pangur-ban

I like Bahn Thai or Sala Thai. Sa-Bai Thong is the other Thai restaurant worth mentioning. But what I'd actually recommend is trying Laotian food at Lao Laan-Xang (each of their locations has a slightly different menu). It's very good, and has many of the same qualities as Thai food.

Does it refer to formal vs functional approaches to linguistics, rather than being accredited or requiring a black tie?

Merchant is great for cocktails & dinner, or the Old Fashioned is good, but a bit cheaper. For breakfast, Marigold Kitchen is kind of a classic now. Both Merchant and Marigold are right off the capitol square, the Old Fashioned is on the square.

Try the near East side, like Willy st/Atwood area. It's the closest thing to a gayborhood, but it's also kind of the aging hippie neighborhood, and it has a lot of cool restaurants and cafes and such. And it's home to one of the city's few gay bars. There's public parking in the Park St. ramp, but it gets expensive real fast. Street parking is similarly expensive and usually has a time limit. Spaces in lots are usually reserved for employees/are hard to come by. So, if you have the money, it's doable, sure, but biking and busing will save you a lot of money, especially with free bus passes for students.

I got a couple of paper letter rejections when I was applying a few years back. One school was even kind enough to mail me two identical rejection letters a week apart, but it didn't do anything towards making me feel better.

I agree with fuzzy logician that you should be able to get into an MA program (especially if you're self-funding) without too much trouble with your background. I came to linguistics with a background in language study and then did a linguistics MA and now I'm doing a PhD and it all worked out reasonably well. Additionally, if you're interested in historical linguistics, you should look at the programs at the University of Georgia, and see if UNC-Chapel Hill still offers MAs. (I heard they stopped offering PhDs, but it'd be a good place for your interests for an MA, if they have it).

Cornell, UPenn, and the University of Georgia should not be overlooked...

I've settled on Debian as my Linux of choice. Ubuntu (I thought) makes it too hard to change/control everything I want, and Gentoo is too much work for me.

Busy, but good overall. Though I'm now even more reluctant to post details here. How's things with you?

A couple friends of mine got acceptances there several weeks ago. The open house was this past weekend. Sorry. It's possible you're wait-listed or something though.

Auditing a class is useful if it allows you to develop your research interests or if it leads you to write a good paper you can use as a writing sample. But, because the professor won't be giving you a grade or looking at your work (presumably), they won't be available to write an LOR for you, and the class won't mean much (if anything) on a transcript. If you can't afford to enroll fully in the class, but think you can still get something out of the discussions, it would be a good idea to take it anyway. Often professors are fairly open to giving feedback on your work anyway, depending on how busy they are, and this can be a valuable service.

You should be fine. At this point, Latin will probably be a piece of cake for you. Sanskrit is trickier, but no worse than Greek (in my limited experience with both languages...) and if you learned Greek and Egyptian at the same time, this should be even easier. I mean, Latin and Sanskrit are both IE so there are some similarities, but not so much that I think you'd have a hard time keeping them straight. Anyway, go for it, and good luck.

Columbia's a really good place to start for the gloves and earmuffs. (Well, I think they have earmuffs -- I can't stand the things, so I don't have any.) Any outdoor gear store would be good, really. REI, The North Face, etc. The gloves that'll keep you warmest are something with a soft fleecy inner layer and some sort of outer shell layer. But with all the people who are saying it's all unnecessary and you can get by with wearing your normal clothes every day... I think cold affects people very differently (probably depending on metabolism?) so you might not need everything people mention, or you might need more. But if you're not used to winter, or if you plan on spending more time outside than it takes to run from one building to another, I'd suggest covering up. Frostbite sucks; dry, chapped skin sucks.