Carley is Safe

Hi All,

I am safe. Baton Rouge has some blown over trees, signs torn down, etc etc, but damage isn't bad. I have electricity and water. Looks like I'll be going back to work tomorrow.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Carley

Carley and Katrina

I think I told you guys that I was planning on going to Miami this weekend. Well, because Katrina was headed straight for Miami, we changed our tickets to a different weekend and went to Houston/ Austin instead. We had a great time. But then it was time to come home, and guess who's waiting for us? Katrina.

So we drove back towards Baton Rouge. It ended up taking us a really long time. We started in Austin, ate a huge breakfast, and got on the road. Around Houston, we ran into bad problems because of construction and roads just being randomly closed down without any forewarning. So it took us a long time, although we did get to stop at Amy's, which made me quite nostalgic. At Beaumont, we stopped to get groceries, non perishables in case the power went out. At Lafeyette, we stopped, ate dinner, and then stopped at Walmart to buy batteries and everything. We didn't get back to Baton Rouge until about 8 at night. It was crazy.

So when we got back to Baton Rouge, I went back to my apartment and got to work at propping all my furniture up. This was unfun. Remember that most of my furniture is solid wood. It is all EXTREMELY heavy. I think I hurt myself, but I did get my hutch, my kitchen table, my piano, and my cedar chest off the ground. Not much off the ground. If it floods more than a couple of inches of water, I'm screwed. But at least if it floods just a little bit, it will provide some protection for my furniture.

So right now I am crashing at a friend's house in Baton Rouge. No work tomorrow, the plant is shut down, so all non essential personnel aren't supposed to come in. My group of work friends and I are all holing up together. We're stocked up on food and water and flashlights. We are supposedly far enough inland that things won't be too severe, but we are playing it safe. It looks like we will probably lose power, but we are equipped to deal with it.

Anyways, I wanted to post to let everyone know that I am somewhere (relatively) safe. I'll post again when things have calmed down a little and let everyone know I'm safe. Hope all of you are doing great!

Too good to be true?

Just wanted everyone to know I started my "O-Week" today. Everyone seems surprisingly cool. I already have plans to hangout and tailgate with some people from other departments. Even the professors for the most part seem chill (for professors). The weather was perfect today. My ID picture turned out great (as good as a university ID can be anyway). I didn't have any problems navigating the bus system. We went to a pub and drank 23 oz. glasses of beer for $2. Tomorrow it'll be the same except with sangria. Next week it's a pizza/beer combination, as well as a little dancing/drink special action. All very cheap. And did I mention that of all the new students in my department, there are about 55 students? About 45 are girls.

Today is August 25. Classes start September 7. Am I being proverbially fattened up? I worry this is the case. I will have had so much fun I will be caught completely unawares, and then rapidly slink into a case of the typically pathetic grad student. Which may explain how professors get us to do their work for them. I'll be in too much emotional and physical shock to really do otherwise. Surely this is my skeptical nature coming through, but we'll see.

Until then I can really do nothing but play along with this diabolical scheme. The sacrifices I make for the pursuit of knowledge.

The Great Muffin Caper

So someone mentioned that I've been neglecting my own blog. In my defense, I'd like to say that nothing interesting has happened to me; I go to work, I go work out, I crochet, I watch CSI, I drink excessively on the weekends. While I could share every detail of my day, I tend to think that would be a waste of my time and yours, so I'm sticking to my "when something interesting happens to me, I'll blog" attitude. Since it's been so long, you can only imagine how routine life has been lately. Anyway, on with the story...

Whenever things get a little too dull for Jenny and me, we start looking for ways to spice things up, and everyone knows that when you start looking for spice, you usually end up with trouble. As I think about it now, we were probably due some trouble anyway, as these things are very cyclical, and it's been about a month since "The Infamous La Strada Affair," (aka "The Brunch That Almost Took Our Lives") and about two months since "The Mystery of the Leaky Ceiling" (aka "Oh No! We Signed a Year Lease On A Fucking Slum!").

In any case, last Monday evening started like any other: we both arrived home from work, and scraped ourselves some dinner together (leftover BBQ, if you must know). Jenny had brought home a stack of copy-editing, and I was prepared to kick back with a Coronita and do some crocheting when Jenny had an idea: chocolate chip muffins! She wanted to make some to take to work, and had found a recipe online. Excellent, I thought, just what we needed to make things more interesting.

It was decided that I would run to the store and grab the ingredients we didn't have as well as mini-muffin pans, since that was what Jenny wanted. I hopped in my car, and made my way across town to the closest place that I knew of that would sell mini-muffin pans at 9 at night: Target. Problem number one of the night: Target was crawling with Rice students. Since I live in eternal fear of the day I run into someone I know from Rice and they say "Hey, (insert inquisitive look here) didn't you graduate?" or even worse, "So you're taking an extra semester, right?" I did the only thing I could: I ducked behind shelves and weaved through aisles keeping my head down, got the damn muffin pans and ingredients, then got the hell out of there. I made it back home victorious, not having run into one person I knew, and still on my high from evading total strangers, I entered the apartment ready to take on those muffins. Jenny dropped her copy-editing (of which, btw, she'd done very little having gotten distracted by lord knows what), walked into the kitchen, flipped on the light and...nothing happened. That's right, our lone remaining light bulb had blown out. Well, we never let a little darkness stop us! We turned on the light in the laundry room, and the light in Jenny's room and got to work. Forty-five minutes later the mini-muffins were out of the oven, and we were all stoked to try them. I could sit here and describe the texture, the aroma, the complex combination of flavors, but I figure just telling you that they tasted like ass will suffice. Oh, and also they were dry as hell; like eating straight flour. So I got on allrecipes.com and looked at the recipe Jenny had picked out. As it turns out the recipe had a four star rating, but only after some reviewer's recommended changes were made. Here's a sample of the reviews for the original recipe:

