Yesterday's headache went away with some Aleve and a nap on the bus to Harvard. Woo!

Recap. Friday night was hockey. Jenn was in town, and I rode with her to Providence. We won, and it was awesome. We listened to the men's game on the radio on the way down, and when we went out of range they were up 4-1, and when we arrived at the arena not much later, they had lost 5-4. Fuckity fuck. But the women won, at least.

Went home and crashed out. Got up on Saturday, and after lolling around the house a bit, Jenn and I walked to Davis Sq for lunch and shopping. I bought a new cool hat. And an umbrella which of course is sitting in my room even though I'm at work and it's raining. Actually, it's just spritzy today, which is even more annoying. ANYway, kids called, because it was Damon's birthday Sunday, so the celebrating was happening on Saturday, and they were going to Shay's. At 4 pm. Yikes.

Headed over there, and we sat outside for a while and had some beers, even though it was spritzy then too. We finally got too cold to sit out there and went inside, where Jenn and I ordered a bottle of champagne. And then maybe another. I went over to try to watch the end of the St. Joe's/ OK State game, but I was derailed by Mihalyfy and some people he knows. One of them, this guy Rob, was super chatty, so I talked to him for a while, until it was time to go. Off to the Cube we were, where there was beer pong. I actually didn't drink anymore, and the champagne roiled around continuing to make me drunk long after. Jenn and I walked Mihalyfy home; he yakked in the street dramatically. But he lives in a really wacky house, full of strange long hallways, four bathrooms, and bizarre stairways. Oddness.

M had gone to the movies with his roommates, and by the time he returned, he was too tired to come up to the Cube, so I gave him a hard time over the phone about it. :-) Meanwhile, Damon passed out in John's chair and slept there until like 5:30. Jenn and I got tired around 2 and took off.

Sunday was brunch at the Thirsty with Danny, Damon, and John. I've never been there, but it was delicious. Then we went off to the game, which sucked a lot cuz we were tied through the first two periods and then just fell apart in the third. Beh. We skedaddled on back so I could get to bed and sleep some before my heinously early flight Monday.

Up at 4 am, shower and eat and out the door to catch a cab to Baltimore. It's a real quick shot down, but getting to the city from the airport was interesting. As I'd already been forced to pay for a cab in Boston (T opens too damn late), I wanted to use public transit in B-more. I probably should have taken the commuter train, but I thought instead to try out this light rail business, even though I knew I'd have to take a shuttle cuz they're doing construction. What I didn't realize is how far the airport is from the city. I was on that crazy shuttle quite a while, before I got to the subway. I did decide to take it back for my evening flight, but I think while the rail is under contruction, the commuter train is more sane.

Anyhoo, my trip was jam packed. I and another prospective doctoral student met with our advisor, who is cool, and then three other professors, and then we had lunch with some second and third year doctoral students. Then I went to part of a class, met up with my advisor by myself, wandered the rest of the campus, went to her afternoon class, and then she drove me on a little tour of the college campus and dropped me off at the train station. Starting with the downside, I think that Baltimore is definitely rough in parts, and the good and bad parts have no real transition zones, but are oddly right next to each other. The town is a bit more spread out and a bit less well-served by public transit, meaning I may need a car. But I figure I can go down there, see how well I can get around, and decide on a car later. Good things about the town itself are that I did some areas near the college that looked just great and fun and safe and full of apartments. Proximity to DC is cool cuz I can go there to hang out (when there's time), and there are lots of opportunities for federal jobs during the summer and such.

As for the program, I don't really have anything negative to say about it other than the first year is daunting. But I really heard and believed that the doctoral students are very supportive of each other and not at all competitive (though some of the MPH students are just cuz so many of them are docs or pre-meds and that's just part of their worldview), and that the faculty has a vested interest in helping people succeed. My advisor really has a mentoring philosophy in line with what I have experienced here, which is a real hands-off approach to students developing their own interests and research paths, but a real hands-on approach to moving those ideas forward successfully. And the doc students said that as far as funding or jobs or anything like that, the faculty is really helpful and good about letting students know about opportunities, reminding them of deadlines, etc., so there's not a lot of digging around that has to be done, and that kind of stress is removed. Totally unlike things like career services at Harvard where you had to dig to find things unless you wanted to do ibanking. The projects the dept is doing are really varied and very cool, much in line with a lot of my interests. The real task will be narrowing down a dissertation topic, not finding an interesting one that is easily accessible.

And my advisor is really nice. She's a lot less effusive than my current crew of mentors, but she's kinda like a low-key mom. But it's clear that she and the faculty as a whole really care about students as people, and the feeling of the work is that everyone has a range of priorities and work/school is just a part of people's lives, not the all-consuming whole. She was really awesome in putting together a whole day for me, and then for driving me around so I could get a better sense of where I might be living. She even said that if I find an apartment online, she could cruise through the neighborhood to see if it looked good or not! I just felt like there's much more personalized attention than in the Master's programs I've been looking at.

