<1328>

I think the consequences of being a flaming jerkoff should be to have unkind rants about you pop up whenever you vanity Google, but I'll be nice today. All named references to the author of the dumbest, least informed Crimson column ever have been removed. But you should know, we all still throw up in our mouths a little when we hear your yalie-esque name.

<2014>

Perusing my old blog pages to make sure there aren't any full names up there... I got rid of a lot of them over the past few years, but I might as well check, because I don't actually want people vanity googling themselves to my blog, even if the results are hilarious. Boo!! Anyway, I started reading in detail The Month That Started What Should Have Lasted Forever, and wow, hello that feeling of guilt I had in the dream the other night, strewn all over. The thing is though? I should never ever feel guilty about having tried to live my life in a healthy way, without that sort of dysfunction and abuse. And I shouldn't feel guilty now about wanting to see said party as little as possible for the rest of my days.

<1341>

He found me in the hallway and handed me a card with a piece of paper attached. It was a birthday invitation. He had been tracking me all over town trying to get it to me, and he really wanted me to come. I felt terrible. I didn't want to go. I told him I'd try to make it, a little pleased at mirroring the blase attitude he'd thrown at me so many times with false sincerity. But I still felt bad. It turned out the party was on a Tuesday night, which was also TV Night. I knew that I ought to feel more obligation to go to an old friend's birthday than TV Night, but I didn't have dozens of unpleasant associations with the TV Night crew. I was suddenly talking to Mike and Tim about it, and I decided that I wuold go to the first hour of the party from 8-9 when no one would be there yet, so I would be that one awesome guest who shows up and makes you feel not like a loser, and then I would bail as others showed up and go to TV night. The boys thought this was a reasonable plan.

Sometimes I'm impressed by the pull people have in my dreams. Last night there were people from high school in them! People I never hung out with!

I feel so unproductive when I'm at work.

<2243>

This weekend was pretty cool. I drove to Pittsburgh on Friday, leaving too late to go to Fallingwater, and really later than I wanted to in general. I hit a huge snarl outside of Frederick, and so I thought there must have been some kind of horrible accident. I got off the highway for a pee stop, and the guy at Roy Rogers told me it was just usual Friday traffic plus holiday mess. Yikes. I'm never living in Frederick! I got back on, got through it (it doesn't help that the highway narrows from three lanes to two and then to essentially one as other stuff branches off). Driving was fine for a while, but then it poured all the way past the Allegheny tunnel on to almost Pittsburgh, so I was terrified the whole time. I really don't like driving when I can't so much see.

I got there about an hour before the party and helped decorate. A ton of people showed up. It was kind of a neat crowd in that there were a lot of people I talked to that weren't public healthers but that had related interests in social science or public health, so it was nice having a different crowd that still knows what the heck I'm talking about when I talk about what I do. As people trickled out, there was helium singing and balloon volleying and then it was time to sleep.

Saturday we got up and had brunch. J's roommate had to go to a wedding, so we got up earlyish. Also with us was J's former roommate who was in town. After brunch, the three of us went kayaking in the Allegheny, which was super fun and didn't even kill my arms that much. I really want to go kayaking more, although I'm not sure how easy that is to do in the harbor. Maybe when I go to Boston, the day after Commencement. After that we had a brief stop at the Warhol museum, and bad pacing lead us to not really see everything before it closed, but that's okay. Then we had dinner, delicious ice cream, and chilled for a while. We got the ice cream on the Pitt campus, which is a pretty nice place. J and I went home and showered off the weekend's detrius and then tried to get inspired to go out. We got as far as Starbucks, had some coffee, briefly felt pepped up, and then crashed.

Sunday J made pancakes, and then we went on a driving tour of Pittsburgh. Some kid at the party had been wearing a shirt that said, "Pittsburgh. Surprisingly okay." I think I would upgrade that to surprisingly great. I really liked the terrain a lot, for one thing. Rivers and hills, how much better is that than shitty harbor and flatness! I mean, I love the harbor, but it's not the prettiest body of water in the world. There are a lot of interesting little neighborhoods around too. And maybe we just didn't drive there, but I didn't see the degree of urban poverty we have in Baltimore. We got ourselves intentionally lost for a while, and ran into some semi-rural areas that looked pretty poor, but it's just different than the boarded up rowhouses. But, anyway, it was pretty cool. We ended up at the park where the rivers meet, which was fun. There was this building up on a steep hill that creeped me out because I had a dream once about a similarly shaped building on a similarly steep hill that got bombed or a rock fell on it or something and parts of the building fell off.

I decided to bounce after we returned to the house so I could maximize my daylight driving. The drive back was pretty much perfect, nice weather, decent speeds. I have to say people were kind of dumb about three-lane highways and not making most efficient use of all the lanes. Too many folks ended up in the fast lane because people in the middle lane should have been in the far right lane. But, anyway, the only bad traffic was back outside of Frederick, but I just opened my window and chillaxed.

