November 2001 Archives

ah, it's all sunny and nice outside so i prepare to ride home from class and enjoy the day...then i realized that it's also really cold! brr. i can't wait to get home and get my heavy coat. at the present, i'm stuck with just piling on layers of sweatshirts.

so as i was leaving cromem last night, i saw a sign posted to the bulletin board that screamed "make $18-$25 an hour!" even though i'm never interested in the odd jobs, it's hard not to glance at something that tells me i can make a pretty high hourly salary. except this poster last night was an advertisement to come teach for the princeton review, you know, the group that tutors students on how to raise their sat, gre, mcat, etc scores. i remember someone at tech--i think it was andrew--telling me that they tutored for the princeton review, and that it was a lot of fun. so now i'm thinking about applying for the part-time job. it would be fun, i would get a chance to see if i enjoy teaching as much as i think i would, and the extra money would be nice.

the issue, however, is time. (isn't that always the issue?) i know that i probably don't have ten extra hours per week to devote to tutoring people. maybe i could do it if i resolve to give up my free saturdays (saturday is the one day of the week that i usually reserve for not doing homework)...but i don't know if i want to do that. i guess i'll think about it.

and in other news, i swear, one of my roommates must eat toilet paper or something. our three-woman apartment runs through rolls like ravenous animals. last summer ron and phil and i didn't go through tp at even half this rate, and i know they're guys and so they use less and all, but geez. anyway, that's my rant for the day. i'm off to target to restock the bathroom.

(4:44 p.m.)

one thing i will miss whenever i do end up leaving grad school is california itself. the bay area is an awesome, strange, exciting, and beautiful place. i am moments away from a million things, from lovely foothills to the breakers of the pacific to the calm waters of the bay. it really is amazing, when i stop long enough to take even the slightest advantage of it. after living in a beautiful area for a few months, i have to wonder what prompted anyone to ever make their home in a place like houston...and to think that i will probably soon be living in that mess of asphalt, humidity, and oil refinery grime. if only lyndon johnson had been from california, and nasa's premier space center could have laid its roots here in the hills instead of on the marshy and flat-as-a-pancake gulf coast. {sigh} it will make me sad to leave california. maybe i will just decide to stay forever.

i guess this means i really can't make fun of courtney for being from california anymore. now i see what she's talking about.

i was reminded of all this today while running errands, of all things. it seemed an odd time for me to realize how much i like the area in which i'm living, but it happened all the same. (side note: sometimes when i am doing errands, i just feel very...normal. i kind of like it.)

all of my aero/astro teaching assistants (all 2nd year grad students) have taken off to las vegas for the weekend. they sent us all an email saying they wouldn't be around to answer questions until they get back on monday, but that if they won big, we'd probably never see them again. that made me laugh.

last night i had the worst time trying to get to sleep. i was in bed at midnight, but tossed and turned until 1:30, at which point i finally took a tylenol p.m. and fell asleep around 2. i had to get up to go to class today, and to do the structures assignment that is due tomorrow, so i was worried the lack of sleep would worsen my cold. but thankfully it didn't. i feel ok today. the sore throat is gone, and has been replaced by a runny nose and clogged ears. yes, it's a typical cold. good thing it's almost the weekend, even if this weekend will be primarily a homework weekend.

my column today is about the space program. it's completely recycled from an old editorial i wrote for the technique, but i thought it was appropriate to appear again. the shuttle was supposed to launch this afternoon, but was delayed. in some sense i'm happy, because i'd meant to watch it but 4:41 came and went with me stuck working on homework and the launch forgotten. hopefully i can remember to watch tomorrow.

plane tickets to houston from san jose dropped another $25...they're down to $168! i was already planning on going to visit ron and becca and others sometime in the spring, and at that price i certainly can't resist. now if only i could figure out what my schedule is going to be so that i can plan a suitable weekend to be away...

i slept almost twelve hours last night, and still woke up with a cold. i know, i know, once you are already coming down with one, it's pretty impossible to make it magically go away. despite my sleep, i have a stuffy nose and ears. ugh. if anyone ever invents a cure for the common cold, they will make billions off of poor people like me who hate sniffling. instead, i guess i will pacify myself for a few days with some sudafed.

anyway, since i just got up, i can't think of anything to write. off to the shower.

(12:39 p.m.)

so it's official. of all the pairs of teams that could possibly meet in dozens of college football bowl games, it turns out that georgia tech and stanford will play in the seattle bowl. my old school versus my new school. how ironic! iffy tells me i should jump on the stanford bandwagon, that tech has no heart. this is one of those games where i can say flightily "oh, it's good for me no matter who wins," and giggle. or maybe i can just wear tech pants and a stanford shirt. or a tech shirt and stanford sweatshirt. or something.

no worries though. i know where my loyalties lie. though i probably shouldn't tell anyone here that i'll be rooting for the yellow jackets...

i told a girl at flute choir last night that i was amazed i haven't been sick yet this quarter...only to wake up this morning with a hint of a sore throat. noooo! sore throats are always the first sign. i am going to finish my homework in the next two hours (which should actually be possible for once because i only have a few touch-ups to do after working all afternoon) and go to bed early. yes.

i am getting really excited about heading back east for my three week christmas break. chris told me last night that he and chrissy want to get a small crowd together the night of the 15th, and that got me all pumped. as i always say...i am enjoying life at stanford, but miss the company of close friends. it will be really good to see them all soon!

this evening after dinner, nick and emily and i made a replacement sign for our friend jerry's door. he unfortunately had his sign taken a few weeks ago, which was a big deal because it was carefully drawn to show all the boroughs of new york, with a big arrow to the part of queens that he is from, and he'd had the sign throughout his entire five years here at stanford. we were sad about it, so we made him a replacement today and taped it to his door. i really hope he likes it, because i really liked making it for him. here it is:

kent makes me laugh. he wrote today from somewhere in pennsylvania/maryland vaguely near the farm, and said he's keeping an eye out for my grandmother, byron, and any stray herds. that made me laugh out loud right after i got up this morning.

well i finally made a few updates to my webpage. i still have to actually post all my old technique articles, and i have more pictures to scan and add to the houston-san fran road trip page, but hey, at least i got a little bit done.

