I survived part one of the group project. Far too soon is part two, which of course runs into crazy reunion weekend. Beh.

I had my first midterm today, in Biostats. I think it went well, though there was universal discontent with the non-computational questions. I was irked because one of them touched on something I think I've figured out on my own but that was a clear and constant source of confusion in class, that the prof never quite caught on to and straightened out. I took the opportunity to remark on this next to the question (multiple choice with a request to show work, which is useful in case they discover they had a bad question that people misinterpreted, so you can prove you were thinking correctly). So that was annoying. Good and bad was that the test was only 15 questions instead of 20, since due to a room scheduling snafu, we only had 1.5 hours instead of 2. The only downside is each question counts for more, but who cares. It was less time I had to waste taking the stupid exam.

After that I went to the biweekly social and behavioral sciences seminar. This one was on intimate partner violence, which had the completely odd effect of making me think of how even when I was a huge heinous bitch, M never even would get really snarly with me, but then I had these completely opposite things going through my brain simultaneously, of sweet boy and bad violent men. Sometimes I wish my brain would just contain one thing at a time and not be such a mixed up swirl.

I really had no desire to go to my afternoon class, but I was joined by everyone else who felt the same way. It was gloomy dark pouring outside, we were all a little frazzed from the midterm, and tired. But class was good; it's the best class I have, the health ed class.

I have a headache again! I had one last night too! I hope this isn't one of those week or two week phases I occasionally get. Though I haven't had one in ages. I used to get them a lot my senior year. I was also reminded the other day that my lower back gave my little sharp pangs for many weeks that year... the reminder coming from the pangs it was giving me after grocery shopping Sunday. But those subsided quickly. Though I realized the next day that I have this not rare left shoulder/neck pain if I sit at the lab computer too long. Um, I don't know what's up with this chronicle of aches I'm doing here. Anyway, my left eyeball hurts. It's all left side these days; it's really slacking off compared to the right side as far as being good to me.

In other news, I've joined the HPM volleyball squad. This should be interesting, seeing as I haven't played volleyball in about 6 years. I was never amazingly good or awful, so I don't think I particularly had any skills that I picked up that I would have lost, but still, I hope my team and this league aren't really competitive. Then again, I thought all my hoops skills had to have died a sad death, but the little we played this summer proved I could still bring out the shot and at the very least get in the way on defense. So maybe I can bring it for vball too.

The other advantage is that to get signed up for this, I had to go to the Cooley Center and get my card, so now that I have a locker (oh! yeah! I got a locker finally! It's great!) and a card, I have no excuse not to bring my gym clothes and get my butt moving. Other than gads of work I have to do. But maybe all this left-sided malady could be eased through some exercise. It would also make me feel better about all the ice cream I eat.

I can't gauge whether I have a net gain or loss in eating terrible foods since I've moved. Before I moved, I quite often bought lunch or dinner away from home (sometimes even breakfast!). Since I got here, I think I've bought a meal fewer than a half dozen times. Less than once a week, definitely. But I indulge myself in plenty of ice cream, chips and salsa, and this week, brie, while I'm at home. I should eat more fruit and vegetables (though I do eat a decent amount), and I try not to buy stuff that's too crappy (popcorn without butter) that still makes me happy. But I think I eat too much of it! The kitchen, it is so full of food, and RIGHT THERE.

Okay, I'm clearly procrastinating going to bed. To bed!

Today I accomplished: 1) cleaning all the windows and mirrors in the house; 2) grocery shopping, though I was a total idiot and didn't bring the old lady cart, thinking I wasn't going to buy that much, bu t then I got a cart in the store and put waaaaay to much into it, which filled my backpack and left me still with two heavy handfuls, and now my back is like GAAAAAHHHHH!; 3) evil group project, requiring lots of lit search, and fixing the part I was sent by the girl I was working with on that question, since it was lots of words with little substance.

I also wanted to finally get my poster done today, but we'll see. I need a beer and some football.

