all year long, i think of halloween costumes. but you already know this.

so this year, i thought instead of trying to decide on one costume, i'll just throw a party at my own place so i can have as many costume changes as i want (think eva longoria at the alma awards)

save the date- saturday, november 1! (i figured most people will be going downtown on the 31st, since it falls on a friday this year). friends near and far- i hope to see you there/barely recognize you under your super creative/cool costume!

The grad students start off every year by going to one of the roundabouts/intersections on campus that has the most foot and bike traffic, and they eat lunch and watch the freshmen crash because they don't quite know what they're doing yet. Poor kids!

Just thought I'd share some pictures of a tree that my brother and I felled this past weekend. This thing was about 4 stories high and almost fell on our house after the hurricane.
























































We first cut the tree down with a chain saw, realized it was leaning on another tree, and so tied the base with a wire rope, swung it around a tree to the front of the house, and attached the other end to my truck. As you can see from the picture, we pulled pretty hard with the truck until it fell and the wire rope snapped on the last tug (thankfully not killing anyone in the process). Also, my brother and I were fully aware of the dangers of using the wire rope (we both have experience on oil rigs), so we're not completely stupid, just slightly stupid and vengeful against trees that try to fall on our house.

who else is going to acl?
i'm looking for a ticket right now...so i might be joining you all.

AND for those going, you must see antibalas on friday:


the A.V. section in the Onion sold me on it with this first sentence: "antibalas serves the legacy of afrobeat legend fela kuti by sounding more or less exactly like him." haha

btw, the cover story on this week's onion is amazing.

I just realized Katie has a separate blog. And so does Lauren. Since I don't, you will have to put up with stupid long posts from me! But now I can spy on Katie and Lauren yay.

You know what sucks? Going to school to study diseases, but GETTING THEM INSTEAD. I've been sick twice since I've been here, and it's only been a month. I think the first time was because of too little sleep/too much boozing/sharing of beer pong cups, but this latest one is just crazy infectious. Our test on Tuesday sounded like some sort of coughing symphony.

Normally this wouldn't piss me off as much, but since I'm going to Austin this weekend (!!!!!!!) to stand in the sun for three days straight, I am all yar. I am still extremely excited though. Everything worked out amazingly quickly. Except for all the details, like how to pick up my ticket or how I'm getting into town from the airport, but I can figure that stuff out later tonight hopefully.

I wanted to come visit Austin a bit later in October, but nearly every weekend is full then, and November is too close to Thanksgiving anyway. And this is the best possible combination of events, as even my dad admitted. Haha.

Evidence that my classmates are pretty cool: I was invited to a pig roast for next weekend. Holy crap! There are pictures of the last year's pig roast and everything. Woot.

School really isn't that bad. I don't know. I guess I expected it to be harder. And I think it will get harder when we start doing stuff I've never seen before. All the second years say to do as much stuff/have as much fun as possible during first year, because it gets a lot harder to do that stuff later. So I'm thinking in mid-October I might go down to Duke and see Tami, and of course a New York trip is inevitable. And I'm submitting an application for a conference in Boston so that might pan out too??

also, you know what is delicious? maryland steamed crabs. mmmm. omg i just noticed that i used proper capitalization for the first part of my post. WHAT IS HAPPENING

I need to post some pictures but that seems complicated. Also, you guys should tell more about your lives! I am like, what is going on.

Colleen and Dane I should be seeing you soon!

if you haven't seen it yet... here's my tattoo. for real.

Here I am with my new sunkruizer (click on the picture to blow it up). Notice how one of my arms has suddenly disappeared! The basket reminds me of the wicked witch of the west, but the overall look is very 70s I think (or at least I haven't seen bikes like this outside of Brady Bunch re-runs and movies). These bikes are everywhere in Davis! I love the super wide seat and my basket. The grocery store is on my way home from school, so I just put my groceries in there! Tomorrow I will meet the other grad students for the first time on our field trip. Wish me luck...

surprisingly not staged

Who votes for anything else when one of the options is "Set yourself on fire!"??

So this past sunday some gal pals of mine from work hosted a baby shower for our preggo cohort, and I was in charge of games. It started off with some chit chat, then a mediocre celebrity baby name matching game. After that we watched the preggo open presents as we ate delicious cake. And once everybody was full from cake and punch, it was finally time for my glorious game. I passed around diapers and each attendee had to open the diaper and guess what was inside. Each diaper contained the melted remnants of candy bars. So they had to open up a diaper and determine whether there was melted chocolate, nougat and caramel inside or melted chocolate, nougat and peanut butter. They sniffed, poked, prodded and at one point tasted the crap inside so that they could play my wildly entertaining game. All the while I stood by chuckling as the attendees moaned and gagged. In conclusion, you should get somebody pregnant so that you can play this game in a few months.

oh, goodness. i sent someone a facebook message last night - "catchphrase ftw" - and they did not know what it meant. this means i have reached new levels of uncool maybe? or maybe people here are not totally jawesome. honestly i haven't even broken out with jawesome yet. i introduce the jessica-speak slowly. today i used lolz and it was well recieved. but ftw?? sigh.

speaking of facebook messaging late at night, it turns out i don't have much of a proclivity towards drunk dialing, but i do love me some drunk posting/facebooking/emailing. i'm a nerd even when drunk!