(5:43 p.m.)

i just added about 15 more pictures to the road trip page. i think i'm done with days 1 and 2...more pictures from days 3 and 4 are forthcoming.

i got my first major plea for money from georgia tech today. i guess that's what happens when you become an alum. included was a brochure listing the names of everyone who has graduated in the past ten years who has donated, and i was happy to see that my name is already on the list. probably for the measely $5 that i gave the student foundation, but still, i am a donor. ha! well, we will see how much i can afford to give them now.

i like the idea of supporting my alma mater. when i am rich and famous, i will donate money for something cool--you know, like free paper in the aerospace computer lab, or more pizza for the technique office. ;) ha ha ha. no, seriously, i will give money for something like a scholarship for aerospace students, or maybe if i am really rich, for an endowed chair.

(11:23 p.m.)

it is COLD! tonight it is supposed to get down to 37 degrees. and here i am without even my heavy coat. i have plenty of sweatshirts, so i guess i'll just pile 'em on. time to dig out the fleece tigger hat.

i talked to chris tonight and he said carter bought a house. !! of course boy hadn't told me it was official, i just knew he was thinking about it. now i will have to wait until tomorrow when i can call and harass him for more details! wow. a house. chris also said chrissy looks like she will take a job in houston...which i find very ironic. i've been a semi-houstonite for years now, liz moved there last june, becca will move there in january, chrissy will now move there in january...and i will in all likelihood move there this coming june when i finish my master's and take a full-time job. (note to readers--yes, i am still thinking i will take the job.) that makes four people from my extended crowd of friends at tech that will have moved to houston, and that's not even counting all my co-op friends that are already there. crazy. but nice.

well, this weekend i learned a bit about the nightlife in downtown palo alto. friday night was spent at blue chalk with the crowd, then last night nick, christopher, aaron and i spent an hour or two at a bar called left at albuquerque. they boast that if you can find a brand of tequila that they don't stock, you can drink for free. which translates to "we have a hell of a lot of tequila." so we had a few margaritas, got nick tipsy for maybe the first time in his entire life, and then headed to safeway and back to lyman for a late night frozen pizza snack. it was another fun night.

even so...bars are ok for hanging out and all, but i still want to go dancing!

it's finally sunday, and that means i have to spend the rest of the afternoon and probably most of the evening doing homework. i'll take a break at 6 to eat dinner and do dishes, since sunday is my cleaning night, then i'll take another break at 9 to watch alias, but other than that, yeah, it's a work day. i knew it was coming...after all, i spent the past three days goofing off completely.

(12:09 a.m.)

ugh. three weeks, then my first quarter will be over. i can't wait to have three weeks without homework!

this past night was a weird one. i went to bed at 4 only to be woken at 6 by some fool calling my cell phone, which i had forgotten to turn off. the number was an atlanta number, but not one that i recognized. i just let it ring, and then turned the phone off. i went back to sleep only to be woken up again around 7:30 by this huge storm raging outside. i had left the window open because it gets warm in my room if i don't, and the blinds were blowing every which way. so i quickly jumped up and shut it. even with the window shut, it sounded like a hurricane outside--the wind was so strong i started to get worried. finally i feel back asleep with the storm still blowing, only to be woken up yet again just after 9:00 when my normal phone rang. the storm was over at that point so after i let my answering machine pick up--whoever the bastard was, they didn't leave a message--i finally fell back asleep again and successfully slept in peace until a few minutes ago.

so now i am not very well rested at all. ugh. but the sun is trying to show itself, so that's nice. and i'm off to the laundry room at last to get my clothes clean before the big tech-uga game at 4:45!

(10:17 p.m.)

please do not ask me to comment on the football game. it was long, it was ugly, and we played like crap. that is all.

i need to stop websurfing so much. it takes me to random things like

your name of sarah makes you easy-going and refined, but detracts from your physical vitality. you desire all the finer things in life--lovely clothes, home, furniture, and environment. however, procrastination is your worst enemy, and you find yourself lacking the ambition to make your dreams a reality. people are inclined to take advantage of your sympathetic, tractable nature. you naturally attract people with problems who seek your understanding and advice. you can give good advice although it is unlikely that you would follow it yourself. you would be most successful in situations where you can use your skills in diplomacy in handling people, but where you are not under pressure or required to carry responsibility and make decisions. it is difficult for you to be individual and make your own decisions, for you lack self-confidence. your desire for sweet, rich foods could cause overweight, circulatory problems, or weakness in the kidneys.

and then i start to actually think the empty internet knows something about me. funny, eh?

this four day break has totally thrown off my timing. it's saturday, right? which means tomorrow is my last free days, which means i actually will have to get some homework done. right-o.

so china plans on sending a man to the moon. that's cool. i wonder if it will motivate the u.s. to get our sorry butts out of low earth orbit again. that would be nice. and a guy in england is planning to launch himself on a homemade rocket next year, after a successful test flight yesterday. i hope he doesn't blow himself up.

anyway. i want to go shopping today because i've been meaning to go shopping for the past month and a half...but i don't know if i really want to deal with the day after thanksgiving crowds. hmm. my laundry situation is becoming desperate; perhaps i should take care of that first.

(2:23 p.m.)

there are ants in our bathroom. ants! i can't seem to get rid of them, because i can't find where they're coming from. is it possible for them to be coming up the sink drain? they always appear around the sink. people said the ants get bad here in the winter when it starts to rain and they all swarm indoors. i guess they were right.

