hosting

I had a lot of fun at our holiday party this year. Generally it's Lindsay's party, but she was generous enough to share the title with Diane and me this year.

Despite having hardly any idea of who was coming (facebook replies were scarce), we ended up having just the right amount of space and just the right amount of food and drink. Possibly too much of drink, really, but there's always the next party to fuel.

I was so happy to see everyone who came, and especially grateful to those who took such time and trouble to get here. With so many people around, we didn't get the time together I wanted, but something is better than nothing, and at least there's the promise of more one-on-one in the near future.

These winter holidays are my favorite time, Thanksgiving turkey to Hanukkah latkes to Mom's birthday cake to Christmas stew, pudding, and steak to New Years cocktails.  Hmmm, maybe it's actually all about the food.

obligatory new years post

Last year was busy. I moved to a new state, started a new job, and applied to four neuroscience programs, to start in the fall. All these changes came with their own problems, but they're going well...I think.

So far I've heard from Columbia for an interview, and from a professor at BU, a heads-up that I'll probably get an interview. The others I haven't heard from yet. Oh well.

Christmas was a lot of fun (no pictures), but we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas in 5 different places. We also ate a ton at all those places, including 2 breakfasts and 2 dinners in one day. After all that excitement, we spent a chill night putting together a 500-piece I Spy puzzle. Some of us (not me) wore headlamps to assist in the project.

In the same vein, I rang in the new year by watching the Twilight Zone (apparently Syfy does a marathon every year!) and watching the ball drop. We then woke up at 9:30, the earliest so far on our 2-week NJ vacation.

Then we went for a walk in the institute woods. My family's never been there, and while my dad went to the gym (which he said was full of resolution-makers), my mom, Michelle, Pete, and I spent a glorious day outside.

Michelle wanted a walking stick, so Pete broke one off for her and we stripped it of its damp bark.

Then she wanted another one, I guess as a weapon? Or to balance herself out? The first one was broken too short, but the next was perfect.

She left one at the head of the trail, as is traditional, but took the first one home to sand and polish until safe to hold onto without gloves.

We wanted to round up our walk with some ice cream, but the bent spoon was closed. Halo pub was good enough in a pinch.

I'd love to be back in the area next year.

stranger tides

Lately I've been updating my nails a little more often than I used to. I'm trying to break the old pattern of wearing a color past its prime: when it starts chipping, I start picking at it until it looks truly terrible.

Better to just wipe the slate clean, even if I don't replace it with anything. This time I did! Sunday afternoon I put on a new arrival: OPI Stranger Tides.

And this photo is from 3 days later. Not bad, eh? I love this color, and 3 coats in exchange for this kind of finish and perfect wear is a-ok by me.

I feel a little silly doing a nail post when Lindsay has started an entire blog with posts about color and fancy layering (so fancy!!). Do you do guest posts?

And other news:

• Going to the NC state fair in Raleigh this weekend!
• Applying to grad school
• First trip back to NJ is 10/20-10/23. I don't know that I'll be able to see many people on such a short trip, unfortunately.

Chapel Hill

Pete's mom came to visit us. It was pretty great.

We went hiking:

We ate barbecue and drank sweet tea:

 

It was fun. It's fun here.

productivity

I'm busier than ever.

Grad school update:

• Interviews at three schools: NYU, UT, and Rutgers, not in that order.
• Waiting on three schools: Penn (given up), Cornell, BC
• Possibly applying to one more: U of Washington

Rescue squad update:

• Waiting on EMT certification to arrive in the mail. This might take awhile, since I took the test on the 27th of Jan and the government-run site still says "Not Attempted" as my status for that.
• Recording secretary and being on the e-board in general is taking more time than I thought it would
• LOSAP is taking less time, but only because nobody is responding to me
• I want to put in more time picking up shifts once I'm an EMT
• Driver training...

I also try to fit in:

• Work, like running participants, learning the IRB, and training on the new scanner
• Social life, like going to Zaffron and girls' night and triple birthday party
• Family life, like seeing Michelle!
• Other commitments, like the DCoP and the class I'm auditing
• Daily activities, like enough sleep and well-prepared not-takeout food

This is all great, but it's a problem, and not only for me, when I get nothing done.

first polish review

It's about time, right?

