Thursday, February 7th, 2013

Good morning!  I was treated to a breathtaking sunrise this morning in the Park.  The pictures are beautiful, yet I still don't think they captured the morning fully.  Those streaks of pink extended way far across the sky - I didn't have enough camera to get it.  The top sunrise pic is around 6:34 and the bottom is around 6:40.  It was just an explosion of color.  The very top picture is Sofie - in case you were wondering :)

I'm in the midst of my ACE right now - that is "Admission to Candidacy Exam."  This basically means that I have to come up with my own novel idea and propose how I would test it, how it fits into the literature, and why there's enough evidence to support my hypothesis.  It starts with an outline - you do that between the months of January and March.  Then you write a full proposal, and then you defend your proposal orally while getting grilled by a bunch of people who want to see whether you deserve to remain in the program.  Basically every day now I just wake up, walk the dogs, work out, then read, write, think, and drink coffee until around 7 - at which point my eyes are glazed over and I can no longer form sentences.  This morning literally the first thing I thought of when my eyes opened was my idea.  It's hard to think about anything else right now - I think I sometimes seem far away when people talk to me - and it's true - I'm just not really great at paying attention to anything else right now. 

Sometimes when Brian asks me about my day it reminds me of a scene from this show I like called The Big Bang Theory.  Leonard's character is a physicist and his girlfriend is an ER doctor.  Over dinner, Leonard asks his girlfriend how her day went.  She replies with all of the amazing things she did and people she saved in the ER.  When she asks him about his day he replies: "Well I thought about stuff."  When she gives him a ridiculously look like he didn't actually do anything he follows up with: "Well I wrote some of it down!"  LoL.

and on that note...I'll leave you for my reading & thinking about stuff.

Carpe diem,

J