so, today there was free lunch for graduate students in one of the dining halls if you got tickets. i picked up tickets for ben and i in the morning, and when he and his classmates got there around 1 in the afternoon, there were no tickets left, but they ended up letting us all in for free anyway. eating in a dining hall is a unique phenomenon, which i had forgotten about, but it all came back... 

anyway, during the course of lunch, someone was telling a story. as i understand it, someone had come up to a friend of ours, who is a masters student in exercise science (i think?) and told her not to let any of "those outdoor ed people" into the computer lab or something. she was informed that she'd be able to tell who they were when she saw them. apparently the guy didn't know that she was engaged to one of them... 

so, sitting at lunch, we started to identify the things that make them look like they are getting graduate degrees in outdoor ed (brands of fleeces, pants, etc.) i noticed one thing that was true of all of them and not of me. sunglasses on their heads. each and every one of them.