Ack! Madness!

Well, vacation's almost over, and, surprise surprise surprise, I didn't get half of what I wanted to get done done. I spent most of my time up at school working on grants and projects, which is good— but it means that my photo album is still out of date, my books at home are still completely unorganized, my various half-written accounts of funny things that happened in India and then a few months later in Washington D.C. are still half-written and sitting on my hard drive, etc. etc. etc. I'm all registered for my classes, which are starting next week. The good news is that my stats class now starts at 1:00 pm rather than 7:30 am. The bad news is that my stats class is using a different textbook this quarter than last quarter.

Last quarter, we had a book called "Princicples of Biostatistics", which was small, cute, and had a nice purple cover with a cool antique chart showing "The Conquest of Pestilence in New York City" drawn sometime in the early 20th century. It cost maybe $65, and weighed in at well under 600 pages. This quarter, our book is a monstrosity named "Applied Linear Systems Models". 1400 pages, definitely lacks a cute purple cover, and ran $185. The fact that I only vaguely understand the freaking *title* of my textbook makes me somewhat concerned.

My other textbooks seem pretty reasonable. The one on organizational behavior seems nice and fluffy, and my database systems book seems to contain a lot of the mathematical theory that I was hoping for. All told, my textbook bill for the quarter came to somewhere around $450. Luckily, my fellowship covers books— your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen! Last quarter, I could fit all of my books in my bag if I took everything else out and didn't mind hurting my back a little bit. The only way I'll be able to carry all of my books back and forth this quarter is if I get my big camping backpack out, and even then it might be a stretch.