I saw Lindsay and Diane on Saturday, after a month of not at all. So...getting Japanese food, seeing these two, that's all I could ask for. But! It turns out they brought the one thing that could improve on that formula: BIRTHDAY PRESENTS!

One was a set of jellies and jams that I am very much looking forward to trying with croissants from Witherspoon Bread Co or the Little Pastry Chef, depending on whether I'm in the mood for flaky or hearty. I'll put a review of those soon, I'm sure.

For tonight, we have the second present: a bottle of FUNKY DUNKEY, from the OPI Shrek collection. Overall, I wasn't impressed with what I saw of the collection, but I thought this and one other were possibles! When I saw the bottle I gasped--I thought at first it was one of the bottles on my wish list. It looked just perfect. A color I didn't have AND wanted!

I got home and tried it out over CND ridge-filler and under Poshe's fast-drying topcoat. The topcoat, by the way, is fantastic. Super quick dry, cheap, readily available. It has the same issue that all fast-drying topcoats do, though: it starts drying out slightly every time it gets used, so when it's about half empty (or gets thick) I start adding maybe three drops of Seche restore about every other time I use it.

The ridge-filler base coat is awful. I'm really disappointed, since lately I've been picking at my nails and liked CND's stickey (regular base coat), so I wanted to like the ridge-filler. Nope. It feels tackier, doesn't hold as well--lots of chipping, and many polishes don't flow as well over it. Not a great choice for trying out a brand-new polish, but I want to use this damn thing up, and I figure since I'm doing a lot of drill-work, I'm going to redo my nails pretty soon anyway.

So: the polish itself! The application was streaky, and felt, paradoxically, watery on the first coat and very thick and tacky on the second. In general good 2-coat coverage, but because of the streakiness a third coat would not have gone astray. I'm inclined to give this the benefit of the doubt; my arms are slightly shaky from all the work they've been doing, the light wasn't great (though that's not really a factor), I was a bit impatient since it was late, and of course, I used the ridge-filler base. Next time I wear this I'll use stickey and see how it goes.

Because there WILL be a next time. The bottle color is a perfect purple that I didn't have. On the red-based side but slightly muted; mid-tone. It's not as dark (or red) as Pamplona Purple, and it's darker and less creamy than Uptown Girl. Yum, I couldn't wait to see it.

And boy was I surprised. I know polishes dry a bit darker than the bottle, but this is FAR darker. It's still very different from Pamplona Purple, and I'm actually still loving it just as much, even though it didn't turn out as expected. It's a great summer-fall color: intense and different enough for summer, but dark and smokey enough for fall. By the way, this is a picture from Wednesday morning, and I applied the polish Saturday night...and in between I've been doing a lot of handiwork. My right hand is more chipped, but this is still excellent wear, especially considering the inferior basecoat.

You can see the slight streakiness on my pointer that a third coat would have evened out.

This is a GREAT color, guys. Thank you so much: you made my day, and the polish was the least of it. And because I promised Diane:

bubble two

We walked down Mass Row, unchanged except for reinforced and more-visible chains blocking off road traffic, and went to Rocky/Silsby where Corey won round two of our knowing-people game.

The game spontaneously evolved starting when I recognized that Santa-Claus guy with the white tuft of hair on his forehead who was always around Collis, managing or just working the register. I didn't know his name, but he was a burst of familiarity that was very welcome after we peered into One Wheelock and found it terribly disappointing. Round one went to me: recognizing someone. Round two was knowing that person's name. For Corey that was Andrew Samwick, who walked out of Rocky just as we were entering.

Here's Corey posing with a picture of himself. In the picture he's presenting evidence for...something. I forget. I didn't have many memories of Silsby and Rocky...just Humanities lectures freshman year and the financial aid exit interview. I also found my bike outside Silsby junior year a few months after it had been stolen. Soon after that it was re-stolen and I never saw it again. Not to imply anything, of course.

We went to Baker next, and explored it more thoroughly than I ever had as a student. We went into those display rooms just off the entrance, which had all kinds of blueprints and pictures of the library and other buildings. The pictures and plans were from various times, and some of the blueprints had never been put into action.

