I'm not sure whether or not I should be thankful for what can only be described as a purging of all my functioning brain cells. On the one hand, my first graduate course here in California is officially over. Still, though, there's all that time I spent over the weekend shoving a metal pole up my nose and into my ears in the hopes that there might be some extra neurons to glue to some paper so that I could turn in what the Monopoly Man professor described as "the culmination of a semester of study." The work I turned in was more like the culmination of a hearty bean burrito and Raisin Bran breakfast, but I guess that's close enough to what he wanted.