Short and eventful, but no pictures.
I'm not getting anywhere with my homework so I'm going to blog instead.
The birthday party was a success, no pictures yet. I might have taken a few but nothing too impressive, I don't think.
Today is Ryan's birthday and I'm missing home, but tonight is knitting night, so... yay! I'm meeting Nick's parents tomorrow night, that should be fun and probably some good food will be involved.
Otherwise, life is good. Busy, and good.
Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!
So last Thursday marked the very first of a string of weekly knitting nights with Rachel and Sarah, and hopefully others as we get the ball rolling. Tonight, we're taking knitting night to the Braves game. I'm so excited! I heart knitting.
In knitting news, I finished Jeff's pirate hat and gave it to him for his birthday. I doubt he'll wear it because it was a little too big, thus I might try again and pawn that one off on someone else with a bigger noggin. But right now, I just started a hat for Nick. He picked out the yarn when we were in Seattle, because I couldn't help but drag him to my favorite yarn store in the world.
That's right, the world.
Ode to soda pop
I don't say "pop" anymore in reference to soft drinks. I say "soda". In fact, I think I made the transition many years ago, many years before moving to the east coast. Does that mean it was fate? I'm just not sure.
I had a conversation this weekend about intuition and random happenings. It stuck with me.
This weekend I'm having a birthday party with four other people. There are a lot of September birthdays, I've come to find out. In fact, I work with or around 3 other people who have my birthday, the 24th. Of the 3, 2 of them decided to go in on this party. One of them is a professor of mine, and he's turning 60. It'll be a good party.
But that's this coming weekend and I'm barely falling out of the last one, which was way too much fun. Josh left this morning and I was sad to see him go. However, I know he's going to have a blast in Berlin so that's exciting. While he was here, we saw lots of Atlanta stoplights (I think we hit every single one at least 3 times), went to a reaaaaaallly boring Braves game, went to a reeaaaaally fun birthday party, and met the Coca Cola polar bear at World of Coca Cola. Josh, being an avid Pepsi fan, was attacked by the Coca Cola bear.
I had a really encouraging talk with my advisor today, and I'm feeling much better in general. I'm not sure, but I'm going to guess and say that Prelief is pretty much the best thing ever. At least that's what I'm saying right now.
Yay.
To the weekend...
I'm feeling better as of yesterday, as of when I finally decided to take my doctor's advice and take Prelief with "problem foods". Who knew an over-the-counter drug could be so helpful? I haven't tested it out with alcohol yet, though. I'm sure this weekend will provide me opportunities to do so.
Tonight is a friend's birthday-bar night, and tomorrow I'm picking Josh up at the airport at 2. He's going to be here until Tuesday morning, and I have yet to plan out all the details, but we will, at the very least, see a Braves game Monday night and go to Jeff's birthday shindig Saturday night.
Right now I'm sitting through an online ordering tutorial and I'm incredibly bored. I'm also thinking about the DSP homework I should have finished last night, but that's a boring story involving lots of knitting and reality TV shows.
Today was a rough day.
So, the girls night was a whole lot of fun, but my bladder did not like the Franzia as much as I had hoped. In fact, I've been having a really hard time for the last three days. The pain pills I have aren't cutting it today. I'm trying to focus on finishing a lab presentation I'm giving tomorrow, but it's hard with this very constant distraction. I really hope it calms down tomorrow. I was able to make it through class today, but by the end of the day I was walking funny. I'm not ready to accept that this is something I have to live with.
I know that alcohol is bad for my bladder. I've gotten used to the pattern of pain-the-morning-after... but pain for three days after? That is too much. And this is worse than I am used to. I guess I don't usually drink wine? I've heard that wine is especially acidic. I guess I needed to learn the hard way.
I have another urology appointment on Friday. More tests. The last time I was there they gave me hope, and I'm looking forward to another successful visit.
Summer '07 - Heck yes!
Having recently visited Seattle and some of the lovely people I dearly miss, it reminded me that I should probably make a better effort to keep in touch. Like so. I'd like to make updating here part of my weekly ritual, but before I can do that, I feel I need to bring this silly little blog up to date on what is going on in my life after The Summer of '07.
During this summer I have:
- Begun volunteering on weekends with Hands On Atlanta. I was part of a group of my friends that worked together through their Teamworks program. Basically every Saturday or so, we would go to a different type of volunteering project. The idea is to get an idea for what opportunities are out there. I was able to entertain some disabled kids, repackage medical supplies to be sent overseas, and build a mudhouse in a community garden.
- Chosen a lab to do my thesis in. My advisor is Dr. Astrid Prinz, and she works in computational neuroscience at Emory. I'm still trying to bring together my second-year project, but I'm looking into building a more detailed neuronal model, specifically incorporating Ca2+ signalling cascades.
- Met an adorable boy named Nick, who I subsequently started seeing. He's great!
- Started hiking and backpacking. Nick is really outdoorsy, so he's been helping me with getting the gear and such I need. So far we've been on a few overnight trips together but I just bought a new backpack (that actually fits!) so I'm excited to try that out. So is Kaisa, she's loving this turn of events!
- Gone to a couple music festivals, including Sasquatch and Bonaroo. Both involved camping and being dirty/tired but I was really impressed with the music in both cases. If you ever get a chance to see Ghostland Observatory, DO it. It was such a happy dancey show. Good times.
- Seen my mom get married. Nick came with me to Seattle for this, and we had a great time overall. It was really fun to see everyone.
- Dyed my hair pink (highlights only, and they've faded to blonde).
- Watched my friend Lauren shave her head, and her boyfriend Stephen get a mullet (the mullet is now gone, and her hair is almost a half inch)
- Been diagnosed with interstitial cystitis. This has been really hard for me to accept, but I'm coming to it. Though I'm still going through a few more tests, my history and symptoms match up pretty well to this diagnosis (at the very least). There's no "cure", and the causes etc aren't very well known, but there are various treatments to try. I'll probably write a few "TMI" entries in the coming months, just FYI. I have a feeling that there will be times I am more frustrated, but right now things are going well and I'm optimistic, so I won't go into too much detail.
I think that about sums it up. Classes have started again, so even though it's still 90 degrees outside summer is pretty much over. Tonight I'm hanging out with a bunch of my girl friends. We're celebrating our feminity by eating lots of spaghetti, drinking lots of boxed wine (hello, Franzia!) and having a sleepover to get up early and hit all the Labor Day sales. Hahahaha, I love my friends!
