December 2001 Archives

my scrapbook is done, and i am sooo proud of it. i can't wait to show it off to my friends...my family has already been forced to look at it multiple times. ;) putting it together made me reminisce about the trip, as expected. i want to go again.

this afternoon andrew had a reunion of sorts at his house. cayce and dave picked up my car-less self and we all went over together. ginger and sari were there as well. it was really, really nice to see some of my old high school friends again; it has been far too long since i saw ginger and andrew. i hope that the next time i'm in charlotte, i'll get to see them again. at worst, maybe seeing each other again will make me more communicative via email!

anyway, tomorrow i'm heading back to atlanta. mom and katie are driving down, then they'll return home. katie isn't going back to tech until friday morning, but i wanted to have plenty of time to see all my friends. and i'm excited that i have a whole week to spend with them...but i have to admit, i am sad to be leaving charlotte. though i want time with my friends, this year i also want more time at home. it's ironic--i never expected that i would be disappointed to have to leave home this year. i figured my days of pseudo-homesickness were past, and charlotte had become just another place to visit. an important place, of course, because of my family, but still just another stop amidst all my travels.

but i have had a wonderful two weeks here at home. i feel relaxed, and really happy. for the first time in a long time, i'm not ready to get back to school. i'm not ready to start studying again, and taking classes, getting up early and staying up late. i know i will readjust to the grind within a day...but man, christmas break has just been so nice.

well, after almost two weeks of procrastination and very slow progress, my europe scrapbook grew today by leaps and bounds. it is awesome; i think i am in love with it. hee hee. my family is already sick of listening to me cry "look at this funny picture!" or "ooooh, i just had a good idea," or "this is going to be the best scrapbook ever." i've finished the pages all the way through rome. with one day left before i head back to atlanta, tomorrow i have to do pages for vatican city, pompeii, nice, barcelona, paris part 2, and amsterdam. then i'll be done! i don't think it should be a problem...i figure that i have been completing each page in an average of somewhere around 20 minutes. so it should take me somewhere between three and four hours to finish up.

anyway. ah, the excitement of my life, right?

tomorrow andrew is having a little get-together at his house, just so everyone can catch up. i haven't seen andrew since...geez, i don't know when. i'm hoping ginger will be there also, since she emailed me earlier and suggested we get together, but we haven't managed to do so yet. not that we've tried very hard, but i guess the holidays keep everyone busy. i haven't seen her in a year...two years? not sure. it's sort of scary how quickly you can lose track of time and fall out of touch with people who used to be really good friends.

good night!

i feel like i should update; however, there is nothing exciting to report. charlotte is still wonderfully relaxing. i actually wish that i had more time at home, and i haven't wished that in a long time. so i'm happy and...happy! and that's all. today i spent some of my christmas money, worked on my scrapbook, took a long walk, and went to see kate and leopold with my mom. typical meg ryan romantic comedy fluff. nice.

so i am chatting with christina and she is suggesting topics to write about, since life in charlotte is not interesting to anyone but myself. so far we have:

• why one should not put explosive materials in one's shoes and get on a plane
• why do poeple eat divinity
• how is it possible that one can mail live birds from one's local post office?

hmm. now she's gone to bed. no more cool ideas. well, i should probably follow her example, since it is getting late. i've been sleeping insane amounts since i've been home, and i'm not sure why. also, i have had many crazy dreams about things like 1) being a russian spy plotting to overthrow the government, 2) being on an aircraft carrier cruising past hundreds of japanese submarines, and 3) creating a new sort of baseball game where the outfield fence becomes the home plate, and it's all about a stream of players throwing and catching balls over the wall. and those are just the ones i remember. i think katie's extra bed is too squishy or something. it's very strange.

tech played stanford tonight in the seattle bowl, and won! woohoo! i knew i was doing the right thing rooting for my alma mater instead of for my current stomping grounds. ;) sadly enough, katie and i almost forgot about the game entirely. i was sitting at the kitchen table pondering how to spend the evening and flipping through the sports page when all of a sudden i saw the blurb about the bowl game. it took a few seconds for the thoughts to filter through: "...we're in the seattle bowl, which is on the 27th...is today the 27th?...today is the 27th...oh NO!...what time is the game??...4:00??...it's already 6:00!!" at that point, my thoughts transformed to voice as i screeched "KATIE! WE'RE MISSING THE GAME!!!" and bounded into the den to flip on the tv. we saw most of the last half.

other than that excitement, it was just another quiet day in charlotte. i've got three more days left at home. how the break has flown by... dad and i had breakfast with four of his cousins who were in town, including the california contingent of anne, peter and anna, and john and leslie. turns out john (who i'd never met) lives in mountain view (which is two miles or so from stanford...i go there all the time to go to target). i could have passed him on the street and not known who he was! small world, eh?