There were a couple hilarious pictures of the Hop that are clearly from the 70s =)

bubble part one

The bubble continues to exist despite establishing myself outside it. I like that, Katie! Like the tree falling in the woods: I don't have to be in the bubble for it to be there. This is a very good thing, because I can always go back and have it seal around me again, for short amounts of time. This was the first since I graduated.

This is not to say that the place hasn't changed. I'd heard a lot about changes from current students and those that had visited before. I visited most of the places on my list, and some that hadn't been on it.

One of the most different was Thayer dining hall. It was mostly closed down for extensive changes, but the building itself was open, so we walked through what we could. Corey was disappointed at the lack of the FoCo runway: FoCo was totally closed off, being used as storage while other places were being redone.

No more Blend, or Remix, or whatever people don't call it anymore. No more Kitchen Sink for Scott.

Homeplate was still open for the interim students, but not at the hour we were there. Remember the dessert demos? The Sunday Brunch? It wasn't left unscathed, however.

The first feeling I had when I saw the Homeplate seating area was one of space. That's because that elevated step is gone and the half-wall enclosures are gone. No more nooks, booths, cozy feeling. Instead: rigid rows with no personality. A second FoCo.

You may also notice the solid wall on the right side. There is no longer a FoCo-Pavilion-Homeplate circuit. Presumably the Pavilion is still there, but there was no way to get to it with the FoCo doors locked. The recession in the wall is only a couple of doors, possibly restrooms.

This was one of the weirdest things: The stairs leading down from Topside have been walled off. The stairs are still there, I guess, but there's no way to get to them. We later went up the other stairs and found lots of construction. It also turned out that the stairs pictured actually go from nowhere to nowhere. There doesn't seem to be any reason for this whatsoever. It's not like they're taking out the stairs in order to create room: why build the wall in that case?

There were also a couple tanks of helium in the Thayer dining entrance. H-croo was active and probably needed them for whatever they were doing with the crowds of trippers there. Too bad we couldn't play with them.

In a mild state of shock and disappointment, we headed off to other parts of campus.

a few lists

Things I want to do in/around Hanover:
1. Pettigrew-Cousins wedding!!
2. See all my friends!
3. See Mao Laoshi and Prof Bucci
4. See the senior apartments, the River, Thayer engineering and dining, McLane, Baker/Berry, Kemeny/Haldeman, Moore, Dartmouth Hall, the Gold Coast, the Hop, Collis, the Chinese building (forget its name omg)*, Rollins, Occom Pond, and Balch.
5. See downtown Hanover and cross the bridge to Norwich and Dan and Whits
6. Eat at One Wheelock, Gusanoz, Mollys, Canoe Club, Murphys, Yamas, The Fort
7. Buy Butterworks Farms yogurt, lots of it, at the Co-op. Buy more Dartmouth stuffs, like another hoodie maybe
8. Visit a dairy that sells raw milk: I'm thinking Upinngil.

Weather forecast in/around Hanover when I'm there next weekend:
1. Friday 78 and sun
2. Friday night 55 clear
3. Saturday 74 and scattered showers (noooo!!!)
4. Saturday night 53 and scattered showers?
5. Sunday 72 and sun

Things I need to do for moving:
1. Pay Jenny for her furniture and fridge
2. Move my bed up the stairs
3. Pay Wouter or Sara the furniture deposit
4. Open a PSE&G account
5. Paint a lot of purple and cream
6. Move all my stuff
7. Make (elephant?) curtains
8. Find/buy a full-size bed frame and standing lamp

Things that were all over my car this morning:
1. Frost. What?

Projects at work:
1. The J Neurosci paper
2. Future directions on the J Neurosci paper
3. The peak experiment (c'mon undergrads sign up I won't complain about you anymore!)
4. The dots experiment
5. Grant work looming, no doubt

*ETA:  The Chinese building is called Bartlett. I remembered all on my own!

what goes up comes back down and back up and

Camping during the Geminid meteor shower, Melbourne at Christmas, Albany in October, Jamaica right now, London anytime ever. I keep making plans I know won't work out.

Finally I felt myself mentally capable of re-reading Redemption Ark. Done in two days and I love it again...but I won't read the next one.

