Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Today's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, December 7th, 2006
9:21 pm	Of Glorious Free Food I paid for neither breakfast nor lunch today through the fortuitous positioning of free food. It started with breakfast, which appeared in the mailroom by some chance. There were danishes, cheese, fruit, and coffee. I think that there was an administrative meeting that yielded these wonders, but either way it was wonderful. Then, a new Chipotle opened up near campus and was giving out free burritos all day. For fast food, Chipotle is good, and I was willing to wait in line to get a burrito and a drink for free. In the end, it only took about twenty minutes to get food, and the weather was beautiful, so it was nice to be outside. As an added treat, the first snow came tonight. Its only a flurry right now, so it hardly counts as anything, but it was pretty. They also lit up the monument (Baltimore doesn't have a tree), so Mt. Vernon looks really nice right now. It'd be nice to get a bit of a dusting, but odds are that it won't happen. Baltimore winters are rather mild, so I don't expect much. I know that I'm probably incurring the hatred of everybody of my friends list now, but believe me if I could give you the warm weather and take the cold weather I would. Finally, in additional free food news, the department holiday party is tomorrow. That means free food and an open bar, two of the most glorious things on this earth. There is also a gift exchange, for which I bought a bottle of ice wine infused with apple. I don't know what it tastes like, but I'm probably going to buy another bottle just to see. Its a bit sad that I just devoted an entire entry to free food... Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: Amnesia by David Byrne (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 12th, 2006
12:56 pm	Aikido and Pizza Yesterday, my friend Kate and I went down to Dr. Yoji Kondo's Aikido club. Dr. Kondo is a very gifted Aikidoka and an excellent Judoka as well. Seeing as the style of Aikido has its roots in both older systems of Aiki Budo and Judo, Dr. Kondo's instruction is really a blessing. During yesterday's class, Dr. Kondo taught us part of the Goshin Jutsu no Kata, which is actually a Judo kata designed by Professor Tomiki, the founder of Shodokan Aikido. As a result, this kata has an interesting mix of Aikido and Judo in it, along with some nice applications for self-defense. Descriptions, line drawings, and videos of the kata can be found here. Other nice Aikido videos can be seen at my original teacher's youtube site. There is also a video of Professor Tomiki up there as well. On to the pizza part of my post: a few weekends ago Meghan and I went to Grimaldi's Pizza in Brooklyn, and we were not disappointed. The pizza was quite minimalist, and delightful as such. The crust was thin and soft, but not soggy. The tomato sauce was simple, and fresh slices of mozzarella were used. This made for an excellent, and also a real Brooklyn-style pizza. In fact, saying Brooklyn-style is silly, it is in fact Brooklyn pizza. Brooklyn-stlye pizzas are not even worthy of comparison. On that note, Meghan also sent me this review of Domino's Brooklyn-style pizza. I am convinced that that product is in fact a sin against the world's better culinary sense, but I'm a bit of a snob like that. Other than that, I'm working on graduate school applications. I'll post news on that when it comes. (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 13th, 2006
9:32 pm	I should give up and make this a blog about food... As sort of a going away dinner for our summer intern, I decided to host a dinner party for which I prepared a full Italian spread. I roasted some sea bass with fennel, thyme, and parsley, baked some lasagna with mushrooms and a white sauce, sauteed some broccoli with garlic, and some tiramisu for dessert. I spent a fair portion of the day preparing, but that was mostly because I was cooking for a lot of people. Everyone enjoyed the food and I was quite happy with how everything turned out. Also, the CDs that Meghan got me for our anniversary provided the music, which everybody loved. It was a great, relaxed event, and the company was only over for three hours. As such, I'll get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight, although I have plenty of dishes to do. Perhaps I will start reviewing restaurants and bars for this blog, along with good meals that I have made. Maybe I'll even include recipes. Current Mood: full Current Music: St. Louis Blues performed by Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong (Comment on this)
Monday, July 31st, 2006