after i tore through the first harry potter book on christmas eve, i thought about starting in on the second again. instead, i've started reading tom wolfe's bonfire of the vanities that my dad gave me for christmas. i don't know anything about it, other than they made a movie out of it. it's ok so far. tomorrow though, i'm going to have to postpone reading and instead spend some time working on my europe scrapbook and shopping. i need a new pair of jeans. guess i'll hit the mall.

we had a nice family trip up to my aunt nancy's new house in chapel hill today, marred only by brian's ever-constant arguments and general put-downs. i swear, he is unbearable most of the time. i don't understand how he can be so negative and argumentative all the time.

still, our day trip to tarheel country was mostly pleasant. aunt nancy's new house is very nice and comfortable, though a bit small for nine people. ;) we had a delicious christmas meal and dessert and the annual present exchange, and finally left around 5 to take grandmother back to her place in durham and then head back here to charlotte.

tomorrow dad and i are going to have breakfast with his cousin anne...from berkeley, california! oddly enough, they are in charlotte for the holidays as well, visiting my dad's other cousin laurie, who lives in charlotte anyway. i find it somehow funny how it turned out that i wasn't the only graybeal to head east for christmas.

merry christmas!

it was a lovely holiday morning in the graybeal household. heh--we slept late. didn't eat until 10:00, and didn't even open presents until 11:00...of course, part of the reason was because dad didn't get home until 11. but then again, we all just like to sleep late now. ;)

i got a bunch of great things. new pajamas, new running shoes, books, a few movies, and enough candy to last me a lifetime. and i think everyone was happy with their new stanford apparel. hee hee.

merry christmas eve! i have spent the day sleeping, picking up grandmother in huntersville, and re-reading the first harry potter book. tonight i will work a bit on the ol' scrapbook and eat a good family dinner. mmm. and that is all!

ugh. argh argh argh. i am so frustrated with stanford's student services. i found out yesterday that 1) they have changed the class schedule yet again and now two classes that i was supposed to take--and other people were supposed to take--are now offered at exactly the same time, and 2) my registration is on hold yet again for something i was totally unaware of. turns out i owe $100 for taking the piano class, and they didn't post it to my account until november 30. well, since i had checked with the bursar's office in early november to make sure my account was all squared away, and was told that i didn't owe anything and everything was great...i hadn't checked my account since then.

so. the way things are run out there is maddening.

but that was yesterday's frustration, and i will hopefully take care of it tomorrow...though the bursar's office is probably closed in which case i'll have to wait until wednesday and just be annoyed. but anyway. my current dilemma has nothing to do with stanford. instead, it deals with cars, and the fact that mine is in california, leaving me unsure of how i am going to get back to atlanta for new year's.

i have burdened chris with the effort of bringing me home, and i am reluctant to burden someone else with coming up to charlotte to take me back. kent won't be back yet, and carter doesn't think he will have enough time. which i totally understand. i was hoping for the miraculous appearance of someone who actually wants to drive 4 hours up and 4 hours back, just to give me a ride. hmm. i will have to come up with something. planes are too expensive, and amtrak leaves at the ungodly hour of 4 a.m. if anyone has a great idea, please let me know!

(12:04 a.m.)

i must say it again: i have awesome friends. i have nothing to ever complain about in the friendship department. :) i talked to christina for an hour and a half tonight...somehow the time always flies by when i'm talking to her. she has such great stories! i am always amazed by her wonderful outlook on life in general; i wish i were more like her. she is always an inspiration to me...i wonder if she knows that. i should tell her. i don't think she reads this page.

i can't believe tomorrow is christmas eve! the first week of my long-awaited break has really flown by. i can't help but remember last year's break, and how bored i was, and how depressed i was, and how confused i was, and how all i wanted to do was get back to atlanta. things certainly do change in a year.

last year i listened to the counting crows' long december over and over again, waiting for the line that goes "maybe this year will be better than the last..." i didn't know what i was doing with my life, or where i was headed. i didn't want to graduate, and yet i knew that i couldn't stay in atlanta for much longer without completely losing my sanity. i came home hoping for some relaxation, and instead was met with family uproar and like i already said, all i could think about was getting back to atlanta, where at least the uproar was not quite as loud.

spring semester was hell. i wanted to die, literally. i didn't think i would make it to the end, i still didn't know what i was going to do after graduation, i despaired over the thought of leaving atlanta, and i spent many nights crying myself to sleep, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of a friend. my craziness strained my closest friendships, i think, and that only made my doubts even more pronounced.

then i graduated. it happened. before i could calm down, i went to europe. i was still mired in my insanity, and the whole trip was very stressful at times...but still altogether an unforgettable experience that was fantastically fun. i came back to the u.s. and in a whirlwind, i drove to maryland and watched one of my best friends get married. it made me really happy to be there for the event, and for her.

