Fallen

I personally like to separate my work from my personal life as much as possible spatially as it helps me keep them separate in my head. 

@Fallen In my experience/opinion, having done both, I recommend going with the option of setting your office up in your spare room. If you can work with occasional distraction, I think that would be fine. My reasoning: a) it's important for work-life balance to keep your bed and your computer as far from each other as possible - your bedroom should be a place of rest, sanctuary, and fun; having it mentally associated with projects and deadlines is unhealthy.  b) having your computer in another room, in a formal office-space, helps to professionalize your work by disassociating it with other activities - i.e. this is the place I work, here I get get work done, i don't sleep here, I don't eat here, I don't surf the internet here, I work here. YMMV.
 
 

I do. It's not BJJ though. The key for me was finding a location convenient to home/campus, which wasn't hard where I was living.

This is an old post but it is the first thing that came to mind when I saw your post. I'm pretty sure there are related ones floating around somewhere...
 

The linmon desk is too short for my comfort. I'm short (5'5) and I can't get comfortable at it. I find myself slouching over to see my laptop or to read and take notes. I want to get wood blocks or bricks or something to put under the legs to make it higher.

It's normal to have doubts, but they excepted you knowing your current level. Everyone program is different, but we were told in our interviews not to worry that we weren't good researchers yet, that is the point of a PhD program, to train you to be a good researcher. 

Yeah, that sounds pretty normal. If you're choosing among several options, whatever you do, you are giving up on these other possible futures. You're never going to know what might have been; but that's true regardless of your choice. It's ok to worry, but try to remember what led you to choose this path. The program that accepted you had its reasons for doing so, and it'll be able to support you and train you. I'm sure it'll work out just fine. 

I was accepted into the direct entry PhD program conditional upon maintaining an A- average in my final year.

Yeah, I got the direct entry PhD acceptance that day too. Official acceptance package came today and said you needed to confirm your transcripts by a certain date, but nothing conditional upon those transcripts.

Nice.  Good school, just finishing up my master's there in anthropology.

Accepted! University of Toronto Molecular Genetics. Will be accepting. 

Accepted! University of Toronto Molecular Genetics. Will be accepting. 

I would just send in one quick phone call saying that you sent an e-mail with no response and you have a deadline of Monday for another program and you were just curious to your status.  Worst case is they say they still have no clue, you say thanks and then accept your second choice program.  I did the same thing.  I am still waiting on one program that is notoriously slow to decide, and accepted another program instead.  I'm taking a shot in the dark as the program I am still waiting on could possibly give me a better offer and it is where I really, really, really wanted to go....but I couldn't take the risk of taking too much time and having the other offer disappearing and then hearing from #1 that I didn't get in.  Then I'm stuck with my 3rd-5th choices with significantly less funding and much longer program lengths.

Good luck!  

I would send them one now.  Just detail to them exactly what you said here about another offer with no extension.  That is what I did a few weeks ago and heard back the following morning with positive news.  Good luck!

My gut is that you still have work to do and that you should not take this as admission into the program. Last week I got accepted into the University of Toronto Biochemistry program and they came right out and said "you're accepted as long as you can find supervisors, this is how much you get paid, etc". Mind you this is a different department.

try this for  general information. 
https://ncatmarc.wikispaces.com/file/view/UNC+2012+Grad+School+Interview+Guide.pdf

I think having a small professional journal to write notes in is a great idea. Just don't write while people are talking directly to you lol.

I think I might have misunderstood Fallen's original question, so I want to clarify:
Yes, for the formal one-on-one faculty interviews, you should have a notebook, or a pad and pen/pencil handy. It's okay to jot down the occasional thing they say, especially when it relates to research. For example, they might tell you about 2 or 3 potential projects in their lab for a new student and you should absolutely write these things down. Also, if they give you some references for some of the methods or current research for these projects, you should definitely write them down. No one likes it when they make a suggested action item and the other person doesn't seem to make any attempt to actually record it to do later.
When I wrote my above response, I was thinking about the "hard questions" like the ones I listed above and others have also listed. Also, I was thinking about the less informal conversations with grad students (in my field, on the interview days, prospective students are scheduled to meet with faculty as well as graduate students in their offices). When you ask questions to the grad students like "What is Prof X like to work with?" or "Are you happy with the department?" etc. then you should not be jotting things down! I think you might want to avoid doing the same thing when asking the "hard" questions to faculty and department chairs etc. as well. 
If there is something that you just learned that you feel like you absolutely have to record because it's so important, I would excuse myself at the end of the meeting and take some time to write it down before going to the next meeting. I did this for a couple of meetings where I received some important info with specific numerical details for things like how much monetary support the school provides for childcare etc. 
Finally, I do think it's professional for you to have a notepad/clipboard/scrap paper etc handy when you do these interviews. It shows that you are prepared. And jotting down an occasional note is a good idea. But don't go the other way and be constantly writing/note taking/taking a transcript!

I took notes at all of my previous interviews & I plan to on my future ones.  One faculty teased me, but I don't think this affected me negatively b/c I think we had a nice chat.  Taking notes helps me remember what I talked to everyone about, which is nice when sending thank you emails out or just generally reflecting on my visit.  Plus, some faculty have made some suggestions on additional papers/ faculty to check out... some have talked about ideas, methods, etc., that I didn't recognize & I liked their explanations... others have suggested additional analyses to run in my research... & these are all things that I want to remember to look into.  Other people have warned me about such & such class or so & so professor... some grad students have told me where the cool & cheap places to live are... all info that I would want to know should I matriculate into that program.  So, even if I look silly with my tiny notebook, I'm glad I have it.  

I wouldn't take notes during these sessions. Honestly, you don't really need to know exactly which words were said by whom at what time etc. I think taking notes would make people uncomfortable and much less likely to answer truthfully.
The point of asking these questions is not to get exact answers that you can then put into a spreadsheet and compare exactly what each school said. That is, you're not going to use these responses by comparing things like at school A, the grad students said "I am happy with our stipend" vs. at school B the grad students said "I am really happy with our stipend". After all, it's not like anything people say at this point is binding. If a prof says "oh I like my students to work 40 hours per week" and then you get there and they lay out a schedule that puts you in the lab 50 hours per week....well, it's not like you are going to say "But you promised 40 hours per week!" etc. 
Instead, the point of asking these questions is not to get specific responses but to get a general overall feeling/sense of what life is like at the school. What I did was at the end of each visit day, I wrote a half-page to one-page "reflection" on my thoughts/impressions on everything I experienced that day. If you prefer more frequent note taking, then I would maybe take some time at lunch or a coffee break to jot a few quick thoughts/impressions during the day and then combine it all at the end of the day.

As far as I understand it, closings are pretty unnecessary. It's a "letter" of intent in name only. AKA you're mostly likely 100% fine.