I made minor progress on the poster, namely, taking my paper and chopping out words and chunks to leave information that might possibly go on the poster. Tomorrow during the day I'll print it out and figure out which parts I really want. It's a process at least! And at least it gets me looking at the paper instead of being like, ho hum, I wonder what the paper says that would be good for the poster lalala.

Overall, I'm almost halfway through the quarter (I know, a whole 4 weeks), but I'm still on top of my work, on top of housework, and feeling better and better overall. This weekend I still didn't do anything exciting, but I never felt down about it. Helps that I talked to my peeps quite a bit, but I still think things are going well. If I can stay on top of things through the whole quarter, that will be awesome and bode well for the whole year.

I am so flattered that my advice is solicited, even in an area that is not my 'expertise.'

Mas luego.

Win last night = headache today. But not too severe. I bet if I eat it'll be gone by noon.

The headache did go away, but I can't say I've had the most productive day in history. I caught up on the news, took a shower, had an orange that made me sleepy. yeah, I know, nonsensical. So I took a short nap. Worked on some Biostats and read an article for Poverty. I'm totally ready for the Biostats exam Tuesday. I'm gonna rock that mof. Then I had dinner and talked to M for a while, then to Jer and Katie a bit while they set up for the party. That all was nice, good to hear familiar voices. I can't believe it's only 2 weeks until the reunion! Though I'm still a little irked I'll be in town such a short time.

But it's better than nothing!

Geh, now I should get this thing done for my Health Ed group project. I'm not entirely sure of the girl's name who I'm supposed to be working with on one of the questions, which is kind of bad.

Adequate sleep is so good. I felt great today! I didn't even get to bed amazingly early last night, but it was early enough. Tonight: more of the same!

I feel completely unmotivated to do any work! I got a crapload done at school today between classes, so now I'm like LALALALA! Maybe some reading. I'm supposed to do a lit search for this class group project crap we're working on tomorrow, but I think I'll do that between classes tomorrow. I hate group projects. I'm in a group with all the 2nd years from genetic counseling... all the g.c. kids are attached at the hip, since their program is tiny and they have tiny little classes together. They give off a cliqueish vibe. Maybe it's just me.

Anyway, it's probably still better than epi lab, which is useful for about 20 minutes out of half and hour, because I always chug through the lab in advance, and I feel like the rest of peeps are sort of catching up with the whole thing to various degrees. But then we're like the fastest group in the lab! I don't get it!

So, midterms are already next week for biostats and epi. I took a couple of practice biostats midterms, and I missed 2 questions on the first one (one being a total trick setup for the question telling me to pay more attention), and then I did perfect on the second one! So I'm not that worried about biostats, despite everyone's doom and gloom about the poor grades people get in that class. Again, there's a class I prepare for thoroughly, which means I know the material pretty well by the time lecture happens, but that means I am mostly really bored during lecture. It doesn't help that the prof spends waaaaay too much time on basic math (not all her fault, some of the people in the class are clueless), and much less time on complex and interesting topics. It sucks. I mean, epi, in contrast, follows the book, which I've already read by lecture time, almost exactly, but Gordis is so engaging and entertaining, that even at 8:30 am, I don't even care and I feel like I'm hearing something new. Biostats fails at this misterably.

I guess the good news is that I'm not finding school to be so much hard as just relentless. There are so many hours of class! I have five hours of epi alone! It's nuts. Next quarter's schedule is vastly saner.

I've been feeling pretty on top of things this week. I'm all caught up with my household cleaning schedule, I'm not vastly ahead of my work, but not overwhelmed at all, and it's Weds and I'm not exhausted, which is a major triumph! I'm still not totally satisfied with my social world... I need to meet some boys -- no, not to date -- because really, I don't like girls. Let me rephrase that: I like girls in the context of boys. I like girls who also like to hang out with boys. But mostly, I just don't relate well to girls at all. Furthermore, I very much miss the Band... it's such a wonderful cohort of quirky, interesting people. I'm sure there are quirky and interesting people all over JHSPH, but they are not so neatly packaged into one social space. Which means effort! I hate social effort! It's why I joined the Band in college, to maximize the chance I'd find people I liked! Here I find that I like scattered people, and I don't like other people that they're scattered in with. My "cohort," as they call it, are the people in my program, the people who I see and talk to all the time. And the truth is, some of them really get on my nerves.