my highs and lows came quickly that day. later that night, i cried and cried on the front porch of the inn where we were staying, and even the presence of a friend who knew more than anyone about my hopes and fears was little help.

the good thing was that time kept on moving. the porch steps in maryland were the last place i felt truly hopeless. i went to houston for the summer, life slowed down, i loved living with ron and phil, and i finally found a group at work doing just what i wanted to do and full of fun people. september 11 came and went and threw the country into craziness just as i prepared to cross the west and settle in for at least nine months...maybe 4-5 years. stanford is beautiful and the people are great; i am also working harder than i ever have before. i still had so many questions. is stanford the right school? (yes.) do i still want to work towards a ph.d.? (yes, but not right now. maybe in a few years.)

it's funny how things work out. somehow in the middle of all that, my life started to make sense again. school was driving me crazy and so i began to toy with the idea of taking the job in houston once i finish my whirlwind master's degree in june. the more i thought about it, the more comfortable i became with the idea. thinking that i will be moving to houston this summer, and won't have to move again until i decide i'm ready, is really nice. and suddenly, i'm starting to feel happy more often than not. finally. i realize i have awesome friends. and a pretty cool life.

anyway. that is way more than i intended to write, and it's now 1:15 a.m. and i'm ready for bed.

i didn't write anything yesterday. hmm. i just realized that. i guess it is harder to write when i'm not doing anything. what was yesterday...friday, right? oh! i had lunch with cayce and dave, which was very nice. i am so bad at keeping in touch with most people when i'm not with them, especially this fall when i was endlessly swamped with homework, but it's always nice to be able to come home and catch up. and last night i talked to katie for a long time about all sorts of stuff, which i really enjoyed. i have an awesome sister.

today i have no big plans. (surprise, surprise.) i rented a few movies the other night and i think i will watch one today. let's see, thursday night i watched 61*, billy crystal's hbo movie about the maris/mantle home run record chase in 1961. the other two i rented are snatch and memento, so i should have some good movie watching times ahead. i'm catching up on everything i missed in the theater. ;)

today is jes's birthday, but i have no idea where she is...charlotte? wilmington? somewhere in between?

i think maybe i have been sleeping too much. you know how getting too much rest can just make you even more tired? i think that's happening to me. i wake up in the morning, blink my eyes a few times, roll over, and just go back to sleep. today i got up at 11:30...i think that's the first time i've been up before noon since i got home. hee hee. i really should get back on a normal schedule, eh.

ah, blissful boredom. today i have slept late, read the newspaper, and played video games. that's all. i love it.

oh yeah, and i realized that i have fantastic friends.

today was terrific. i woke up late, went to a 1:00 showing of lord of the rings with katie, came home, bummed around, ate some dinner, went to the georgia tech vs. davidson basketball game being played here in charlotte (tech won, woo), came home, redecorated the christmas tree (curse you, tree lights that pop and go dark, curse you), showered, and now i am sitting here comfy in my pajamas.

the movie was soooo good. soooooo good. katie got mildly annoyed with me because i wouldn't stop gushing about it on the way home. i called kent and leila to tell them how great it was. {happy sigh} i will have to go see it again. i can't possibly be expected to wait another year for the second movie, and then yet another year for the third, can i? i want to see them now!!

anyway. it was good. ;)

home was great today. even brian, my always-ready-to-argue little brother, was agreeable. tomorrow...i have to buy new shoes (that will go under the tree till the 25th, drat), and go to a tri-family dinner (graybeals, yoders, mickles). and bum around some more. bumming around is wonderful right now. i know it makes for boring diary entries, but i think i can deal with that for a few weeks.

well, chris headed back to atlanta this afternoon. i'm glad he came up here to visit, but after listening to my siblings be loud and argumentative for two days, he probably will never want to come again. {sigh} whenever i have guests, it always embarasses me that our household is so loud and obnoxious. i never noticed it when i lived here, but now when i come home sometimes i just want peace and quiet, and i never get that.

i hope he wasn't too bored. there are so many more entertaining things to do in atlanta.

but i was glad he came.

this afternoon i went to the dentist. ugh. i have cavities, which is ironic because all fall i was better about brushing and (gasp!) flossing than ever before. stupid dentist. stupid teeth.

tonight david and i are going to see vanilla sky. he said he's got some free passes. whoo!

well. i am home. charlotte. in the past three days i have:

• spent a lot of time on airplanes
• gotten my marta fix for the holidays
• seen a lot of people at a bday party in atlanta
• ridden down to sharpsburg with anit
• gone to church
• seen carter's fantastic house under construction
• hugged kent at least a dozen times
• been driven up to charlotte by chris
• decorated the christmas tree
• played tennis and pool with chris
• watched perhaps the worst movie ever (the ladies man)

i am happy to be home, and happy to see my family. i will probably be bored many times in the next two weeks, but boredom is probably a good thing in my life right now. i need to recover from last quarter. the only bad part about being bored is that it gives me too much time to think, and then i start coming up with things like the following...

