30 days. the data is all in, now it's a question of making something of it. i had 4.5 hours of class in the afternoon, by the end of which i was alternately doodling, dreaming of puppies, and doing the pavlicek bridge quiz -- anything to not have to think about linkage methods in cluster analysis. fridays this month are brutal.

during the break, the present for one of the birthday boys arrived at the department office, necessitating some misdirection and skulduggery as ewa and i smuggled the 4' by 2.5' by 2' box to a suitable hiding spot. i love how amazon ships their stuff in containers that are at least 16 times the size of the product. we had a little debate as to how ewa was going to get the present to the party, and not one graduate student suggested opening the package to see the size of the actual damn thing; instead, we wrestled with the box all the way to the trolley stop, and held up rail traffic for several minutes when it jammed in the doors.

it was a bread maker; the other, more manageable gift the talking heads brick, and the cake was actual several dozen Symbolic Cupcakes with depictions like the sri lankan national flag and "positive psychology" (don't ask). daniel managed to make an appearance, despite his busted leg, and traitor joe, on rotation back from princeton. i ate too many mini-pappadums. the theme of the night was the 80s, and there were too many leotards, and a vigorous, overlong debate about whether lynyrd skynyrd was 70s or 80s (if you think the answer to that is obvious, try another one: pac-man. unquestionably 80s, right? but no! the arcade version first appeared in 1979. point: decades are no longer defined by years). there was also too much discussion of work and research, and you could sense people frantically trying to get drunk to put a stop to that. and still: just before i left at 1, i overheard a conversation about randomized controlled trials, and the problems associated with.