I know, I'm totally misanthropic and judgemental. But, what can I say, I feel great discomfort around people I don't really click with, and I feel great happiness around people I like. I haven't been able to maximize the concentration of happiness.

It'll come, though, in some form or another, I'm sure. It probably just won't be the form I'm used to.

Yeah, so I didn't really do any work tonight. I felt energetic, so I decided to sort of exercise and watch TV in the living room. I was watching That 70s Show, which was fine, but then I changed the channel and there was this Dr. Phil primetime special on families, and if there's anything I have a weakness for, it's Dr. Phil. I used to go to the gym and watch him on the treadmill. I think I like two things: 1) he makes accessible some really basic behavior change techniques and doesn't dance around how hard it is to change behavior and helps people understand the ramifications of their choices; 2) the people on his show are often really fucked up, so there's the vicarious reality TV element in there. I don't like the obvious marketing aspects to his whole deal, the books and all that crap, and I think he's often sensationalist and certainly falls short of being the best scientist. For example, tonight there was a segment where they taught these three kids some really basic breathing, stress relief, and focusing exercises, and turns out they all improved a lot in school. Well, certainly these exercises couldn't have hurt, but it's clear that a combination of attention to the issue by parents, vast attention from Dr. Phil, and an overall placebo effect certainly plays a role. I don't think anyone watching along at home could apply these simple exercises and expect such a large result.

But overall, I think it's nice to have people out there who are like, yo, when you do this behavior, this is the choice you are making, and if you want to make this other choice, you have to cut through your bullshit excuses that you use to make yourself feel better and truly make yourself feel better by making real, substantive, concrete changes. It's sort of what I've always thought psychology should be about and what the best of psychology is: it's about behavior change, and thinking change, not about some vague talking about your feelings. At least that's the stuff I mean when I glow about the powers of the field of psychology.

Though I think the other side is something I've started to really appreciate from my Health Ed class, which is that there are sooooo many factors outside a person that influence their behavior, and from a public health perspective, it's much more effective to address those issues than to try to make every individual change their health behaviors. Smoking has been much more curtailed by laws and restrictions and pricing than by telling people to quit individually.

I do have to say, from an ethical perspective, it is sort of uncomfortable to have people's problems aired out on national television under this semi-theraputic guise. And the books and other crap. I realy hate that stuff. I'm telling you, it's love/hate, I often cringe, but I watch it with total interest.

It did get me thinking along possible lines of a research area: health behaviors during the "quarter-life" age, and the effects of the quarter-life crisis y'all may have heard some faddish word about. But it's a real thing, I think, this post-schooling (high school or college) jump into adulthood that is not so easy for a variety of reasons. Which I'm sure I will geek about here as I think more on the topic.

I dragged my ass around today, but now I'm feeling fairly peppy. This will probably last far too long, I'll go to bed too late, and then I'll be so very tired tomorrow morning. But for now, pep. I went to Rite Aid to use a coupon for soda (only to find the grocery store was cheaper anyway) and buy a battery for my smoke alarm (better than burning, I guess). Then I headed to the book fesitval, which I found underwhelming. Compared to what ABQ used to have at the Pit, this was nothing. Most of the booths were local organizations, and the places that did have books were cramped and overcrowded and I couldn't properly browse. So I left fairly quickly, sans books. I'm actually looking for a particular book, so I should just find a bookstore and buy it. Anyhoo, then I went to the grocery store, as I hadn't in a while.

Then I came home for football, dinner, and epi. I should get to some more homework here soon. On the whole, I could have been a bit more productive this weekend, but I was pretty good. I'm sure the 2nd biostats PS will kill my productivity this week.

My feet are cold, and my favorite footwarmer is 400 miles away! It's chilly in the house... fall is here!

I wish I had felt this peppy all day... but I really felt quite down for most of the day. This weekend was hard, but it'll get easier.

