it ain't my birthday but i got my name on the cake.

Whaaaaaat this weekend was so ridiculous. I am still sleep deprived because of it.

Friday was the NO PANTS PARTAY. I had one of my emotional freakouts (argh) but dang! It was fun. I need to post pictures but I'm too tired to do that now - I'll have to do a pure picture update later. Besides, Kamna has all the good ones, as always.

Anyway, more house parties shall be thrown. We got several compliments on how fun it was, but I also had someone tell me that "everyone at that party got really sick or threw up." Well...maybe our next party will be moderation themed. NOT

Then Saturday Amber came into town. hi skuuuuuuuuuuuu! We caught up on the gossips over dinner. It's so nice to be able to walk a block to the square. Then we went to Tom and Jathin's House party. It was a zoo. If that many people had come to our place, our carpet would have been ruined for sure. Amber got tired early and went home, and Kamna and I tried to meet some first years. Then we decided it was a lost cause so we danced to "I'm on a boat" with Johnny in the living room....three person dance party? Because "I'm on a boat" did not attract any other awesome people, we knew for sure that it was a lost cause and decided to leave. (jk, jk) (not really.) Then we came home, heated up leftovers, and sat around chatting with Amber until 4am. Whoops. Did I mention that I was barely alive this whole day? I did not escape the plague of my own party.

And did we take a nice relaxing Sunday off? Oh no. Apparently Virgin Mobile throws a summer freefest every year, and it is actually literally free as in it costs zero dollars, so of course we went to Merriweather Post Pavilion, of Animal Collective album name fame, and saw soooooo many shows. And Red Bull parashooters, one of which was Richard Branson, all landing on the roof of the stage and spraying champagne everywhere. That man has fun. Anyway, we saw Jet, The Bravery, a little of The National, Weezer, half of Girl Talk, and most of Franz Ferdinand. The acoustics were great at the main pavilion stage. Weezer was a freaking blast. It was like seeing the last 10 years of my life flash by...while dancing like a crazy person. At Girl Talk, I wanted to be on stage, but at Weezer, it didn't matter. It felt more personal. It also felt like I should be playing Rock Band. Say it ain't soooooooooooo...

Then, tonight, Kamna's mom made us delicious Indian food and showed us acupuncture. The food was sooooo good. Nom nom nom. She's even taking us to class tomorrow! I think that means we don't have to leave as early. Woo hoo.

Other things happened over the weekend. Like Brandon leaving for Greenland. =(. I talked to him today, though, and he's made it as far as Denmark. Eek! I'm so nervous about his trip. It's too cold there for Texans.

On top of all this, I'm supposed to be studying. Right. Loading dose = concentration * volume of distribution / bioavailability. OH DANG did I retain something?? See parents, I do study. Sometimes. Maybe.

oh AND I stabbed myself in the eye on Saturday night with mascara, and I now have pink eye. WIN

snuggie

oh yes.

technology fail = life fail

We have a beautiful new building for class at Hopkins. It looks like the medical school of the future. However, it does not operate like the medical school of the future. Somehow they didn't think to test the videotaping technology, so my day yesterday went something like this:

9:30am: wake up. extremely pleased that i am still at home.
10am: dressed and ready to watch the first two lectures on my laptop
10:05am: suddenly very concerned about the absence of posted lectures
10:10am: gchatting with everyone online to figure out what's going on
10:15am: extremely frustrated that my stay-at-home plan is failing me
10:30am: go to safeway, buy brown sugar and vanilla
11am: bake a million cookies

Seriously. In my anger I baked soooooo many cookies. At least I didn't completely waste the day?

This is what it looks like if you actually go to class:

And that's the view I'll be seeing until they get their act together with the videotaping.

On the upside, living in my new house has been better than I could have hoped for. I will dedicate a post to my lovely house this weekend, after our first house party! It will be epic.

last days in Htown

Last Saturday Dad and Becky threw a barbeque! There was SO MUCH food. And the whole family was in town, which was so nice. It's super convienient to all live in the same state. I like that we don't have to leave Texas for visits.

Look how much Annabelle has grown! I feel like she just got here yesterday.

And so cute too.