4:49 pm	Unmitigated Crap Last night, Meghan and I watched What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?, and it was really, really awful. In fact, it was so awful that I feel the need to write an entry about it to warn people to not waste their time on it. Basically, the premise of the movie is to take Heisenberg Uncertainty and derive a new way of thinking about science, religion, and life. The central claim seems to be that attempts to measure and observe reality alter that reality, and thus consciousness is the key to defining reality. As such, our point of view can radically change the world in which we live. Now, the philosophical position there is sort of new age, self-help version of monist idealism. Older versions of this can be found in Hinduism, but have been adapted more recently as part of the Maharishi movement, Hare Krishnas, and the Kabbalah. As a side note, the "scholars" who appear in the movie work for organizations such as the Ramtha School of Elightenment, the Maharishi University of Management, and New Age Kabbalah. While I have no problem with people's beliefs in that sort of thing, I do take issue when they misrepresent science to claim that their position is the correct one. This is especially true when most of the available evidence seems to suggest that their point of view is, in fact, wrong. To begin, Heisenberg Uncertainty makes claims about our ability to measure and predict events at the subatomic level. It also makes claims about the probabilistic distribution of particles within an atom. However, there is no evidence that our observations change a system in any way other than the obvious and there is certainly nothing to suggest that thinking about matter differently causes it to behave differently. The folks who represent themselves as scientists in this movie claim that Heisenberg Uncertainty and modern quantum physics suggest that reality is simply a matter of consciousness. This is quite far from the mainstream view, and no real respectable science has been done on the matter. Please, do tell me how particle accelerators and high field magnets can tell us anything about consciousness. I'm a bloody psychologist and I can say from the state of the field that there is very little we can tell anybody about consciousness based on the behavior of the species that supposedly has it. For the most part, the "scholars" in the movie spend the whole time telling us just-so type stories to advance their claims. They tell us about experiments in which 4,000 people in Washington DC meditated and where Buddhist monks blessed water. They explain how the natives in the Caribbean couldn't see Columbus' ships when they landed and how they have seen evidence of the role of positive thinking in their work. All the while, they do not tell me where to find documentation on any of this, and they do not even tell me who they are until the end of the movie. In other words, I am being lectured to by unknown people who cite evidence that cannot be found, and represent that information as mainstream science. New age self-help and positive thinking are all fine things, but I do not appreciate when they are passed off as science. This is especially true when there have been actually scientific studies on things like meditation and prayer (ask me and I'll e-mail them to you in .pdf format and I'll even try to throw in the authors' CV). These studies have found out some interesting things about relaxation, stress, and immune system function, but they still haven't gotten walking on water or flying taken care of. Just remember, if we all concentrate our positive energy, we can make the NSA wiretaps turn into beautiful flowers. In reality, the current state of the field is such that most researchers are either don't really care about consciousness, think that it is too messy to be tractable, or think that it in fact does not matter. One of my favorite points about consciousness advanced in The Illusion of Conscious Will by Daniel Wegner. He argues, via empirical findings (you know, the thing that we scientists are supposed to do) that consciousness is best understood as being like the compass on a ship. The compass does not direct the ship, rather the compass tells the ship where its heading. This is to say that our conscious apprehension of our goals and behavior comes very quickly after those things, rather than causing them. Meanwhile, situated amongst the interviews with "academics," the movie has a back-story about a deaf women coping with stress and anxiety and learning a Matrix-like lesson about the nature of perception. Sadly, I was not nearly stoned enough to appreciate "how deep the rabbit hole goes." Yes, they actually said that, you know, the line from the Matrix posters. The saddest thing is that it felt like an infomercial. The actress who won an Academy Award for her work in Children of a Lesser God winds up playing a role that was about as rich as a fat free rice cake. I know that this woman can act, I've seen her do it, but the whole thing plays like an add for anti-itch ointment: "Painful burning? I have just the thing in my purse." Bah! I believe that it was best put by fictional critic Jay Sherman in his appraisal of Lorenzo's Oil, "it was a mixture of fantasy and crap, I called it 'Fantacrap!'" Bad movie, don't see it unless you are really, really stoned and/or drunk and want to throw popcorn at the screen. Even in that case, I wouldn't recommend it. If you want philosophical, new way of thinking type stuff, watch Waking Life, a nice movie on the nature of dreams and death, and one that's not afraid to realize that its a work of fiction. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 2nd, 2006
