This past weekend I TA'd my first field trip. It's the intro field trip, so it was the students' first time in the field looking at rocks. The highlight of the trip was me completely obliterating a bale of hay in the geology van full of students that I was driving while going 70 on the highway. I was the third van in our caravan, and by the time the first two had swerved to avoid it I didn't have any time to switch lanes so I just had to hit it head on! The students in the back of my van shot up about 6 inches (sure woke them up!), and when I looked back in my rear view mirror there were pieces of hay exploding everywhere. It was quite the experience.

Today was just one of those days. With the incredible stress of my school and work situation (the quality of my work is sucking, I seem to have lost the ability to form coherent sentences on subjects I'm supposed to know something about, etc), I start to wonder what the hell I'm even doing here. I know everyone comes across this in a new situation at some point or another. Usually when things are going the worst for you, this thought will start to creep its way into your mind. It's gotten to the point where sometimes I'm even convinced that a mistake was made in letting me come here. This may sound like paranoia (and probably is), but the feeling is real. I seem to be psyching myself out to some degree, and you can start to see a snowball effect. I don't write a very good paper (stress level goes up), now I doubt my own ideas (stress level goes up), now I don't even want to say anything out loud. I need some sort of outlet to calm down about this. This is where you guys would come in. Being able to talk to you is great, but sometimes you just need to chill with people and not really talk, like watch a movie or just eat together. I'm forming some relationships here, but with being gone every other weekend, I feel a little behind everyone else. There are so few people that I am comfortable just calling up out of the blue to just chill. There is one guy that I would say I'm closest to, but because of potential complications, our friendship has had to change a bit. There is a time line for this set of rules, but currently it sucks.
This morning for some reason I was thinking about getting margaritas at Trudy's, and that one little thing that I used to do in Austin made me so homesick. I really just want to call you up and meet you at Trudy's. Does that sound good?

is like this. it sucks, mostly, except that:

1) otherwise, i would be dealing with renting with people who would've been complete strangers before moving in (and i do have my own room)
2) this is hella cheap
3) it takes me 8 minutes to walk to class
4)we get to have dorm parties/preparties/gatherings very, very easily

it sucks because:
1) off-campus housing is pretty nice, and pretty cheap. every time i go to someone's house i am like daaaammmnnn yo why don't i live in a house?
2) houses here have roof-decks!
3) reed hall is a shithole (our shower has broken, our sink is clogged, my light blew out, one bathroom for 4 girls, no cable hookups, etc)
4) reed hall is a shithole. sometimes i have to walk up 10 flights of stairs when our elevators break. if you know me, you know how i rage.
5) laundry in dorms is terrribly terrible.

But hey, I have roomies for next year, we're gonna get a sweet house, and we're working on convincing Kamna that cats are sweet pets. I am so excited.

This past weekend I went to my first toga party. My friend Robert (from high school) threw the party at Stanford, where he's going to grad school. The Stanford grad students all live either in dorms or in on campus apartments. Seriously, I don't know if I could do that. Dorm life was super fun when we were all there, and I wouldn't change those two years for anything, but I really don't think I could give up my apartment and live in a dorm again. Jessica, how are you liking it? Will you be able to move off campus next year (if you even want to)? So since all the Stanford grad students live on campus, the party was in the basement of Robert's dorm. It was actually a pretty nice party spot- it was large, had two beer pong tables, and a bar. Here's a picture of me and Robert in our togas- his is made from fabric he bought, but mine is actually made from the queen sized bedsheet that I sleep in! It took a lot of safety pins....

For those of you who have graduated, you are missing out on a great football season. The game last night was a lot of fun and there was a great atmosphere in the stadium. Sadly our seats are right below Matthew McConaughey's private box, so much of the game was spent listening to drunk girls scream at him.

oh, and here's a pic of the haircut i promised in an earlier post



so how are you guys?

this morning i nearly killed Katy.

i was finally getting over my distaste for cooking and thought i'd try to make this amazing (and simple) dessert my Mom makes at home. turns out it's not so simple (or i just really suck).

so i made it last night and we tried it this morning. within two minutes of trying the dessert a serious of dramatic events ensued (including katy semi-passing out)...and now i'm pawning off my dessert on unsuspecting guests. thank God katy is okay now. i relapsed into thinking i'd never cook again, but now i'm over it and will try the same dessert next week (and three more!)

hopefully those will turn out a bit better...

here is what i'm going to do instead! introduce you to these fine friends of mine.