(3:34 a.m.)

driving home just now, i came across a skunk directly in the middle of the road. a skunk! i realized that i don't think i've ever seen a real, live skunk before. it was black with the double white stripe down its back and everything. i stopped, not wanting to run it over and have the smell everywhere, and it darted around in the road for a minute before running off into the bushes. weird.

today was a lot of fun. this afternoon, aaron and christopher and nick and i wandered around town and ended up at some random mall in san jose for a while before heading back to round table pizza for dinner. then tonight a whole big group of us went to a bar called blue chalk in downtown palo alto and drank and chatted and played shuffleboard (i know...that sounds strange, but it was fun). after that all ten of us headed to denny's for a late night breakfast and more conversation. it was really fun. i like all my fellow aero/astro people. they're a really good crowd to hang out with.

well, emily is in san diego and i am better rested after taking her to the airport and then coming home for another four and a half hours of sleep. we talked about all sorts of funny things in the car...spring break plans, and feelings about being at stanford, and stuff. emily has some quirky qualities about her that i never thought i would like, but as a whole, i am really glad she has become my friend. sometimes my conservativeness needs breaking down. anyway, in three hours i get to go have thanksgiving in the student union. i guess it's better than nothing.

i was settling into bed early last night when my cell phone rang....christina! we talked for two solid hours; we finally hung up when she laughed and said "i just looked at the clock and it's almost 4 a.m. here!" i miss talking to her. i like the way i don't feel like i have to hold anything back when i'm with her.

it's funny how in the past i have always avoided the telephone, preferring to either talk face to face or through the computer (the latter being the much more likely situation because i am a big fraidy-cat). but now, i find myself always anticipating the next time my phone will ring, and the next time i will get to talk to an absent friend.

there are things in my life that i need to leave behind, ideas that i need to get over. i have a bad habit of picturing the way i want things to be, and of course it is impossible for life to ever turn out exactly the way you wanted it to. for a few minutes, christina was giving me relationship advice. see the thing about me is that i don't jump into relationships--hell i don't even tiptoe into relationships--easily. i am great at being friendly and funny, but the minute something begins to show signs of a relationship, i lose control of all rational thought and freak out. and run away. i am not sure if that's what i'm doing right now or not.

most of my problems and fears are rooted in my many insecurities, and some days i think i am really improving. i like stanford and despite all my complaints about the workload, i feel like i am getting another good education, and learning a lot more than i did the first time around at tech. though i miss atlanta terribly, one thing i have learned over the years is that i am "better" when i am pretty much on my own. i know that "better" is a relative term, but what i really mean is that when i'm living more independently--like i do in houston, like i am here--i become a more even-keeled person. i feel much more stable. and so lately, i have been feeling both happy and sad, happy because my life seems calmer, but sad because i miss my close friends.

of course on some days, i am a hopeless cause. but the good days come more often than the bad now, which is a definite improvement over last year.

anyway, i apologize for the cryptic nature of that little aside. it isn't directed at anyone but me, believe it or not. hey--this is my journal after all.

in any case. i have formed this obsession with crossword puzzles lately. i do the one in the daily every day, sometimes successfully, more often unsuccessfully, and sometimes i do them online too. emily says will shortz, the guy who edits the new york times crossword, is her hero. i am worried he is about to become my hero too. it's a strange obsession.

this morning on my way to class, i passed at least a dozen people with bulging suitcases waiting on the corner for one of the various airport shuttles to come pick them up. for the umpteenth time, i wished i could go home.

but it's ok. i was moved from the wait list for tomorrow's big grad student thanksgiving meal to a guaranteed plate at the 4:00 dinner, so i am happy. nick got un-wait-listed as well for the same time, so we'll get to have real food with a lot of people instead of my lame attempts at cooking sweet potatos and green bean casserole. though adventures in cooking could have been quite entertaining.

also, this morning i awoke to a slew of great emails. becca wrote about her excitement over the yearly "to hell with georgia" issue of the technique, which i read online yesterday and was amused by. carter replied to the boring email i wrote him last night. alex and carter both wrote to tease nick about the rednecks/truckers, i mean tap dancers, that he met last night. (he went to see tap dogs, a group of guys who used to be construction workers in australia but then formed a tap dancing group that is now famous.)

and then, in what has to be a new record of some kind, i got an email from every single member of carter's family. two from him, one from his mom, one from his dad, and even one from rachel. it is nice to know that other people are thinking about me. it's like i have a second family! :)

finally, yesterday i got the official letter offering me another job at jsc. i hadn't expected it to come so soon, but it was a nice surprise. they haven't given me a deadline as to when i have to reply yet, but it shouldn't be until march, at the earliest. plenty of time to think it over again, and perhaps my thinking will be clearer this year. last year i was so stressed and confused by every aspect of my life that i couldn't even think straight. things are better now.

ah well. one more class today, then my four day break begins!

(10:11 p.m.)

i wanna be at home. holidays are lonely when you sit in your room while everyone slowly goes offline on icq, and you stop getting email. because it feels like everyone is with their family except you. :( my parents told me not to waste my money on a plane ticket home, and i know they are right, but it still just feels sad not be to in charlotte for thanksgiving. i can understand why people get depressed during the holidays. i feel really far away.

i looked for el palo alto tonight when we went to the mall, but i couldn't find it in the darkness. the mall was a disappointment. apparently all the stores close at 7:00, which seems rather early. i came home to watch dawson's, and then stayed planted on the couch for west wing. we went to safeway though, so at least now i have some food in the apartment. cereal, and milk, and yogurt. and chinese leftovers from lunch with emily yesterday.

well. i guess i will go read. i have to get up early to take emily to the airport.

