Have I mentioned how much I hate moving?

I packed my books today, yay me! I went through the boxes from last time that still had stuff in them and ruthlessly threw things out. In addition to the holiday decorations, I ended up keeping half a box of memorabilia and knick-knacks that I felt bad throwing away since they were gifts. That's not so bad, considering I had a good three boxes full of stuff. I still have another couple to go through, but hey at least my books are packed. Tomorrow I'll do bathroom and kitchen stuff, minus what I'll need for the next few days.

This morning I went couch-shopping for a little while. There are several couch fads that I don't like, such as having pillows on the back instead of cushions, only two cushions instead of three, and icky microfiber fake suede upholstery. The Storehouse sofas were gorgeous, but all above the price I wanted to pay. There's a discount place we checked out that had millions of sofas. After sitting on about a dozen, my judgment was shot, so I'm going to try and get back there tomorrow to see if I can find something comfortable and non-ugly for a decent price. Sigh.

# : 9:44 PM : :

Today one of my coworkers told me that he wants to introduce me to his daughter (she's maybe 10) because she needs to know successful ambitious women like me. He thinks it's really cool that I'm applying to med school.

Then another coworker asked me for fashion advice for her 14-year-old daughter. She was browsing the kid's wish list at Hot Topic and asked me if that's really what the kids are wearing. I was like "cool! bondage pants!" so she decided I must be a teen fashion expert. I did point out that I'm too old to actually wear bondage pants. Then she asked if I'd ever heard of Slipknot and were their songs really satanic? I said I didn't think so, and mentioned that most of the albums I buy do have covers that are too scary for me to look at. When asked if the lyrics were scary too, I had to respond that I don't know because I can't understand them. (Definitely teen coolness points.) So then she asked me for further shopping and hair advice for the 14-year-old.

I was glad to help out, and I don't think that I'm *completely* out of touch (I do know something about Goth fashion at least; if the kid were an Abercrombie type I'd have to call in reinforcements) but dude, I'm not cool! My very-cool sisters laugh at my fashion sense. The coworker's response to that was "Well I think you're cool!"

When middle-aged people think I'm cool, I know I must be getting old.

# : 6:15 PM : :

Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines!

# : 11:19 AM : :

Trader Joe's packaging tries to thwart me at every turn. They like to sell their produce in these impossible-to-open plastic containers, like the ones that cheap electronics come in (last time I tried to open one of those, my scissors broke!). So it's a lengthy struggle to get to the food, and since the containers are clear it's like the food is taunting me. This morning's pineapple chunks finally succumbed when I pried the lid off with a knife.

I'm angry at last night's pizza, too. I bought Red Baron frozen pizza because it was on sale for like half the price of DiGiorno's, but it wasn't worth it. It tasted only marginally better than the frozen shrink-wrapped cardboard pizza my mom used to buy from Finast, before Finast turned into Tops. (Neither name was particularly accurate.)

The good part of my dinner was the Fat Weasel ale (also a TJ's product but easy to open with a beer opener) that I had because beer and pizza is such a good combination. This morning, though, I have a headache and an upset stomach, which is completely unfair after only one beer. I think I'm going to blame the pizza instead, since it sucked anyway. Then maybe I won't feel guilty about not eating the leftovers.

# : 10:12 AM : :

I feel strangely guilty that I haven't updated my blog in a week. I'm sure my vast audience is horribly disappointed every day when they click on me and see nothing. Right guys?

Most of my writing energy has been going into writing essays for secondaries. They're much harder than blog entries! I have submitted three secondaries so far and am going to turn in a fourth shortly. After that, I have seven waiting for me and am waiting to receive three more. I'm getting buried!

In other news, my rescheduled [test prep company] audition was today. My work computer broke again yesterday, but I was able to print everything anyway, and today I left early enough so that I was actually the first person to the audition! It went pretty well - the topic of my presentation was sailing, which almost all of my audience already knew how to do, so I felt a bit silly with my two days of experience, but at least they could answer the audience-participation questions. And, I passed! I get a phone interview later this week, then hopefully start training shortly after that.

I have only one week until move day. Have I packed? No. My best friend/college roommate is coming to visit this weekend, and she's promised to keep me company while I sort and box my junk, so this should work better than previous moves, when I put off packing until my parents actually arrived with the van.

