This evening, the department of special education had its once a year, professors bring the students out for appetizers and drinks social outing. We went to Starters, a sports bar, with lots of sports memorabilia and giant TV screens showing college football and other games. No cheap drinks for me since it’s only once a year the profs take us out so I had an oreo milkshake, next year I’ll have a martini 
Besides drinks, we get platters of appetizers to share: buffalo wings, fried calamari (love it), spinach and artichoke dip with fried pita bread, cheese and chicken quesadilla, thai egg rolls, and hummus platter. The waitress was doing the timeless “please get out of here quickly so that I can open these 3 tables for more people and get more tips” trick by quickly clearing all the dirty dishes. And this really annoyed the profs who kept telling her, “No, we’re not done with the calamari yet.”
Actually, the professors do take the students out for food when we are away at conferences. But not all meals with professors are free, I’ve learned that if everyone at the table is the professor’s advisees or work in her research grants, then most probably it’s free. But if you have a number of students working on different grants with different profs, then the lone professor would not willingly pay for everyone. But sometimes poor graduate students can look so pathetically horrified when they realized that they ate a $30 meal each and when the professor gets the bill and says, “So how are we going to split this?” that the professor inevitably ends up paying for them. I’ve learned my lesson.
I found out tonight that a fellow doctoral student, Yuan (the girl who gave me the Beijing Nini soft toy), has taken a one-year’s leave of absence from the program because her mom is ill back in China. My friend probably has other things going on in her life, in other words life is leading her somewhere else. Anyway she basically had to make a quick decision, then clear out her apartment, settle everything, move and fly back to China. With the amount of junk one can collect in 2 years, that is not an easy thing to do. I’m going to miss her.
On Wednesday, I bought a box of Almond Biscotti, wrote a Thank You card, and added a box of Seri Songket mango flavored tea to the mix and planned to give that to the Northwood Hand Center for the months of kind, friendly, understanding thumb therapy. I was really expecting that visit to be my very last since this was an unofficial visit to check whether the splint was working well for me. But after the therapist checked the splint and did some simple measurement of my thumb bendability, he set another appointment in 2 weeks time and he said after that I’ll have to come in unofficially once a month just to monitor the progress. At this point it seems a little odd to give them the “Thank You” stuff since I’ll still be going back there for more visits but I gave it to them anyway.
During my first few therapy sessions, I was so impressed by the amount of magazines they have there: tabloids, gossips, home, auto etc. Since I hardly ever read magazines, I was happy that they’ll keep me occupied while my right hand is under heating pads or in the fluidotherapy machine for 15 minutes each session. But then I kept going and going and going for more therapy sessions that I literally read/browsed through all the magazines. So the end came at the right time.
