grad student night IN!

hooray for relaxing evenings!

it's been a busy busy week!

saturday: i saw lion king on broadway with jessica -- it was AWESOME!

sunday: i was still tired from saturday, but after church i had a lunch meeting with amber (from church) and after an hour of discussion agreed to start helping run senior youth group in the fall. i'm excited, but apparently really am allergic to saying no (when someone tells me about a niche that needs to be filled and lists the skills they think i have to fill it, i don't think about the big picture of ALL of my time, and tend to say "ok, sure! sign me up!"... i enjoy all the stuff i'm up to, but haven't learned to necessarily budget relaxation like i should ;))

monday: worked in the TA office all morning until our 1pm meeting, ran around quickly to get last-minute errands done for tuesday,... then off to the coffee shop where met with baxter for 3 hours of studying for his qual, then met with esther for half an hour to set a reading list for a seminar we give this fall... while meeting with esther, i ran into a former student of mine, and after meeting with her i ended up chatting math with him for half an hour... so we're talking 11 hour day :)

tuesday: annual REU field trip to IBM... excellent as always, just from leaving campus until our return was 11 hours as well :P

wednesday: (1) meeting at 10am with colleen (not my housemate) to set the reading list for *our* fall teaching seminar, (2) attended presentation about prague by the czech REU students (it was HILARIOUS, see here, especially the intro (see slides 2 and 3) and the section specifically about prague (namely slides 6, 9, and 10) ; they promised there would be things i hadn't seen in the past two years of REU, and oh man, did the pictures deliver ;) ), after laughing for 1.5 hours of prague jokes, (3) i sat in on an hour long meeting where my coworkers at the TA office met with the manager of the campus student center to make room reservations/set up requests for TA orientation next month. it was 4:30pm by the time i was home again.

but here's one of the highlights of my week (besides the czech presentation and going on field trips at age 26 of course ;) ). some of the czechs had requested to go see a baseball game before we all leave the country in 1.5 weeks, so we were going to go tonight... and then it started pouring rain instead... i IMed the czech grad student (jan) and asked if monday would be ok instead (and he checked with the other students who were on campus). then, as we chatted a little more, i commented i was going to watch movies since there was no baseball to be had, and he asked if that was an invitation to join... i have no problem with movie company, so i ran errands and picked jan up from campus (obviously flying in from prague he doesn't have a car)... i introduced him to the wonderful world of "ferris bueller's day off", and we chatted until midnight about all kinds of stuff. for jan, he lives in the dorm with the other REU students, but is more like an analog of me. he enjoys it, but they're all 18-21 year olds, and he'll be 29 this weekend, so on occasion, like me, he feels old and needs a break :P, and i was happy to provide the escape.

most of my local friends are MIA lately... scott's busy, eric's in vermont or new hampshire or something, colleen is in minnesota, leigh's in maine... ben's been missing since april (not missing, just i haven't managed to track him down in person in 3 months). i've been hanging out quite a bit with sara, but most of the rest are gone... it's just fun to hang out with other fellow tired 25+ grad students, enjoy the chatting, and not feel guilty about energy level :)

it was a good day.

(and that's what i've been up to lately... how i manage to keep up with me, i'm not quite sure ;) )

end of ramble.

good night!