Today I met with Rajiv and we talked about me maybe going to Malawi next year for a few months to do some qualitative data collection, and the various ways we might be able to fund it. I did start to realize that maybe I need to be more aggressive about looking for funding. I am still waiting to hear on the one fellowship... if I don't hear this week, I'm going to have to bug people. It would be nice if I got that funding, because then I could slack off for a whole year.

I also went grocery shopping. Some guy gave me his business card and I pulled out the lame fake boyfriend excuse. Did anyone ever hit on me when I actually had a boyfriend? Last week some guy in a linen truck gave me his number. I guess there's something to be said for random guys thinking I'm hot, but they're never the kind of guys I actually want to date. Which, yes, I'm being a snob here, but really, I don't think I'm really the kind of girl these guys actually want to date either. I need someone who can keep up with me and who won't be all intimidated but who also won't want me to be any less intimidating. If that makes sense.

I know I'm not one to talk, but why don't people run far far far away from big drama? It's so not worth it. I at least hope I've honed the art of finding levels of drama that have small likelihood of blowing up to be big.

<0102>

TV Night wrapped up House and The Office. House was crazy and gross and weird. And The Office was... whoa. I think I held my breath for the entire ending. It was a little too incredibly realistic. Oh man.

<1742>

Friday I finished my paper around 3:15, got dressed, and went to meet the crew at Happy Hour. I missed the thing at school, which bummed me out, but Arco's has a nice back patio that was lovely. After that I could have gone to the end of year party, but I opted instead to go home and be a bum. Yesterday I got up amazingly late, went to dinner with Lynn and Tim, and we were going to go to this play but they were sold out, so we went today. Instead we came back to my house and played DDR and watched A Mighty Wind. Today we went to the play, and it was pretty good. The theater is this tiny little place.

Last night, I was showing Lynn and Tim the crazy Lost-related websites out there, when my computer spontaneously shut down. Not cool. We must have almost stumbled on something we should not know! Anyway, I talked to M for a while last night too, which was nice. It's good when he's tipsy and on IM.

It's funny how the brain works. In my dream last night there was the conversation I wanted to have last week, some final discussion and a real goodbye. In reality, I feel that all is well, so not having the discussion doesn't matter. But the brain wants closure and will manufacture it if it has to.

Time for DDR!

<1311>

I hate this paper. There's no way I'm making it for the 2pm dealie, so I'll just have to meet everyone at Arco's. Turns out the 2pm dealie has all this fancy food, when the original plan was pizza. I think I would be more motivated to go if there were pizza. Anyway, this paper sucks ass. I feel like the format is totally backwards, but it's very structured and constrained, so I've had to move everything around just so I don't repeat myself endlessly. It's like mystery format... why did I choose this intervention? You'll have to wait to find out! First, here's why other people would pan me for choosing it! Stupid.

My plan for the weekend. Saturday: Sleep until at least noon. Have breakfast and read the NYT and anything else I feel like online. Play DDR until my legs fall off. Strength training. House, Sopranos. Repeat on Sunday.

<2340>

Today was another busy day. I presented to my Epi of Human Rights Violations class, which was nerve wracking, but people seemed to like my presentation. Then Danielle and I worked on our MLM paper for the rest of the afternoon/evening. We discovered that our results were completely lame. Much giddiness was involved writing them up and mocking them and ourselves the whole time. We ended up missing class, which was not a bummer as such, but it meant not getting to say goodbye to P, which makes me sad.

Tomorrow I have to bust out a 10 pager, ideally in 5-6 hours. I have done no work to prepare this paper, and it will be total bullshit straight through. I figure there's no way I get worse than a C on it, which means pass baby pass. But I really want to be done by 2 for all the fun grad stuff.

<1712>

I am a paper-writing rock star. I discovered about five minutes too late yesterday that all the psychiatry journals are housed not in the main medical library but in a small library at the hospital... that closes at 5:30. I thought this would put a dagger in my paper topic, but I looked online at Harvard when I got home and found most of the articles there. I read those last night and then went to school this morning to read the rest. I started writing around 10:30 and my computer battery got low after about 75 minutes... no biggie, right? Except I'd left my power cable at home. I had only written about 4 pages, and I was shooting for 8 or so by 1:30. I ran around, trying to get my flash drive to read, figuring out RefWorks since none of the useless lab computers have Endnote, for about an hour before I started writing again. But then I busted out those last 4 pages like whoa and turned it in with minutes to spare! I could have really taken another couple of hours and ditched most of class because it was entirely useless as usual. It was fairly interesting when people talked about their paper topics, but of course no one is allowed to really talk without DR following-up for like 5 minutes. God forbid, like, students should have a conversation in which multiple students speak in turn. The only person who was allowed to yammer endlessly is this girl in my cohort who really needs to time herself talk sometime... or listen to herself, because she is way boring.

Anyway, woo paper done! Only 2 more to go. :-( I have to make some tables tonight and try to maybe write up some results. I also have to figure out my presentation for tomorrow... there are five of us, and I feel vastly inexpert compared to some people on the list, so maybe I'll be last and won't get to go. I like talking, but I also like not looking like an asshole.

