Good weekend…

This was one of the better weekends I’ve had in awhile, largely because the weather was stellar and we didn’t spend it sitting around watching TV (or studying) like usual… We drove down to Ste. Genevieve for the day on Saturday to do some wine tasting from two different wineries and look at some of the historic sites. The Cave Vineyards winery was especially neat ’cause, as the name suggests, they’ve got a cave that you can sit in and enjoy your wine and picnic lunch. Neither Brooke nor I consider ourselves to be “aficionados” or anything, but the wine was decent…certainly, the atmosphere made it worth the trip. They apparently do live music on weekends beginning in May and occasionally host “dinner and a movie” in the cave over summer as well.

Regardless, we had church Sunday morning and then spent the afternoon getting the bikes out and ready to go for another season. As we don’t particularly enjoy driving to St. Charles to hop on the Katy Trail, we tried out the St. Louis Riverfront Trail, which is thankfully within biking distance of our apartment. It’s about 11 mi long (plus a few miles to get there), and we certainly didn’t do all of it, but it was nice to get out and enjoy the day and explore a bit of the area around our place, now that the weather is cooperating.

Of course, the weekend was especially good because my final was on Friday, leaving me with absolutely no school work to accomplish over the weekend (first time in awhile!). It “only” took me 5 hours this time (instead of 6 hours, like last semester), and the exam wasn’t entirely unreasonable…but regardless, the semester is officially over for me. Not only the semester, really, but also the sum of all classwork required for the Ph.D. program. Now, I’ve gotta buckle down and write a grant that follows along the lines of my research plans, then defend it, by the end of 2007.

Ready? Set? Go!