The View From Kalamazoo

Trip to Lexington completed. The Dodge Neon Thrifty gave me was really pretty nifty for a small car – not bad git-up-n-go for something with a lawnmower engine and the savings in gas was enough so that I only once in traffic missed my V-6.

(speaking of the v-6, it’s out of the shop and runs like a million bucks…or at least…a grand. *cough sputter* aaaaaaack)

Interestingly enough the trip both down and back consisted in crappy weather in Michigan and (especially) Indiana that suddenly changed for the better once beyond the Ohio border. Curious, yes. Surprising, no. It may be a good time to mention that the highway system in Indiana is wacked – you can’t effectively get anywhere from anywhere. Bizarre. Wacked, I tell you. Wacked.

Anyway…the folks at U KY are very nice. I met with what seem at the time was the whole damn campus – 2 in the morning (after a large coffee on my own whilst I perused the student paper), a lunchtime colloquium, grad students (with coffee), 4 more meetings (1 with more coffee – I was just about humming), and 2 more faculty at dinner (decaf *twitch*). Lovely, lovely people. I think I would be really happy there, and moving a family and managing to live whilst in school not totally impossible. Lexington reminds me a lot of Kalamazoo in some ways, and the surrounding area really very pretty. Fewer strange looks at my yankee accent than in Nashville, where they’re outright hostile, but since KY was on both sides, er herm, I suppose there are less…historial issues. Got some honestly valuable gossip/warnings about other programs to which I’m applying off the record (and with caveat that they know they’re biased. heh) that I plan to follow up on so that I have all the information I need once letters begin to arrive in a few months.

I’m glad I went. I need to pop in on more places, but that was a Very Good Trip, indeed.