# : 7:48 PM : :

Three blogs I read have recently addressed the question of why undergrads tend to sit like lumps in lectures, faithfully taking notes but rarely asking questions, even (especially?) when they don't understand. Though I was an excellent student, I wasn't a big question-asker, and it wasn't because I already understood everything. I'd been thinking about this for awhile when Radagast, as usual, provided a thought-out list of possibilities, which I'd like to expand upon.

Of Radagast's reasons, I think the following apply to what I was thinking when I failed to ask questions in class:

1a. Students almost never do the required reading ahead of time, but they don't want to make this fact obvious to the instructor. Thus if they believe the answer to their question may have been in the reading, they won't ask a question until they've checked the book.
1b. Students may think that their question has been answered in a prior portion of the lecture that they missed (while they were not paying attention, in the bathroom, out sick, etc.)
2b. Students may be hoping that if they can write everything down they can review their notes later and figure the material out then
[snippets run together and formatted]

This was me. I was an excellent student. But I didn't ask very many questions at all. (And it wasn't because I already understood everything - when I did, I either skipped class or asked very interested questions.) I rarely did the reading, and spaced out much of the time in lecture. What I did was make sure to take notes (I took good ones, despite not being actively engaged in listening), then while I was working on the problems, I would refer to the text and/or notes for whatever I didn't understand. If it was a class (like biology) that didn't have problem sets, I'd go through the text and relate it to the notes. The notes were also very helpful when studying for tests; you can generally tell what will be emphasized on the exam by what was emphasized in lecture.

So why did I do this? Little of it came from conscious decisions, so I probably can't pin down all of the motivations, but I'll try breaking it up.

Why didn't I do the reading? It often doesn't make much sense before the lecture, plus you end up focusing on the difficult sections which the lecturer then skips. Basically it's pretty pointless unless the subject is one you learn well by reading.

Why did I space out in lectures? It's not because they were boring. (Well, some profs did have extremely soothing voices.) It's actually because I wasn't following. On the occasions when I was able to actively listen to the lecture - make connections in real time, anticipate what was going to happen next, see the big picture - I never spaced out unless I was actually sick or something. Passive listening is, for me, pretty similar to spacing out. Yeah, I'm sitting there writing stuff down and can probably tell you the topic, but if I'm not engaged in the lecture, I'm not currently learning (in the sense of gaining an understanding). There aren't any "ooh!" moments, it's all "ok, ok, ok."

If there were problem sets, I didn't read the textbook (unless I was TOTALLY lost). Because that's just more prose, and if there's nothing to apply it to (whether a problem or a brain "hook") it's impossible to attend actively. Instead, I just tackled the problems with whatever I'd absorbed from lecture, and flipped back through the text and notes for examples or equations when I got stuck.

So to get back to the topic of why students don't ask questions: in order to ask questions, you must be actively listening - actually fitting the new information into your mental framework, making connections, processing in real time, rather than just saving it all up to work through later (during problem sets), or to keep in a pile to use as needed ("oh yeah, I always wondered what Prof X meant by that"). [Forgive me for the lacking terminology; I helped a college boyfriend write a paper on learning and the brain, but didn't actually take the course myself.]

It's really, really hard to actively listen during lectures as an undergrad. When everything's new, you can't challenge and question and fit things in; the expression "drinking from a firehose" comes to mind. I don't think it's possible unless you have a basic understanding of the underpinnings of the topic. It seems to me like there's a tipping point: if maybe 90% of the information makes sense and fits in without a problem, I'll be able ask questions about the other 10%. Under the threshold, you just can't formulate questions that fast. Or, you simply can't follow quickly enough - when I read a math book, I work through the problems at my own pace; when I attend a lecture I can get the instructor to stop and go through it again, but getting him to pay attention to the exact step I personally need 10 more seconds for is more trouble than it's worth. ("Where, here?" "No, before that." "Here?" "No, over with the 3X." "Ah, here! You just subtract." "Uh, thanks.")

It's like reading a book in a foreign language. I speak German, though not well, and I can read stories aimed at young schoolchildren. And understand them and laugh at the jokes and so on. I might not know all of the words, but I can pick most of them up from context and look up the handful that stump me. On the other hand, if I pick up Der Spiegel; I know more than half the words in most of the articles, but that's too few to depend on context. I have to pull out the dictionary multiple times per sentence. I *can* read an entire article, but not only will it take a long time, my understanding will be dulled by taking in the sentences word-by-word rather than as a whole.