One crazy thing is the third-year cohort, in which everyone is getting married or were already married and are having like their second kids already! Wack! I definitely don't intend to do either of those things soon, but it's nice to know that it is very possible to have a real life and go to grad school.

So, Hopkins yay. I got back home real late, came in yesterday pretty tired. I putzed around all day. After work I headed to Harvard, where I met up with Matty and we went to Barteley's, finally, as usually there is a huge line and we don't want to wait. Mmmm, delicious burger. Then folks came down for the Idol and 24 in the BR, and then off to karaoke! We ended up kinda split up cuz there was such a crew of us this week, so we sat at the bar, which was fun, though some dumb people like to stand in the way so it's hard to see the singers. But Matty got to sing "Crazy on You" and it was great. :-) He has a very unabashed stage presence, esp for his first time up there. I think he'd also become tipsy enough by then.

Unfortunately maybe a little too tipsy by the end (no thanks to Rhodes with his extra pitcher), as he is not feeling so well today, my poor dear.

I feel great, though, even with the complete absence of sleep! Though I'm not being so very productive yet today. I'm glad we had some hangout time, though, because we barely saw each other this weekend, and we're secretly ridiculously incapable of too many days apart. :-)

So today I got in late for the early meeting, not cuz I got up too late, but because, okay, I got up later than I usually do on Weds, and my roommate got in the shower right before I got up. Poo. So, I did have enough time, I just couldn't use it due to resource conflicts. Things like this have me salivating at having my own place all to myself. But I made it in not too terribly late. Then for lunch I met up with a girl from HSPH, which was helpful. While there are certainly good things about Harvard, I really feel like it's not quite a good fit, and there are clear advantages to being in a doctoral program over a master's program, because people just care a lot more about their doctoral students at reearch institutions, since they contribute to the research. And the process of going into the doctoral program from the master's is not really trivial, you really have to do the full application process. So why would I want to do that when I've got into one of the top doctoral programs in public health in the country and I can start now. I also don't feel so hot about the merger with Maternal and Child Health, because I feel like they're still working out the bugs, and I'm just not that interested in development.

I'll still go Friday to the afternoon session, but I'm pretty certain Harvard is out. I feel bad having no plans to visit UNC, but they haven't exactly made any effort to personally contact me, whereas all the other schools have now in some form. I don't feel like I should have to put forth a lot of effort to sell a school to myself when I have a perfectly awesome school that I've visited with an advisor who has been awesome already. I mean, Hopkins really wants me to come, and I'm really set to go there. The only reason I'm even looking into Harvard the little bit I am is because it's right here, and I'll feel better about my decision to go to Hopkins if I've at least sought out info about another school for comparison.

So, apparently the new argument in the "under God" case from the Christian Coalition is that this is a free speech issue. I'm pretty sure the 9th circuit didn't say no one could say that version of the pledge ever or they'd be arrested. I'm pretty sure they said schoolkids could not be compelled even a little to say the version with "under God" in it, because that's a prayer. In fact, I think it'd be great if they just said kids can go say it whenever they want without any prodding from a teacher, cuz none of them would do it. Cuz it's a stupid pledge.

I mean seriously, who amongst kids really digs the pledge or can even parse the impossibly ridiculous sentence that it is. Only stupid American adults even give a crap about it. And as for assaults on the first amendment, where do we even begin to talk about how this administration has damaged freedom of speech. Go hang out in a "free-speech" zone at some Bush rally for some doubleplusgood times.

Either you've grown up or you really actually like someone a lot when they leave their email open on your machine when they leave, and you just exit without sending prank emails or digging around for what they say to their friends about you. :-) Especially if the negligence was due to extreme Zuma obsession. ;-)

So, M came over and we watched Mihalyfy's show tonight, except they fucked up and spelled his name Mihalyfi for the show title. It was pretty good, but I think Dave needs to drink first, because he's a very avid speaker when drunk, and the low-budget one-camera quality of public access TV really requires an over-the-top dynamic to really entertain.

Today's entry is way too long. I, like public access TV, need commercials to break things up.

Elephant in the room, small and cute and baby right now... I feel indecisive about some things lately. Should I visit UNC? First I think yes, then no, then yes, but I think I've settled on no. Should I go to the reception at HSPH on Friday, or should I just settle for the department meeting? Should I rent a car when I go down to B-more in June, or should I test out the public transit some more? Should I get a car at all, or can I make it work without one? At times I think I can't possibly be quite independent without one, then I decide that there has to be a way to make public transit work for me, and it will be cheaper overall. None of these things are really what I'm fussing over, I've decided. There are more important things to go back and forth on an torture myself with a lack of conclusion.

It's four months, very close, but still too far off to fuss that much about.

I think the denial about change is not so much directly about change. I think I get in the stage of not having changed yet but anticipating change, an exciting moment without all the stresses of living the change, and I feel like my brain is assuming I will be suspended in that state. My brain is like, yes, this living here in Boston but anticipating moving to Baltimore and going to grad school, forever shall it be. I don't really believe in the leap to the part where I actually am in Baltimore and have left Boston. I think that's the really hard part about change, the big denial. That's what is weirdest when the day comes, because the day only comes once, but the anticipation lasts so many days.

