Linguistics, Dancing, and a Few Good Books
Wherein I post about the excitements and mundanities of life in Providence, RI| [blog home] |
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| Don Blaheta is a sixth-year PhD student in Computer Science at Brown University, studying Natural Language Processing; he just finished up an AM in Linguistics across the street in the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences. In his copious free time, he does competitive ballroom dancing, sings in two choirs, hangs out with the Brown-RISD Catholic Community, knits obsessively, and reads sci-fi, fantasy, and alternate history novels. |
19 July 2003
I spent Tuesday through Thursday of this week in Galesburg, looking at apartments. Some were dumpy, some nice; all of them were massively cheap compared to Providence, of course. Two-bedrooms pretty consistently ran around $400. Anyway, I had settled on one when I got a last-minute call returning a message I'd left---I went to see it and ended up taking it. Slightly smaller, but way cooler. I'll have one bedroom plus a finished attic, so basically it's a two-bedroom; the kitchen appliances are vintage and in excellent condition; the floors are all hardwood; and the neighbours are all other faculty members. The apt itself is part of a duplex that got subdivided into two apartments, of which I have the upper one, so I have a downstairs neighbour who is a prof in psych, and a next-door neighbour---the landlord---who is a prof in bio. The residents of the next building over (also a duplex) also seem to all be profs.I also set up a bank account at the Farmers and Mechanics Bank (aka just "F&M Bank"), an old Galesburg institution whose only branch outside town is in Peoria. It's got good ATM coverage, though, so that's okay.
Tomorrow I get to see people I haven't seen in ten years, at my high school reunion. Sunday I'll see a lot of my cousins and assorted other family members. And then I have to get back to my thesis, which I still need to defend. Argh, I'm so ready to just move on at this point....
"Consulting? Why would we consult you? Do you know something?" --Fr Henry Bodah
Posted 1:22 AM [+]
15 July 2003
Saturday I saw most of my family on my dad's side at a memorial service for my great-aunt Ann---she had left in her will that as many people as possible should come and have a really big party, and her estate paid for all the distant folks to fly in. Strange idea, but cool.
Yesterday I met my sister's boyfriend's family. They're great; they've taken to our family's recipe for Hackepeter (aka "raw meat") like ducks to water, and even after Ryan left they hung around for a couple hours chatting with us. :)
And today I finally got to see Loren Kinkade for the first time. She's ten and a half weeks old and absolutely adorable.
Tomorrow I drive out to Galesburg to do some apartment shopping, open a bank account, and generally check out the town some more. Soon I should be able to give people a real address to mail me at, rather than the Providence one that is only good for another month, or my parents' in Palatine.
From the come-again-now? dept: "I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are." --Ari Fleischer
Posted 3:22 AM [+]
| Don Blaheta / blahedo@brown.edu |
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