the rundown

it was a good day... up until about 10 minutes ago.... but we'll save that part for the end.

got nearly 8 hours of sleep, which is mighty impressive for lara on a thursday night... class was fine... got a new all time personal record on minesweeper while killing time before pizza seminar (97 seconds on expert level... previous record was 102)... ben helped me set up the room for the seminar and then ben, sujith, and mike helped get the pizza, and the speaker was great... had fun running errands... watching mulan with leigh (she just got the new dvd version of it)...

dinner with eric's family was a blast... they all flew in from vegas to philly wednesday, and are around today and tomorrow before going back to philly to fly back (they have family there too, not just visiting eric here)... i'd met them all in july, so it was fun to see them again... the 5 of them (parents, and then eric and then he has a younger brother and a younger sister), and 8 of us math people ate at an indian restaurant and chatted for over 2 hours... it was a good time.

after that, ben and me went to see "ray" -- which got a huge round of applause from everyone in the theater when it was done -- it was really good... story of the life of ray charles, but really well tied together... i was impressed.

so, 2:15am, life is great, i've had a long but fantastic day... what could go wrong?

i've been trying to sort out my life and have hit a major kink in the fixing process that's no good... applied for and got "conditionally approved" for a loan... they told me they needed more info, so i got them the more info... now i come home to another email tonight that says they still need more holes filled in from what i sent.... i'm following all their freakin instructions, but how many paperwork hoops do they expect me to jump through?!?!?! i want to just say this is all a big bother and give up on it, but i need the money if i expect to be able to afford to exist come next fall (when i'm on teaching assistantship instead of fellowship)... maybe i'll "luck out", fail the qual, and get a whole new life vision in january?

blah... headache indeed.

can't end an entry on this grumpy a note, so here... go look at the new pictures here - enjoy.