new job, moving, and being in limbo about where we're going to spend the next several years. we're trying to finish off the last few house projects that we hadn't gotten to in the two years we've lived here, along with trying to inventory our house and figure out what we're taking with us and what we're putting into storage for years. eesh.