The time has finally come for me to come out of my hole and look for my shadow. And since this is California, of course it's there, which means we'll have 20 more weeks of summer!

I've been locked up in the library for most of the last six weeks, studying for my qualifying exam. I went about taking the qual in a somewhat unorthodox manner: my major topic had never been done before, one of my committee is not a Berkeley professor, and my outside examiner was the only questioner on one of my topics (usually the outside member just sits there silent the whole time). The studying process was very similar to that for the Cambridge exams: memorize a whole lot of stuff in a short time. In the actual qual we didn't get through very many questions because the math professors didn't understand the CS topic and kept asking questions, and the CS professor didn't understand the math topic and kept asking questions. I passed, so now I have no responsibilities for at least three more years.

The short-term plan now is to take two weeks off and do absolutely nothing, and then start work for the summer. I'll be working at HP Labs in Palo Alto, doing cryptography research. In answer to the question that immediately came to your mind, yes, I did do a little bit of name-dropping: I told my boss-to-be that Hendrik Lenstra (a former Berkeley professor) recommended him to me as an expert in my field. In fact, the only association Flora has with the job is that I'll be driving her car to work for the second half of the summer while she's in Spain. Thanks Flora! (In the meantime I'm renting a purple Kia with 100,000 miles on it.)

Speaking of which, I went out to the city last night with Flora and her friends to celebrate Flora's graduation from public policy school. They started out at a bar on top of Nob Hill, and given my injured knee I certainly wasn't going to hike up the hill from the BART stop. I was hunting around for a taxi, and then I had the brilliant idea to take the cable car -- it was right there, went exactly where I was going, was leaving right away, and would be cheaper than a taxi. Unfortunately the plan went awry when Flora called and told me they were on their way to the Mission. So I scuttled the plan and joined them in the Mission, where I found that the rest of the group consisted of about a dozen attractive women. Sadly, all of them were either married or in serious relationships -- including the one who was (very obviously) hitting on me. I wasn't quite sure what to make of that.

In other news, our house is now temporarily home to three adorable little kittens. One of Rosie's kids (she tutors high school students) was fostering them and brought them over one day, and we all fell in love with them and decided to host them next. They are about two months old; when they get a little bigger they will be spayed and then put up for permanent adoption. In the meantime they frolic about and get into all sorts of trouble. One has the potential to be as fierce as Tilly (our cat last year) but the other two are very sweet.

Oh yes, the injured knee. Two weeks ago I was just walking up the stairs and all of a sudden I felt sharp pain shooting through my knee. The pain returned whenever I tried to bend the knee, and the next day it was all stiff and swollen. The pain has subsided a bit, but other than that it's not much better. UHS has been useless, and it's been a serious inconvenience trying to get around -- the bus doesn't really go where I need to go and is unreliable anyway, and walking everywhere doesn't fit the doctor's prescription of "stay off it." Worst of all, I haven't been able to bike or run, usually my only forms of exercise. I was really bummed out about this, but then last week I made the serindipitous discovery that there's a public pool three blocks from my house -- so I've taken up swimming, which is great. (Though I'm awful at it.) I hope the knee gets better in time for Tahoe -- I really want to go hiking!

My sister comes to visit next Tuesday, so we'll be partying it up for a few days. We already have plans for a "sibling dinner" (a housemate's brother is in town as well, and two others have local siblings) and a baseball game, and perhaps a night out on the town...it's great having a sister who's 21! Also there are plans to buy me nicer-looking clothes and new glasses. (I'll buy, she'll choose.)