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.

How cold are we talking here? You'll definitely want a nice coat and boots if there's going to be snow. A lot of people here (Wisconsin) either get a wool coat and wear warm layers under it, or get one of those double-layer ski jackets, like by Columbia or similar. The nice thing about those is that by wearing them with different stuff under (for wool coats) or wearing only the fleece lining, or only the wind-proof outside (for the ski jackets), you'll get a lot of wear out of one coat all through fall-winter-spring. I have less specific advice about boots, but if there's going to be a lot of snow or mush, you'll want something you can wear outside, since snow (and the salt people use on ice) are killer on other shoes. (Timberland makes really nice ones.) Plus, it means a big difference in comfort if your feet stay warm and dry. Also, if you get boots, most people here buy them a size too big and get boot socks (thick, wool socks for wearing over a pair of regular socks with boots). You can keep a pair of normal shoes at school to change into if you don't like wearing boots all day. For regular clothing, I like to buy a bunch of thermal long-underwear shirts and wear them under a T-shirt (just like it's still the 90's!) so that I don't have to change my wardrobe too much seasonally. It's also nice to have a bunch of sweaters -- both pull-over for cold days, and zip-up or cardigan ones to wear over a lighter shirt for in-between temperature days. Plaid flannel shirts are nice and warm too, but if you're not in the midwest, it might be hard to wear those and boots and not get made fun of for looking like a lumberjack. Trousers made from a heavy material are usually warm enough, but you can also get long-underwear (WinterSilks makes ones that are warm, but not bulky) to wear underneath. If you're really cold, you can get flannel-lined jeans and such at places like Eddie Bauer or other outdoor clothing stores. Wearing layers really helps when it's cold and windy out. You should probably do your clothes shopping once you get to wherever you're going for school. I moved from Wisconsin to California for undergrad, and I noticed they just don't carry winter gear in stores there. Plus, if you shop wherever you live, you can wear basically what other people are wearing, and avoid looking like a lumberjack (unless you're somewhere where everyone else does too...). For being outside in the cold -- wear boots, warm socks, nice gloves/mittens, a scarf, and a hat. You'd be surprised what a difference it makes in how warm you feel if you have all your extremities covered up.

You might already be aware of this, but another bonus for UNC is something I heard about while visiting there for their linguistics PhD program. Apparently they have a (unique?) program that matches statistics students with students in other departments to offer advice on putting together research involving statistics. The benefit for the people in other departments is obviously that they can get the expertise of a real statistician instead of making do with one semester of beginning stats, but the statistics students probably benefit from the experience too, and it might look very good on an application to a PhD program later. (Depending, of course, on what kind of statistics you are interested in doing, and so on. I know nothing about statistics...) I also found Chapel Hill to be a very nice town during my visit, and between financial and academic concerns, as well as opportunities like the one I mentioned above, I don't think you can go wrong with UNC.

There's also the possibility that the prof would have a hard time getting to a store to buy the mug. When I've been at conferences, I usually don't find the university store until the second day or so, and then there's not a lot of free time during store hours, if you go to all the talks. I wanted a mug for myself at the last conference I was at, but the conference was over a weekend, so the store was closed by the time I found it and had time to shop. The request doesn't seem like a big deal (and I might even ask it, if I were you) but I've also found it can be surprisingly difficult to find spare time while at a conference, which is something to consider. Maybe you should order online, or start submitting to more conferences at famous universities yourself.

Do you have the time/money to do an intensive French course over the summer? It seems like the combination of a French course followed by the immersion environment of living in Paris would be enough that you'd get along pretty well. But I'm afraid I can't offer any insights to the program in general.

Some of my Celtic medievalist friends were looking at Toronto and Cornell, though I don't know much about either in terms of English dept./literature faculty. Cornell, at least, has people in the linguistics department who work with and teach various Celtic languages occasionally, so that might be a nice bonus to a good English department. Southern Illinois at Carbondale and Notre Dame have decent Irish studies programs, so it might be worth looking into what else their departments offered in terms of medieval literature.

Well, if you have the option of TAing at Stanford, I think it sounds like the better program overall for you. You sound more excited about it in your post, and it seems like it's just attachment that's keeping you from going for it. Speaking as someone who moved halfway across the country for undergrad, and then halfway across the globe for a job, and then again for grad school, my advice would be to move outside of your comfort zone. It's really hard, especially the first time, but it is totally worth it in terms of experience gained. You're likely to have to make a bigger move again when you get a job after grad school, and you'll be better prepared for that if you make this move first. It sucks with the surgery, but ask your family (and friends?) for help, and I'm sure you'll manage the move. Besides being a generally good idea to go to new places whenever possible(in my opinion) making this move to grad school might also help put you in a new mentality when you start the program. If you're still living in the same area and seeing the same people and places, it might be that much harder to think of yourself as a grad student.

fortune cookies

crab apple

King George

Quiet American

nice weather