and since I stopped waiting for them

A's in everything but Functional, A- in Functional.

I would have been happy with B's in Bayesian and Monetary Policy (because they are HARD)
and I didn't think to hope I would get higher than a B in Functional (it is EVEN HARDER and way out of my field of expertise)

Filled out my Intent to Graduate with my M.A. in Economics in August.

Coming out of the Fog

I've been kind of holding off until they post grades, so that the semester will really feel completely over. But they are taking their sweet time about it, and I'm going to try not to let it make me crazy.

I am very probably done with coursework for math, and am taking one course this summer to finish off Economics. (Game Theory - I'm really looking forward to it. It fits in perfectly with the economics courses I took last semester.)

I never know how crazy the school year has made me until it's over. My brain is finally starting to let go of the constant refrain of "You're behind, we should be working on X." that has been dogging me for the last few months. Actually looking at the list of courses I took last semester, I see that it was a completely nuts courseload. I took 3 classes that were extreme stretches of my ability and took a lot of work and a lot of brainpower. And well.. I had comps.

Work is awesome. I've got a big "learn new things, bulk up IT side of resume" project that I expe ct will take most of the summer. This week I did a reasonable impression of a Java coder, taking apart a tutorial with enough understanding to throw out the bulk of the extra crap they were trying to show off and actually have a Sametime bot that talked to a webpage at the end. (Note: actually following their instructions did not result in having something that worked in the end.) I'm very proud of this because I have no formal background in Java, and haven't even tried to use it in almost 2 years.

We have almost no plans for the long weekend. Should be a wonderfully lazy time. :)

Closer..

Bayes is done. (Which is a whole long story in and of itself. For me at least, it was an incredibly hard topic to try to teach myself. I think I learned enough to ask good questions, but certainly not enough to be able to use a Bayesian technique for an analysis.)

I got some ideas and some guidance on where the econ paper should go.

We planted the berries last weekend. They're not dead yet. The garlic, onions, mint and oregano are alive. (The mint and oregano came back from last year. They seem to be well entrenched. )

Work is a little crazy right now, but I think it's mostly that my brain badly needs a break.

Quiet Week

It's pretty quiet here. I'm groping for something to talk about.

School - One Functional Analysis quiz handed in (including something resembling a proof to the representation theorem for the dual of l^p spaces), lots learned about central bank independence and how hard it is to measure. No more Monday/Wednesday night classes, which should help my overall sanity greatly.

Garden - We had one totally gorgeous day: Wednesday. Yesterday it was in the 40s in the afternoon, and it's looking to be a grey weekend. So we still have 3 berry bushes on our kitchen counter. The raspberry is blooming.

Dogs - Gustav had his second trip to the doggie dermatologist yesterday. We're pretty sure he has allergies. We're starting an 8 week food trial hoping that will do it. Doggie meds for allergies are either steroids (lots of bad side effects and not ok with his arthritis meds) or the miracle pill that costs $5/day - every other day forever. Best part: approved restricted/allergy diet dog treat? Potato chips. There's a bag of Ruffles in the dog treat corner now.