There have been classes where I remember asking intelligent questions (and being gawked at because few others were following enough to even ask.) It happened a few times in programming classes, which I generally grokked pretty easily. For some strange reason, I understood organic chemistry (the first semester at least) and asked questions there too. (I wanted to ask questions when I was observing introductory classes as a teaching assistant or evaluator, but restrained myself because my questions wouldn't have been helpful to the actual students.) Somewhat interestingly, these situations were the same ones where I would correct the professor on minor math mistakes or misspeakings - I was following the lecture or the problem, so I noticed the error and also noticed that my fellow students seemed confused, so I made the correction to prevent them from getting mentally turned around or having mistaken notes.

I think there are things instructors can do to help students actively attend to the lecture. Radagast's techniques are good. Moving slowly at first then picking up the pace once people have a basic understanding can help. I like analogies - take something the students already understand and help them hook the new concepts in. I also liked one math professor's tactic of having us attack problems *before* lecturing on the topics, but most students didn't. (And my biggest pet peeve, realize that students can't draw diagrams quite as quickly, so don't move on as soon as you have all the lines on the chalkboard. Let the pencils catch up.)

# : 6:05 PM : :

So I just got my first interview invitation. That was fast. I feel so flattered!
 
In general I'm pretty well swamped with secondaries; I appear to have applied to a bunch of schools that don't screen. A large number of them have technical and design issues - invitations with the code showing, email addresses limited to 20 characters, strange organization, downed servers. As a techie, I'm not impressed.
 
Then there are the essays (so many!) and the fees (major sticker shock here) and the very specific instructions that vary across schools. I bought a whiteboard so I can keep track of all this stuff. Does that make me neurotic? Does the fact that I bought extra markers because they were pretty mitigate that at all?

# : 5:27 PM : :

I was dragged to see Anchorman this weekend. It was horrible. When you go to see a comedy, and the outtakes are by far the funniest part of the movie, you know something went wrong.
 
The problem with this movie is the same thing that's wrong with a lot of SNL-graduate movies: sketch comedy and movie comedy don't necessarily match up. Trying to stretch a moderately funny idea out to fill almost 2 hours pretty much guarantees that the humor is going to feel forced. I mean, I usually laugh at these movies, but it's because they're trying so hard, and I know I'm supposed to laugh, and it's mildly funny, so I can manage to giggle a bit.
 
A lot of movies I actually think are funny do come from the sketch comedy genre - Airplane, Best in Show, anything from Monty Python. I'm not sure exactly what the difference is, but I think it primarily has to do with the fact that the mocking is clever. You've got to have references and in-jokes, not just LOOK AT ME I'M DOING SOMETHING FUNNY AND STUPID humor. Or maybe it's just that those people are funnier.

# : 9:35 AM : :

The stinky floor mats I mentioned in last night's post are gone!
 
Apparently, leaving 3 hours early yesterday and telling my boss on the way out that I wasn't going to work in that room if nothing was done about the smell making me sick? Very effective. The mats are going to be removed over the weekend. Mine is already gone; I rolled it up and put it in the corner.
 
I feel so accomplished, like I've won a battle. Me against the stinkers. W00t!

# : 12:20 PM : :

According to Flea, they're coming out with a new reality show, where people face their nightmares. Her post about it is funny, but let me tell you, after today I know that facing your nightmares is not fun at all.

Awhile back, when I got my MCAT scores, it occurred to me to apply to teach test prep with [a big test prep company]. I miss teaching, and if I focused on the MCAT I'd get to teach subject matter in addition to test-taking skills, so it sounded like a great gig. I submitted my scores and was invited to audition. I set up an appointment today at 6pm and they told me to prepare a 5-minute teaching presentation and bring photocopies of my score reports as well as a current resume. No problem.

So I picked a topic (sailing) and let it stew in my mind for awhile. Last night I got home from work and started preparing. Then I remembered that I hadn't yet made the photocopies of my older standardized tests (I might want to teach those too), so I walked over to the library and took care of it. My printer hasn't worked for a long time, so I figured I'd print out the MCAT score report and my resume at work today. I finished my prep and went to bed.

This morning at work, there were two pieces of bad news: first, my internet-connected computer was broken. I put in a problem report and waited for them to fix it. Second, the place smelled horrible. The wax on the floor had worn off thanks to having people rolling their chairs around all the time, so they'd had to have it rewaxed. They decided that in order to prevent that, they should buy rubber floor mats to protect the floor. Whatever. In addition to the tripping hazard (they aren't flat), these things reek. They first installed them a month ago, and no one could even come in the room. So some guy took them home and let them air out in his yard for awhile, and last night apparently they put them back. Too soon. By lunchtime, I had a headache from the fumes. I took some Tylenol Sinus, but it didn't help. By 3, I gave up and went home.