Grarg, I have such the headache right now. I will recap my weekend and Baltimore later.

Elena being around is good for writer's block. The Fear of Demanding Russian really gets me typing away. I went in to help her with something, and then she asked me how my paper is going, and I went, mrph. And she said, go write, have a section done by 3. Like, totally serious. So, I had to go write! And it looks like I will actually have a sketchy sort of introduction done by 3. Nuts. She said she's also gonna bug me Monday for another section. Relentless. Brutal. Thank god, I was going nowhere on my own!

I'm telling you, I need a babysitter. I'm going to have to tell my advisor that for grad school. Dear advisor, I love working on my own and having control over the course of my projects, but I really need you to put some deadlines over my head, because it's the only way I work.

Woo hockey tonight!

Hooray for the return of Bandies to Lowell!!!

Which reminds me I should go to tea one of these weeks. Though it's hard to get over there any earlier than I already have to for class. This week would be sort of perfect since I don't have class... but it'll be a madhouse over there.

I feel much better today after lots of sleep.

Another current hero: Michael Newdow, speaking out for atheists all over this great nation. The solicitor general is bringing up the founding fathers in this debate about the pledge, but the phrase "under God" was not put in the pledge by our founding fathers, but by anti-communist sentiments. So not only does it represent religious ignorance (gosh, some people don't actually think there is a God!), but also political intolerance and hysterical nationalism.

None of this addresses that the pledge is pretty stupid overall. I was glad all that stopped for me when I went to Academy. If I was a teacher in public school, we'd never say that shit. If I wanted to do some crap about God and America, we'd sing Battle Hymn of the Republic, cuz that song is seriously rocked out in a completely ridiculous way.

I hate writing so much. Well, I mean, clearly I don't hate all writing see how much of it I do on this page and on email. But I hate formal paper writing. It's like pulling teeth. I can procrastinate forever!

More and more lately, if I go to get water, and the tank is empty because some fucking douchebag didn't replace it when they emptied it, I'll just not get water because I'm so angry that I might have to be stuck replacing the stupid heavy thing yet again that it's not worth it to have water. Let some other schmuck replace it! I always have to do it!

While I was at the gym, I was flipping around the cable news stations, and I think I was on CNN... anyway, they had on this prissy looking bitch from Focus on the Family and a reverend with a love of the Constitution, talking about the pledge. Reverend Awesome totally destroyed this woman. One point which was great is that all these people are trying to say, "but under God doesn't mean anything religious!" And he was saying that it *should* mean something if you believe in God! It shouldn't not mean anything! So it *is* religious, and it doesn't belong in something put forth by Congress for people to say. It *does* establish religion, because it's a claim that the nation is under one God, not many, not none. At the end, the moderator was trying to go to commercial, and the evil woman tried to make the last flailing argument that most Americans believe in God and support the pledge, which had me bashing my head against the screen, but the Rev slipped in, "The Bill of Rights protects the minority. That's why it's there." TAKE THAT BITCHFACE.

I also love people who are like, well, it says "In God We Trust" on our currency, you wanna make us change that too, HUH? Oh no, like it's SO HARD to change the currency! My frickin $20s have changed twice in recent memory.

Soooo tired today... but I need to get my butt into gear and do some work, so that by some miracle I will have something to give to Jeff so it looks like I've been doing actual writing all this time. Which I totally haven't.

I sang "Hot Stuff" at karaoke last night, but I was the third singer and not at all tipsy enough. Danny and I sang "A Whole New World" which was awesome except where the key changed and I completely lost it for an entire verse. Also, I think on Hot Stuff the key was lower than in the actual song, because it seemed much easier to hit the highest notes.

Next week Matty will be there, so I think I know what I have to sing. Muahaha.

Dave and I didn't get to sing "Obsession" but we totally will next week.

I keep waiting for the one event that will be the nail in the coffin for the Bush administration, but so far Bush's decline in popularity just keeps trickling downward. I mean, the shit is totally hitting the fan in several ways right now, with the Foster revelations about the Medicare hushup, and the Clarke story being all over the place. I just hope this stuff will keep the trickle downward moving even if a few pro-Bush news items come out.

Wow, I'm just busting bus drivers left and right this week. The first one didn't surprise me. Saturday I was on the 88 bus, and this insane man was driving. As I reported, "As we passed by the stop at Lowell St., the driver slowed as there were people at the stop. But they were waiting for the 90 bus, so he started to go again and didn't notice a couple with a small child running to catch the bus. When people shouted for him that there were people trying to catch us, he yelled that they had come out of nowhere and was generally loud and mean about it. One man was more vocal about it than others, but was just sort of obnoxious, not at all threatening or invasive if the driver had just chosen to ignore him (he was also way in the back). He stopped the bus in the middle of the road and went back to yell at the guy. I was in the front of the bus and woman up there said that she had ridden with this driver several times before and that he was bad and loud like that often. When the guy eventually got off the bus, he asked for his badge number. The driver wouldn't give it to him and said that if he saw him on Saturdays and Sundays, he'd have to walk." Dude was nuts. So I got a response back that he would be disciplined and the letter would become part of his file. Cool.

