back on track and rarely at home

Monday... again. I haven't decided if these seem more or less frequent than they are, but they sure don't seem to come at the frequency they should.

I went to a family reunion this weekend. My great-grandparents have something like 300 descendants. Only a fraction of these people showed up, but it was still a sizable group. Given that my family is quite loud, this event was pretty sedate. I met a few more distant relatives and ate a lot of good food. My grandparents made sure to introduce me to the lone PhD in the family :).

I produced a bunch of plots for the meeting with my advisor last Friday. He was very pleased with the results. Unfortunately, that means we've expanded my to-do list :P. Most of the additions are details that I hope won't take too long.

I finally feel like I'm back on track with research. I think it really helped that I got my house set up and clean the way I want it. It feels comfortable again. I also think my weekends away have helped. I needed to get out of town and do some new things. I've noticed a bit of a dichotomy between academic success and happiness. I'm generally not very happy when I'm doing really well in school, and I'm generally not doing as well as I would like in school when I'm at my happiest. Maybe this time I can combine happiness and academic success. It's been working for a week or two now... :P

My advisor is gone this week until Friday. We have a meeting scheduled Friday morning and I drive to my parents' again Friday afternoon. After a brief visit with some family, I'm catching a flight out of town for a week and a half. I'm unbelievably excited about this trip. I haven't had a real vacation in over two years. Even though I will probably do some research while I'm gone, I expect to have a great time.