speaking of catchphrase, i taught everyone here speed scrabble, and it was an instant hit. it was at a pregaming gathering and was played for maybe 1 1/2 hours straight with different people rotating in and out. it made me feel good.

so i went to the grocery store here for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and i made a snap judgement that it was terrible. then i went again and now i think it is okay, but only okay, and do i ever miss the HEB.

as for REAL LIFE, many things are happening. i'm doing fine in school so far. i am mostly bored but we are doing some interesting genetics stuff soon so that might be exciting. i never go to lecture - i stream it at 2x the speed, and it is amazing. i am fast converting people to the "no lecture" system. tomorrow i am going to start knitting in discussion section, which is required. turns out my good behavior only lasts so long.

also i am starting all kinds of volunteer stuff! i will elaborate more upon this later - too much in one post gets annoying.

my BSSC football team sucks but they are really nice, and i have a great war wound from our game this weekend. and a nice sunburn.

i miss texas and you guys a lot. sometimes the best part of my day is catching up with someone from back home. i am getting used to baltimore, but it's taking more patience than i thought it would. i guess this is what it feels like to move away.

also i got pulled over for cutting off a cop yesterday. which i totally did, but i thought it was a cab? he yelled at me for a bit (the thing was, it was closing time...don't worry, i was dd, but he didn't know that) and then i was like IM A HOPKINS MEDICAL STUDENT. but real timid like. and he let me go. whew. (it's a joke that we can get out of any situation by saying that phrase really loudly and self-importantly. there are ridiculous pictures of us in bars pimping our ID's extremely obviously....haha.)

This is a great idea! I love how technology keeps people connected. What has everyone been up to -- more/still college, jobs, etc. ? If anyone is in Austin on Sept. 25th, the start-up company I have been working with, Moximity, is throwing our launch party (call me for more info)! On top of Moximity, I have been working downtown full-time at Optaros, an open-source software consulting firm. Hope everyone is doing well and keeping busy! (I know I have been... :P)

Dane

teehee, i voted twice.

what sort of system allows this?

First, sorry Adilbek! I read your post and had to go back to mine to see what you were talking about- I can't believe I wrote that on accident! So dumb.

I am starting to get settled in my apartment here, and it's actually a lot bigger than I expected! So far I really like the city. It's an interesting mix of small town and liberal artsy. There are no buildings over 2 stories tall, the city speed limits are all under 35 mph, if I go down my street 1/2 mile to the east I run into a farm, and I can easily drive through the town in under 10 minutes (going 30 mph with stop signs). However, there are multiple high end boutiques and art galleries, restaurants serving every different type of food you can think of, a very large and beautiful Islamic center, and double decker red British buses. People are out walking or biking on the streets at all times of the day, and the city is extremely environmental. I can recycle everything! It's great!

adilbek, nice job.
i love the two extremes in the voting section- so far two have voted "awesome" and two, "set yourself on fire!"

and now, i'd like to share with you all my latest obsession, Gordo the Gap Troll:

do any of you have a good riddle?
(by the way, thanks to adilbek, christie, and especially katy for being such good sports and watching this...in katy's case, numerous times)

I hope everyone's family in Houston & nearby areas is okay. Thank God Ike's effect was weaker than expected.

Hey thanks! This is pretty cool. Update: I'm moving! I'm very excited about this because I'm moving into that house that I had previously turned down after already signing a lease. I'll be living with two zoo people, Ariel and Marissa, and Marissa's dogs, Jake and Hercules. It's a real house too, complete with a yard and pool. Add to this the fact that my rent is going to be soooo much cheaper, and you can see why I'm pretty happy about this.

Hey Guys,

Heya Guys (and Girls),

This is my first blog post ever. I feel like I should be inducted to this cool blogosphere club now, because everybody besides me seems to have a blog now.

Anyways, I post this, first and foremost, to correct Lauren's grievous mistake of saying that my middle name is Imanbayev. Really LG? It's like, come on. Other than that though, you're cool and hope you're having a good time in Cali.

Anyways, I'll stop acting like I'm too cool for school and try to keep up with this blog, it's not a bad idea. However, let's make sure we all keep in touch with each other outside of this blog. I'm not great at this, but I still like talking to people once in a while to catch up. I'll personally do my best to keep in touch with peoples.

About me, everything is great and work is going very well. It's so weird to act all grown up at work (although we do watch the occasional SP episode there once in a while). I have to wear a tucked in polo or dress shirt everyday and pretend to be mature. It's a lot of fun though, and for those of you who just love school too much and want to stay in it forever (James...), it's definitely a cool experience to get out into the working world. One of the best things about my job though, is that I will start travelling relatively soon, and that means that I might get to visit some of you all once in a while! I don't know exactly where I'll be going from week to week, but I figure I'll be travelling so much that I'll get to see most everybody that left Austin.

Other than all that, thanks for the flattering pictures posted of me, whoever that may be. Above is that one picture from a different angle, so that you can fully appreciate the moment. So as Collo says, TTFN.

So I'm starting to realize that there are some complications when your coworkers are also your friends. You have to be very careful about how you act even when you are not at work, because your coworkers are not a large group and stories will and have spread like wildfire. I've already heard so much gossip about many different people, and I've only been interacting with these people for a week! Certain issues become very dicey in this situation. Example: dating a coworker. If things turn bad, your work environment could be terrible. And unfortunately, I will be in this work environment for the next 5 years.

KT