Crawling out from under my week

Gah. What a hectic past week. It's mostly just grad schooly things that have kept me away from the internet, but also the slow and painful death of my computer. I desperately need a new one, but I'm waffling about buying because I keep thinking there's something better and cheaper out there. Right now the front-runner is an Averatec laptop for around $600, and I can't find anything reliable that's cheaper. Recommendations, oh internet friends? I got my first letter from a PhD program in the mail yesterday. Yikes. It was thin, and obviously only had one sheet of paper inside, so I assumed it was a rejection letter. After being incredibly depressed for 30 seconds, I opened it to find that they're processing my application. They wrote me to tell me that. I think they're [the Powers That Be who run the admissions committee. I'm sure they're all lovely people.] just toying with us and whoever doesn't snap from the anticipation and anxiety will get a place in a program. Grad School Survivor: Out-Write, Out-Read, and Out-Stay Sane. I sincerely think that if we threw the threat of being eaten by a tiger/barracuda/really big lemur into the mix, grad school would be much more interesting. I'll leave you with a selection from the first round of papers I just collected from my students: "The author decided to dress the Martian's [sic] in Grecian clothing because it is very appropriate clothing for Mars. Mars is supposed to be a very hot planet and tunics, which are not made up of a lot of clothing, keep the Martians' cool." Well, she almost has a point there.