Then, Monday I went to catch the CT2, and they have moved the stop. So the guy just blew right past me without even looking to see if anyone was there, and when I ran after him as he turned the corner, he still failed to see me. Which sucked, but wasn't the end of the world. Still, I filed a complaint to make the point that they needed to remind everyone on the line about the new stop. But this email will too go into the driver's file! I hope he doesn't get into any real trouble, because I don't think it was intentional, just absent-minded. But the response did also say they would remind the drivers. Woo.

Anyway, now I feel like I must identify some marvelous bus drivers and commend them, so I don't seem like just a critic. Though last year there was a big mess with one of the green lines, and they handled it marvelously, and maybe that same day or another time, the ringmaster over at Lechmere pulled up a bus for people who were waiting to sit in because it was so cold out. I sent in commendations for those things. The guy at Lechmere is super cool. And I didn't send in a complaint about the crazy angry 91 driver M and I encountered, but we think he might have called in to quit on that very bus ride. He was even more nuts than the guy I reported.

While Richard Clarke is my newest hero, dude really needs to buy some shirts that fit around his neck. His enormous head looks like it's exploding from a tiny little neck, but then you see the collar is all warped, so his neck is not really that tiny. Let your neck breathe, dude!

Rargh. I brought home some work to do, but then ended up trying to nap instead and only being vaguely successful. I decided then to turn in for the night at like 8, and couldn't fall asleep! So I got up feeling better, folded some laundry, and checked my email, and now I feel like crap! My stomach is yechy. Fuck it, I'm going to bed, and I don't care about getting any writing done, I'll just tell Jeff I'm not at any place yet where he can be helpful and I'll give him something next week. Brargh.

Woo, more money being thrown at me! Harvard gave me a Prez Scholarship, which covers tuition. I am a badass. I think I can also now say screw you to Columbia, cuz it's now by far the most inferior offer, as they do not throw any substantial money at me! I will not tell anyone else to screw off until I visit Hopkins.

Hey kids! Update update. Friday I left work early to hop on a bus to Albany with the kids. Jenn met us up at the game, which was great! We were in the nosebleeds, but the men won so wooo! But sadness we could not stay for the championship. Got back wicked late, slept.

And no alarm for the morning! I want to keep this mysterious boy who disdains alarm clocks, unlike my similar-looking regular boyfriend who regularly sets alarms for morning hours on the weekend. :-)

After brunch, we headed to this wicked great TV room in the basement of Eliot, to watch the women's hockey game. M got to fiddle a lot with the surround sound that wouldn't quite surround. :-) That went into overtime, and ended with a dumpy little shot past the Brown goalie who'd played a great game all day, so it felt a little sad to see the puck just dribble up to her, and then to have her accidentally kick it in with her skate when she went looking for it. If it had been a harder shot, actually, it probably would have bounced away, but since it was so slow, it just stuck right under her. Sucks for Brown! A terrifying moment in the game was when one of the defensemen, Banfield, went down real hard on her back, smacking her head on the ice. She just laid there motionless, except for a few icky-looking twitches for a few minutes. But turns out she was okay, just had a wicked concussion, and returned to the hotel that night from the hospital. I guess she was a little dazed still, and didn't play Sunday.

After the long game, it was like 4:30 already! I dashed home, grabbed a shower and some grub, and headed back for the men's game. They won! It would have rocked to have been there, but alas. After that we watched the rest of the Hockey East final, which went into *triple* overtime. In the midst of all this we also watched basketball. And drank beer and ate chips and cookies. It was, like, the best day ever. :-)

Then we had to get up soooooooooooo early on Sunday. I don't mean early like I normally bitch about for Sunday, like 10, but like, seriously early, like 6 am. Gah! Actually, I didn't really get up til 7, but still. Snoozed on the bus ride to Union College. We handily destroyed St. Lawrence... during the two-game series earlier in the regular season, it really seemed like the Band and esp Clark really got inside the goalie's head big time. Barrie is a good goalie, but she sucks against us, and she looks very sad every time a goal gets past her and we yell, "It's all your fault!" Which means it's quite awesome that we play them again next weekend in the first round of the Frozen Four. Normally I would say it's tough to beat a team 4 times in one season, but I swear, if Clark doesn't make that sieve cry, I will be quite disappointed. We're her nightmare, I'm tellin ya.

Snoozed back. Dinner in Eliot, where I tried to teach Danny the way of the alum scavenger. But he was scared, so Clark had to get him food, and then on subsequent trips, he would bring his glass with him to validate his need not to swipe and ID card. :-) Then I went up to the Cube for some Sopranos.

