My head still suffers from pulling an all-nighter to (start and) finish a homework that due today. But anyway, the class itself was less torturous. That was partially due to the professor who took the liberty to distribute two boxes of Girl Scout Cookies (his granddaughter's) and a sheet of John Bardeen's short profile along in the hand-outs. So, instead of paying attention to yet another set of band diagrams lecture, I was busy munching on the snack while calculating Dr. Bardeen's age profile during his education and professional working period, in which the Two Nobel prizes were awarded on his behalf. (He graduated from HS by the age of 15, got a BS and MS by the time he's 25, a PhD at 28. In between, he had been a Research fellow in Harvard, a "Geophysicist", and an "Electrical Engineer". His first Nobel was in '56, for the invention of the transistor effect, and the second was in '72, for the superconductor work.)

The other 3/4 of the class period, my thoughts were flying somewhere to the Spring Break plan. Throughout my graduate studies to date, I've never taken a whole week break. Let's just say, I've been following the tradition of the people in the research group to dedicate all of the available time to the advancement of the research. Even with such dedications, students in this particular research group graduate years later than their fellow classmates. But this year, it's gonna be different. I am going to be a rebel (with a cause, and yes, to my own expense). I am taking the next Thursday and the whole weekend off to flee 400-something miles down to the South Padre Island. We (as in the sibblings, the neighbors, anybody else interested on the trip) haven't been working on the details accomodation and places to visit, yet. A day or two should be enough to figure those things out.

Coming out next time, the scanned pictures & accompanying stories of last Saturday's Houston trip.

Holler,
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