Here's a cool acronym: SHIT (Significant High Impact Trauma) happens! I am feeling this acronym at the moment because something's happened to throw a kink in my grad school visitation plans. As it turns out, the program director at U of D is *probably* not going to have time to see me. On one hand, I understand because there's a really big symposium on Northern Ireland happening at the same time as my trip.

On the other hand, I contacted her 6-8 weeks ago to ask if this would be convenient, if she would have time, etc. and she assured me it would be no problem. I would have arranged my trip to visit Denver last if she had told me she was tied up. I realize that a visiting potential student isn't high on the priority list, but I've been in fairly regular contact with her and I have to say I'm finding this rather rude. I mean, I'm not just driving an hour to visit - I'm flying out there *specifically* to talk to the PDs of the two schools. I mean, how inconsiderate is that?

On a more cheerful note, the people at Portland have been extremely helpful and nice and have made it clear that they're very interested in speaking with me. On the whole, the experience with Portland, so far, has been vastly better than the one with U of D. This still doesn't mean I've decided but my feeling is leaning more and more to Portland.

I've decided to look at the bright side and consider my trip to Denver as a vacation and a chance to visit Boulder. I've always wanted to visit that area so here's my chance! I'll probably just check out of the Denver hotel Friday and stay in Boulder Fri nite & Sat. Yay - this is going to be more fun than I thought!