So like the obnoxious kids we are, when we go to bars, we like to pimp our IDs in ridiculous manners. From L to R: Morgan, I forget the name of the exchange student, Paul, Kamna, Alex, JP, me. On this night I got a free XXL shirt that says "Baltimore: GOT BAIL?" from a club, and I wore it the rest of the night. It made me look 12.
JP gets a little overenthusiastic
These are my floormates who live in 10B (minus Amit.) I live in 10A. Johnny Z is on the right there, he's part of my anatomy group, as is JP. So is Marisa but she does not feature in any of these pictures for some reason.

it's a little awkward because you have to pick your own anatomy groups, and it's a delicate thing. who can you stand for hours on end every day for four months? how do you even know that at this point in time? will our friendships survive? are they hard workers? do they work TOO hard? do they want to spend all day in the lab? dun dun dunn....

i am confident, however, that our group will be fun. at the very least. our name is "elevated white count" because we are one of the few all-white groups. sarah and kamna's group is named thoracic park. i am a little jealous because i <3 dinosaurs but racist jokes are funny too.

it's already getting cold here. i have never dreaded winter before.

uh i tried to upload a picture of sarah and kamna. they are my main peeps. but i guess you can keep on believing that i don't have any friends that are girls, james.

I just found out that the only good-looking young tenure-track faculty member is gay. Guess I'll have to move on to post-docs and grad students...

i got a crazy haircut this weekend! i'm talking short, and curls e'rywhere!
picture coming soon...

Yes Adilbek working rulz! I do enjoy getting home and not having hw/studying hanging over my head. But I do not enjoy not being able to wear sweats every day, although grabbing a beer at lunch is almost as relaxing...

Anywho, I was looking through my pics and saw this one from my visit to my parent's house over labor day wknd. In case you don't know, my parents moved to Arkansas summer 07 to a glorious laid back country life of semi-retirement. They live on a lake (see picture) and just built a sweet dock. When I was there I played around on their raft thing. My dad (sitting on the dock in the pic) helped me put the mast and sail up and then I "sailed" around the cove. But country/lake living is amazing. It's been annoying having to travel up to Arkansas for holidays, but its been nice to relax out there. It makes me excited to grow up and then eventually retire. Hopefully, I will be able to retire to a lakefront property ... in 35yrs.

Hey Guys,

Hope you like the kraziness in the title, I thought it was appropriate.

Anyways, since I don't get a chance to keep up with everybody all the time, I just wanted to update you all with what's going on in my life. If any of you ever had doubts about the "real world", don't, because it's amazing. I realized this as C-Lo, JD, BHowe, and I were sitting around at the guys' place and they started talking about homework and essays. It's the greatest feeling in the world, getting home and realizing that you can do whatever the hell you want that night. Sure, I work really hard at work all day and get worn out, but I enjoy what I do and like the whole work atmosphere. It probably helps that I work with some younger engineers and that we watch YouTube videos all the time, but hey, I'm getting paid to do it!

I guess I just have a different perspective on all that then some of you, but I figure as long as you're doing what you love, there's no better path in life. I think it's about that time in life for all of us where we're thinking about whether we chose the right path. None of us really talk about this too much, because we like to think we're working it out on our own. I myself am just beginning to realize that some of the same thoughts go through all of our minds. Anyways, I'm going to stop waxing philosophical and just say that if you don't like what you're doing now, go do something else!

On a different note, now that everyone is slowly starting to think about the holidays and such, I want to know what everyone's plan is for coming back to Austin/Houston. I know it's a little early to be planning some of this, but hell, if Taleen can plan a Halloween party a month before the actual day, then I figure I can do the same for Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years. I like the idea of keeping in touch with the blog, but it's definitely not the same as actually seeing and talking to you all.

Speaking of Taleen's "Harroween" party, that picture reminded me of XJ. And then I looked through the list of people that were part of this blog, and he's not on it! I thought people were just joking before when they said that he never gets on, but I didn't realize that he actually wasn't on the list. So unless people object, I'm inviting him to this exclusive club of young professionals/students/cool people. And if he was invited and never joined, then we must force him to join, because our group doesn't have the same dynamics without some RJisms sprinked in there once in a while.

All in all, it's good to hear from you all, whether it be through the blog, on the phone, or in person. I especially enjoy the old, embarrassing pictures, and I enjoy them even more when they're not of me. If you have any of those, I want to see them!