Two inches tall, a mile wide.

Things I have learned today:

1. When I get eight and a half hours of sleep, I feel like a champion.

2. I'm pretty excited about Puzzlehunt. I didn't really learn this today, but I had it reinforced today. I went and looked again at some of last year's puzzles. I had forgotten how hard they are. Also how I was unable to think of anything else for several months following the hunt. I think I'm feeling especially psyched because I had lunch with Rahul (among other people) today. His enthusiasm is contageous. I learned that Karthik is on a rival team, so I plan for lots of trash talk email during the hunt.

3. Wedding cake makers can make clay figure likenesses of the bride and groom to put atop the cake. No, seriously. Two inch tall scupltures! In wedding dress and tuxedo!

I keep surprising myself with how much I'm enjoying work these days, which is good because for the moment I'm here pretty much constantly. I feel as though I'm learning a ton. I don't think I've learned this much this fast since my third year of grad school, which is the year I had enough depth/specialization to count as something like an expert but was still taking classes in other things. Some of what I'm learning is linguistic; more of it is not. I still haven't started my technical blog, but I think I'll get going on that sometime in the next month or so. I have a steadily growing list of topics.

Q: if you were going to study someone for nine years in a dedicated fashion, who would it be?