today in the library we were talking to ryan, who is in the midst of the job hunt for something to do after he finishes his master's. he explained that his choices were either boeing in los angeles or los alamos national labs in new mexico. then he carefully added that in l.a. he could live on the beach...but he hates the beach. he loves the mountains. so he figures he can live in l.a. and have no mountains but lots of single women, or in los alamos and have mountains, but no single women. i was taken aback that the presence of single women played so largely into his plans, but to everyone else this seemed normal. now that i think about it, i guess his view is not so bad. no job, no matter how great, could make up for a lack of social life, and i suppose dating is a big part of social life.

unless you are me. ha ha.

in other news, today i read about "el palo alto." i knew that the city stanford is in was named for a tall redwood ("el palo alto" means "the high tree" in spanish), but i didn't know the tree still stood. a flood in 1887 knocked down half of it, but it said the other half is still standing beside a creek at one of the corners of campus. so now i have a new mission--i want to go see el palo alto! tomorrow i am going to find the redwood.

another interesting thing i learned was that leland stanford, who founded stanford along with his wife in the name of their dead son, was quite a cool guy. he grew up in new york but moved out to california around the time of the gold rush. he campaigned for abraham lincoln and then was elected governor of california. he made his money in the railroad business as president of the central pacific railroad company. mr. stanford was the one who brought the famous golden spike to utah when the tracks met to complete the transcontinental railroad, and it turns out the golden spike is actually not in the ground at all, but in a museum here on campus. they had tapped it into the ground in utah but were careful not to dent it, then they took it back out and mr. stanford brought it back to california.

i just thought those stories were so cool. stanford has so much history! not that georgia tech's history isn't great...but stanford's is so much more exotic.

i got two more midterms back today, so the suspense (ha, ha) is over. yeah. i did fine on controls, and bad on structures, as expected. hopefully tomorrow we'll finally get the stupid compressible flow midterm back so i can get the entire picture of exactly how hard i'm going to have to study for finals. expected answer: very hard. i'm in a very anti-grad school mood. it's good that we only have 3 days of classes this week because of thanksgiving break. i need to recover, and my alarm clock needs to remember how to wake me up. it goes off, but i don't wake up. ;)

my room is a pigsty. perhaps i'll clean it over the break as well. you know, prepare for studying. ha--that always seems to happen. i procrastinate my studies with the excuse that i can't study in a messy room. hey, while i'm making empty promises...maybe i'll redesign my webpage finally too!

tomorrow i'm supposed to play scrabble, which is funny because i'm really horrible at scrabble. but it will be fun if only because it's not homework. i don't have any homework due until next monday, so i think i am going to take the next few days off.

{sigh} i'm talking about boring homework again. so what else...? i finished lance armstrong's book and haven't decided what to read next. i think i've narrowed it down to either "the talisman" or "lords of discipline." so far this quarter i have read the second and last books of "lord of the rings" and lance armstrong's bio...and "ender's game," for the umpteenth time. i've lost track of how many times i've read that one. considering the amount of schoolwork i've had, i am really proud of myself for reading so much. i sort of want to read harry potter again, but i don't have the books with me out here. ah well.

(2:12 p.m.)

argh!! i spoke too soon. i just checked the webpage for my cfd class only to find that we have a homework assignment due on wednesday. i skipped class last wednesday--only the second time i have skipped any class all quarter--and he gives out a homework assignment. so i guess i will have to do it today and tomorrow. who makes homework due the day before thanksgiving?? sheesh.

ohhh, i'm still so tired. i'm supposed to catch up on sleep on the weekends, not lose even more of it. i was up till 4 again last night...but it was definitely worthwhile. we saw the leonid meteor shower, and it was really spectacular.

i headed over to aaron's at 1 and we met up with our canadian friend steve. the three of us headed the half mile from aaron's apartment up the hill to the tiny stanford observatory, which is right next to the golf course. there were people all over the ground so we ducked through the fence and joined them. there we were, lying on the fairway of one of the golf course holes, on the top of a hill in the middle of the night. you could see the stars amazingly well considering we're only thirty miles from san francisco, and not "out of town" by any means--i could see more stars up on the hill than i can see from my driveway in charlotte.

i had never seen a meteor shower before, and it was awesome! we were outside from about 1:30 until a little after 3, right during the peak of the storm, and we quickly lost count of how many meteors we saw. the average was probably around 3 meteors per minute, but at times we saw a lot more. we'd see three streak across the sky at once, or catch one out of the corner of both eyes. you could hear "oohs" and "aahs" coming from all over the hill, and it was hard not to say it every single time. we even saw a few really fantastic earthgrazers--meteors that burned brightly and left long green trails that didn't disappear immediately.

it was one of the coolest things i've ever seen.

ugh, i'm tired. i got up at noon despite not getting to bed until after 4 a.m., because if i sleep past noon i feel like and utter and complete lazy slacker person. anyway. we won big game, so that's good. {sigh} you know, i just can't get into the stanford-cal rivalry the way i love the tech-uga rivalry. ah well. it's to be expected.

so i was just taking a break from structures and surfing the web, and came across a little factoid in espn.com's "rumor mill" that says the yankees have contacted john smoltz's agent. my response? noooooooooo! i will be absolutely distraught if smoltz leaves the braves. come on, he's been in atlanta for his entire career! he can't possibly leave, and on top of that, to the yankees? the evil empire of baseball? ugh!

and in basketball news, mike krzyzewski has signed a "lifetime" contract with duke. he's set through 2011, at which point he'd be retirement age. my respose to that one? awesome. one of the articles used that analogy that duke is to college basketball what the yankees are to baseball. i guess that's right in the sense that they are consistently good, but hey--duke is a nice team with good guys, which the yankees are a bunch of big oafs. ha. anyway, i like duke, and i love coach k. it all goes back to my 7th grade days when i was convinced i would be a blue devil one day. my brother will probably kill me for those statements seeing as how he goes to carolina, but ah well. that's another topic. duke vs. carolina. the greatest rivalry in all of sports. i could go on and on.

hmm. i should be a sports columnist. that would be a really fun job.

well. back to structures homework.

i'm officially jealous of karen and becca. i wish i could hang out with them in the middle of nowhere in england, and go see harry potter with them. actually, it is already 4:30 over there. maybe they are already on their way. whereas i am on my way to a midterm. note the disparity. yeesh.

