this is the loop

and this is me way over here. everytime i leave for a weekend interview i come back and i have no idea what is going on with anyone anymore. this is going to be a fun month of never ever being here. at any rate, the pudgy fluffy is always so happy to see me when i come back home!

chicago was fun; i think i like the school better than penn but i'm not sure yet. the city reminded me of a smaller version of pittsburgh, without all the crazy bridges. but the school is outside of downtown, similar to the way cmu is. the skylines are similar too, except chicago is bigger.

the faculty and students that i talked to were really nice, and my interviews went pretty well. sadly though, i didn't get to bed until after 3:30 last night and then had to get up at 7 to catch my van ride to o'hare. what also sucked is that i thought my flight was at 10:30 instead of 11:30 so i got the airport way earlier than i needed to. so i napped in uncomfortable chairs for a while and knitted until the flight. my favorite part about flying has always been the part just after you take off or right before landing, when you can see all the buildings and exciting things on the ground. flying into chicago at night was neat because the city is a big huge grid and seeing the lights was rather cool. then i flew over lake michigan and it was just black. impressive. flying home this morning was equally exciting. cities are gorgeous from the sky. and the lake was really pretty blue with cute little ice burgs all over the place.

some comparisons between chicago and penn
- the program at chicago is smaller but has more well-known faculty with more interesting research
- the students at chicago are much more hard core work ethic than penn
- chicago is a better city i think
- having a car in chicago is important, not so much in philly
- apartments are slightly cheaper (by $100-$200 per month)in chicago
- the stiped is slightly less (by roughly $1000) at chicago
- i intereacted with faculty much more at chicago than i did at penn, although this may have mostly been due to the snowstorm in philly
- uchicago gave me a nice beer glass and allowed me to get a second city shot glass
- i saw second city in chicago
- there was lots of free beer and wine at both schools; i think this will be a continuing theme

and here's my itinery for the next month. i am travelling everywhere!!

feb 10: yale- new haven, ct
feb 17: ucsf- san francisco, ca
feb 24: duke- durham, nc
mar 2: stanford- stanford, ca
mar 6: toronto spring break vacation

and then i'm done and have to decided where to go for the next 5,6,8, however many years by apr 15. scary.

anyway, what else is going on in my life?

the murder mystery dinner went really well. everyone had a lot of fun and did an awesome job. now i just have to get the tape of the show on dvd and then i can watch it. woohoo. i'm looking forward to the cast party.

i'm only taking 3 classes this semester because i'm lazy. indeed. they are all stupid but interesting classes that involve almost no work at all. it is very good. also, taing is good but i keep missing friday lab classes because i'm away on interviews. research is ok this semester. i hope that i'll be able to have something to write about in my honors thesis.... we'll see how that goes. i want our spec to be fixed so i can do a growth curve!! no one comes to tutoring so i get paid $77 a week to sit and do nothing.

i finished knitting my hat and then left it in gerrit's room over the weekend because i'm stupid. good thing it was warm in chicago this weekend.

in other good news, i get to sing back-up in the wiz for carnival. yay singing!! and counterpoint will actually have concerts this semester, in theory. yay!!

i'm watching the superbowl over at miklos and phil's place today. that will be fun and there will be good food too! i don't really know who else is going though besides me and gerrit and probably deniz. hooray for no school tomorrow!

spring break trip to toronto will be fun and full of adventure, shopping, dancing, and drinking. it will be awesome as long as people are good sports and allow themselves to have fun. i'm pretty excited about it. although it won't be warmer than pittsburgh, and that is sad for spring break trip. but if that's the only bad thing about toronto, then that will be great.

my apartment has gotten less confusing and cleaner in the past week. also a good thing.

so i suppose in general that life is pretty good. there are a few issues and the feeling of being outside the general world occasionally, but whatever. that's what not being around will do to you, i guess. so it's kind of my own fault, but not really.

i am kind of sad about not being able to see the double shot because i'll be in california. sadly, it was the only weekend that i could visit ucsf, which is an important school for me to visit. hopefully, i'll be able to go to a tech week rehearsal or something.

i got a tutoring job tutoring a high school student in biology for a couple hours a week. it will be good money and a good review of basic bio concepts for me. shouldn't be difficut which is awesome. and more money is always a good thing.

the old movie version of south pacific is currently my background noise. this show is really stupid. i forgot how retarted it is.

hmmmm. joe, in reponse to your comment about my meyers-briggs test results, i can't remember how the scores for each category were. i had two that were definitely hard core in the category and the other two were less strong but i can't remember which ones at this point.

this was a long post. but since i never ever post, i figured one long post will make up for not posting for long periods of time.

anyway, the fat fluffy is glad to see me because he missed me a lot this weekend. i am very happy to see him too!