Another 2-hour shift with no calls, so I got to drive the rig around a lot, and it was pretty OK. Then I ran a red light I never knew existed and found that sitting too close to and pressing a stiff pedal with huge boots leads to intense cramping of places I thought weren't muscle.

The lab is slowly returning to normal. People are back or coming back from vacation and interns are leaving. But Marieke was hit by a car while she was on her bike. Please be careful.

Ellen and Robert's wedding is in less than two weeks.

I had a good dream last night, though that's all it can be. At least I can look forward to more good dreams. There's no limit to what I can come up with: my good dreams are as good as my bad dreams are bad, and often just as possible.

picture post

So each one is like a thousand words right? I'll include some extras as explanations. Also: you can click on any of these to see them way bigger.

A double-yolk egg. I got these from the farmers market, and while they don't look particularly orange to me, I totally see the difference when I break open a store-bought one. Anyway, I was pretty happy since the yolk, when runny, is my favorite part.
Extra extra: a site that starts out innocuously enough, with explanations for double yolks. Things quickly get gross, and I'm reminded that eggs come from biological beings.

I took the GRE general test on the 27th and never have to take it again (which is the important part). The building I took it in had an impossible to find elevator—I took the stairs—and a recessed door, which was thankfully not what I was looking for. I mean, really.
Hint: check out the name on the door.

It was my dad's birthday on the 30th, and at Penang that evening Kim asked the waiters to bring a dessert and sing. My mom was skeptical: could these fobs know how to sing happy birthday? I, remembering the birthdays people had in China, knew better. Asian restaurants are the absolute best place to embarrass someone on their birthday.

Lindsay had a GREAT get-together on the 26th of June, and unfortunately a lot of people had to miss it (sorry Charu). She made delicious cupcakes and was, once again, a perfect host.

When Roland and Vicki, my dad's brother and his wife, came to stay for a few days in the beginning of July, I slept in Michelle's room and found a  dire threat waiting for me on the pillow the second night. Needless to say, I removed my face wash and toothbrush from her room RIGHT AWAY. Also, those cut out pieces of paper on the page opposite were used for warning and other notes slipped under doors and carefully signed.

I like my new friends/future housemates in Princeton.

I don't even know this guy's last name (first name Justin), yet I drew a vague Abe Lincoln on his arm in blue glitter glue, just in time for the funeral he went to tonight. Alison the intern (or is it the intern Alison?) finished the job with a fat T-Rex and USA. Come on.

Finally, the tattoo I will probably never get (on my left ankle, if you're curious). It'll just be an outline of the elephant, so ignore the paisley, as awesome as that would be. But you know what would be even awesomer? A Where's Waldo tattoo. TOW all the Waldos.

people who always make me feel better

Theresa: i don't get used to it, everytime i wonder how anyone can be so bad
               it's like, i discover that *** is a fool for the first time, every time


No wonder you're a resource for concerned parents everywhere.

what a weird...

week. at least i get to relive the glory days by rooming with kristin for ellen's wedding! I'M SO EXCITED I COULD JUMP. actually that's saying a lot, because i'm so very weary just now.

and according to charu, it's raining buckets in phl, so hopefully that will rumble over here and do away with our humidity...tomorrow. because there's a cookout tonight and i need to study tomorrow.

am getting voted in (i hope) to be a PRS member next thursday, with the endorsement of the chief and a classmate who died this week. such a sad SAD thing: she was young, of course, and did good things with her life. what's better than helping people? i'd heard she was on the squad just before hearing she died, and was looking forward to working with her.

ah, like learning a new word and then seeing it everywhere. theme!

shallow!

me: i wonder what it'll be like not to have loans
Theresa: i think it will feel like back problems and arthritis
               and thinning hair

Nope, not for me! And you'll notice she didn't include wrinkles in that list, because We Believe in Sunscreen.

I'm in quite a good mood today, so this is going to be really shallow. It started with yesterday, hearing funny stories from a new facebook friend (hi John) and having adventures with the new audio system in the scanner. We also watched Return of the Jedi—at least, a little bit of it. I think I'll do Leia-hair again tomorrow!



Speaking of hair, I took a picture of it to post up on that site where you sell your hair. I think I'll sell it and donate it to charity instead of donating it to locks of love. They actually don't turn out many wigs, the wigs often go to kids with alopecia, and I think there are more worthy causes out there. Somehow disasters and diseases, while terrible, don't seem as bad as the pure evil you encounter when people do bad things to other people.

