I think I could have hugged the under­grad who asked me this ear­lier today, as we sat wait­ing for the class to start. From pro­fes­sor to sopho­more. What could be better than that?* Def­i­nitely an advan­ta­geous start to the quarter… oops, semes­ter. I don’t quite know what to do with myself given 15 weeks of classes instead of the usual 10.

[*Note that I'm going to ignore the pos­si­bil­ity that she might have been think­ing "man that's a hag­gard look­ing second year!"]

So one shopped class down. Def­i­nitely won’t be taking that one (The Psy­chol­ogy of Social Com­put­ing). It seemed inter­est­ing, but the room was packed and appar­ently the wait­ing list was 15+ deep. Next up is my first Anthro PhD class. It’s one I began to take last year, so I’m pretty famil­iar with what will be asked of me.

As a total aside, yes­ter­day, while dri­ving back to Ithaca, I stopped off at the Thirsty Owl Winery on rt 89. I cannot accu­rately describe how great it is to drive along­side a Finger Lake on a sunny day, so I’ll let the pic­ture do the talk­ing (there’s more on Flickr.)

Two years ago Dre and I were mar­ried here at the house. I’ve trav­eled to Rochester to spend this night with my love and my best friend, toast­ing the family and friends who were there in person and in spirit to share that day with us.

Dre is telling me to cut this short before I get to cheezy (oops, make that “too cheezy”… thanks Dre, you back-​seat blog­ger). So I’ll let the pic­tures do the talk­ing:

The day is wind­ing down. It’s 6.44pm and I’m going to see Harold Lloyd’s won­der­ful movie The Fresh­man. The day has been a busy one. I’m reg­is­tered, I have my ID and my first stipend check. I’ve seen my apart­ment and gotten the chance to talk with a few people from my depart­ment. The next few days will be a strange com­bi­na­tion of hur­ry­ing up and waiting.

I didn’t get the chance to shoot many photos, but here’s a sample of some of the sights and scenes from today:

Just pulled into Cor­nell. Now it’s off to reg­is­tra­tion in Bart­let hall!

Today’s beings with a quick post. I’m leav­ing for Cor­nell within the hour to start my PhD. I’ll be post­ing and tweet­ing on it all day. I’m excited and more than a bit nervi­ous about what the future holds.