(4:08 a.m.)

tonight was a really fun night. christopher is a strange but fun boy. he writes weird messages on people's things. and that's all i have to say 'bout that. it's definitely bedtime.

if anyone can find me a ticket from the san francisco bay area (that means from the san fran, oakland, or san jose airport) to charlotte for thanksgiving for $200 or less, let me know. i think it's going to be impossible, especially with the three hour time difference. i could get home thursday, but not until evening. which would kind of defeat the purpose of going home to have thanksgiving with my family. {sigh} i guess i will be home for plenty of time at christmas. i was just hoping to remove myself from the campus for a few days. i know everything will be closed on thursday, but maybe if nick is in town i could convince him to go on a friday day trip to monterey or yosemite or something.

today i wore my "girls kick ass" shirt. at georgia tech, they were common because of women's awareness month, but here, it was like no one could believe what i was wearing. they were all very amused. people kept asking what it said on the back, and i kept having to tell them that it doesn't say anything on the back. "girls kick ass" is all that it says. i just liked the shirt. i always get weird comments about my skateboarding cow shirt too. go figure. people are funny. and i need to do laundry.

well, off to study for my structures midterm tomorrow. last test until finals!

so a day after i called bob to tell him that i do indeed want a job offer this year, i read online today that the new nasa administrator is going to be the man who is currently the deputy director of the office of management and budget. that could be either really good--he gets the budget under control and the country segues into a beautiful pro-space era--or really bad--he puts a moratorium on spending, the station never grows beyond its current infancy, and we never go anywhere. i'm hopeful for the first scenario, but more worried about the second.

(10:05 p.m.)

i have this nervous butterfly feeling in my stomach and i don't know why. i think it usually comes around when i am thinking about the future, and for the past year, i have been thinking about the future a lot.

i have friends who say i think too much. i'm too introspective, or too prone to overanalyzation. it's not that i do or don't agree with them; it's more that i just don't know how to live any other way.

as an undergraduate i never worried about what i would do when i graduated...mainly because i couldn't conceive of the day when i would actually be done with school. academia was where i was comfortable, where i fit, where i could do well. i was good at it.

you know, i thought there would be some kind of quick transition, you know, just a *snap* when i would go from college life to adult life, and it would be easy and natural. if there was a quick bump, i haven't found it yet. it makes me feel like i'm permanently waiting for something. i talked to carter for an hour or so tonight. he's thinking of buying a house. a house! am i old enough to have friends with houses of their own? i keep forgetting that i'm the adult now.

i'm thinking seriously of taking the nasa job. i want to have a place of my own that i can decorate. i want to not have homework every night. carter noted that a ph.d. is not something to jump into lightly, and i know he's right. but i have wanted one for so long. but i don't know if i would like it. back and forth, back and forth, i do the waffle dance.

i keep saying that i am lonely, and yeah, i am. i miss my friends, and their company. i miss being with people who know me well, with whom there are no more barriers to worry about, with whom i can just be the slightly neurotic (but hopefully still loveable) sarah. but even if i was surrounded by friends, i think i might feel the same way i do now. i wish i knew what i wanted to do, what would make me really happy, what would give me some sense of purpose. i'm not sure if i'm sad, actually. i just feel kind of lost, like i'm drifting through the days but not really going anywhere.

i talked to my sister online tonight about a lot of what i just wrote. now that she's in college, i feel like i can connect with her life a lot better. i love that, because i think she is awesome. when i left home five years ago, katie was only 13. she was a teenager while i was away, and i often forget that she had grown up. i don't realize that she's 18 now, and fiercely intelligent, and has useful and thoughtful advice to give when i ask. one reason i would love to go back to atlanta is to be able to spend more time with her.

"three days till harry potter!" i've adopted emily's rallying cry, since the rest of this week leading up to the movie is going to be hellish. controls homework due friday and structures midterm that same day. i am really scared about structures, as i have no idea what will be on the test and dr. springer, though a funny and nice old man, has a reputation for putting really random crap on tests.

emily wants to make costumes to wear to harry potter. she wants a shirt that says "gryffindor seeker." she makes me laugh. i'm glad i met her and can hang out with her, especially now considering things.

last night i finally got ahold of kent, and was surprised to find out he was in new york, about an hour and a half away from the city. sheesh. i can't keep up with so many friends doing consultant-ish work and ending up in a different city every week! you'd think one of their jobs would have sent them to san francisco by now, but no such luck for me.

my aunt invited me to come up to sonoma (about an hour and a half away from stanford) for thanksgiving. it's good to have the option, but i think it might be weird. i just met her for the first time two months ago, and that was the first time my dad had even seen his own sister in twenty years. she's my aunt, but i don't know her. so i don't know if i want to go have thanksgiving with them or not. hmm.

oh yuck yuck yuck. i woke up half an hour ago to steadily falling rain. i hoped it would taper off by now, but no, i'm going to get to either a) ride my bike or b) walk to class in this crap. it's days like this that i miss the lovely stinger and how it would pick me up and drive me to the aerospace building. ha--there aren't even any public access roads that lead to my building here. i'm going to be soaked. {sigh} yes, the rainy season has begun.

(11:29 a.m.)

ohhhh my god it is so miserable outside. i had no pants to wear this morning except jeans, which of course take forever to dry, so i rode to class and then sat through structures and controls shivering. then i walked into math, which is held in this huge auditorium where apparently no one can figure out how to turn off the air conditioning. see, the climate here is such that you really don't need a/c all that often anyway, but some of the newer buildings have it. and they don't know how to turn it off. hence, it is always cold. i am always cold in math class as it is, and today, i just couldn't stand the thought of sitting there in the arctic for an hour and a half in my still soaking-wet jeans, so i turned around and came home. so here i sit with a nice cup of hot apple cinnamon tea listening to music, and it is lovely. too bad i have to start doing homework.