it was so good to see kent and carter and anit and chris and james, and see them smiling. it was reassuring to see that they are happy; it was sadly nostalgic to see that they are happy without me. that i can't play a part in making them happy anymore.

i had a good quarter at stanford. my grades weren't what i hoped they'd be, but i did have a good quarter. i readjusted to life on my own, and i made some new friends. i finally was able to stay home on a friday night and not feel like that meant i was socially inept. i had a few dates, even if i did sort of space out so that nothing came of them. it was a good quarter. but when i see my tech friends--my best friends--i want to come racing back to them. seeing them makes me feel lonely, because i know i can't see them always.

they were making plans for a party on the 23rd, another get-together in atlanta. i won't be there. i'm hardly ever there anymore. i want to be there with them, to hear about their lives and to know what their inconsequential daily thoughts are. i miss it.

i wonder what life would be like if i moved back to atlanta. i wonder if i would be happy, i mean, in the long run.

i like stanford. but i still wonder.

so i just picked up my math final that i took on wednesday. wow. in my 17+ years of education, i have never done as badly on any test as i did on this final. i got a 67. not out of 100. out of 200. even i didn't think i had done that badly. i saw the score and just laughed. it was that comical. i've never done this badly in a class in my life. i still never gotten a c, but now i have a lovely bright shining b-. thank god i never have to take math again.

sad how i am a freaking engineer, and i never want to take math again. math is what i do! ha ha ha. man, i can't do anything but just laugh.

i was so pumped walking out of my structures final this morning, not because of the final, but because exam week is over! i was jumping up and down punching the air in front of skilling, while most of my first year aero/astro class just looked at me with amused expressions on their faces. a bunch of us are leaving in 45 minutes to go into san francisco and eat at the cheesecake factory. mmmmmm. i think i will try to pack a bit before we leave.

(10:24 p.m.)

ohhhhh, i love the cheesecake factory so much. i am still stuffed, four hours after we finished dinner. tonight i had jambalaya pasta and lemon raspberry cream cheesecake. that place is my favorite restaurant. mmm. the one in san fran is especially cool--on the 8th floor of an 8-story macy's department store overlooking union square.

i've also decided that we will now be going into san fran every weekend, because it was so much fun! after dinner we went to nike town and i bought a ghetto hat, then we wandered around. the streets were full of people hustling and bustling around, and it just made me happy. i love cities.

i have a headache now though, so after talking to nick and emily for a while, i came home. i'm gonna finish packing and head to bed since i have to get up at 6 a.m. for my flight. atlanta and home, here i come!

well, in keeping with the ae mafia journal trends (yes, we stick together even in that regard, scary isn't it?), i have made a list of all the places i've been. except i put it on my webpage. so you can go see it there, if you're interested.

well, in twelve more hours i'll be in the middle of my last final. my final final. ha ha.

today there was a mass round of quizzes. christina quizzes, carter quizzes. they are fun, but also make me nervous. what if i don't know as much about one of my friends as i should?? ;) hee hee.

i am feeling a bit out-of-sorts tonight. people are getting married (jes), people are buying houses (carter), people are moving to houston to start jobs (becca, chrissy). i don't want to be an adult! i think that is why i continue to cling to school. that's why i will be frightened to leave, even though grad school has not turned out to be exactly what i thought it would be.

i was talking to ron tonight about it all. he is probably going to grad school in the fall to get a master's, which i think is a very good decision for him. though i may complain about the work being much more than i thought it would be, i am definitely glad that i came to stanford this year to get my master's degree. i know, i'm reevaluating whether i want a ph.d. or not, and if i do, whether i want it now, but i defintely don't regret committing nine months to a graduate degree. it is something that i want, and something that i will take pride in having, even if getting there is sometimes maddening. if i hadn't come straight to grad school, i think i would have never forgiven myself.

ron said "maybe you have been [an adult] and you just didn't know it. it is like somebody else defined what 'being an adult' means and eventually the pressure just gets stronger and stronger to conform." he is right. i wonder if my parents felt this way. i wonder if they still feel this way. it's weird--we grow up with all these preconceived notions of what an adult is, based on society and our own observations. and then one day you wake up and realize that you're smack in the middle of that transitional age range. you're 23, not too far from being 24, and you get up, run some errands, and some kid at the grocery stores asks if you want paper or plastic, ma'am. and then it hits you--"wait, i'm an adult." and if you're me, it freaks you out. ha. one of these days my conflicted brain will calm down.

