The final months

The last few months of 2014 have been very busy for me.

In October, I had my wisdom tooth taken out. The surgery and recovery were pretty straightforward: I would say that there was discomfort the first day, not pain, and awareness at most the second. I had bought a couple of days' supply of soup, and once that was finished I was ready for solid foods. It's been a greater ordeal sorting out the payment: it should be covered by insurance, but the hospital administration seems to have been failing to put it through properly.

I went to John's ordination as a deacon, at St Ignatius' church in Chestnut Hill. I was glad to be able to support him, and join with a large number of people to celebrate.

I organised a singthrough of The Yeomen of the Guard with MITG&SP, and ended up singing Sergeant Meryll because Barratt was unavailable. It was lots of fun, though Patience was still my favourite (plus I think we did a better job during Patience, because it's a slightly easier show and we had more people there, especially as the chorus).

I went with Nik to see La Traviata to celebrate his birthday. Weston Hurt as the father was the standout performer: as one reviewer stated, "he sings 'Di Provenza il mar' so rapturously, it’s a wonder Alfredo doesn’t move back to the family home".

I had much fun at my birthday party. I bought some pizzas and invited about 20 friends over. The only disappointment was that I didn't get to talk much with about half the people there.

In November, I went to New York for the American Australian Association fellowship fundraising dinner. I gave a very short talk about my upcoming research in Chicago. The dinner itself was like any other fancy dinner I've been to: the highlight was the chance to meet other fellows.

A major highlight was submitting to my thesis committee a draft of my thesis. It contained five years of work, but I was really working specifically on it in the last few weeks (and especially the last week). When I had finished, suddenly I could sleep and spend time on other activities!

I took advantage of this by going to see The Trojan Women. It's a rather depressing play: usually even tragedies have ups and downs, but this one starts sad and gets worse. Unfortunately its anti-war message has not been tremendously successful over the last couple of thousand years.

In December, I defended my thesis. I had given several practice talks with which I was happy, so it was a low stress talk. I think people enjoyed it and found it useful: I tried to make my work accessible to outsiders, since basically everyone in the room was one (even my supervisor hasn't spent much time working in this field).

I also said goodbye to Anna, who was heading to Australia, to return after I had left for Chicago.

I had many farewell parties: with roommates and friends from church, the physics program and MITG&SP. Each involved a slightly different activity: games, dinner and chatting at my place, barbecue for lunch and dinner and drinks at the Asgard, respectively.

I spent my first three Christmases in Cambridge with Jimmy, and revived that tradition with a Christmas Eve party at his place. We played Wii (I mostly lost) and poker (I came second) and enjoyed a wide variety of food.

As for Christmas Day, you'll have to wait for the next post...