I was sleepy, thanks to the headache meds, so I decided to take a brief nap. I set the alarm for 4:30 and drifted off. At 4:25, I bolted awake, having realized in my sleep that I'd neglected to print my resume. Shit.

I grabbed all my stuff and went to the library. All the computers were taken. It's worth a few bucks, I thought, and headed to Kinko's. They had 8 computers, but four were broken and the rest were taken. I tried to calm down and decided to wait until 5:15 before giving up. Quarter past rolled around pretty quickly, so I left, figuring that showing up minus a resume would be better than not showing up at all, and maybe I'd see another Kinko's on the way (I didn't).

Naturally, traffic was terrible. I'd figured that since the place was 15 minutes away, allowing three times that long for rush hour traffic would do it. Not really. I was still on 495 at 5:55 when I realized that I hadn't printed out my MCAT scores either.

That's where the nightmare comes in. I actually thought,"Of course, this is one of those nightmares where you're trying to get somewhere and you can't and you keep realizing things you've forgotten. Any minute now, I'm going to either wake up or look down and see that I'm naked." No such luck.

...

My boyfriend is really wonderful. He hardly freaked out at all when he answered the phone and heard only sobs for the first few seconds before I got it together enough to tell him what was going on.

He served as my cool head in the crisis, and encouraged me to call and reschedule since not only did I lack the most important papers, I wasn't going to get there on time anyway, and even if I did go I'd be all upset and red-nosed and wouldn't come off well at all. So I called, the guy was really nice, and I'm going to reschedule tomorrow.

I was still pretty upset, and all I wanted was to be home watching a fluffy movie. Of course, I'd seen the other side of 495, and if it had taken me 50 minutes to get to Maryland, it was going to take over an hour to get home. Eric looked up the movies playing nearby (all crap) and even the location of a day spa in case I wanted to get a massage (I didn't, since it would have made me cry more). And he told me cute stories, possibly all made up. So I felt quite a bit better, and I hung out at Borders until 8-ish, when I figured traffic would have dispersed.

On my way out of the mall, I saw another Kinko's. Its sign had been obscured by a tree when I first drove by.

It took me only 15 minutes to get home.

# : 8:45 PM : :

Saving Private Hammer

Saving Private Hammer became a mission for Fort Carson Staff Sgt. Rick Bousfield, whose 3rd Brigade Combat Team adopted the cat born last fall at a base in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad. [...] During artillery attacks, soldiers tucked Hammer inside their body armor for safekeeping.
[...]
Like his comrades, he had to earn rank. He was “promoted” to private first class after nabbing five mice. “He should have been major,” Bousfield said. “He caught a rat as big as he was.”

After $2500 and help from two animal groups, he's retired to Sgt. Bousfield's home.

# : 5:14 PM : :

Last weekend I decided to try making Indian food again. I settled on chicken tikka, bought some yogurt, and found a tasty-looking recipe in one of my cookbooks. The marinade was easy to mix and smelled pretty good. The food smelled really good while it was cooking, too - very garlicky. Not Indian at all. When I ate it, it turned out to have the same problem as my last Indian attempt (which had used curry paste) - grainy, not very flavorful, not the right flavors.

I don't know what the deal is. Probably I need to buy an actual Indian cookbook (rather than a one-size-fits-all) and fresh spices and a food processor for grinding them up. Or, maybe I should stick to getting Indian carryout.

Of course, I had a lot of yogurt left over, so now I needed to figure out something to do with that. (I don't eat plain yogurt, or even the flavored kind very much.) Paging through cookbooks I found a recipe for mango lassi, which I love. So last night on my way home from volunteering I stopped at Trader Joe's, but they didn't have any mangoes, or canned mango puree. I bought "mango sauce" instead and just mixed it into yogurt. It's good. Doesn't taste particularly mango-ey, nor quite like a lassi (there might be more ingredients) but it's as good as standard fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt.

Now, I still have more yogurt than I can eat, plus a jar of mango sauce. I have plans for the latter, though - I'm thinking shrimp with mango-chipotle sauce. I am such a trend follower.