I was trying to decide when to go to the book festival, either today or tomorrow. So I looked at the weather, and it seems it will stay windy and chilly and maybe rainy here today, but tomorrow should be nice. Also the shuttle runs longer hours on Sundays, for some strange reason. Anyway, I flipped over to Boston weather to see what the kids are experiencing for their first football game. :-( Heavy rain and wind all afternoon, feels like 50F. That sucks a lot.

The most wonderful thing about my senior year, second to the undefeatedness of the team, was the perfection of the weather. Actually, we generally had good football weather when I was in college. The year before I got there it apparently rained nearly every week, and since I graduated there has been a fair share of lousy games (though no snow). It better be nice for the reunion!

This isn't getting any easier, this distance, this change. Biostats on a Saturday night at home is not what I wish I was doing, not where I wish I could be. But who chose this, eh?

In pleasant surprises, epi lab went really well today. The person who was most lost last time really prepared well this time and sped things along considerably with her sound thinking on a question that I had only sort of muddy thoughts on. Sweet. So, it looks like we're all on the same page now as far as level of prep required to make lab kick ass. So see, I just needed to give it a little time, and it all worked out.

In other news, today and yesterday I happened to sit up front in lectures, and it's actually far more engaging that way. Because if I sit way far back and the prof asks a question, I feel dumb shouting out an answer, but if I'm up close, I can speak at a reasonable volume, and the prof will hear and repeat it. I also always feel bad when the prof asks a question and no one answers, especially if I know the answer, because then they feel like failures as an educator when that is not the case. So, if I sit closer to the front, everything is better!

I think I just made it sound like if I sit up front, the entirety of lecture, and also the professor's sense of well being, is saved due to my enormous genius, but that's not really what I mean. I'm not saving anything, but I try very hard to be engaged when someone is putting forth an effort to teach me things or present something, and I think engagement is really the issue. I hate the flip side more than you can imagine, if I'm presenting something to a class and everyone looks bored and no one makes eye contact or responds. It's the worst thing ever.

I felt sooo sleepy all day. But there was a fun activities fair for community service orgs, and I put my name on too many email lists, but lots of stuff sounds interesting. Too bad I probably only have time for one group, or for really short projects at multiple groups. I have to sort through that at some point.

You know, by the first weekend after classes started, I was like a week ahead, and now I'm doing work today for tomorrow! Wah! I will get ahead again this weekend, as I have no plans but to sleep late, re-energize, and do work.

I talked to my mom tonight (hi mom!), and she thought I sounded pretty happy, which is a good sign. Maybe cuz I just had eaten ice cream. I love (and eat!) ice cream just a little too much.

I seem not to have much to say lately. School is pretty busy, and writing here just seems like more talking to myself, which I do plenty of at home. Don't get me wrong, I love living by myself. LOVE. It's just about the best thing about this move. The second best thing is that this program is definitely the right one for me. I'm not bowled over by epi and biostats, but the happy reason for that is because I am overprepared for them compared to many of my classmates. So I get bored, and I get frustrated if I have to work with others (ugh, like epi lab, where my group is half really with it, and half lagging behind), but I'm sure things will get more challenging. I shouldn't gripe too much about biostats, since I did have to extract from deep memory everything I once knew about probability. Maybe if I go down to DC and relive the Mathcounts experience, it will all flood back.

My other classes are pretty good, esp Fundamentals of Health Education. It's by far the most relevant to what I will eventually do with my life. Health, Poverty, and Public Policy puts a new spin on things, even though we haven't really had much class yet, since the first class was intro, and the second class was superceded by a debate on health care from the Dem and Rep presidential campaign representatives on the subject. But the reading has been good so far.

School is tiring, though. I spend many hours there, though much of that is time I have to find ways to fill. I'd rather all my classes were lumped together, then I could go home and work. But at least while the weather is nice, I can read out on the deck at Hampton House. When I get home, it's really hard to get a lot of work done, as I'm just not used to working so hard at night, and I'm tired by then. 8:30 epi on MWF doesn't help me feel too peppy. But I manage to get a little done during the night, quite a bit done during the day, and I try to make the weekends as productive as possible.

