October 2002 Archives

 happy halloween!!

i'm already wearing my devil horns, much to the amusement of the russian woman who taught our morning class on cross-cultural communication. tonight i'm headed to not one but two halloween parties. fun fun.

got to get back to training, more later perhaps.

(1:49 p.m.)

ohhh, this afternoon is going slowly. i fear i am coming down with a cold. eek.

becca was talking today about how she is slowly accumulating a group of 5-10 close friends in houston. that's funny to me. the thing i like about houston and having co-oped here is that when i took a full-time job, i already had something like 30 close friends. there is always someone around if i want to see a movie, get coffee, hang out, learn something new. and yet knowing that there are always people here, i also feel less pressure to subject myself to the whims of others. i take more time for me, and the time with my friends becomes more meaningful, and i am all-around happy. life is good.

also, i just found out that becca and i were volunteered by our mentor to plan the dm4 christmas party. this should be interesting.

there was something else i was going to say, but i've forgotten. oh! the high school college fair! chrissy and i spent two hours at clear brook high school last night talking to kids from all over the clear creek school district and answering their questions about georgia tech. i had such a good time! i love sharing my thoughts about georgia tech and telling others how much i loved it there, and i also like that i'm helping someone get the information they need to make an important decision. it's a good feeling, being able to represent the school that gave me so many college memories.

talking to the kids, and then to chrissy on our way home, made me miss being in college. i miss the freedom, and the diversity, and the fun. and the environment, and always meeting new people. yeah. the people.

things for today:

1) it would appear on your insurance form as an "act of god." i saw a meteor last night!! not just any old shooting star, but a big meteor (or perhaps a piece of space debris, to make it directly applicable to my work). i was driving home at 5:45 and was stopped at a stoplight just staring out the window towards the northwest (where the sun was going down) when i saw a flash, a green streak of light, and a lingering smoky trail. i gasped and sat there with my mouth open for a moment before i grabbed the phone to call my dad to tell him how cool it was. he always appreciates that kind of stuff. :) it was really bright. the sun was below the horizon but the sky was still a bright orange-ish color, so for me to be able to see the meteor so clearly meant it had to have been something more sizeable than your normal dust clump. very cool.

2) viva la france! i bought a plane ticket last night. houston to london to marseille, where i will take the bus to aix-en-provence to visit nick! hooray! i got a really good deal on the price (if anybody wants to go to europe within the next few months, buy tickets now because they are incredibly cheap), and i'm going from january 17-26. i can't wait!!

3) "and this is why georgia tech is the place for you." chrissy im'ed me last night to ask if i want to go with her to a high school career fair tonight over in friendswood to represent georgia tech. of course i did! it should be a lot of fun; i always enjoy talking to prospective students about my school(s) and sharing my opinions on the good parts and--yes--the bad parts too. i was talking to chris last night and told him i was going to this thing, and he laughed and said sarcastically "oh, that's great publicity." i didn't understand why he was being sarcastic, until i figured out that he didn't know that i liked tech. he had the idea (picked up from some other former tech co-ops who are now here full-time) that no tech student has ever liked being there. how sad! i loved tech. this is why i am a good person to go to the career fair, and not my friend phil, for instance, who once referred to tech as a "wasteland" compared to uga as the "land of milk and honey." ;)

4) "yes drill sargeant sir!" if becca hadn't written in her journal that she skipped fitness class, i wouldn't have suspected a thing. (now that i know, i will harass her about skipping.) i wouldn't have known, because i wasn't there either; instead, i accompanied jason and phil to "boot camp buddy day." boot camp is another program at the rec center that also runs three mornings a week. i've been thinking about doing it but don't think i'm in good enough shape, so i took advantage of buddy day to find out. yeah, um, good lord. we started out with a half mile jog (one lap around the short track), immediately followed by 100 jumping jacks, immediately followed by another half mile, immediately followed by another 100 jumping jacks and some stretches. now, at this point, i was sweating a lot but still feeling pretty good, doing ok, thinking boot camp might be manageable after all.

then we moved over to the softball fields and did pushups, crunches, leg lifts, more pushups, some sort of arm exercise, more pushups, more crunches. now i'm feeling slightly nauseous (uh oh), and also have serious doubts about whether my arms still work. (turns out that they do, lucky for me.) we walk back over to the asphalt lot and do squats down to the end of the lot. ugh. i'm really hurting now. then we do leapfrog back across the lot. and oh dear, i'm feeling like i'm going to throw up.

yeah. so i sat out the last exercise, which was a relay race of sorts where everybody hopscotched, leaped, side-stepped, and gorilla-walked down the lot and back. and i felt like such a wuss. {sigh} so my boot camp buddy day was less than ideal, but at least now i have a new goal for fitness class: to get in good enough shape to survive boot camp!!

i could never live in seattle.

i'm sure it's a lovely city, and i still want to visit someday...but i could never deal with the rain. last night i sat here in my apartment just praying that it would stop raining today, after almost a week and a half of overcast skies, torrential downpours, and on-and-off street flooding. i can't take endless rain. it puts me in a very bad mood; it honestly depresses me. you could probably attribute my happiness during my year in california in large part to the constant great weather. sun = happy sarah, rain = mopey sarah.

someone heard me, at least, because the sun has finally made an appearance and the sky is beginning to clear. and today i feel much better.

even training academy was interesting this morning, as i learned all sorts of things about the shuttle electrical, mechanical, and environmental systems that i never knew before.

we got out of training early yesterday, so i used the opportunity to be home at 4:00 and call nick (who's 7 hours ahead of me) before he went to bed. he's already hitting on his dance instructor. ;) i can't wait to go visit! the tickets are down to $452. incredible. i'm going to buy.

i want a cat. i just don't know if i want one for 15 years. and i don't know if i want to subject my mom and other friends to allergic reactions. {sigh} christina is probably right; if i have to ask, i probably shouldn't get one.