(11:59 p.m.)

all i've done today is complain about the rain. blah. it stopped raining, though it is still wet, and there is more to come. but it stopped for now.

flute ensemble tonight was nice. victoria--the girl who plays the solos on this gorgeous three-movement irish piece we're playing--wasn't there, and since i'm second chair on that piece, i got to play them for a night. that was a lot of fun. i'm so glad i was able to continue playing my flute out here. even though i don't play nearly as much as i did in high school, i would really miss it if i wasn't in some kind of musical group tooting my flute.

anyway. it's time for bed.

i need to rearrange the furniture in my room. right now i have my desk in front of the window, which is nice because i like to be able to look outside. however, it is a real problem every afternoon from about 2:30 until 5:30 when the sun is going down and shines directly into my window and into my eyes as i sit trying to work on the computer. of course i can shut the blinds, and i do. but i would rather not have to shut the blinds, because it's much nicer to be able to work with sunlight streaming in the windows rather than with the awful fluorescent light on my wall.

yes, i know. such a pressing problem, isn't it? heh. my boring life amuses me sometimes. anyway. i don't know if i will actually bother to move furniture or not. my room is an odd shape, and i don't know if there is a better way to put things than where they already are. and i'm really only in my room during the sun-setting period on the weekends. during the week i'm always in class or the study lounge.

i have had a really good weekend. i didn't get any homework done yesterday, which was bad, but i am making up for it today by doing my math homework and hopefully starting on compressible flow. i keep telling myself that there are only two more quarters of doing this much homework--then it's either off to start a ph.d. or out into the real world where i can leave my work at work.

speaking of which, i have to call bob tomorrow. he's the co-op coordinator at jsc. just like last fall, i have again gotten myself mired in a semi-annoying game of phone tag. i call him, he's not there. he calls me, i'm in class. argh. i just want to ask him to send me a job offer again. i want to have it in my hands. i'm more likely to take it this year than i was last year.

i wish i had gotten the bike with bigger tires. see, back when i bought my bike at the beginning of the quarter i had a choice between a mountain bikes with quasi-road tires (thicker than normal road tires, but thinner than mountain tires, and smooth) and a mountain bike with mountain bike tires (the fat, knobby ones). i couldn't decide but after input from the salesman and from my dad, i picked the one with road-ish tires, because it takes less energy to pedal and because i thought the only place i would ever ride would be on campus.

now though, i'm loving my bike. and there are so many places to ride around here, so many trails! and i'm wishing i had mountain bike tires so i could explore the trails. but i don't have them. and i can't put them on the frame that i have because the frame is too small. any suggestions? i want to ride all over the place.

it's been drizzling since this afternoon, but we went ahead with our plans to bbq some steaks for dinner. we all went over to aaron and christopher's apartment and used the grills there. they live in lyman, which has a reputation of being the nicest of grad housing here. it was indeed nice, but also reminded me a lot of the apartments at tech. same style--long hallway with doors off either side, apartments with living room, bathroom, small kitchen, and two bedrooms. same style furniture.

dinner was great. i joined aaron and nick for a trip to the grocery store this afternoon around 2:00, we came back and made pasta and cut up vegetables and marinated the steaks. they were finally done around 7:00 and we ate and had aaron's peanut butter cheesecake for dessert. i got to meet chihuahua the chinchilla, who is very cute and soft even if she was jumpy and scared. it was a fun time.

now i'm home for the evening, and happy. normally i'd be depressed to be sitting at home at 9:30 on a saturday, but i had such a great day. so now i'm going to try to get a little homework done, and then get to bed at a reasonable hour because i'm still a tired girl. i may try to get up in time to go to church in the memorial church tomorrow. i've been wanting to go all quarter and haven't yet. perhaps tomorrow.

(1:20 a.m.)

ok, so i just watched saturday night live, and you know, it's not nearly as funny as it used to be. i haven't watched in a long time, but tonight i caught the end of "shakespeare in love" on nbc and saw a promo that gwyneth paltrow would be hosting snl, so i figured i'd watch. since i like gwyneth paltrow and all. but it just wasn't that funny. the majority of the sketches aren't funny as much as they're just plain crude. i don't think i laughed but once or twice. am i right, or am i just old? i think i'm right.

so after seeing katie's and jelly's little quizzes, i got bored this afternoon and made one for myself. so if you want to take a 20-question quiz about me, click here. my sister currently has the high score (go katie!) my sister also has mono. :( she found out earlier this week. that sucks. i wish i could send chicken soup through the mail.

i am exhausted. my eyes hurt. perhaps i will take a nap. though i'm rather anti-napping. napping never seems to really help me, it just makes me groggy. so instead of just being tired, i'm tired and groggy, which really isn't any better. oh, and i'm cranky. in fact it's probably worse when i take naps. so i don't. i will go to bed early tonight, after we get back from seeing k-pax. yay movies. i love going to the movies.

after hearing him speak last night, i went to the bookstore today and bought lance armstrong's book. i read the first chapter, and it looks like it will be an easy and entertaining read. yay.

