Catching Up

Ok, I keep on promising to tell about the morning sickness of the gods, and I will do it fast.

Grad School Info Evening, keynote speaker:
"Of course you are all wondering why you would want to go to grad school, and how that is better than becoming a pirate, or joining a gang, or going on the run from the police...
"If you need to hide from the police, grad school is not the place for you."

Grad School Info Evening, dean:
"And I distinctly recall that feeling, when I made a discovery. It was late in the evening, in the physics lab, and I knew that, just for a moment, I knew something about the universe that no one else yet knows."

Grad School Info Evening, me to Margarethe, wonderful PhD student who researches Lie algebras, is president of the math grad students association, and whom I will mention again:
"And you know that, just for a moment, you know something about Lie groups that no one else knows, and only five people else care."
"Lie algebras, Lie algebras."
"There, you've just lost one person."

After I left the grad studies evening and its roast lamb I recall with fondness and its golden fountain of chocolate fondue, I went over to the school, to supervise the students at their grade eight info night. I detoured a little to go, again, through the Space Sim's inflatable planetarium, and to check out the Dark Lord's class's periodic table, mentioned before in this journal, which was finally up.

*TOU: How come you always do the fun things without me?
*DAR: I try, I try.
*TOU: What did you say?
*DAR: [% embarrassed, mysteriously] Nothing, nothing.

And then I went back downstairs, only to see Professor Poplack.

Professor Poplack is the god of the sociolinguistics department. She is one of the things that put the U of O on any sociolinguistics map, and linguistics in general. She recognised me, from the Urban Di coffee time when I had asked a lot of questions, and I asked what she was doing there.
She explained that she was thinking to enroll her son in this school.

Professor Poplack has a son? Sociolinguistics gods get pregnant? Sociolinguistics gods have morning sickness?

I talked about it to Laurelin in English Phonology, "Somehow you know that Venus gave birth, but you don't imagine her squatting and upchucking in the Olympian bathroom..."

So I will make a record of this event, and I will write another post as soon as I am able, more about the recent days.