I hope I can get this multilevel project out of the way so tomorrow night (and hopefully not all day Friday) I can bang out my IH paper. I got an A on the first one, so I just need to make the second one exist and be semi-coherent. I don't even think I need to put in that many references.

A friend wrote on his blog about how the end-of-the-year goodbyes are difficult. It's not like I even have many, but it's not always the quantity that matters. :-/

<1823>

Okay, so playing DDR after having done so several days in a row, on very little sleep is a really terrible idea if you want your legs to not do that thing it does in dreams when you can't run away from something bad. You know, where you try to move them and they don't at all, and they don't really hurt, but man are they slow. Of course it doesn't help that I started off with all the challenge songs in a "what the hell, it's workout mode" kind of way.

Still, man, DDR is so great. This weekend, I'm going to sleep a ton, play endless mode and finish completing everything in light mode, do as much as I can in standard mode, and maybe even train for stuff I suck at. AND I'm going to watch Sopranos and House. It'll be good.

<0048>

I felt a lot better today. I guess a hallmark of good decision making is that it makes you better off in the long term, even if it has you clawing at the walls in the short term.

D and I met for a thousand years today to try to run analyses. Gllamm takes forever. I came home and managed to make myself write my human rights paper, with a nice walk in the middle. The walk was great, because it was that nice stiff blusteriness before a thunderstorm moves in (as it's doing currently). That was always my favorite weather to go barreling around outside at night during high school and college, except usually when I did it then I was rageful or miserable. Tonight I just felt great and fiery, and I totally hauled ass all over CV and got my exercise in.

I finished the paper when I got home and fired it off to the TA, who emailed me back 5 minutes later to say he'd read through it and I should present on Thursday. This makes me feel totally validated because I spent half my time working on this idea thinking it was great and the other half thinking it was super lame. D had thought it was cool, but I'm glad the guy grading my paper also thinks that. Now the joy of presenting is seeing if anyone else thinks it's cool!

Now I just have three more papers to write for the week. I have a topic and some literature found for the doctor-patient communication paper, D and I are making progress on the MLM project, and my IH paper only has to be mediocre since I'm taking the class p/f and I got an A on the first paper.

<0056>

Dispatched! Someone had to be the voice of reason. I was given a duty when I was named, and that is to inject truth where I can, even if I don't even want to hear it.

And I don't. I feel both enormously strong and deflated.

Congrats to my sister, who won four awards at the graduation awards ceremony tonight. She was additionally completely robbed of the fashion award. Fix fix fix!

Today I met with D to work on our MLM project. We were going along just great and then got stuck looking at a poorly estimated variance, which I hope the prof will dismiss as not so important. Then I went to Happy Hour... there was a dearth of HPM folk, but P and the Brazilians were there, so I stuck around and then some of us went to Bay Cafe and then to Dizzy Issie's, where I'd been looking to go for a while because it seemed like a nice neighborhood hole in the wall kind of place. The upstairs is actually exactly like some college dorm room with a pool table. It's like the apartment at Penn.

*sigh*

<1215>

At least it's appreciated. It would be so unfair if it weren't.

<0125>

I know the Banquet tends to bring people out of the woodworks a bit, but flipping through Lauren's photos of tonight, I realize that I've definitely hit the Obsolete stage. Who the fuck are half these people?! I even met some of the froshies during football season.

I finally bought plane tickets for Commencement, having found housing that is to my pleasure. I've made sure to come in on karaoke Tuesday.

So... it's turns out "short-term" means short-term, not one time. God, I'm going to hell.

<1411>

Things catch up eventually. When those things are nobler impulses, I"m quite fine with that.

<1122>

Zonk. I woke up at 5:30 with my nose itchy and runny like crazy. I took some NyQuil which did have the desired effect of quenching the itching and putting me to sleep, but which also had the undesired but anticipated effect of making me so zonked here at 11. My nose still doesn't itch!

<0316>

The inevitable. This had only been brewing for three months now.

Wrong as it may be, there's something better about following through. Curiosities sated, the unknown made known. I'm also not the one who has to make real decisions. My life hasn't changed at all.

But it's funny how much more charged and emotional are things unspoken, hints and insinuations. When it's all obvious, it's easy to return home and sleep well.

<1854>

Capsaicin in my eye ow ow ow.

Still, good to find green chile at Giant and still have hotness floating about the next day.

<2351>

Today was tiring for many stupid reasons. Starting with getting up an hour earlier than I needed to, out of absentmindedness. My back is also hurting again.

<1950>

Congrats to Storey on his cool ass job. I approve.

I managed not to fail my MLM final. Yay pass/fail.

Yesterday we had a department picnic. There was a bit of wiffle ball, which was fun.

Otherwise, life is dull. Cinco de Mayo party on Friday... I want to make posole (which I know is more of a Navidad kinda thing), but I'm not really sure where to get it. I went to a store south of school today that had various hispano-latino foods, and there was some corn looking stuff, but it wasn't labeled posole or hominy, so I didn't get it. I may just bring breakfast burritos. :-)

Carne adovada would be nice.