Digital Analogue

Dénouement

After finishing my thesis on Thursday, I was sort of at loose ends. I caught up on email and notesfiles, cleaned out my office, and headed back to 166, where I puttered some more.

That night, I met a few people at the GCB to claim my bottle of champagne. Though not technically affiliated with the University, the GCB gives one free bottle of champagne to every finishing PhD student. It's Korbel, too, which is a damn sight better than what the CS dept serves at defences. :) I met Greg and Carrie there at 9, and Sam arrived about 9:20, which is when we actually started the bottle. Around 10:45 Sam left just as Matt and the new residents of 154 came in---they've been hanging out together a lot, and I think Matt is really happy about that; I think what he really always wanted was to be best friends with his housemates, and now maybe he's getting that. I'm happy for him. But I digress. About 11 Rob and Angela show up, and Greg and Carrie leave shortly thereafter. In the end, Matt and Evan (a PLME med student who did CS undergrad---good fit for 154 ;) and I ended up closing the bar at 1, though they went off to some other party.

Friday morning I met Theresa for breakfast about 9. This was really convenient, because I'd been meaning to drop my car off at Firestone to fix the exhaust leak, and since she was driving in anyway I just had her pick me up there. It turned out even better than that, because she'd been meaning to try a place way up on Hope Street, which turned out to be about as far north as the Firestone. It bills itself as a country breakfast place, and it's great! I'm a little sad that I only discovered it my last day in Providence.

Theresa dropped me off at home about 10:30, which let me run up and drop off my thesis (10:47, as I mentioned in the last entry) and make it to Manos' thesis proposal at 11, where I was finally able to get started on a new pair of socks. :) The proposal was really well done, perfectly pitched to the audience, and it sounds like Manos is right on track to finish up in a few months, leaving only Don Carney from my class (but he might be able to finish up by next spring if he proposes soon).

I had promised Sam that I'd make an appearance at the grad orientation, but after Manos' proposal I kept running into people and talking to them, so I didn't manage to get out of there until 2 or so, by which time the orientation was over. I stopped by anyway, and Sam was just closing down---he gave me a copy of the Brown Book, which I had helped him with, and sold me a Brown Grad School T-shirt. Then I talked him into giving me a ride back to the Firestone to pick up my car.

Heading back from the Firestone, I remembered that I still needed to A) close my bank account, and B) get some books on tape from the library for the road trip. I wasn't sure which closed first, but since I was in the car I went to the library first, dropped off my car at Dave's (calling him to give him a last chance to use the car in case he needed to do any heavy lifting---he drove it to play one last round of golf ;), and went to Sovereign.

In one last, final "fuck you" after several years of increasingly bad service, they were going to charge me $6 to close my account, assuming I wanted the amount in a cashier's check, as is standard. Screw that, I took it in cash and got a postal money order---at the post office a block away---for $1.25. Stupid Sovereign.

It's nearly 5 at this point, and my plans of "take a nap and then leave around 8 or 9" are looking increasingly unrealistic; among other things, I'm getting hungry. So I meet Chris at Kabob & Curry... I owed him a dinner there, and anyway, I found it eminently appropriate that my last Providence meal (well, until I come visit again) would be there. It was a nice day, and we sat outside, where I was able to say hi to an awful lot of people I knew walking by.

And of course, I still hadn't packed. When I got back to 166 at 7:30, I found out that people were coming over at 9 to take Angela out for a birthday dinner. Rather than try to nap for an hour, I just packed, put away the hideabed, and then drove out to pick up the boxes-o-books that Chris wanted me to drive back to Galesburg (much like myself, he has a weakness for buying books---a lethal pursuit when you need to fit everything in two suitcases and a carryon, unless you know somebody who's driving that direction...). I parked the car out back of 166, and after Angela et al went to dinner, went to sleep on the couch. A bit after midnight, I loaded my suitcase and bags into the car, and departed Providence.

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