It has been a busy week indeed, with lots to do and some good news to share.

Shuwen passed her dissertation proposal defense this morning! This basically means that her committee of 5 professors were sufficiently convinced that her plans for her dissertation seem okay and the research appears do-able. We are celebrating by meeting up with a few friends at a local bar for libations while participating in their weekly trivia night (past attempts at this has shown that PhD student or not, we know surprisingly little!). Can't celebrate too much though as she will have a full day of teaching tomorrow and is also working on an abstract to submit to a conference.

The weather has taken a sudden turn towards Fall. It has been in the 60s-70s the past 4 days, which has been a real surprise given the 90 degree temperatures only a week ago. This has been great for running though as Marc continues to train hard for the trials (in 6 weeks!) His time of 65:50 in the Philly Half-marathon was quite impressive (5.01.5 min-mile pace) and bodes well for NY. He came in 26th overall and was the 4th (I think) American. See results at: http://results.active.com/pages/searchform.jsp?rsID=48114

That's all for now folks!

~ Shuwen & Marc