This past weekend threw me off a bit, because Saturday I went off to a nature center for some community service in the morning, and the afternoon/night was subsumed with Bill putting in a window. The nature center was great; I met a cool guy who is actually from the Boston area and went to Brandeis, then Tufts for his MPH, then lived in North Carolina for a year to work. I should actually hang out with him some more, because he was cool in that dorky way that indicates a possible friend to me. The work itself was fun; we got to hack at overgrowth on the trails with these blade things that were like sharp rakes, and with various clippers. Then we mulched some trails with wood chippy type mulch. I was glad I was in that group instead of the weed (I mean, exotic invasive plant) pulling group, though they made satisfactory amounts of progress in their work also. We weren't there more than a few hours, but it was fun and a bit of hard work. I really like that kind of project; I don't really need to work with people, and I always cringe a little when people go on in glowing terms too much about how they love community service because of how people react to them... I mean, maybe it's not as condescending as it comes off. But I just like to do something sort of anonymous that improves a place or situation for people. I don't need the personal love, I can try to impact people's lives without needing children smiling on me out of being Personally Affected or whatever.

Anyway, that was the good part of the day. It was also friggin perfect weather, which is nice. The lame part of the day was when I got home and Bill came to start putting in the new windows in my bedroom. It took him 6 hours to get the first one in! And I had to help him out by then end! Granted, they did look like complicated little fuckers, but I really don't think it should have taken that long. Anyway, for most of the time I got some work done. I talked to Jamie, which was cool. And ordered pizza, which was delicious (though Papa John's small pizza is muy expensive, so I won't be doing that a lot). But I had planned to go to Sarah's birthday that night. I wasn't totally keen on going, since no one had responded with my request for a ride, but I had planned to call Sarah to see if I could go with them (turned out they would have been at dinner, so that wouldn't have worked) or grabbed a cab, but Bill was here quite late, so I gave up on going out.

Juhee and I went to Rocky Run for some Sunday lunch, since brunch at Pete's was mad nuts, as I kind of suspected it would be. That was pretty fun. Then I came back and Bill put in the second window. It didn't take quite as long, but it did kinda throw off my grocery shopping and other stuff I wanted to do. But Roger gave me a small vat of chili he made, which was delicious and I ate it for three nights, so that was good. I also watched football, which is just spongey enough in terms of action that I got a decent amount of reading done.

Bill also got me bread today at the bread factory place where they have the discount stuff! My landlord and neighbor keep me fed. :-)

So, things are going pretty well, though not super hedonistically amazing. I saw a bumper sticker today that said something about faith having two parts, patience and gratitude. I didn't much see the need for faith as such in there, but I definitely saw the complimentary virtues of patience and gratitude as an important focus. In some sense, active, willful patience is an abundance of gratitude. If you are grateful for what you have, you are not impatient for more. You can patiently pursue more and understand that it takes time and luck and hard work to progress. Gratitude allows you to understand the time and luck and hard work it took to get you where you are (and what I call luck, maybe others call the grace of god, but either way, it's a powerful component of everyone's situation). I was applying this in two ways. One simpler way, a way I've never found easy, is basic patience with people when they can't keep up with me. Sarah made me feel impatient when I was talking with her about my frustrations with epi lab today. I feel frustrated that I spent time and effort to understand the lab and to get to the point where I could come to lab and make quick decisions about the problems with my group, but then we had to step back many steps just to go over the concepts because other folks in the lab didn't struggle with the material beforehand. But I really need to consider how I am fortunate to have had the time to look over the lab, to understand it quickly, and how easy it will be for me to complete it for Friday. And so I should have patience, and not just the passive patience of tolerating these people and pushing down the annoyance I feel, but the active patience of helping them and helping myself learn more by teaching and engaging. But it's hard, it's always been hard for me to do that when I can just do things myself faster.