Today, I am trying very hard to be productive at work. I'm getting things done little by little. Now I'm going to go to the gym for the first time in two weeks, and I think I'll take it slow since I'm still not totally over this cold, but I feel like I just need to *go* and even just walk on the treadmill or chill on a bike. I don't know if I'll do weights, because I feel like that takes recovery energy I don't quite have yet. I'm basically a big baby. But it's becoming the time of year when I want to really get back into the gym regularly and get into bathing suit shape. :-) I've managed to get my eating much back under control, gobbling fruits and vegetables instead of pizza so much. But now I gotta get the gym back in there regularly.

This next weekend is going to be insane. More hockey, plus I'm going to Baltimore next Monday, starting with a 6:30 am flight. Geh.

Gym today was chill and good and made me feel happy. Except now I feel sorta bleh, but maybe once I get over my annoyance at the CT2 not stopping to pick me up, I'll feel better.

In good news, UNC is also throwing money at me, so if Hopkins is unddesirable for some reason, I have a solid backup.

People love their distorted little views of reality? Why must I make so much effort to dissuade them to join the ranks of the non-delusional? I don't know! It never works! I should just do what works best, smack talk about the delusional with the non and leave the delusionals alone! But I'm always afraid some impressionable person will become the next delusional person unless all inaccuracies are contested.

I'm also not prone to much idealism, though. I'm a divider, which gets me into big arguments with people who like to use a giant brush to talk about everything. Big old generalities are like tacks under my fingernails. Nuance! This is good, that is not good, this was good, that was not good. See? It's a medley. You can't rub it all together into some average that you think has changed because you've lost all the important pieces.

I would post this to the list, but I'm certain it would just cause another huge thread, which I have no time for today. But it strikes me that maybe the big difference between now and few years ago is that more of the crazy shit that happens stays private, or within a confined circle. If you're the slightest bit out of touch on a daily basis, it's easy to think nothing is going on. I think it's maturity, not shame; telling everyone every salacious detail about your sex life is sort of attention-seeking, and most people honestly can only take so much of that. I think the Band is a lot less tolerant of attention-seeking than it used to be. It's a more introverted group, and I think many people have a sense of strict boundaries around their personal lives and around what they want to hear about other people's personal lives.

If you're trying to start a magazine, and your proposed contents include hilarious works of fiction, but your magazine is not supposed to be a humor or fiction magazine, you have a real problem.

In related news, some people aren't very thoughtful. Or smart.

I really need to do this reading. I really have a weird headache. I'm hoping these cold meds will help.

Headache brought on by a really ridiculous hubba thread. If I ever have to get into another "words have meaning" argument on that damn thing, I will go apeshit.

Tonight I'm going out for some St. Patty's fun, but I think I'll have to limit it to a couple hours, cuz I'm quite tired and it's only 7.

I feel super bleh today. Man, you shoulda seen all the crap that came out of my nose this morning! Also, I coughed up some pretty choice little chunks. Yech. Things seem to have dried out, but I still feel zonked. Considering it's supposed to snow like a bitch tonight, maybe karaoke should not happen, and I should just snuggle up in bed and try to read.

Last night I accomplished no productive reading, instead browsing entries from my other journal from the fall, which were funny. I think the overarching theme was "I have a crush on every boy!" The subtext being I really liked one boy, but since that didn't seem sensible, I decided to have silly crushes on a billion other boys. Har.

But who can assess what is truly sensible or not. :-) I'm glad I didn't totally let go of my nonsensical thinking.

Jeff asked me yesterday if maybe he should send a nudging email to the dept head at Harvard to encourage quick and ample funding for me. I really kinda doubt they can match Hopkins, and really the only way they can come close is to match the funding *and* put me into the DrPH program directly, but I kinda don't see that happening. And after today's weather, I'm not so sure I want that anyway! It's snowing like a mof out!

And wind! Hideous wind!

Also, I am greatly looking forward to living on my own. Knowing that I won't be in anyone's way, not having anyone in my way. My roommates are pretty cool, and better even than the last set, which were also cool. But there's little things, like we all get up too close to the same time, so occasionally someone is using the bathroom when I really need to get in the shower, or I know I'm impeding someone else's shower time. And like right now, I kinda want to watch the Idol, but I think my roommate is in there watching something else, even though she has her own TV. Not like a big deal, just kinda annoyin, you know?

Actually, she wasn't in there anymore, but I ended up talking to M for like 40 minutes, so I missed most of it anyway! So now I should just do my reading. :-)

Lowell-open is a sad shadow of what it was my senior year. damn we had some funny folks on that list. Now it's almost entirely announcements for shit no one cares about, and whiny annoying people.

Wow, I thought I did nothing yesterday, but in addition to grocery shopping, I actually caught up in Quicken and finished my taxes (I owe more federal than my state refund, beh). Then I spent too long reading my very last paper journal, which I stopped writing in this spring, which is sort of too bad because there's some fun stuff I missed writing about anywhere. But I feel like writing takes so damn long, I always have a hard time keeping up, whereas between here and this other little page I have for me, I can update more frequently. Also, it's hard to update much when things are just going well at a sort of consistent pace.

