Ryan's coming back tonight! Yay! Seriously, I don't know how people are able to handle long-distance relationships. Nowadays, I can hardly imagine not living with Ryan. The next couple summers are going to be tough, with me up in Maine and Ryan having a limited amount of vacation time to come visit. I guess I should just devise an ingenious research plan that involves several couple-week stints in Maine instead of requiring me to be there every day. As if designing a good experiment wasn't hard enough!

Thoughts on turning 25 soon:

• That's a quarter of a century!
• I can't say that I'm in my early twenties anymore.
• If you round up at the number 5, that makes it late twenties!
• I hope I get to eat filet and chocolate cake.
• The perfect present from Ryan would be a kitty with a diamond ring around its collar. I would, however, settle for either a kitty or a ring.
  
• Stuffed animals don't count as kitties under my definition.
  
• If a box of expensive assorted chocolates could somehow be affixed to the diamond-bearing kitty, I suppose that would be an improvement.
  

I lead my first discussion section today. I've made a pretty extensive outline, so worst case scenario is that I give a mini-lecture, but I'm hoping that the students are willing to discuss. Hopefully my natural "cool grad student" vibe will get them all interested in talking.

One plan for the weekend is outdoor ice skating at Penn's Landing. It was 19 degrees this morning, which is the coldest it's been here so far this winter. (You're probably not too interested in the temperature, but the blog is also a personal fact-storing device).