# : 2:49 PM : :

I started reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat last night. It's the most interesting book I've read in months, and I've been reading some pretty good books. The book, by Oliver Sacks, a well-known neurologist, is basically descriptions of interesting (read: weird) cases, tied together by some common threads and a bit of discussion of the field of neurology.

These cases are so incredibly fascinating. The title patient had a degenerative left hemisphere disease that affected his visual processing. He could no longer recognize faces as such, or take in entire pictures, but had to manage by noticing small details - recognizing people by their unusual glasses, for example. He could recognize shapes, and describe any object very technically (there is a description of a glove as a container with five outpouchings), but couldn't identify very many things. (Apparently his wife was approximately the same size and shape as a hat stand, and he once thought her head was a hat.)

I felt sorry for this guy (as I did for all of the patients) but the really neat thing about him was that he was a singer and music professor, and that wasn't affected at all. He could no longer read music, but could sing along. He couldn't recognize his students' faces, but could identify them by their voices. And he got through the day by singing constantly - he had songs for getting dressed, eating breakfast, everything - in order to focus. Sacks prescribed for him a life no longer just centered on music, but consisting entirely of music. He was able to continue teaching up until his death.

I'm completely sucked in by this book. Luckily he's written a lot more!

# : 8:57 AM : :

---SPOILERS AHEAD---

Like all great comic-book movies, the Spider-Man movies have a working formula they stick to. This is why I love them. I know what to expect. After coming up with a list of the apparent necessities, I decided to compare the two movies and see which one comes out ahead. Winner per topic in bold.

Ingredient	Spider-Man	Spider-Man 2
plucky Aunt May	secretly listens to MJ and Peter while she's in her hospital bed	hangs from ledge by her cane, then easily drops down
Kirsten Dunst gets wet wearing a clingy outfit	little sweater	frilly dress
upside-down kiss	MJ and Spider-Man	MJ and her boyfriend
Peter decides not to use his powers	after the jerky wrestling organizer doesn't pay him	because he's sick of not being there for his friends? I don't know
New Yorkers stand up for Spider-Man	by throwing rocks at the villain	by stepping between the villain and our knocked-out superhero then backing off when threatened (points for humor)
mad scientist, formerly idolized by Peter, taken over by his own creation	Norman Osborn, his friend's dad	Dr. Octavius, some important scientist
coolness factor of mad scientist	Willem Dafoe	integration of octopus arms with real body, Doc Ock ends up destroying the evil reactor
web-swinging action	excitement of discovery	better CGI, plus he goes between a semi cab and its trailer
heroic saving of mass transportation	boat full of school kids, suspended by spidey-web	the El (wasn't this supposed to be New York?), stopped with web and a Superman-esque attempt at body-braking, during which his costume rips open
emotional motivation for action	death of Uncle Ben	MJ? Aunt May? I might have slept through this part

Overall, I'd have to say that the first one worked more for me emotionally, but the second one was more fun.

Comments welcome on anything I missed!

# : 11:29 AM : :

I remembered to call Case today, and it turns out that *two* professors haven't turned in their letters yet. Far from an emergency, but I'm glad I remembered so I could remind them. Hopefully the MIA professor is back from Europe or wherever she went.

My new Virginia license plate stickers came yesterday, so I also remembered to call State Farm. Turns out I actually have to go see an agent in VA to switch my insurance over. I suppose I should put the plates on already though.

I hate taking care of administrivia like this. I'm already dreading calling the phone and cable companies when I move. I think it should all be done online.

Actually, when I moved down here, I *did* order phone and cable online. The cable part worked pretty well, but the phone, oh man. They waited until I'd already moved to try contacting me to verify my identity or something like that (I'm not sure how the "verification" works; they didn't see photo ID or anything), then they emailed me. Of course, I couldn't check my email because I didn't have a phone line. And they wanted me to call them. Also difficult without a phone line. So no more Verizon web site for me.

# : 10:50 AM : :

I started getting secondaries today.

(For those non-med types following along at home, you fill out the one-size-fits-all AMCAS application and select schools to apply to, then if those schools like you (or don't pre-screen) they send you secondary applications so you can fill out more of the same information plus more essays. Also they ask if you have any felony convictions, and what's your mom's work phone number, and stuff like that. After they get those back, and you make your professors send in letters of recommendation*, if they still like you, you get invited for interviews.)