(12:55 a.m.)

becca (who shall now be known as "becks"), is currently in the middle of her last day of work in switzerland, and she says she hasn't packed a thing, which is "pulling a sarah." hey! i resent that!

ok, now that you all have picked yourself up off the floor from laughing... ;) i admit, i am not the most efficient packer. anytime i move anywhere new, i save it all till the last minute, at which point i freak out, start throwing things into random boxes, and yell at people who are only trying to help me. moving is perhaps the most stressful thing i ever do. and i seem to do it a lot. ah well.

i am in the middle of a music obsession. music of any kind. i want it playing constantly. if it were possible to listen to four songs at once, i would. i don't know what has gotten into me. i just made a new cd though. yessss.

i am pretty much done studying for structures. not that i have studied much to begin with, but structures is one of those classes where studying has never really paid off for me. it all depends on my ability to sit down, look at the test, and classify what type of problem it is. which means studying doesn't help, only practice does. so i have practiced today. and now i should go to bed. but i'm not tired. instead, i am searching for new songs to adore. i found this song by dar williams today, "are you out there," that i love. {happy sigh} in 10 hours i will have slept, taken a final, and will be done!

life is full of hits and misses. already in the 6 hours i have been awake today, i have been jerked from one end of the emotional spectrum and back again and forth ad nauseum.

today i got snail mail about a georgia tech package to go see the seattle bowl, and email about a stanford package for the same thing. i wrote to alex and iffy, saying "oh, I am being pulled in so many directions! agh!" to which iffy eloquently replied:

"'once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.' yoda said that. he's smart as shit."

iffy cracks me up.

so we were playing this game called where in the world is kent stephen siebeneck, you know, like carmen sandiego. the first clue was "emeralds." not having any idea even which region of the country kent is in, i guessed seattle, since it is the emerald city. so he sent another clue today, and carter guessed his location before i even got home from my math final (which, by the way, sucked). hmph! i am miffed. the second clue was "tar heel," which immediately tells me that kent is in the north carolina mountains. a quick search turns up the town of hiddenite, where the largest emeralds have been found.

i was supposed to win! i'm the one from north carolina! poop. ah well. sometimes i am too competitive for my own good, and it makes me a little insane. with carter it is particularly pronounced, like that maddening brother-sister type of thing. it is neat that kent is in north carolina--i may get to go to "lord of the rings" with him next week, with any luck. the movie opens on wednesday, but katie and i have tickets to the gt basketball game vs. davidson that's being played in charlotte that night, so i'll have to go see the movie thursday i guess...

yeah, again, my math final SUCKED. there's no way in hell i'm getting an a in that class, in fact, the one thing that will allow me to probably get a b is the fact that pretty much everyone gets an a or b. {sigh} so i'm home listening to angry music again. but in a few minutes i'm going christmas shopping! yeah!

(4:39 p.m.)

ah, after spending a few hours at the mall with emily and coming home to emails and ecards from friends, i am feeling very loved. and i have coffee. mmm, coffee.

i really like seeing people who look happy, or in wonder. or just smiling. this evening i was waiting in line at starbucks and the line was really long, but there was a palo alto fireman standing there just smiling, with his eyes crinkled. he made me happy. then on my way home i saw this guy just standing in a field kicking a soccer ball around, which made me happy too.

ok, now you can all laugh at me for being a sap.

i got to talk to daniel today! he is not going to be in town on saturday night, so he can't pick me up at the airport. basically, despite all the friends i have in atlanta, i have not found anyone to pick me up at the airport yet. carter has a family dinner, kent has an office party, chris will probably be preparing for the birthday party. christina will not even be in atlanta. ah well, i will get my marta fix.

today there was this guy in the plaza by the bookstore laying face down on a giant mousetrap made out of a wooden box and some metal rods. there was a wall street journal lying on the ground beside him, and he held some money in his hand. we asked him if the drama department was performing "the mousetrap" and he said no. so we asked him why he was lying on the ground in a giant mousetrap. his answer? "it's political art." ok....

i got some good studying done in the library this afternoon. now, this was only the second time i have ventured into the main library here at stanford, and i must say--WOW. it is so nice inside. tons of nice tables, comfy armchairs, good lighting, an abundance of computer terminals. i always hated the georgia tech library, which was cramped and ugly and depressing. going in there just sucked the life out of you. going into the stanford library, on the other hand, is like entering heaven. i think i will spend a lot of time there the rest of this week as i finish my exam studying.