My friends came to the BBQ as well. Shiner has a new beer called Smokehouse? It was good, and it was jawesome to see them. I hope everyone stays in Houston for the time being, it makes it a lot easier to catch up when I'm back. Guys, plz to modify your life plans around what's convienient for me. Although we were missing some people like Saunders & Tim. Lame! Tim said the rollercoasters he was riding were more fun than the BBQ, but this must be a lie. Also, he had not tried the boudin.

Anyway I spent that night downtown with friends, and then came back on Sunday for two days of errands and shopping and family time. Tuesday night we went to an Astros game! Hooray!

Unfortunately, the stros lost. This seems to be their thing lately. (lately?)

Blarg. The last two days before I left, I was sorta miserable. It's hard for me to come home and leave again. I get really nostalgic and weh weh weh. I just did not want to come back to school. Plus, I just got an email that they are going to start taking more attendence. WTF. I liked how it was!! I would write what my toast was at the end-of-first-year party was, but my father has warned me against slacker-type talk on my blog for fear of future job sneaks. Hey, job sneaks? I watched all the lectures online anywayz so back off.

This weekend I'm in Princeton/New York. Brandon is somewhere creating anerobic media while I update my blog. I pretty much live on the internet? His professor just walked into the office and said, "you're not Brandon!" Whoops.

I'm adding pictures for sad children to my webcomic list on the right. You should read it because it is extremely sad/funny, which is one of my favorite types of humor. A softer world falls under that heading as well.

I would consider this blog a total success if I could just get 1 more person hooked on webcomics. Bwahaha.

Quote from "rusty"* Briggs

"Obama throws like a girl. You know what Bush did really well? He could throw a first pitch. Remember after 9/11? He went to Yankee stadium and threw a strike. That's about all he did well."

*that's for you, James

memory

I had a great time this weekend. I wish I had taken a few pictures of everybody together. Ah, well.

I have a few very sense-based memories, and sometimes I'll smell something or feel something and I'm suddenly thrown right back into how I felt at that moment. Really hot, relentless sun beating down reminds me of walking to play tennis with Tim. Not playing the tennis, walking to the court. I'm half zoned out, half listening to Tim talk, spinning my racket and thinking about playing the game, half thinking about a sandwich since we always walked past jimmy john's to get there, thinking a little bit about what we'll be doing later but mostly just feeling the sun and the racket. Not wanting to be anywhere else or doing anything but exactly what I was doing.

I think that's pretty much my personal definition of happiness. Not wanting to be anywhere else or doing anything else. I really liked this article in the New York Times because he says it a thousand times more elegantly than I could:

"I suspect there is something inherently misguided and self-defeating and hopeless about any deliberate campaign to achieve happiness. Perhaps the reason we so often experience happiness only in hindsight, and that chasing it is such a fool’s errand, is that happiness isn’t a goal in itself but is only an aftereffect. It’s the consequence of having lived in the way that we’re supposed to — by which I don’t mean ethically correctly so much as just consciously, fully engaged in the business of living."

Emphasis mine. Anyway, I've been happy here (in Texas) and I guess what I've got to do is get a little more engaged in Baltimore. Avert my vision.

the beat is biology but what is the song?

sometimes i wonder how other people experience the world relative to how i experience it. actually, i wonder about that a lot. 

here is a petty example (really, really petty): can other people estimate time as well as i can? today i had a timer set for 20 minutes and i decided to get up after 10 and i checked and the time i got up was 9:48 on the timer, and that's pretty damn good. and i wasn't always this good with time, either. i remember one year when i basically discovered that i was very good at judging discrete chunks of time. maybe that's what helps me be on time to stuff so often. i have a very good sense of what time it is, how long something will take, and when i should leave for the next thing. maybe other people do not have this sense, or maybe they just do not care. ANYWAY enough with boring time talk. if only it were time-travel, instead.

i had a wart frozen yesterday and it's way, way more difficult to function without a left thumb than i thought. i can't open doors, wash my hair, hold my phone, type, or do a thousand other little things (ok, i can type just fine) because of the stupid thumb. i am highly displeased. i thought this would be an easier process. 

today i sunbathed without burning myself. this....this is cause for celebration. i am built to burn. that sounds cooler than it is. 

tonight we go dancing and i am SO EXCITED. all i want is a waltz.