fields medal

As always, Amy O. has put me back in my place. At a $4 per head dinner yesterday, she gave me the verbal equivalent of an exasperated slap to the back of the head by telling me that the only reason my blog is so self-loathing is so I can justify doing the things I feel so bad about doing. Why don't I just stop doing them? she said.

Touché! My mea culpa, my dear, and oh how me culpa. I am honestly conflicted about working for a firm but more or less committed to doing it for a couple of years after graduation. The reasons for this are many, but most of them start with the letter $. It's not that I want five houses on the islands; I just want my parents to retire.

Anyway, excessive explaining, as AO noticed, is tiresome. Besides, my week of 27 identical interviews is over, and now my mind is working on higher ground, or something. All I am doing, after a long day of mostly dull but nicely populated journal training, is reading about the Poincaré conjecture and eating roasted cashews. I bingoed last night in a Scrabble game - sPROUTs for 84 - but was beaten nonetheless, fair and square, by Raj's 90-something point bingo, *TARPULIN. I'm going to walk my dog later, when the rain is coming down, and then maybe work up some vague interest in the first couple pages of my property textbook. I'm saving for another blogpost, or perhaps the privacy of my real journal, the story about giving a stool sample this afternoon. I'm pretty sure whatever it is that is making my abdomen feel stomped on is an ulcer. Oh, boo.