(8:28 p.m.)

there is one quality in particular that i find i like much better about the stanford aero/astro department than the georgia tech aerospace school--the students. maybe it's because we're graduate students now, or maybe it's because none of us knew each other ahead of time and were suddenly thrust into all of the same classes, but the one thing i have noticed, and really liked, is how we all get along.

at tech there were cliques. becca, karen, and me--the ae mafia. the mikes. alex and his little crew. maggy and anne. kent could always talk to any of the groups, but was probably most associated with the mafia. oh, we all spoke to each other now and then, but the little posses never really mingled.

now, i don't mean to imply that there aren't groups of people here at stanford that tend to be seen together more often than others...but somehow, we're all friends. we all help each other out with our homework, and we all study together, and we all ask each other how life is going. one day i might have lunch with nick, valerie, aaron and robin. that afternoon, i work on homework with bree, canadian steve, joo and yuichiro. i take a break to go chat with brian and kyle. i ride home with american steve and cornell mike. and then the next day i'm having lunch with molly, tyson, new zealand steve, and canadian mike. (yes, we have too many steves and mikes.)

i really like this part of grad school.

warning--i am in a linking mood today.

after sitting through 3+ hours of presentations on the same handful of cfd projects, it felt so good to ride home in the freezing cold and wind. it woke me back up from my catatonic state. anyway, the cfd project is written up, presented, and handed in. whew! and my controls final is over as well. i didn't finish, but neither did half the class, and i know i was on the right track, so i will just pray to the god of partial credit, and everything will be fine. two more: math wednesday, structures friday. tonight i get to catch up on the sleep i didn't get last night.

it amazed me this afternoon to see how many of my classmates have no idea how to give a presentation. i mean, we're talking just painful presentation skills. not having rehearsed, and making obvious by the extreme amount of "ums," "ahs," and general fumbling for words. not knowing how to use powerpoint. (do people use anything else??) having hand-written slides that are impossible to read. it was bad.

on the way home, i realized that i am totally in love with my bike. i love it, love it, love it. i will miss it over break. i hope it will not be too lonely.

ron has a new webpage that he is working on, he says. so far, he has lots of pictures from his trip to italy with buzz in november. {sigh} i was looking through them and oh my god, i want to go back to europe right now! there was a picture of this square in florence with all these statues, and i just stared at it, thinking "i was there...six months ago, i was running around just having a good time with some of my best friends in the whole world...in freaking florence." yes. i want to go back. if i had a million dollars, i would travel the world and write about it. becca could come with me. we could start a travel magazine. she could do most of the writing, and i could do most of the layout and editing. it could work. yes.

so tech now has its first rhodes scholar in fifty years. i feel like i should have gone after some pretigious scholarship just so everyone would have oohed all over me. i guess two national graduate school fellowships are not enough. dit dit dit. poor sarah. ;)

ok, i am going to stop being a completely ungrateful whiny person now. off to get my math stuff organized so i can start studying. maybe if i get something done tonight, tomorrow i can go to san francisco!!

(12:49 a.m.)

my toes are cold. hmph. i am already wearing one pair of socks. either i can 1) put on another pair, or 2) go to bed. wow, that is a tough choice. goodnight world!

I'M TIRED OF SCHOOL!

this week, i am motivated by one thing: fear of failing. i will study my butt off because i don't want to get bad grades. it is very intimidating to see all these people around me who are motivated by the desire for actual understanding of the material. i was like that at the beginning of the quarter; now i just think "whatever it takes to be done and go home." break is less than a week away. so close i can almost taste the tequila shots that chris and chrissy will be doing for their birthday party next saturday night. ;)

i went to blue mountain today to send chris an ecard for his birthday (since it is actually today...the party's just not till next saturday after finals, and fortunately, after i get back in town), and i was very disappointed to find that blue mountain is no longer free. now you can't send ecards unless you pay a yearly fee! grrr. now i will have to find a new place to send random ecards.

well. off to the a/a library to finish up this cfd project with georg. i'm hoping hoping hoping it can be done by 6:00 so that i have all night to study controls. wish me luck.

(11:53 p.m.)

STRESSSSSSSSSSS...is bad. i don't like it. five days.

(2:53 a.m.)

today? errands, studying, and hopefully a trip to see ocean's 11 tonight.

here is a thing i wrote up so that my diary would hopefully avoid being extremely boring today. ;) it's one of those email survey things.

my hair: light brown. or blond? shoulder-length and very poofy.
my makeup: copious amounts of chapstick. does that count?
my dream: fly in space, write a book, play the piano well. be in love. be happy.
my obsession: writing, outer space, coffee, and music. and my friends.
my most attractive feature: hmm. i have been told i have very pretty eyes.
my favorite thing to do: have coffee and good conversation with a friend.
i'm wearing: khaki corduroys. long sleeve black shirt. christmas socks.
i'm eating: blueberry yogurt.
i'm drinking: water.
i'm listening to: my mp3 collection. currently playing-vertical horizon, "falling down"
i'm feeling: a bit stressed, a bit tired. ready to go home for christmas break!
i'm thinking: i want to go into san francisco tomorrow and see the bridge again.
i'm going to: go finish reading my book. and then study.
i see: a picture of me and my sister. surrounded by a really messy bedroom (ick).
i need: to quit procrastinating and study for finals. and vacuum my floor.
i find: ants in my kitchen cabinets. and in my bathroom. {sigh}
i want: it to be next saturday, with me on an eastward-bound airplane.
i have: glittery fingernails. for now anyway.
i wish: i knew what i wanted to do with my life.
i love: my friends. my family. dancing in dark clubs with loud music.
i hate: loneliness. pastries (except hot fresh now krispy kremes).
i miss: my friends. summer quarter 98. living in harris.
i fear: swimming pool drains (i know, it's bizarre). failing a class.
i smell: my vanilla candle. mmm.
i wonder: if grad school was really the right thing to do after all.
i regret: the way i burdened my best friends last year. not having more courage.

