Friends, work, and sleep. Pick two.

The old aphorism also applies to graduate students. Twice in the past week, I've spent several hours out longer than I intended, just because I was talking to new acquaintances. Tonight I spoke to a friend who's playing in a summer orchestra at MIT and met (by accident) a fellow Eli who played in a Yale Symphony Orchestra Halloween show that seemed like a cross between Le sacre du printemps, Star Wars, Animal House, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

And on Thursday night, I spent hours in the lobby of a DC hotel talking with other fellows---one topic segued into another, and before we knew it, "a few quick questions" turned into a free-wheeling four-hour chat that only broke up because we realized we had to head for our various stations (train and plane) in three to four hours. But it was time well spent, even if I did spend most of the train ride back to Boston conked out from sheer exhaustion. :-)