(1:10 a.m.)

tonight i went out with aaron, christopher, nick, valerie, and susan. all we did was go to the movies, but...

this is a group i can deal with. this is a group that i really like. we laugh and talk and i feel comfortable with them. they could fill part of the void that was opened when i left tech.

the stanford bookstore is this absolutely gorgeous place run by barnes and noble. there is a huge selection of books, a coffee bar, computer software, and every kind of stanford paraphenalia you could ever want. unfortunately, they don't have reams of engineering filler paper and the kind of clicky eraser i need. how frustrating! it makes me long for the nerdy contents of the tech bookstore's shelves.

anyway. i picked up the daily today only to find an article on the front page about lance armstrong speaking here on campus tonight. so i bought a ticket and headed over to the pavilion to check it out. he was there with eric davis (baseball player) and a tennis player and a moderator, and they talked about "athletes winning the battle against cancer." of course the topic wasn't surprising, since lance armstrong is known for being a kick-ass cyclist who won three tours de france after beating cancer.

i don't know why i find him such an interesting guy. it's not like i've ever had cancer, or even known anyone close to me with cancer. i just think his story is so inspiring. when i was at work over the summer, i would come in and check the news every morning and i would always read the cycling update to see how he was doing on the tour, and i was excited when he won again, even though i know nothing about cycling.

i dunno. i just think he is awesome.

my long week finally comes to an end tomorrow with a controls midterm. after that, i'll only have one more test until finals--structures, next friday. i think i may sleep the whole weekend. emily is going home for the weekend, i just found out tonight. she leaves tomorrow morning. she thought she had told me, and maybe she had, but i didn't remember. i was hoping to go dancing. i have been wanting to go dancing for weeks but it never happens. anyway. nick's always busy with valerie, and emily's gone, so i will have to find someone else to hang out with this weekend i guess.

i think i might be ready to be done with school for now. i'm thinking seriously about taking the nasa job this year. it scares me to think that i might not get a ph.d., because for so long that has been my goal. and i really do think i would enjoy being a professor someday...for which i'd need a ph.d. but i don't know. i just feel like i'm stuck, and maybe leaving school would be the best way to shake me out of the rut.

a pretty normal wednesday that ended on a high note. it began with three hours of class, but math ended a half hour early when the fire alarm went off, so aaron and andrew and i had a lovely lunch over at tressider (that's the student union). they have chinese food. mmm. it's a great food court--my only complaint is that they close at 2:00...and often try to shut the gate even earlier than that. mildly annoying.

anyway, i spent a few hours after lunch writing my column for next week, then went to my last class of the day, then headed to the daily office. i am always nervous walking into the office, as i'm afraid mark will tell me that he didn't like my column, or that the topic isn't good enough. this week was even worse after the email i got last week about how my topics needed improvement. but it went ok today. i guess.

dinner was nice, and afterwards i did a practice controls midterm in preparation for the real thing on friday. dawson's was on so i watched that from emily's room, then watched west wing...all the while, emily was down the hall playing scrabble. i suck at scrabble. anyway, the game finished and she and christopher came back and we hung out for a little while. then i was exhausted, so here i am. home.

christopher is this cool guy that i recently met at dinner. he kills mice. see, he is majoring in immunology, and specializing in leukemia, and so he uses mice and infects one of them with cancer, then kills that one and harvests the tumors to infect other mice so he can test different things. i don't completely understand the process, but it sounds very interesting.

also, he taught me about chinchillas. he has a chinchilla. i had no idea what one was, but it turns out to be a strangely cute animal that looks like a cross between a rabbit, a mouse, a hamster, and a squirrel. his chinchilla is named chihuahua. i was so amused. he said he'd bring it over some time. i get to meet chihuahua the chinchilla--how exciting!

{sigh} it seems i can hardly talk to nick anymore without it coming out wrong. i tend to disguise every emotion in dripping sarcasm when i'm around him. i don't really know why. i hate it. i'm sorry, nick.

i hate that i am so bad at structures homework. it really bothers me that there is an aspect of aerospace engineering at which i really suck. how did i manage to get a bachelor's degree, much less get into grad school, when i can't do the simple algebra required to complete one structures problem?

whine, whine. complain, complain.

not much to say today. midterm this morning, homework all afternoon, and now i sit here working on my column for the daily this week...except of course i am far too easily distracted by the lure of web surfing or working on the long-overdue revamp of my webpage.

well. that was a spectacularly boring summary of my day. back to writing my column.

ugh. i hate how it gets dark so early now. not that there's anything anyone can do about it, i mean hey, that's the way the worlds turns--literally. i suppose going off daylight savings time didn't help, but still. hmm. let's just tilt the earth so that it's lighter later again. i'm sure that wouldn't hurt anything. hahahahaha. i'm such a dork--what a pathetic joke. anyway, it's only 5:30 and it's already dark and it's just depressing. darkness makes me sleepy.

and it's getting chilly outside. a sweatshirt is no longer enough to really keep me warm on my bike rides home once the sun has gone down...but i don't want to carry around another jacket, so i just suck it up and deal with being cold for a few minutes.

and now that i've done the requisite complaining for the day... ;) so i turned in my cfd take-home midterm today, and have the midterm in compressible flow tomorrow. i should study for it, but i just can't convince myself that it will be very hard. i mean, come on, all i have to do is take the given numbers and plug them into given equations. maybe i'll have to derive a few of those equations, but i've done that so many times before. and it's an open book, open note test! the odd thing i've found about grad school so far is that while the homeworks are a bit harder and more time-consuming...the tests are easier and often open book and notes.

hmm. i just decided that my diary must be extremely boring to anyone who doesn't actually know me...and quite possibly boring to even those people who do know me as well. all i ever talk about is school and homework, and i never tell any funny stories, and i never write about how i went and did such-and-such cool thing in the bay area. i will have to work on that! i don't want my life to be boring.

