Holidays

Grateful for the holiday. A cold has swept through work and caught me in its wake. The past few days have not been real great, although I've had worse. I'm hopeful that tomorrow will have me turning the corner, since PTO is well allocated already.

Dad graduated, finally, on Thursday:

I think it was ten years of work, with classes interspersed between this that and the other thing—mainly his own work schedule. The experience was different for him than grad school, although this is no real surprise. The M.A. in Religion is probably not quite the same as self-study in Anatomy, Histology, and Physiology.

He revealed that his original Ph. D. plans—for one in Chemistry—were denied. They didn't think he'd make it. He was that guy, you know, the one who asked too many questions in class.

Interestingly his committee was incredibly supportive of him when he applied in an interdisciplinary program: every one of them became a friend and supported him throughout the way. I think this was one of the reasons he was so angry about my experience, although I think he was likely a far better student than I.

The house is on the market, and he and Mother will be going to Exeter sometime this fall for his Master's in Theology; he wants to concentrate on 1 Peter, and the expert is there. He said that the reception at Oxford and Cambridge was rather cool, but the folks at Exeter were pretty excited to have him. I think in the main this will be a very good thing for both of them, and for us, too. The security blankets are swept aside a bit, and we both need it.


In other news, J tested for his 8th degree in Universal last week; E and I were his test: we answered questions and moved in front of the panel. Others were also testing, and so our time up front was relatively limited. Even so, I came home pretty sore.

Not unexpectedly, weapons was my weak point, but E's strong point: he did a great job of covering up for my lack. The compliments afterward were gratifying, and I think indicative of how much my movement has matured in the intervening years since my own Masters testing. I think it's probably because moving hurts more than it used to.

I also picked up a 200mm Micro lens after selling off my 55 micro and 85mm lenses. I have needed to shrink my kit—there are lots of things I don't use—and this was a start. The micro has been fun to play with so far:

The TC-300 I have mates with it properly, so I can get a 400mm f/8 with 1:1 reproduction if I like. I'll check out how it works sometime against the moon so I can get a proper comparison with the 400mm f/5.6 I've got. I'm guessing the glass in the micro is substantially nicer, although the lens does suffer from chromatic aberrations.

It's way past time for me to try to clear out my throat and nasal passages with some ginger/mint tea. L has been (hopefully) sleeping downstairs—her own schedules haven't been so great lately, either—but I need some cleansing draughts.