Two Stars

I unexpectedly had this weekend free to myself with nothing in particular to do. I was pretty excited about this as it hasn't happened in a while. I decided to head to Neutral Ground on Saturday and actually play some Magic. They had a release event which I played in, but being the first time I've seen the cards (I missed the PreRelease because of Nashville) I lost repeatedly. I dropped out early and BDM needed another body to complete his 6-man Ravnica draft, so I stepped up. I didn't know what I was doing and this was pretty evident to onlookers. I believe the comment was, "Why does your deck suck so much?" Well, that set the stage for some really sad news. I found out that my Level 3 DCI judge mentor got laid off from work. Given that there are zero pharmaceutical jobs in the NYC area it means that come 2006 he won't be around anymore. I've been judging under him for nearly 6 years now and it's because of him that I've been able to be as good as I am. I've been thinking about testing for Level 3 for quite some time, but always put it off; we already had a NY Level 3. So, things are almost certainly going to change. I don't know if the TO will bring in a new Level 3 from another state or if I'll head judge more PTQs, but regardless, I appears I can't sit back with my feet up anymore - maybe this is life's way of saying that I need to step up to the plate.

On the work front, I've been laboring tirelessly in an attempt to get the Specific Aims, Introduction, and Preliminary Data sections of my Thesis Proposal in an acceptable form. It has to be in NIH grant form, which was a first for me and explains why it's been so hard. Well, today I got the lastest version back from my advisor with only a few stylistic changes! In addition, the introductory paragraph got a "Fantastic!" and two stars (which is a lot coming from my advisor). I spoke with him later about it and he said that it was excellent and it was great to read - it gave him goosebumps. Go me!