11:04 am	Raclette and Korean Food Ah food, glorious food. This weekend has been a truly spectacular exercise in the culinary arts. To that end, it has made me mourn the fact that I've been exhibiting such a lack of creativity this year. However, the food has inspired me to cook some of my quality Italian dishes for some of my friends. Once they are done with their quals, I'll invite them over for some good food. On Friday, we had raclette, which is a Swiss style of cooking. It consists of a table-top grill that has little pans that you place underneath. On the grill you cook whatever you would like, while underneath you melt raclette cheese. We had mushrooms, potatoes, eggplant, and squash. For that, it was just five of us. I sat there quietly while everybody else gossiped. It was rather entertaining, but I was incredibly tired. On Saturday, two of my friends from the department came to my place to cook Korean food. By the end of the night, 15 people were in my apartment eating a delicious spread. We had five different varieties of kimchi, cellophane noodles with mushrooms, radishes, carrots, green onions, and chillies, vegetable fried rice, Korean style pancakes, sauteed chicken, and a little beef. I didn't really care too much for the meat dishes, but everything else was fantastic. I also mixed drinks for people, and they all decided that I mix perfect drinks. To that end, I tried to mix a Long Island Ice Tea. It turned out rather well, but I didn't have any lemon juice, so I substituted lime. At the dinner, there was more gossip. I really do enjoy hosting get-togethers, and I am finally opening up to people in the department. Its a good feeling. However, alone time is quite nice too, and I am going to be enjoying that today. Rather than cooking, I'll be getting pizza; rather than talking, I'll be watching Risky Business and then whatever is on TV. Sometimes its nice to do nothing. Current Mood: accomplished (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 18th, 2006
11:20 am	An Exquisite Party Last night, I hosted a wine tasting that turned out much better than I had hoped. To begin, the new intern in our lab brought tons of good food to compliment the cheeses and grapes that I had gotten. That turned a decent spread into a truly impressive one. Our intern loves to cook and wants to do a whole bunch of other culinary stuff this summer, which is great because I have become rather uninspired these days. Anyway, we tasted eight different wines last night, most of which were quite good. The blush was a little sweet for my tastes, and most of the reds were good, but not great. Oddly enough, I preferred the whites last night, with the exception of a red zinfandel that I already knew was good. The event kept everyone interested and entertained from seven thirty until midnight. Of course, I was dying by the end because a) midnight is usually later than I stay up and b) I had been up since 5:30 AM because I took the GREs yesterday morning. I felt a little bad because it wasn't that I was terribly intoxicated, it was just that I couldn't stay awake. Either way, it was a good time for everyone to head out. Remarkably, the only spills last night occurred with white wines. There was also an unexpected debate about European politics when one of our German colleagues got into an intense discussion with one of the grad students. It was an excellent and well deserved event, and it really encouraged me to play the host more often. I had forgotten that I could throw good parties, and now I will have to keep it in mind as an option for the future. Current Mood: happy Current Music: Seven Steps To Heaven by Miles Davis (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 10th, 2006
11:10 am	The Environment A few of us from the department went to see An Inconvenient Truth last night, and I must say that its really great. To begin, Al Gore is an excellent speaker. For the most part I already knew that, but for the way that he was cast during Clinton's presidency and the 2000 elections, its easy to forget. I spent the vast majority of the movie hanging on his every word. There were a few points in the movie where it seemed like he was just preaching to the choir. While large portions of it contained data and figures that I hadn't seen, the parts about the 2000 elections, Bush's science advisors, and the Gore family history got a bit slow at points. I agreed with Gore on all points, but I was worried that any conservatives in the audience might have been turned off by some of his rhetoric. However, a lot of it needed to be said, so its hard to say that he should have tried to reach a compromise. So that's it for the negative. On the positive, the film was visually and musically stunning, and Gore was funny and informative. I was captivated for the entire hour and a half. Considering that the movie is mostly a lecture on global warming, that's saying a lot. I would have liked it if he had spent more time on what we as individuals could do, but he did get to it. Furthermore, the film refers to the website, which has a lot of helpful information. All of the information was conveyed in a truly entertaining way. I hope that when I have to give lectures, I can be that good. The clips from Futurama were hilarious, and Gore's use of rhetorical devices was exquisite. Contrary to how many portrayed it, An Inconvenient Truth isn't all about doom and the like. Rather, Gore uses the catastrophic nature of what lies ahead to motivate us. When I walked out of it, I thought about what I could do better, not about having my apartment be changed into beach-side property. Most of what we can do is spread the word, consume less, and be more cautious with what we do consume. By simply monitoring our energy expenditure, we can easily reduce our carbon emissions by hundreds of pounds. In fact, we are quite capable of changing the course of global warming if we act up. The final message seems to be that learning and teaching is the answer. Furthermore, I learned that my being a vegetarian reduces my carbon emissions by quite a lot. Thanks, Hon. Current Mood: awake Current Music: Down In A Hole by Alice in Chains (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 13th, 2006
