The life of a PhD student feels a lot like this picture sometimes. It's a slog, and sometimes you feel like you are getting nothing done at all. That is both the blessing and the curse of an open ended job where, in a lot of ways, I make my own schedule and get to determine what questions I ask. But when things feel like a total slog sometimes it helps to get away.

We took a vacation to Seattle to visit some of Katie's graduate school friends who were coming up from Texas to see the Emerald City. We picked up Berlyn from his mom's, where he has been visiting for the last month, walked around Pike Place Market, explored Bainbridge island, and generally had a good time. The weather was great and the mountains were out. The sunsets over the Olympics were awesome.

Now that the weekend is over it's back to the grind. A high school student is helping out in the lab for a couple of weeks and amazingly we got a ton of work done today. I feel like I lifted out of a midsummer slump and the mountains of work don't seem quite so horrible. Here's to vacations!