Today I took Josie to the airport to go home. As I’m writing this, I’m on my way to my parents’ house in Überlingen. For more than one reason, today wasn’t my favorite day this week.

Let’s start at the beginning: the last few days were extremely cool. I spent christmas with Josie in Ulm, and we hung out, ate and just generally had lots of fun, with very few obligations. Yesterday, Josie and I decided to make tiker.net our full-scale journal site. So, I ordered the upgrade from my web hosting company, and they filled the order almost immediately, even though it was a public holiday. When we got to Karlsruhe, I could of course not resist and just had to set up the site to see if it would work. This took until 3:45 am this morning, and except for a few glitches that I might write about in a separate entry, it worked out great. I had been a bit sad since we left Ulm because it seemed Josie was seriously leaving. Setting up the site helped me forget the sadness for a while (hacking generally does). Unfortunately, the sadness came back right after when Josie was rightfully upset with me for getting in the bed this late.

And then we had to get up at 6 am this morning, so I started the day with a royal 2:15 of sleep. We got to the airport while it was still dark, got her checked in, and hung out at Terminal 2 until it was time to go. Josie was in a hurry, because it was 9:50, and she was supposed to be at the gate at 10. She raced through security, was reminded by the ticket checker lady to say goodbye to me and didn’t even turn around to wave before she disappeared. That sucked. Fast forward to home, through two trains filled to the last spot with me sitting on the floor. As I walked in the door, I found the envelope from ETS that I had been hoping for and dreading for a long time: it contained my Subject GRE results. Turns out that I sucked. 660 out of 800, or better than 60% of the people. I sincerely hope that this doesn’t ruin my chances to get into a usable PhD program. It’s pretty easy to get frustrated and believe that all is lost. However, hope dies last, and I’ll continue to pursue admission in the US. To be safe, I’ll certainly look for opportunities for a doctorate in Germany in the new year.

Right now, I’m looking forward to a few days in the consoling abundance of food and company that is my parents’ house. (I’ll have to be studying, but still.) I just realized that I forgot my tooth brush.

Update: Much less frustrated now than when I wrote this. I still decided to post it, though.