Huh, there goes another week

The quality of food from Costco always surprises me because I'd think that it's, well, Costco. The giant stacks of boxes of socks and soap are not exactly what anyone would associate with gourmet. Yet somehow there're pretty good stuff there. My recent discovery is their Belgian chocolate cups, especially the dark chocolate ones. (Which reminds me to note that I finally remembered to try that chocolate soda that Lucy brought over the last weekend and it tastes like carbonated chocolate milk. It's...unsettling. I think I might just let it set out until all the CO2 goes so I can pretend it's chocolate milk.) (Yes it's still slightly carbonated, even after a week. Impressive, isn't it?)

The night with my recruit went well. We had, against all odds, things in common, such as being one of the few applicants of our year who hasn't obtained our bachelor's and liking Neil Gaiman's work. We went out for Thai food and I warned her that it might rain, because SD always rains on recruitment weekend. This turned out to be true, but at least the rain was this morning, and brief, so that most of the outdoor events that were planned for Friday and Saturday should've gone fine.

In fact, that evening went so well that when I got the desperate email asking for the hosts to volunteer a second time since we have over 40 people coming the second weekend, I agreed to host another student.

The interviews with the PIs were on Friday, so I got to see my PI as well as one of the neighboring PIs wander past with the recruits (recognizable by their red-bordered name tags). Afterwards when I asked my PI how the interviews went, he commented that all the students had potential, but since this is recruitment he couldn't really ask them any of the hard questions. (There you go, Anna, apparently the PIs have some sort of unspoken codes of conduct for recruitment weekends.) Of course immediately after this comment I had a moment of incriminating doubt about my PI, because somehow the comment made me recall with horror every single oral exam I've ever had to take and I didn't really expected that from him. Then I realized I couldn't actually remember him ever asking me really hard questions. Therefore it's possible that either he was really desperate for a grad student when I joined (Wendy's graduating, once a PI's lab has emptied of grad student it'll be harder for him/her to get another one -- admittedly not as hard as a PI who's never had a grad student), or that he was joking. The jury's still out on this one.

We still haven't heard anything from Wendy yet (and by "we" I'm referring to my labmates and I). I've talked to one of her friend on Wednesday and was informed that she was fine. However, then we got an email from her husband saying how the baby could be expected any day now. Six months is so much shorter than what it should be. Admittedly modern medicine has gotten very good with premature births and one month ahead of time is almost guaranteed to be problem free, but even so.... It's not even six, to be honest. It's five and some.

My labmates and I are currently in the habits of crossing our fingers at each other when we talk about this. I feel like I should be crossing my fingers now but that would impede typing.

Parents are coming today. I cannot stop them. It should be nice and awkward.