(9:54 p.m.)

two things i forgot to mention earlier. one is that i finished the entire crossword in the daily today all by myself with no help. yeah!!

two, we got a list of breakers members at dinner tonight and i just want to offer this example of the diversity found here at stanford. the following are the hometowns of people:

i find it just amazing that i get to eat dinner every night with people from all over the world. i think dinner may be my favorite time of the day.

if you change your mind, i'm the first in line, honey i'm still free, take a chance on me, if you need me let me know and i'll be around, if you got no place to go and you're feeling down...if you're all alone when the pretty birds have flown, honey i'm still free, take a chance on me, gonna do my very best and it ain't no lie, if you put me to the test, if you let me try...

today i am obsessed with this crazy song that emily played for me last night during a game 6 commercial break--an erasure cover of abba's "take a chance on me." i swear, that girl gets songs stuck in my head like no one else. she has hundreds upon hundreds of cds, and knows so many neat songs that i've never heard before. she's the music buff i always wish i was.

so i have gotten myself into a rather sticky situation with this guy i met when i first got out here. i think he's cool and so i hung out with him a few times, and we went to the movies on friday...and then i realized i'm not interested in dating him. but on friday he made it fairly clear that he's interested in me, and so now i don't know how to tell him that i only want him as a friend. {sigh} any suggestions on how to get out of this predicament?

anyway. i'm sitting here working on my cfd take-home midterm and it's oh-so-fun. actually it's not that hard, but i am really paranoid about making a mistake. i mean, it's take-home and open book, so i figure i should be able to do pretty darn close to perfect on it. hopefully i can finish this problem in the next half hour so i can watch the world series...

(10:05 p.m.)

i think that may be the best world series i've ever seen. wow. what a great seven games. i haven't been this pumped about a series since 1995...i can still remember standing in that parking lot in chapel hill listening to the game through a walkman when marquis grissom made the final out and the braves won.

tonight, i was all prepared to come home and write about how it was a fantastic series except for the fact that the yankees won again...but geez, i should've learned by now that it ain't over till it's over. bottom of the ninth, with the incredible mariano rivera pitching. i'm cursing up a storm because it looks like there's no hope for the diamondbacks and the freaking yankees are going to win for the umpteenth time, and then all of a sudden there's a hit! and another! next thing i know luis gonzalez is standing there with a chance to win the game and he hits a blooper into shallow outfield and bam--the yankees are dethroned and the arizona diamondbacks are the 2001 world series champions. i can't imagine how it could have ended any better. it gave me goosebumps. ah. game 7 is why baseball exists. totally. awesome.

does anyone know what holes are like this time of year? i'm thinking of moving into one. i miss my friends in atlanta and houston something fierce, and i'm getting stressed out by the various issues of the friends i have here. i can't deal with all the complexity that keeps on trying to run my life, and i so badly want everything to just be normal again, like things were way back during my first few years of college. maybe one day i will learn to quit caring about how other people treat me. i can hope, can't i? {sigh} i think i'll go running.

(10:18 p.m.)

song of the moment: u2, "stuck in a moment"

I'm not afraid
Of anything in this world
There's nothing you can throw at me
That I haven't already heard

I'm just trying to find
A decent melody
A song that I can sing
In my own company

I never thought you were a fool
But darling look at you
You gotta stand up straight
Carry your own weight
These tears are going nowhere baby

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment
And now you can't get out of it

Don't say that later will be better
Now you're stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it

I will not forsake
The colors that you bring
The nights you filled with fireworks
They left you with nothing

I am still enchanted
By the light you brought to me
I listen through your ears
Through your eyes I can see

And you are such a fool
To worry like you do
I know it's tough
And you can never get enough
Of what you don't really need now
My, oh my

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it

Oh love, look at you now
You've got yourself stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it

I was unconscious, half asleep
The water is warm 'til you discover how deep
I wasn't jumping, for me it was a fall
It's a long way down to nothing at all

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it

Don't say that later will be better
Now you're stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it

And if the night runs over
And if the day won't last
And if our way should falter
Along the stony pass

And if the night runs over
And if the day won't last
And if our way should falter
Along the stony pass

It's just a moment
This time will pass

crisis averted. today i went to safeway and bought toilet paper. such is life.

tonight i'm finally going to see bandits. i know it's probably not any sort of terrific movie, but it looks funny and entertaining and more importantly, it means that i am getting off campus. tomorrow i have this huge desire to go dancing in san francisco...i wonder if emily would want to come? she keeps saying she knows of a great place to go. i dunno, i just want to go somewhere and forget about homework for a little while and shake my groove thing. ha. ;)

so apparently there is a "credible" threat to suspension bridges in california, which of course includes the bay bridge and the golden gate bridge in san francisco. a few months ago the news would have seemed distant and disconnected from my life, but suddenly i live in the bay area and it's very strange to think that something near me could be targeted. i mean, i don't think anybody's going to want to take out stanford anytime soon, but i can't imagine what would happen to this area if something happened to one of those bridges. getting from one place to the other would be a nightmare. however, in some weird sense it's nice to think that if someone did manage to damage a bridge, the loss of life would be much less than in a skyscraper.

so in the midst of a websurfing break yesterday, i came across this: nanowrimo. short for "national novel writing month." the idea is to get a bunch of people to write 2,000 words each day, and at the end of the month they will have produced a 50,000 word novel.

i found the concept very intriguing. they don't care what you write about or how good (or alternatively, how crappy) the writing is...instead, the idea is just to write. though i've thought a lot about writing some sort of book, and i'd love to be able to say one day that i had had something published and sold...but i've never had the desire to write a novel. i always think more along the lines of humor, or history, or fact-based books. you know, some sort of non-fiction about the space program or something.

i wonder if i could write a 50,000 word novel in a month. i wonder what would happen if i took an hour each day to sit down and just write whatever happened to be in my head. hmm.

it would probably be mindless drivel. ;) but maybe i'd get a few good sentences. maybe i'll try it.

tech won tonight, which made my day a happy one. i wore my bee ears to dinner, even if it made everyone look at me a little strangely. i think they brought good luck. as for the game, it can pretty much be summarized by leila's song:

we won, we won
joe didn't fumble
ohh yeah,
we won, we won
whoop whoop
we rule