It rained at last! Most Seattlites thought I was most silly to be so excited about rain. The rest of the user studies I did while up in Seattle went more or less all right, aside from servers going down. Now I'm back in Berkeley, none the worse for wear and now the proud owner of two beautiful pottery bowls, a purple fuzzy shirt, and a new ball gown for UCBD (which I somehow managed to cram into my carry-on bag, without too much rumpling) - and quite a generous meal reimbursement, which was certainly more than I actually spent. And a high-resolution image of a cloud poster my advisor has in her office, which I was coveting all summer. I'd like to print it out on a poster printer sometime!

Today, after munching Cheeseboard pizza for lunch, I caught up on missed lectures as best I could, and started grading for 170. After the first ten or so homeworks, I got into a rhythm and actually found it fun and relaxing. It looks like this will be the good GRE study strategy that I hoped it would be - I'm forced to do it every week, and I'm also forced to spend the time to really understand each question inside and out.

It's much too hot in Berkeley. David's Prius claimed 100F, and his studio was certainly above 90, driving us out of the hills and into my much-cooler room this afternoon.