Last night TheLimey and I stopped by a nearby bar "just for a few minutes!" to say hi to a number of my colleagues who had gathered to celebrate the birthday of one of our number. Of course we ended up staying about two hours, but got away having only consumed one beer and half a burger each.

I was very happy to actually spend some time with my friends. This past year I've seen them extremely little since our classes together ended, and we've all been so individually busy with our requirements. We really only have a few months together remaining. It seems like this four years has simultaneously been a lifetime and like it's gone by in a flash.

As the founding cohort of PhD students in this program, I've always thought we ought to start some odd tradition that all subsequent students would do, but I have had a hard time coming up with anything. Some things I've suggested included: carrying kids' lunchboxes (which actually caught on for a while there), calling each other by our last names (partly motivated by the multiple first names in our ranks), feeding squirrels (of course), and a few other things. It may be that the only thing that lives on is an as-yet-unformulated drink called a "Tight Goat".

Don't ask.