last final, celebratory dinner

yesterday i took my last final exam ever. (probablyl). yippee! and it was a hard one. three hours of vision perception. three grueling hours of vision perception. but, topped off by leftover chocolate truffles made with fine belgian chocolate by our professor. yum....

last night ginny (the prof i ta for) took me to dinner to thank me for being such a fabulous ta (thank you very much!). we went to fork, at 3rd and market. i had acorn squash stuffed with cous-cous, and cranberries, and topped with maple sauce. served on a bed of swiss chard (which i'd never actually eaten before--only heard about in that song by ed's redeeming qualities). it was delicious.

ginny and i had a good time. get a little wine into that woman, and she spills information about department politics. i got confirmation that mike kelly left because he was feeling underappreciated and underpaid (both true), and that he's leaning toward coming back. i hope he does. i really like him, and think he's super smart. plus, he's an involved and responsible member of the department.

we talked about ginny's irrational fears. and they are weird. one was that at the dentist, during her root canal, the drill was going to get caught in the metal in her mouth and mangle her entire face. another was that while she was parachuting out of a plane, the guide person she was attached to was going to think she looked like an old girlfriend who dumped him, and he was going to cut her loose and let her die in a flash of misplaced revenge. whoa.

in the conversation about how mike kelly is underpaid, it came up that ginny is also underpaid (in comparison to some more junior faculty). she, unlike mike however, doesn't really care. she's not married and has no kids, and no expensive hobbies, so she doesn't really need alot of money. so we got on a discussion of what she might like to spend her money on. she doesn't particularly like travel, her hobbies are mostly sports (she's thought about taking up golf, which is of course an expensive hobby), and she's already saving toward retirement and giving to charity. she's thinking about buying some land down on the chesapeake bay, eastern shore, and maybe a mobile home to go on it. that would eat up some money, for sure. during this discussion of what she should do with her excesses of money, i'm basically thinking: ginny, you can bite me. i happen to be a poor graduate student with very expensive hobbies. let's list: cello (lessons at $40/hour), harp ($25,000 for a harp, plus lessons at $40/hour), photography (darkroom equipment, chemicals, lenses, filters, film...), and horseback riding ($x,000 for a horse, plus $400/month in upkeep, plus saddles, bridles, vet bills, lessons, show fees. this is certainly the most expensive of my hobbies). i would never have ginny's problem of too much money. urg.