Anyway, this cold blows. Usually I feel worst right away and then it gets better. This one wasn't so bad at first, deceiving me, and now I feel more crappy. But I don't feel that awful.

I'm not going to be able to watch a lot of basketball this year. It kinda blows. Someday a March will come around where I can really just take off that whole first weekend and watch all the games, but I think it'll be a while. Senior year was the closest. I guess I could not go on these hockey trips (or just trip, we'll see) this weekend, but they'll be fun, and I want to go.

I increasingly feel quite spoiled by life. The recent Powerball winner is my latest source of this feeling: the guy who won it was laid off last week form his job at a tractor family. Now he and his family have 49.9 mil before taxes, so what are they gonna do now that they're filthy rich? His wife is quitting her job at a daycare center, and they're both *going back to school*, and she wants to be a nurse. That is just really touching and amazing, but it also highlights that for so many people, it's not a lack of desire that prevents attaining higher education, it's just a lack of finances. These kids are my age, both 24, and they have two kids, and now they can put themselves through college without worrying about how to take care of their kids, and they can put their kids through college easily, all because of a lot of money. We'll live in a really great society when all that can happen without the need for a whole lot of money.

We dominated both women's hockey games this weekend (and the men swept too down at Brown!), so that was awesome. Friday night was the party, which was not bad, but I felt kinda yech due to my cold, and whisky just kinda made everything feel dry and hurty. Also, I increasingly feel old at parties. Which is weird, because this wasn't such an issue in the fall, and no one's gotten any younger. But I think part of it is parties don't capture my attention as much this spring because I have more delightful things to pay attention to...

During Fair Harvard at the end of Saturday's game, I got very teary realizing it was finally my last hockey game at Bright. Well, I'm sure I'll visit sometime during hockey season, but you never know. I've been a little melancholy about the leaving. I mean, I'm very glad I'm going where I want, and I'll probably have a great apartment all to myself, and I'll meet new peeps. But I've been here 5.5 years now, and so it's hard to think about leaving. It's only like 4.5 months until I go.

The WE concert was pretty good. I was assigned to do lights for the beginning and end (the middle was all the same setting), so I got to go drool from the balcony at Hottie in his tux. Rowr. He wore the shiny silvery vest which is extra rowr. The music was also pretty good for once. :-) After we went to the BR and listened to the rest of the men's game, which had gone into OT, and then we won. M looked slightly disconcerted as now there's a problem of what games to go to next weekend, since we'd planned for the men to lose this series and we'd go to the women's final. Now that whole plan is in question. In an ideal world, where people didn't have lots of work and we had tons of dough, we could go to the men's games and the women's games, since Union is close to Albany. But, alas, we'll probably have to choose.

We went to Uno's, which was delish, and then to sleep, also great.

Today I accomplished grocery shopping and a tiny amount of reading, because it is hellaciously boring.

After class, M took me out for a wonderful dinner. We went to Vinny's at Night near Sullivan, and true to legend, it's in the back of a superette. But it was really delicious and fun. M's perserverance in making sure a birthday dinner happened is truly admirable. :-)

Except he gave me his cold!

I didn't exactly prevent him, I guess. :-)

Tonight, hockey and party! Woo! Gar, stupid uterus, I have no use for you! Why must you take up so much of my life being annoying!

It was fairly sunny this morning, confusing me as to this weather report of rain and snow. I get to work, pop out to the big windows round noon to see it has rained (my office has no windows). Around 2 it was snowing like mad. Now at quarter til four, it's sunny. Da fuck?

I'm so proud of myself for writing a whole five-page paper. I mean, it even turned out good! I was getting tired towards the end, so I thought maybe it would suck, but I read it through today, and it was pretty great. I rule. :-)

So I guess this constitutional convention is going on. One rep made the point that 40% of adoptions in the state of Massachusetts are to gay couples. Wow, all the more reason to support gay marriage and fight to the finish anyone who spouts this trash about it hurting anyone's marriage. It helps makes the lives of many children so much better!

Man, I feel like such crap today. Soooooo tired. Too much drinking last night. And I'm supposed to write a paper tonight, which will only be 5 pages at most, but still. Bleh. I have no idea what I'll write about. Maybe Francis Bacon since I presented that week and have lots of quotes. I was hoping Darwin would be a good topic, but I feel like there's a lot of stuff on evolution, and not a lot of stuff tying it back to society. There's some... I need to finish the reading.

But karaoke was fun. I got there first, which sucked cuz I was all alone for 15 minutes, and then some folks I only sorta know came in and sat with me and took most of the seats. But Danny and Mihalyfy finally showed, and I sat with them, and Dave and Mike came later but they sat kinda far away at the other end of the table, so I didn't get to talk too much to them. Though Mike did have a great story about catching a thief. I sang "It's Raining Men," which went over very well, but is just about at the top of my belting range. I kinda wanna sing "Hot Stuff" but I think that's even higher.

