Greetings, again!
It has definitely been another crazy year. Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, we thought life would get more sane as we got older, as we got more settled in, and more experienced at our jobs. Oh well.
As with previous years, our lives in general are centered around school (or sleep, depending on how you look at it). Sarah has been the conference queen this year. She applied and was accepted to a two-week summer session on Cognitive Neuroscience at Hahvahd (yes, we're getting an accent), and also attended a less hoity-toity conference on experimental psychology in Chicago this fall. She didn't take advantage of being at Harvard to see the sights of Boston, but she did take advantage of being in Chicago by visiting the local pizza parlors, a blues bar, and the Chicago Art Institute. Oh, she went to talks too.
Alan continued his tour of Snotty East Coast Universities by doing a marriage-disturbing amount of research at Hahvahd and spending a week at Princeton running a preliminary experiment. (The Princeton experiment would have been marriage-disturbing as well, considering that it included our second wedding anniversary, but Alan had to fly home to take a final exam that, purely by coincidence, was on our anniversary. Shucky-darns.)
We both passed some important exams this year. Sarah passed her Ph.D. qualifying exam in June, so she is now officially a candidate for the degree. Alan braved blizzard-like conditions to take the second of his three general examinations, and then consumed, with his friends, $90 worth of oysters to celebrate. He passed the exam.
Not all of this year was filled with good news. Sarah lost two of her three grandfathers and one grandmother, which made us both sad. In addition, Alan's mother was extremely ill for several months, but she is doing much better now.
In our copious free time, we have cooked good food, done laundry, visited friends, family, and spicy food in the SouthWest, seen some movies, gone to Sea-World (Shamu--my hero!), eaten some lobster, seen some good folk and classical concerts, made crayon Halloween costumes, cured Rusty (the cat) of his incontinence fetish, behaved like computer nerds on several occasions, dealt with an unhappy automobile, raised and harvested vast amounts of herbs, and even socialized with our friends in Boston. All in all, it has been a good year.
We hope 1988 has been good to you, and we hope you have a fun and exciting year in 1989. Happy Holidays!
We are still at 40 Bartlett Ave. * Lexington, MA * 02173, and loving it!!!
