Sunday as usual

Carol threw her first milestone party last Saturday, celebrating 80 days to go until she flies to Germany for her Ph.D. ( my own count stands at 92 - amazing how fast one hundred days have gone by). I left early and, although tempted, didn't join the rest of the gang who went out dancing. Rather, enjoyed the loneliness of a middle distance runner with a good night's sleep, and on Sunday morning, drove the break to the Clockwork Orange's second win in as many weekends. But if last Sunday was summer-like, winter more than made it up this time with proper grey background and a cold drizzle - so much the better, as this was my third victory in adverse weather in just over a year.

This evening I had the pleasure to enjoy a rock concert by Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band - a welcome addition to my list of indie rock bands I'm learning to enjoy. Thanks Carol and Kàzic for the suggestion and company. No Mulligan celebration today; drinking a glass of wine instead :)

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My diss is almost there; just a tad short of 50 pages; still missing are the main discussion of my results and some further talk about the conclusions. I had originally hoped to hand it in last week, but failed after some catastrophic numerical woes took longer then planned to be solved (still an open question, working around it as we speak). The date of my defense has been set for August 25; the committee consists of Profs. Carolina Nemes (UFMG), Felipe Rizatto and Cristiano Krug (UFRGS). Also held interesting talks with the Optical Quantum Information Theory group in the University of Erlangen. While my application to Munich is still pending, Erlangen's friendly Prof. van Loock may just tip me to coming back to my "native" Mittelfranken. At any rate, there'll be some Bavarian beer down the road in the coming few months!