She put on another sweater, and then spontaneously combusted

...It could happen.  It happened to a guy in England once, and I breathed a sigh of relief then because at least I didn't live in a place that ever got so cold that I needed 10 wool sweaters at a time.  Heh.  But just so everyone's clear (I'm sure this is going to shock you all),

It's cold here.

Yesterday a long-predicted cold front came in, and for the first night and morning it snowed.  The pictures I tried to take didn't turn out, but the coolest thing I've seen for a long time was a brief snow sunshower on Saturday.  But then the snow turned to sleet, and the sleet is supposedly going to stick around for a week, so my world is currently icy, slushy, and damp.  And cold.  The combination of a busy few weeks of classes with darkness and bad weather is not something I'm looking forward to, and these will be 3 BUSY weeks of classes.

All my big projects have managed to converge onto Wednesday, Dec. 8.  I'll have two group projects and two homework assignments due that day, and a formal lab report and computer simulation project not far behind.  That's the second-to-last week of school, so at least the last week will be easy, I guess?  But I'm definitely beginning to feel the stress from it.

However, I'm also starting to feel real anticipation for Christmas--I went Christmas shopping on Saturday and wrapped all my gifts this morning.  I love wrapping Christmas presents.  Always have.  I need to come up with a  few more, but my Mom just gave me an idea for one, and hey, this means I get to go Christmas shopping again.  And some interesting things have been happening in the "What are you going to do after this?" department.  I had a talk with one of my professors about PhD projects available in his group, and one of them really caught my interest.  I'm going to be talking more with him about it, and talking to other professors in the department about their research, just trying to get an idea of whether staying is something I'd be interested in.  If I do want to apply for a PhD, I would need to make that decision soon, since the funding applications are mostly due by the end of January, so I'm starting to think and pray a lot about what I want to do, considering not only the research and the resources but (the big question), do I really want to stay in Scotland for 3 more years?  And I'm not a hundred percent sure that I do.  So, that's me for the past few (and next few) weeks.  But after that, it'll be Christmas!