(5:55 p.m.)

whenever finals roll around, i always fall into cleaning mode. i tell myself that i can't possibly study unless i clean up the pigsty that is my room, and so i get to work. today i dropped off a bag of clothes at goodwill. it had been sitting on my floor taking up precious space since september. woohoo! but i forgot to take my old computer monitor, which i was also going to donate. turns out aaron said he'd like to have it. i wasn't going to get any money for it anyway, but it still works fine and i didn't want to toss it. now i'll just give it to aaron. one more item out of my hands.

it's sort of scary. my cleaning sprees used to consist of simply moving piles of paper around the room until somehow it looked cleaner. now, they involve big trash bags and getting rid of large things. hmm.

tgif. for sure. i have no idea what i'm going to do tonight. i think i may just sit here in my room and be catatonic for a while. really, i should study. i have my part of our cfd project (for which i've already firmly established a reputation as a slacker...either that or georg is just a cfd fanatic), and the controls final monday. more worrisome than controls is math, on wednesday. i haven't been paying attention in that class for a while now.

i have this horrible feeling that my diary entries are going to be extremely boring for the next week. actually, probably for the next month. i predict that i will be talking about one of two things: 1) finals, or 2) sitting around charlotte for christmas break being bored. now, in my case, i think bored will be a good thing. but it's not very interesting to write or read about. maybe i will just make up stories.

i am going to go read now.

(i wanted to go to starbucks and drink coffee and sit, but i'm too tired to go down the street. ha.)

(10:58 p.m.)

well i suppose i've actually been fairly productive this evening. i read for a while, then went to dinner, then came back home and wrote up the introduction to our cfd report. nick called and then came over to hang out while he ate his delicious fast food dinner and we talked for a while. it was cool; i was glad he stopped by. now i am debating whether to clean my room a bit, or just read some more and then go to bed at a decent hour. hmm.

i've known for a long time that i am not a big fan of large public displays of affection. now, i have no problem with people holding hands, or giving hugs, or even quick pecks. however, tonight my roommate came home with her boyfriend and i heard them come in and walk into the kitchen, and then they started to come back towards the stairs, but before they made it up the first few, they started kissing. hell, they started making out. and since my door was open, because i always leave it open when i'm at home, and since my door is also right at the top of the stairwell, i could hear them. fortunately it didn't last long. even though i had music playing, i still heard the boyfriend whisper "her door is open" and then they came on up the stairs, while i pretended to be extremely interested in my cfd book. that's the kind of pda that bugs me. i don't know why, but it does.

my compressible flow final came and went this morning without much fanfare. i think i did well. i'm almost done with my final homework assignment--controls. it's funny how much of a difference a professor can make. when i took controls for the first time a year ago, dr. calise made it understandable and even interesting. dr. enge, on the other hand, helped me become confused about even the simplest things that i used to understand. what a frustrating feeling! i'm going to have to spend some good review time this weeked to reorient my brain before the final on monday.

tomorrow night though, i want to take a study break and go see ocean's 11. yeah movies!

i had my last piano class today. i didn't play very well, because i didn't practice much this week. studying got in the way. {sigh} next quarter i move on to 12c, the "advanced beginner" class. i am really enjoying learning how to play. my biggest issue, not surprisingly, is getting my hands to do two different things at the same time. i can play the right hand and the left hand parts flawlessly on their own, but putting them together is sometimes a problem.

one of my favorite things since coming to grad school are the evenings that i come home and get to talk to one of my faraway friends. sunday it was kent, a few weeks ago it was christina and daniel, tonight it was carter. he is in austin, and gets to have dinner with leila! i like hearing about everyone else's lives, and though it makes me sad that i can't be with them always, it has been a relief to realize over the past few months that moving doesn't mean never seeing those you love again.

today began horribly. i was stressed, it was cold, i was tired, and i didn't think there was nearly enough time in the day to finish everything i needed to. i wanted to cry. it's the first time since i graduated from tech that school had stressed me out so much. sure, all quarter i have complained about how much homework i've had, but i never felt hopeless until today. i'd forgotten how horrible it feels. i can't believe i survived all of spring semester last year feeling like that! ugh!

but i managed to get some good studying done between lunchtime and 4:30, when the aero/astro department threw a holiday party. it was really nice! all the professors came, and we had good food and free beer. quite a difference from georgia tech, where getting professors to mingle with students was like pulling teeth, and alcohol was nowhere to be found. the alcohol policies can be chalked up to the fact that stanford is a private school, while tech is public. i don't know what's to blame for the professor discrepancy.