All right, so work ended with me getting free pizza, which was tempered by bits of mushroom, gah. I got home and watched a bit of Best in Show, got a weird call from Max about writing a song (?), and ate toffee (the dry English kind). Also, my mom asked if she could wear my red lipstick. Imitation, people! I like it.

This morning, good mood preserved: I got enough sleep. This was at the expense of getting-ready time, so I had to skip my morning cup of tea. So far it's OK. I went to the summer-fall Princeton farmers market for the first time with Max, intending to get eggs, lunch, and whatever else struck my fancy. Somehow overnight I figured out what he was actually asking me to help with: not casting Oklahoma into a new genre, but writing lyrics to the tune of Oklahoma. The lyrics should be a tribute/roast of his uncle Charles, who I know nothing about, and I don't actually know much of the Oklahoma tune, so I couldn't be much help. But the thing is, Scott and I used to do that sort of thing spontaneously! And that was always really fun, and I thought I was pretty good at it. Anyway, I had a couple ideas about Max's project, and it turns out we think the same way about it, which could be good for working together, or it could mean we just have redundant ideas.

At the market I got my eggs and lunch (a really...TOUGH salad. Is sharp an adjective normally used to describe salads? I'm thinking not, but it was still pretty good.) and peaches! I remembered the warm peaches I picked with the Newbrys in Oregon, and getting pelted with them by Chad and Joe, and how Scott defended me valiantly. Warm peaches are lovely, peach smoothies are lovely, and peach pie is loveliest. I'm still unhappy about the farm stand on Dey Rd in Cranbury that closed down.

To conclude: It is July, and I like seeing the html here, because I used to able to write in it, and now I've forgotten everything but know more about programming in general.

OH DUH

Now that I have a blog, I have somewhere to write about all the stuff I want and have tried and wish I could have. I can unload here instead of in gchat or in my own head. This is a win-win because I AND you just have to see this once. Also, I have a permanent record so I remember this stuff, and if anything I write is helpful, you will enjoy that. That makes it a WIN-WIN or a WIN-win at the very least. The "yous" here are my readers, which I think is only ktr. OK, so it's a WIN-win.

I'll start off with this:



$12.50 at martinandosa.com. Understand: I want the shirt, the lady, and her hair. I've only put the price of the shirt.

Also: the neuro/psych IM soccer team I play on is in 9th place of 10 teams. The only team below us is the brand-new one that joined up a couple weeks ago, woo! To quote Max: the stage for our dramatic ascension is set. The great thing is, he could be talking about our standing in the league OR my fitness level as indicated by butt-pain as I climb the stairs.

broked car

So! As you may have gathered from my gchat status a couple days back, I am having car troubles. The transmission needs replacing, which will cost about $1200, which just under half the worth of the car. I don't need this in my life. Right now it still gets me from A to B, with occasional bouts of crap this is hard to drive with a bent shaft! As long as it stays that way until I move to Princeton, it'll be ok, I think. I won't need a car so much then...

If it breaks down before then, I'll have a decision to make I guess.

I'm really excited about moving to Princeton, but there are a few ways it could go wrong. We'll see.

I signed up to take the GRE on Tuesday, July 27th, thinking that would force me to study. As it is I continue to forget, and haven't studied much at all (except for the much part). I only need to cover the verbal, math, and writing parts, though. Whew! Looks like easy times ahead.

This leads me into today's mishap: I'm the new assistant secretary for the Dartmouth club of Princeton (this wasn't the mishap), and my first duty was to survey the members about their preferred dates for the next meeting, and then let everyone know what the consensus was. Step one, good. Step two, I was really proud of how I included the date and time clearly in the subject line and in the email itself. Go me, until I get a reply two minutes later telling me the 7th is a Wednesday, not a Monday, and asking could I please confirm the date again. D'oh. Anyway, expect a post sometime after Monday, July 12th telling y'all how my first minute-taking went.

Here's another survey: Is it likely for a girl named Pilar to be called "Pilly"?

Last of all for now: I like how Fei says indeedio. What a great way to start off being 24.