10:54 am	Talk about countering speech with more speech... This is perhaps the most innovative well of dealing with large, racist crowds that I have ever heard of. Its so simple, and as a researcher in the field of attention, I am particularly interested in it. (Comment on this)
10:49 am	Beach Rugby Yesterday, one of the graduate students taught us a modified versions of Rugby meant to be played two on two or three on three. The game starts at the end zone opposite the offenses end zone. An offensive player grabs the ball and can either run or pass. Passes, however, can only be backward. Tackles, then, are accomplished by hitting the player with the ball on the legs. Defensive players cannot cross the line of scrimmage at any point. This is to say that the line is constantly active and moves as play does. The game was pretty tough to learn, but a lot of fun. Its nice because it actually works as a two on two game, unlike football or ultimate frisbee. Hopefully, we'll get to play again some time. Other than that, I've been a bit sick lately, although today I'm almost better. Also, I've been trying to think of a graduation present for Meghan (I already know part of it, but I need to think up the rest). Things at the lab have been going pretty well, and I'm really looking forward to actually going to graduate school. Current Mood: sick Current Music: Time by David Bowie (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 26th, 2006
9:25 pm	The Wharf Rat Last night, a couple of us went to the Wharf Rat for trivia night. The Wharf Rat is a very low key establishment in Fells Point, which has attained an almost legendary status. Needless to say, its a very Baltimore place, which some of you might remember as the bar that all the detectives from Homicide: Life on the Street went to. Trivia night consisted of mustache related questions about presidents, rock stars, artists, and fictional characters. My knowledge of Mario's past as Jump Man and the history of Ned Flanders helped to earn us a free pitcher of one of their own brews. It was a tasty pale ale, and I am usually not a fan of pale ales. We almost won the whole thing, but wound up coming in at a close second. Aside from the fact that this bar is cheap, attracts a good crowd, and has good music and beer, the Wharf Rat is amazing because it allows animals inside. One of the girls that we were with learned this when she shrieked because she thought that she saw a rat. I proceeded to tell her that her "rat" was actually a cat, at which point we got an affirmative meow. There were also some adorable dogs. Basically, we got to drink, answer questions to earn free drinks, eat fried food, pet animals, and chill, all while calling ourselves the Domesticated Cocks as an homage to our bird ethologist comrades. Good times. Current Mood: cheerful (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 23rd, 2006
7:12 pm	The stoned video game experiment... The other day one of our collaborators from the fMRI facility came to tell us all about independent components analysis (ICA). ICA is basically an algorithm for looking for the components of a given fMRI signal as it occurs over time. Anyway, its a relatively new method that is often used for "cute" studies intended to demonstrate what it can do. This gave rise to the stoned video game experiment. Apparently, this guy and his colleagues took EA's Need for Speed 2 and had people play it in the scanner or watch it being played. Then, they used ICA to analyze the data, and found the noise, attention, perceptual, and motor components. Well, the data looked cool, so they decided to get funding for the idea and study driving while intoxicated. As such, they got some THC pills and reran the experiment, hence the stoned video game experiment. Whereas most cognitive psychology experiments are horridly boring, the stoned video game experiment sounds great. If they included pizza, it would have been perfect. Current Mood: hungry (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 9th, 2006
3:30 pm	Entertainment So I decided to cancel my cable package and get Netflix instead. All things considered, all of the TV that I like to watch is on broadcast anyway, especially since I stopped watching Law and Order. I will miss comedy central with the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, but those two shows aren't worth keeping cable, and I usually miss them due to Aikido anyway. Well, that'll save me $20 a month now. Furthermore, I'll grab a one-year cable internet contract from Verizon when I renew my lease, which should save me another $30 a month. That will bring the total savings up to $50, which I can put towards the fact that the electric company is planning on raising their rates by 72% in July. Hopefully, the Maryland legislature will solve that problem, and I may be able to keep some of that $50. Hope you enjoyed the utterly mundane post. Oh, and I get to go riding now, and that's free. Current Mood: good Current Music: I Came as a Rat by Modest Mouse (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 8th, 2006