The broader question is on finding my social place. I'm impatient, I want to have a whole social group now, and real friends who I really connect with. But I've been at school 12 whole days now; I'm lucky to even precursorily know anyone. Real friendship takes time, and we should be glad it does, and I'm glad it does especially for me, because on the whole, the people who become my real friends are good people. With very few glaring exceptions. ;-) Also, my preliminary judgements of people are prone to some error; well, at least, my initial impressions of my eventual friends are often off, because there tends to be a lot of depth and contradiction to them. So I have to work at being social, no matter how much I feel like THESE ARE NOT MY PEOPLE! Because if I don't look, I can't find my people.

Anyway, that was quite a ramble.

But, some things are hard. I miss Boston a lot. Maybe if I had a car Baltimore wouldn't seem so dreary and unmanageable to me. But I miss my old squares, and the ease with which I could get to all of them. I miss the buzzing social life -- though it's good I'm not too close to it, because it sucks up time I really need for school. And I think it's probably obvious what is the most acute absence in my life... the happiness that often-heard voice brings me is wonderful, but the comparison to actual presence... it's hard. I don't know when it will be less difficult.

Overall, I can't really believe I've been here four weeks. I think of the four weeks until the reunion as interminable, but these four weeks have been pretty quick, even though the two weeks of classes have felt like a billion. Time is fucked up.

Happy birthday to Matty!

Monday I went grocery shopping, and then down to the Inner Harbor for a shopping attempt there. There are two kinds of shopping I like: general, untargeted browsing (though if I'm not quite in the mood, this becomes tedious quickly), and having a list of things I'm looking for. One thing is okay, but if it's hard to find, that can suck, so I'd rather have a few things for greater success. Shopping I hate: event-oriented shopping. I need *something* but I don't know what.

Thing was, I did know what, I was just saving it for a different evnent. But then I said, fuck it, now is the time!

It was easy to get there on the bus... downtown is no problem, it's anywhere else that kinda sucks.

Yesterday was lots of school. Woo. Today muchly the same, but Epi lab hasn't started yet, so I actually had 6 hours between my morning and afternoon classes, so I went home and did some work. That was nice. I like working at home, when I can. I hope next quarter's schedule will be nicer and allow be to be at school for more condensed blocks.

The umbrella my sister sent me is cool, but lethal. I totally sliced my thumb trying to open it. Then I saw some other woman in the neighborhood with the same umbrella but I was carrying by black one at the time.

Shout out to my homie J down in the nation's wang. Storms literal and fictional have been a bitch.

I slept until 10 again, and it totally didn't feel like it. I swear, I love sleep a little too much. The day started out very productively, as I cooked up some steel cut oats... takes about half an hour since they are tough little boogers to start with. But that was delicious. And I got some homework done. Then I had malaise! Seriously, I couldn't motivate myself to do anything, I felt like crap, and I was just bleh. Finally, I had some salsa, and I felt way better. No, there's no addiction or anything going on there.

With the endorphins rushing, I took a trip to Rite Aid to try to use a coupon for diet coke, but they didn't have any, but they had other crap I needed that was on sale and for which I had coupons. Woo! And then I tallied some hubba stats, since the school year for hubba is officially over (don't ask for all of them... I can provide select stats that exclude my embarrassingly high post count for the year). Then I started in on this Epi lab that I may have Friday (still don't know my lab times), and that took a while, but it was actually sorta fun. It was all about tracing outbreaks of disease to food. I'm a huge dork, I know.

So now I feel like it's too early to sleep, and I'm not really tired, but I'm not really lively enough to do any more homework. I kinda wish I had a movie I wanted to watch, but I don't want to watch any of the ones I have and it's too late to go to the video store (I mean, I'm sure Blockbuster is open, but I don't like walking that way at night). So, I remain sorta bored. Sometimes I really do need cable.

How bout an update, huh? Lesse, Tuesday was another ass-long day of orientation. The morning wasn't so bad, as we learned about all the variety of departments at the school of public health. Turns out if you are a lab nerd, you too can join me at Bloomberg, in the departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology AND Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. They do things with chemicals and stuff. The rest of the departments are a mishmash of social science, from biostats and epi to fuzzier things like Health Policy and Management, which includes my concentration, Social and Behavioral Sciences. Woo!

I don't really remember what else we did that day. There was ice cream at the end!