I came home and had a very amusing conversation on IM with Matty. It took me a while this morning to remember all of it... all I remembered at first was him saying that my IMs after karaoke are funny and he should save them to show me later. And I was having a really hard time typing. But then I remembered the rest, which was pretty amusing... he was doing problem sets, and I said he should be in the A. Class, because then I'd be his problem set. I'm pretty silly.

The American Journal of Medicine seriously has the grossest cases. And they're from Hopkins! Today's photo is of a woman whose breast inflated to an amazing size due to some sort of vein stenosis that I don't really understand. Last one I read had a picture of a deep leg ulcer that this woman would inject drugs into. Ew.

I'm rockin the shit out of this paper. I wasn't for a while, not even really starting until like 8:30 even though I got home at five... I had to finish Darwin, and that took way longer than it should have, and then I required a short nap. But then I came up with a thesis and typed out tons of quotation shit, and then got stuck for like an hour. But then I got out the notebook and started working through it longhand, which always leads to good, and now I almost have the whole damn thing written and it rocks the house. Rock dat shit, yo.

Speaking of shit, there's a whole entry on Mihalyfy's web journal about my shit. I told him about my hospital stays for the study and my "collections" and he thought that was crazy wack funny.

Holy crap I can't wait until my class is done tomorrow and I get to go out to dinner with Hot Stuff and just relax. The weekend is mad crazy again, but dat's cool yo.

Saturday I slept until 2, and then putzed around until the hockey game, which we won. After that I got to meet M's parents, who are very nice people, and then M had a little work to do while I perused TASP applications. Turns out I'm chairing the local interviewing committee. I said I could chair, but I would have thought they'd check to be sure before shipping four applications to me. What if I moved! What if I got hit by a bus! Anyway, that's fun...

Then it was off to the Cube for Courtney's birthday party. Fun fun. We stayed a little while and left just before the cops came to tell them to be quiet. We actually sorta inadvertantly let them in the main door. Oops. But apparently they didn't really care and just said to be quieter.

Sunday ws more hockey, which we won, then dinner and homework in Eliot, then back to the Cube to watch the Sopranos. It's pretty good. Also good is Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I'd heard was pretty wacky.

I drank too much beer in too short a time. But they have a keg to empty! It was floating around in the melted ice all amusing like.

I've been spending entirely too much time pondering this move to Baltimore, but of course I fuss about these things a lot. Now I'm thinking maybe it would be worth the expense of moving my stuff just so I could avoid the hassle of having to get new stuff without having a car. It would be sort of nice to arrive there and not have to worry tons about getting a bed, desk, shelves, etc. I could just set up with what I have and spend four weeks playing around town and getting settled.

In other news, flying to Baltimore is really ridiculously cheap, even if you just wanna go for a day. Thanks to Air Tran. Now, do I rent a car, or just navigate public transit or cabs?

In other news, my sister sent me a bug that grows in water to a billion times it's original size! Back senior year we had the Gro-Beast, which was a little yellow dinosaur that was supposed to grow to immense proportions. Murph put it in a jar, and it grew to not-so-much-larger proportions. It wa sa dud. The bug, however, was not. I stuck it in water Friday, and it is totally enormous now! I've just taken it out so it will shrink back amazingly. I could do this for a while, I bet.

Presents from mom and sis in today (woo, thanks!), and LETTER FROM HOPKINS! "The school scholarship will provide two years of full-time tuition supprt along with an annual stipend equivalent to the NRSA stipend level (which the internet seems to say is ~$20,000)." And then basically they pay 75% and no stipend for the next two years while I write my dissertation, but by then I'll have my own funding set up. This is excellent. I think I can say with full confidence that I'm off to B-more in August.

Until then, I'm gonna sleep well into tomorrow afternoon.

As off-kilter as this week has been, and how easy and immaturely satisfying it would be to pout about it, I count myself lucky to have someone who is so thoughtful, who checks in on my brain, and who simply cares an awful lot.

M got this Etch-a-Sketch pen from his friend, so I spent a while last night drawing tiny pictures of states, words, and a deformed heart. I like the small screen because it's a lot less daunting than the big old screen.

Before that I was perusing the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in the hopes of seeing cute swimsuits, but many of the young ladies were not even really wearing them! M said that the amount of time I spend looking at a given photo is proportional to the percent of clothing worn, whereas it's the opposite for them. So true.

Then Clark lectured me on the cuteness of freckles on girls. I said they are cute on boys too, but he disagreed.

My sister, who is awesome, mailed me some cool gifts, some of which were burned CDs. I'm poking around Johnny Cash's lastest, and in addition to his cover of "Hurt," he also does "Personal Jesus." It's amazing! Johnny Cash covers have always made me laugh a lot ("Rusty Cage" being one of the best), but I think it's just great that here was this old guy that'd been around forever and he clearly loved popular music so damn much that he listened to *everything* and he could relate to so many different vibes and make them his own.