from there, i joined emily and valerie to go to roble and watch the end of quarter dance performances. nick was in ballet this quarter, and so he was dancing. it was good.

then home to talk on the phone for a while, and now i've got just a little bit more studying to do for my fluids final tomorrow. off to finish up.

i am home at 3:00 on a tuesday afternoon. this is very odd. i feel like i should be banging my head over some homework in the aero/astro library, but since i finished my compressible flow earlier than expected (with much assistance), i have a few hours. now, if i were smart i would use this extra time to study for my final on thursday, or to start on the controls homework due friday. instead, i am writing in my online journal. funny.

becca sent me an email this morning. she had been looking over the job listings from the organization that set up her internship in switzerland, and found the following:

the moscow aviation institute, job description: design and working processes of combustion charmbers of rocket and jet engines, organization of burning process in subsonic and supersonic flows, flow in rocket engine nozzles, computer modeling of rocket engines, numerical methods.

too bad i can't type in russian, or the subject of today's entry would make more sense. i want to start practicing my russian again. how cool would it be to live in moscow for a while? i need to find out more information!

i just finished practicing piano. i try very hard to practice at least three days a week for an hour or so. i'm not sure if i'm getting better or not. well, i mean, i'm playing the songs i've been assigned better, but most of that is just memorization, i think. hmm.

i added a piece of internet poop to this page that tells you my mood. hee hee hee. this amuses me greatly.

(4:58 p.m.)

everyone keeps asking me why i'm rushing through grad school taking five classes per quarter and stressing myself out when i don't have to worry about money. the dod is paying my way for up to three years, so why not slow down and take it easy?

my answer? um...i don't know.

sometimes i want to tell everyone to stop giving me advice so that i can make a life decision and know that whatever happens, it was my own choice. other times, i want to hear opinions from everyone. {sigh}

(10:08 p.m.)

well we had our fall quarter flute ensemble concert tonight and it went very nicely. and i was so excited that some of my friends came to hear us play; i felt very loved. here are a couple pictures:

susan, emily, me, valerie, and nick after the concert.

two things i forgot to mention earlier: 1) saturday night live was actually pretty funny this past weekend. derek jeter was hosting, and so there were a lot of good yankee jokes. 2) speaking of the yankees, i was so relieved to hear that despite all the rumors of his move to new york, john smoltz resigned with the braves. yay!

(12:28 a.m.)

i had a really crappy day. all i could think about was how much i wanted to be home, and how unhappy i was doing this god-awful homework assignment, and how dinner wasn't that great. ...until 7:30, when i went to flute ensemble. then the stress just melted away. afterwards, i got to see nick and emily and susan and ted and valerie and just laugh. now i feel better.

it's gonna be a long two weeks if it keeps raining the way it has this weekend. i don't know if i like this whole "california has a rainy season" thing. nine months of sunny skies isn't enough; i want twelve. ha.

i am stressed thinking about the upcoming week. i hope i survive. well, i mean, i know i will survive, but i hope i don't flunk out of school in the process. ;) most worrisome is this huge homework assignment that is due tuesday that pretty much everyone else has been working on for days already...and you guessed it, i haven't even started. i was working on a cfd project instead. argh.

so i was talking to kent tonight. he is hilarious and can always make me smile. and he was so sympathizing and reasonable when we were talking about the pros and cons of rushing through a master's degree. i miss him.

i don't really want to participate in the next few weeks. i don't want to study anymore, or take finals. i just want to see my friends, and my family.

then again, who doesn't?

yesterday i was talking to my sister and she said "don't forget to open your first advent treat tomorrow!" i was suddenly disappointed, because i hadn't gotten any advent treats to open. i thought maybe mom had decided that grad students are too old for advent calendars.

but she didn't. :) today i opened the front door to take my trash to the dumpster, and sitting between the screen door and the wooden door was a box from home with 15 days worth of advent treats. today's is the standard december 1 treat--green and red paper strips to make my christmas/going home countdown chain.

i can't believe it's december already! but christmas is my favorite holiday, i think. time to dig the christmas music out from the depths of my hard drive! and exactly two weeks from now, i'll be winging my way back to the east coast for three blissful weeks of holiday vacation.

(6:51 p.m.)

{sigh} i have lost faith in the georgia tech football team. i think iffy might be right when he says they have no heart. today's game was totally winnable, and in the first half, it looked like the team was prepared to do just that. we'd get our first ever win against an admittedly weak florida state team. unfortunately, a football game has two halves. and our team fell apart. my georgia tech wardrobe, down to the flip flops and bee ears, was to no avail. no matter how much i sighed loudly, or offered advice to the tv screen, we still lost. boo hoo.