This is exciting. Except for the essay part. I have no unique qualifications! I haven't overcome any serious difficulties! I'll add no diversity to your class! Just let me in because I'm smart!

No, seriously, I'm happy to be at this point. Obviously these schools can't have pre-screened or I wouldn't have heard from them so soon, but I still feel all flattered and stuff.

*One of my professors seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. This could cause difficulties. Note to self: call Case tomorrow!

# : 5:51 PM : :

Tonight was another fun night. I went down to Dupont Circle to have dinner with some more friends (some who couldn't make it last night, and some like me who just like to go out again). Although we had to walk in the heat and humidity, the restaurant we settled on (La Tomate) was tasty. I had black linguine with shiitake mushrooms, shrimp, and sun-dried tomatoes in white wine sauce. Mostly because I wanted to try black pasta. It was tasty. I had tiramisu for dessert, which was just OK - personally I prefer the tub of tiramisu at Trader Joe's, especially since it costs the same amount for like four times as much.

I probably should have caught the Metro right after dinner, but I felt like wandering and anyway didn't want to get on the train without making a rest stop first. So I went to Kramerbooks, my new favorite book store. It is one of those places where I feel like I want to read every single book. Their science selection is really impressive considering the size of the place; much better than the Books-A-Million right down the street. So I bought a couple of books: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. I started reading the former on the Metro, and it's really good. I'm looking forward to the other one as well. It's probably a good thing that store is not really close to me, because I don't need to buy that many books!

# : 11:26 PM : :

I haven't blogged much recently, which is weird because quite a bit has been going on. I guess when a lot happens it's hard to either figure out what to include, or sit down to type everything!

So, what have I been up to recently?

Last week Eric flew to DC so we got to hang out during the week. Wednesday evening we went to Bardeo, a wine bar in Cleveland Park. We've been there before and it's one of our favorite places. The food comes in Amanda-sized portions, so I can actually clean my plate (I think some people order a few things and share; the prices allow this) and they offer wine by the half-glass, so I can try several kinds. It's great. Eric had steak, which was so tender he really didn't need the steak knife, and I had trout. My dinner wine was a red I can't remember the name of, that was served chilled which I thought was interesting. (Probably I am exposing a huge gap in my wine knowledge here.) For dessert Eric wanted cheesecake and it turned out to be fantastic. I wanted Beringer Nightingale for my dessert wine, but they were out of it so the waitress recommended Muscat Beaumes de Venis instead. What a fantastic wine. Eric, not a dessert wine fan (he got Scotch), said it tasted the way he always expected alcohol would taste before he was old enough to drink.

After dinner we went across the street to the movie theater and saw Spiderman 2 with Tim and a bunch of other people. It was awfully late so I had a bit of a hard time staying awake (OK, the wine probably didn't help) but I thought the movie was really good. Unfortunately, by the time it let out Metro was no longer running so we had to take a cab home.

On Friday we drove up to Cleveland. Our plan was to leave early so we could stop at a state park and have a picnic, but instead we got stuck in a traffic jam (in West Virginia!) and stopped at IHOP. So we had to have the picnic at a highway rest area. But the drive was good anyway - it's so much better with a companion. Especially when said companion has a fancy new laptop and DVDs! I watched The Fast and the Furious during the slow parts.

When we got into Cleveland we went straight to Dave and Buster's to meet college friends. The boys played games and the girls sat at the bar and had girly drinks (paid for by the boys!) so everyone had a good time. It was great to catch up with everyone.

Saturday I hung around at home, did a superb job at hemming my new jeans, then met everyone for dinner at Quaker Steak. I love wings. And I miss them, since bw-3 and Quaker Steak don't exist around here! The boys, being silly, ate Atomic wings, but I stuck to edible food. The others went to see Spiderman 2 afterwards, while Eric and I headed downtown to visit Mi Pueblo and some more friends.

On Sunday we went canoeing with my family - it rained. The sunshine afterwards felt really good though. Then we went to my grandparents' for dinner, visited my sisters at Handel's ice cream shop, and watched fireworks.

I had to leave Monday morning to meet people in DC for dinner Monday evening. Thanks to a 2-hour traffic jam at Breezewood, I was an hour late, but it was fun anyway. Then I got home to find out that my roommate had moved out while I was gone for the weekend! I knew she was leaving sometime this month, so it wasn't as weird as it sounds, but I was still surprised.

Which reminds me of all the stuff I have to do before I can move in August...

# : 4:46 PM : :