Dogs!

Bunches of photos of the therapy dogs at my school today over on my Flickr page!





This is Daisy, whose breed I've forgotten. We also had Otis, a beagle-mix; Cathl (Irish, pronounced Cay-hill, and I've probably misspelled it), a Staffordshire Bull Terrir; Fiona, an Australian Shepherd; and Wrigley, a yellow lab.

The time I spent taking photos and petting pups was the first time in quite a while that I haven't been stressed by all the other things I'm supposed to be doing all at once. Mission accomplished!

Bike Repair

On Sunday of the holiday weekend, I finally got around to fixing the brakes on my bike. It turned out I had a bent barrel adjuster, so that didn't happen. I got the part on my way home on Monday and replaced the rear brake line. It was actually easy. Really easy. Which was a huge relief. I was expecting something much more complicated.

There was water in part of the housing which may have been the problem. It may also have been getting caught up on the bent adjuster. Either way, I adjusted both brakes. All is well, and I biked to school again today. I missed that! I'm going to ask on a bike forum, though, about why the 8-speed hub sometimes jumps a bit going into or out of fifth gear. This thing is still new to me and I worry about damaging it somehow.

I'll make it to 3000 miles for the year this week.

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I've gotten to the point where I'm basically done with my school work for the semester. I'm picking up the poster that is my GIS term project tomorrow morning, and will give a short presentation on it in class. Assuming it's ready for me at Creative Services! They said they'd do their best, and as long as nobody's printing something on a different material it should be doable I have three papers ready to turn in. One in particular is, I feel, kind of half-assed. But I think it'll be worth a B. I've said that before about other things and gotten an A, but I'll be happy with a B here.
Next week I have three finals, but I'm not worried about that.

Today, I'm going back to grad school stuff. I just paid the $28 to send my GRE scores to Ohio State. It's a good thing you get four free submissions when you take that test. Otherwise sending six copies would be expensive!

Now, I'm looking over faculty pages and CVs again as I write a new draft of my application letter. I think I need to be speak more directly about my political motivations. More and more, urban politics and public policy are my focus. I also just sent off a draft of a poster submission for an undergraduate research symposium. Parkside will select up to six posters for inclusion, and the authors will have an expenses-paid trip to Madison to present.