Everything's coming up bright lights and lollipops

Hey all, I apologize for being a little late in posting - this weekend the Physics department here hosted a conference for undergraduate women in physics, which meant two things for me: free food and that my best friend could come visit. Yes, I realize that I sound like a typical grad student once I bring up free food, but it was good and I actually went to some of the talks, too. I was supposed to be helping but never made it onto the mailing list. Oh well.

It's both encouraging and weird to get a bunch of young women together and to hear the ways we're encouraged to keep after all the craziness we love. Unfortunately, none of the worldviews presented are particularly Christian, which means that I tend to be unable to wholly accept the social science-y talks. Instead, I get angry at the 'jokes' made at the expense of men and unemployed musicians. Yes, the Social Science woman told us that if we wanted to have families it would be best to marry a musician so he could stay home and take care of the kids. And after she said that, I partially stopped listening, although I did pay enough attention to catch her entirely qualitative graph indicating that gender differences decrease after 45... and to hear her then argue that since the average lifespan up until about a hundred years ago was 47, the gender roles prescribed by religion and tradition are no longer valid now that people are living to 80, 90, 100 years old. I think, at the very least, that the argument is a far too simple way for her to throw out stuff she doesn't like.


In the midst of conferencing, I took the time to make my usual cookies (on time this week), which I will have to distribute tomorrow, seeing as there was no school today and I got caught up in apartment decorating. Classes start tomorrow, which means everyone will be back and will help me eat these lovely chocolate-expresso orange cookies (29)!

These small cookies lack eggs and baking soda, which is something that I would expect out of a shortbread, but these don't seem too much like shortbread, perhaps because there's a decent amount of flour in them. The flavor, as you might expect from the cookie name, comes from dutched cocoa, instant expresso, and orange zest. I really think the orange zest makes this cookie, although it just may be that when it's January I want citrus. However it may be, I approve of these cookies.

In other news, I finally found out what and when I am teaching this semester, and while I'm glad to be teaching Physics 101 again, I'm not at all happy that I have to teach 4 sections instead of 3. This will mean grading 96 quizzes every week instead of 72, and at least another two hours lost out of my week. At least I'm only taking two classes this semester, and I really shouldn't complain because I expected to work hard in grad school, but, well, I'm just a little disappointed I suppose.

Everything will be fine, I'll get over it once the semester's momentum picks up (and I very much look forward to when it'll warm up outside and I can start riding my bike again)