I have to admit I like my HMO back home. To go to the doctor, to have tests done, to get shots, to do anything, all I do is walk in, show my HMO card, and pay $5 to $100 and that's it. Since I've had to go to the non-HMO neurologist here I've learned that if you don't go to your HMO you have to fill out tons of forms and then, like today, get scary $1,000 bills in the mail that luckily say "If your insurance is listed below, we have sent them the bill" and mine was listed.

The Control class is taking up a lot of my time. In the next week and a half I have a homework, a lab report, and a design project due. Luckily Separations calmed down. This week's homework only took me around 3 hours. That's a record!

Today I had one of the nearest to a panic attack I've ever come. It was half an hour before a scholarship-do I didn't want to go to, and I got an email from the fellowship I'm applying to--saying to make sure to send them my GRE scores and three letters of recommendation. When I submitted my application three days ago it said two letters of recommendation and absolutely nothing about GRE. What the hell! It was horrible. I wrote back right away saying I haven't had to take the GREs, don't have to, and won't be, is that all right? and what about three letters of recommendation? I also emailed the grad student I worked under last spring to ask if he'd write me a recommendation.

Stressful.

Luckily the fellowship lady wrote right back and said the no GREs were okay (apparently they're only required if you already have to take them), and saying, oh yeah, it's up to three recommendation letters now. They changed that two and a half weeks before the deadline?! Thanks! And after I got back from the scholarship-do the grad student said he would be pleased to write me a recommendation, which is so nice. Crisis averted. But at the time it was vastly unpleasant.

The scholarship do itself wasn't as awkward as normal. I ended up talking mostly to a chemistry grad student and some freshmen about the kid on campus who put dry ice in some soda bottles and now is being held on felony charges for what the newspapers called "an act of terrorism". Okay, he's an idiot, but not a terrorist. The grad student was talking about all other kinds of stuff that's just as easily obtained but just as if not more dangerous. One thing I found funny was he mentioned a 9 volt battery and some steel wool, and I said "I haven't tried that" and he said "don't" but when the computer science major beside me (a guy) asked "What happens?" the grad student went, "Try it."

Also, I realized why the TA for my Bioprocess class looked vaguely familiar. When I had first starting talking to the chemistry grad student and a professor a guy came up and just said "Hi, Abby" and I had time to say hello back, think who the hell is this, look at his name tag, look back at his face, then he walked off and I went "Oh!" That explained how he knew me, too. He's the TA that has been the recipient of some of the stupidest problems I've had while away at school such as the "Are you sure you're doing problem 9?" fiasco from last week.

Off to relax with television and fitting first order exponential functions to thermocouple data from lab yesterday.