It used to be that when I was dissatisfied, there was either 1) some solution that I could point to, even if I couldn't effect it; 2) someone to blame. At the moment I have mild dissatifaction lacking both these things, and it's kind of annoying. It leaves me feeling unwarranted in my dissatisfaction. I want to be warranted!

I wish I had some sort of colored signal system on my body, that would turn red when I didn't want to talk to people. Though my curtness and general communication of irritability should be enough, but people still knock on my door to plague me with inane chatter.

Maybe one of the most annoying things is unsolicited pity. I'm pretty good at soliciting pity when I want it. I don't really need people to act all sad when I tell them I didn't do anything for my birthday but homework. I'm like, it's not a fucken big deal, stop emitting your stupid shallow emotions at me!

I also don't like over-the-top congratulations. Lots of people congratualted me about school, and that's fine. But one of my coworkers would congratulate me like every time she saw me for like three days, as if my whole mental faculty must be absorbed in the joy of my accomplishment. It's just embarrassing. One congratulation is certainly enough.

I'm just surly today... I stayed up too late, and I'm tired, and I still have to write a response paper for class. Beh.

If a Dem used something akin to 9/11 in an ad, can you imagine the howling rage that would be all over Fox News and AM radio? It would be the only thing on! I hope there turns out to be a lot of outrage and that Bush ends up spending a lot of money to screw himself over. That'd be great. The hypocrisy of refusing to cooperate with the 9/11 commission and then trying to be all like, look at what a good President I was that day! is so outrageous.

Okay, I guess it's the lead story on cnn.com. foxnews.com barely has anything, of course.

Ha this is going to be totally meta, but I agree with Storey's entry today about not wanting to have a comment feature. Meta because he specifically mentioned that commenting on one's own web page or email is a perfectly fine way to respond to things. Which I guess I'm doing. Anyway, his point is that it mars the presentation and that wackos will leave weird comments. I'm down with both these things, esp if I'm writing about personal stuff or just trying to write something pretty or emotional. I don't even really like people mentioning that stuff to me at all sometimes. I guess you can have a format in which you turn off commenting for certain entries, but the whole enterprise just isn't worth it. Sometimes I comment on other people's pages, but most of the time I don't like reading them because they just don't add that much to the page.

Woo, I'm 24! Which I mistakenly thought to be a perfect number without calculating, until Danny told me that, no, 28 is perfect, 24 is just lovely. I got to sing twice at karaoke last night, and I rawked.

I think I'll even have some time to do reading today, between work and dinner.

Well, looks like I'll have more time to do my homework. But things come up, eh? And I'd rather have a nice leisurely time when things aren't crazy.

Bleh, I don't even want to do reading. And I don't know where I should go to read. I need an apartment in the Square.

What a crazy friggin day. So I ended up trying to read at Ticknor Lounge, which is actually a nice quiet place... until the Catholic Student Association showed up to hold a mass. Now I like Catholics as much as any girl, but don't they have churches for things like mass? The Tick is used for all sorts of events, but still, annoying.

So I went to Tealuxe, but it was noisy. I took my tea to the BR and actually succeeded in finishing up one of the readings. Then M showed up after lab, so I did get to see him a bitty bit. He got me a Hopkins SPH shirt! He's so awesome! Clearly he knows me well enough to know that gifts heralding my personal acheivements are greatly appreciated. :-) So that was cool, and then he had to run off to a meeting to handle the crazy shit going on. I feel really bad about it, it really sucks.

I went up to Davis, and while waiting for the bus home thought I'd get some ice cream. Went to pay only to discover an utter dearth of wallet. A few phone calls relieved me: it was back at Tealuxe. So I had to jet back to H Sq, retrieve the damn thing (fortunately just as full as I left it), and go back to pay for my ice cream which the nice gentleman had let me take. Though I think he was majorly in love with me for actually coming back to pay... his name was Bubka. Seriously, random foreign guys love me. Anyhoo, now I'm home, and I've had like a billion phone conversations today, and now maybe I will finish my reading, or crash and say fuck it.

Urrrrrrrrgh, feel like crap.

I went to bed with a headache, but I figured it would go away, but I was dumb and took no Aleve. So I woke up with a headache, and now it is only finally starting to fade.

It doesn't help that I'm stressing about how much work I'm supposed to do before Thursday because even though last week's reading was like 50 pleasant pages, this week's is like 200 boring ones. Yargh. Tonight I'm gonna get sucked into karaoke, and tomorrow is my friggin birthday and I would like to go out with my boyfriend, if that's not too much to ask. So I guess this is my week to hide and not say much in class.

Gooooooooooo New Zealand! Wiiiiiiiiiiinnn all the Oscars!

I sometimes get overwhelmed when I think about his goodness, and his immense generosity. I hardly deserve to be the benefactor. But I won't complain about a pure happiness.

You know, if I were to move to B-more, I think it would be cheaper to leave my furniture and buy new furniture when I get there. Moving trucks are expensive!