11:57 am	Hangovers... Normally, one would expect a subject line like that to be followed by a long, vivid account of drinking, debauchery, etc. However, that subject line is descriptive of the morning after a night where I went to Aikido, watched "That 70s Show" until 10:15 PM, and then went to sleep. Then, for some reason I woke up at 6:00 AM thinking that I was going to be late to work, followed by waking up at 6:45 AM thinking that I was in danger of missing my flight. Anyway, now I have a pounded headache that I did nothing to deserve, except for maybe gritting my teeth all day yesterday. Gritting my teeth is a new bad habit of mine that I developed since moving to Baltimore. Most of the more seasoned veterans of Charm City have explained "Yeah, Baltimore'll do that." Yesterday, should have been a good day, but it was a crappy day, and for a change it wasn't because I was being self-deprecating or anything like that. On Thursday night, I had the opportunity to go both horseback riding and sailing. Horseback riding was great as it always is, and I love the fact that I get to help a friend exercise horses. Riding out in the fields reminds me of home, and gives me that feeling that I missed when I was dealing with the passive-agressive bullshit of the Vassar Polo Club. Sailing went well too, until we came to dock. Two of the people that I was with started making horrendously racist jokes. Now, this isn't like when two friends of different races, ethnicities, or religions make fun of each other with such jokes. I still find that distasteful, but often times that type of person isn't really racist. However, this situation was one in which several people simply started making awful racist jokes just to make one another laugh. I was disgusted, so I left, but I regret not truly bitching them out. I merely glared at them, and left at the first opportunity without saying thank you or anything. I really ought to have yelled at them, but I was just too shocked, and wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. They really should have known better. Anyway, today I am going to Aikido where I can teach and give back to the community. Today I am going to revel in the fact that I am a liberal, open-minded, compassionate human being. Oh, and here's a very fitting comic for the events of the other night. Current Music: Fuzzy Freaky by David Byrne (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 2nd, 2006
5:06 pm	Caballeros I figured that I should update, as its been a month since my last. Anyway, its been a rather long and stressful month, but things are back to normal now. Perhaps, things are more normal now than they ever were (not only is that line categorically untrue, it is from another source, and I know that D knows it). I took the Psychology GRE yesterday, and I am glad that I got it over with. The Psychology GRE is annoying because it is almost completely irrelevant to all of experimental psychology. There were maybe four or five questions out of two hundred and five that dealt with modern research. Granted there were biopsych questions, which are always good, but they were quite simplistic. Most of them were along the lines of "What part of a neuron has receptor sites for neurotransmitters?" Well, very few graduate programs require (or accept) the psychology GRE, so it doesn't matter too much. Other than that, I have come to the conclusion that I will attempt to return to New York for graduate school. This shouldn't be two hard as there are three good programs within the city itself and another five within an hour and a half. Hopefully, my current job will give me a nice leg up and I won't have a problem getting into a great program. Beyond the field, I've gotten to go back to Aikido and my instructor has told me that he wants me to start working on getting my shodan. First, I have to find a good testing partner, who will hopefully be available for the Vassar tournament next year. Also, I have gotten the chance to go riding again. One of the graduate students rides at a barn just outside of Baltimore, and as she exercises horses, she gets to ride for free. As there are multiple horses for her to exercise, and one that she wants me to help her work with, she has been inviting me to come out on weekends. Its fun and I certainly wouldn't mind having the chance to ride on weekends. Well, that's it for now. I really miss Vassar and Chicago, but my life out here is quite nice. I'm looking forward to Summer, and I am actually excited to start applying for graduate schools. Current Mood: good Current Music: The Only Living Boy In New York by Simon & Garfunkel (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 26th, 2006
1:57 pm	Coolest Sign Ever This is probably the best sign that has ever been created. Its on I-70 just outside of Baltimore, and it reminds us that the interstate system is pretty cool. However, Meghan was right to point out that it would have been better if the distance to Independence, Missouri was posted, instead of the distance to St. Louis. If you get the reference, then you have earned major geek points. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 21st, 2006
