hooray! i feel like i am making progress in the following areas:

1. presents for colleagues have been mostly purchased.
2. "first contact" emails have been duly and FINALLY sent off.
3. two drafts of my yale essay are done.

and while revisiting professors' websites (stalking is more like it) i remember more why i want to go back to school. there are primarily four dudes (one from each school) that i would love to work with ... and they each have such neat research interests. if i had to rank them ...

1. yuri slezkine-- cal
2. j. arch getty -- ucla
3. jay winter -- yale
4. omer bartov -- brown

three and four are interchangeable ... i think the first two hit a little closer to home since they're russian historians primarily. and NOT just b/c they're CA schools.

now my big fear is if/when they try to establish contact BACK. what will i do? what will i say???

"puh-leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease accept meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. giiiiiiiiiiive me moooooooooooooooooooooooooooney."

i think that'd go over well. right before i start to blub in fear of great brains.