Wednesday I didn't have to be there until 3:30 for registration. I arrived a bit earlier for the very small activities fair, met a fellow New Mexican who is from Shiprock and studying at the Native American institute at the school (and who is very homesick). Then I got screwed out of getting a locker since we were the last group to register and they ran out. Apparently this has never happened, and they always have more than enough. I have complained, and will complain more to more people if things don't get fixed soon, cuz carrying all my books and lunch and shit around all day sucks donkey balls.

Class started Thursday. Biostats was as expected... not that exciting, really. Then I had hours of free time because my schedule is incredibly stupid and makes me be on campus all day for like 3 hours of class. Lame. But I've used the time to get ahead on my work, since I'm sure the work will pile up and I might as well be less behind. Afternoon was Fundamentals of Health Education and Health Behavior, which is a pretty groovy class, and during the brief activity at the end of class, I got to meet a pediatrician, the future Jamaican Minister of Health, and an undergrad. Big variety of folks at the school.

Yesterday I had Epidemiology at 8:30, a decidedly brutal hour, but not that bad compared to orientation Mon and Tues, which had been even earlier. Epi is a class that could be dry and boring, but the prof is pretty awesome and has been teaching this forever, and he puts funny cartoons in the slides and makes lots of jokes and is lively. More hours and hours of free time, most of which I spent on the Hamptom House deck (HH is where my dept lives), outside in the lovely weather that was even a little chilly until the sun hit the deck more. Then I had 1 of 4 seminars for HPM doctoral students to help us think about the qualifying exam at the end of the year, so we have an idea of what actually has to stick to our brain until June instead of just through the 8 week quarter.

Then I went home. Woo! I'm glad to live alone, because I like being able to hang around my house without other people around. But it couldn't hurt to have people to go out with. It also couldn't hurt if I would, like, call people. But I suck at that. But I'm sure, with time, I will have actual friends to hang out with.

Didn't help that there was actual happy hour at the school this week, but I didn't get the email until I got home. LAME.

So instead I slept a billion hours last night.

Today I went to the Farmer's Market, finally. It was crowded, but there was lots of good stuff. I only bought green peppers, since I knew I didn't have any, and then I got out because I hate walking through crowds.

Then I went to the JHU bookstore to try to find poster frames, with no luck. Then I walked the direction of an alleged yard sale, but I didn't see anything, except a liquor store I didn't know existed, so I got some Mike's.

Browsing cards at the JHU bookstore, however, had made me feel lonely and sad, so I took to reading the news from the past week on the internet and cleaning my room.

I finally hung up crap on my walls! I just put the posters I have up with regular poster squares, since I didn't find frames. I need to go to Target, but alas, I have no car. I may rent a car sometime soon and just go shopping. I'm very cheap about wall decor, however, so I refuse to spend good money to frame things.

But now I think I can say that I am fully settled in.

In fun news, I got four packages this week! My tea kettle finally came (it had been on backorder for weeks, even though I ordered it before I left), and my Biostats book ($30 cheaper!) arrived just in time. My order of El Pinto Medium Green Chile sauce arrived, and I have almost consumed an entire 32 oz jar. I know, crazy, but it's so goooooood. And my sister sent me a really nifty umbrella and covered the poster tube she shipped it in with the strangest Maryland-themed stickers ever. We had to decode them for several minutes. The oddest one was of a guy who had a Maryland-shaped head that was green, and his torso emerged from the bay, and he was wearing a blue shirt (to match water), and he was holding a recently-opened box from which an oriole with an Orioles hat had flown. It was like some horrible nightmare. Other than that was a jockey, for the Preakness (Am: I just thought he was flamboyant!), the flag, a less perky oriole, some flowers, and a dog, which the internet tells me is a Chesapeake Bay Retriever. The internet also tells me the flower is a Black-Eyed Susan.

Anyway, they were weird-ass stickers.

I've been so good about maintaining good habits, such as not eating out (I have even made lunch for school!), keeping up with my chores list, doing laundry and grocery shopping weekly. Crap like that. The house is clean! Things are organized! I'll get back to you in 8 weeks to see if it's still that way!