6:54 pm	Charm City On my way home from work, I saw a stray dog, which ran underneath a car when I made eye contact with it. Not wanting to let the dog get killed, I decided to call animal control to pick it up. They told me that it would take 72 hours. The woman who owned the car came out of her office and I told her about the dog. She proceeded to call animal control, as another guy came up to try and help us out. The woman managed to reverse the car and the guy tried to approach the dog. At that point the dog freaked out and ran back underneath the car. Meanwhile, the woman was told that animal control would take 72 hours to respond. I figured that this dog needed to be dealt with, otherwise it would wind up biting somebody or getting hit by a car, and maybe even both. As such, I decided that a call to Baltimore's finest might just be in order. When I contacted them, they asked me if I had contacted animal control. After I told them the whole story the dispatcher asked me if I had tried to "chase it off with a stick." Lovely advice to get from the police. I understand that they have bigger fish to fry, but they could at least call animal control and get them to respond faster. Long story short, I ran to a nearby deli to get some meat to lure the dog out from under the car. The owner was very nice and gave me the meat for free. We lured the dog out and I just had to leave it to the mercy of St. Paul Street. ::sigh:: I wish that I could have done more to help it, but sadly I did all that I could. Other than that, my birthday has been quite nice and I have gotten several nice cards and presents from my friends. Also, one of my coworkers brought me a cake. Now I'm going to order pizza and let my dishes sit for another day because I don't want to deal with chores. Current Mood: annoyed (Comment on this)
Monday, February 13th, 2006
6:01 pm	While essentially irrelevant, Dick Cheney shooting somebody else is comic gold. Mind Control... Cheney and Death? Bambi Its kind of funny, whereas I tend to believe that Bush is simply a spoiled, manipulative, ideologue, I actually think that Dick Cheney actually is evil. This supports that notion. Two things of note: The UN report on Guantanamo declared that the naval detention facility should in fact be closed. This highlights one of the most classic rules of investigation; if one looks like one is hiding something, then one probably is hiding something. That there are secret detention facilities beyond Guantanamo only further illustrates this idea. Also, nothing else on the web cheers me up more than boingboing.net. It demonstrates that a) bad things do have they're funnier side and b) that the world is still capable of ingenuity, creativity, and sometimes beauty. This post could be seen as one massive recommendation for boingboing.net. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 31st, 2006
8:38 pm	Unconscionable Today I went to PetSmart to grab some extra litter and replacement cat toys for Freya, and I noticed that they had some cats up for adoption. All of the cats had these really cute individual containers with placards underneath that displayed the cats name, age, and history. There were five cats. One of the cats was given up because her owner couldn't take care of her, which isn't a bad reason. Another cat was found in an alley, a stray, pretty typical. The other three cats were found in their respective homes after their owners had moved out. Three different families left three different cats in an attic, a box, and a basement. WHO THE HELL DOES THAT? That is absolutely despicable. I don't even think that I need to make analogies to explain how awful that is. I can't believe that anybody would treat an animal, especially an intelligent animal, like that. There is something utterly abhorrent about the fact that we live in a country that would gladly institutionalize the equivalent of virginity tests only considers this sort of treatment a misdemeanor. And only in some states at that. Other people can be so vile. By the way, read the linked article, it made me more liberal than I already am, and I didn't think that that was possible, but that's for another post. Current Mood: infuriated (Comment on this)
Friday, January 27th, 2006
9:36 pm	Freya I finally managed to find some space to host these pictures, and Meghan was kind enough to send them to me, so here they are... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 24th, 2006
9:27 pm	The end of times... This past weekend, Meghan and I went to a party in DC. Our friend Amy with whom I graduated from Vassar was throwing the party, and there were a lot of other Vassar people there. At one point, Amy came to the realization that there were four Vassar guys there (including myself) and we were all strait. I told her that that was true, but not to mention it again because if she did we would become the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Then, the guy sitting next to me shouted "I call pestilence!" Other than that, a few of us have decided that the invention of the alcoholic pickle will be our ticket out of low paying jobs. Oh, and I got a cat. She is a two year old grey tabby with a few brown/rusty patches on her. Meghan and I named her Freya after the Norse goddess of war, love, and agriculture. She is really cute and friendly and right now I am trying to condition her to like her crate. This is, of course, not going well. Either way, she's nice and I am glad to have a cat. Current Mood: calm (3 Comments |Comment on this)