"This recipe produces a fairly bland muffin, rich neither in texture nor taste"
- KIWANOMELON

"These muffins were so dry. I followed the recipe exactly. I will never make these again."
- DISKODIVA

And one of my personal favorites:

"If you want to please a crowd do not make these muffins. I followed the recipe exactly and these things came out horrible. My kids hated them and so did I. They were more like rocks instead of muffins."
- CANDYO383

Needless to say Jenny had NOT read the reviews before deciding to make this particular recipe. We quickly dumped the remaining batter and decided to try again with the improvements that allrecipes.com member JAKYSMOM recommended. (As a side note, how sad is it when you're forced to be known solely as someone's mom. I mean, eww.) In any case, although Jaky's mom had some good ideas, the second batch of muffins, which came out of the oven around midnight, were marginally better, but still fairly mediocre. We decided to call it a night, and began washing dishes, at which point I remembered the lights above the sink that we'd never used before because they were so frickin' bright. Lucky for us that they were, I guess, since it was almost as good as the ceiling lights once I turned them on. Feeling humiliated by the lights, and betrayed by Jaky's mom, we wearily made our way to bed with muffins still on the brain.

The next day at work, unbeknownst to each other, we both spent gratuitous amounts of time looking up other muffin recipes. I was thinking that we could just buy more ingredients, and make three or four recipes that looked promising, and decide which was best. I called Jenny on my way home to see if I should stop at the store, but receiving no answer, I went straight home. It turned out that Jenny didn't answer because SHE had gone to the grocery store, and she bought EVERYTHING she'd ever seen in any muffin recipe. Flour, sugar, sour cream, butter, milk and the list goes on. She'd also bought a box of butter flavored cake mix, and a box of muffin mix from the store. Her idea was that if you mixed every recipe you could think of together, the muffins were bound to come out well. I found this logic to be a little faulty, so I decided to branch out on my own and make a muffin recipe I'd found online from a Bed & Breakfast somewhere in New England. I figured if Grandpa Red could serve these and still have a business open, they couldn't be nearly as disgusting as the ones we'd made the night before. So the baking commenced. Jenny began dumping things into her bowl, and I followed Grandpa's recipe to a T.

Well wouldn't you know it, but Jenny's muffins tasted good, and mine were almost as bad as the original muffins. Jenny rejoiced and began mixing a new batch of muffins, and I began fiddling with Grandpa Red's recipe, adding all kinds of shit that wasn't in the original. By the time my first second batch was going in, and Jenny realized that instead of adding cake mix to her second batch of muffins, she'd added Bisquick, I was sick of muffin talk. The kitchen was covered in them: big muffins, little muffins, muffin mixes and ingredients, not to mention a slippery spot on the floor from when Jenny had sprayed cooking spray on the muffin pans. The whole thing was disastrous, and I was convinced that there was no way in hell I'd ever want to look at a muffin again. So of course fate came along, and made my modified Grandpa Red's muffins taste fucking delicious. In fact they were so good that I'm renaming them. They're my muffins so they shall henceforth be known as "Alana's Badass Chocolate Chip Muffins." Fuck that loser Grandpa Red. In any case, even Jenny's part Bisquick muffins turned out well, and both sets were taken to our respective jobs the next day.

Anyway, I'd like to share what we learned from our experience, so that if you all ever decide to bake muffins, you can avoid the same mistakes we made.

What we learned:
1) No one in the world can make a good chocolate chip muffin except Jenny and me.
2) There are weird assholes out there that sabotage everyone else's muffins because they like dry muffins. Before you accept a muffin recipe from anyone, ask if they're into dry muffins. If the person says yes, get as far from them as possible. Their recipe will be shitty.
3) If the batter tastes like ass the muffins will too.
4) Don't take your Bisquick out of the box, put the box away, and then leave the bag of Bisquick next to your cake batter. You will almost definitely pick up the wrong bag.
5) You really CAN mix any damn thing together to make muffins, and in fact, they'll probably be better than any recipe you could come up with.
6) Before you spend over $60 and two evenings making the perfect muffin, check your recipe box. Your grandmother's muffin-top recipe will probably work just fine, and in fact be better than anything you could come up with.
And finally,
7) If you are too embarrassed to admit to your co-workers that you made your muffins by mixing a regular muffin recipe with a store bought muffin mix and a powder cake batter, do not give your co-worker your grandmother's recipe that you recently re-discovered instead. Your co-worker will ask questions you can't answer such as "How many muffins will this make?" and then you will feel like a fraud as you stutter and blurt out a random number. Instead, just tell her that you used a recipe off allrecipes.com. By the time she's fought through four different recipes that all taste like flour balls, she'll be so nauseated at the idea of muffins, she'll never ask you about your recipe again.

In other news, Jenny and I are considering getting dogs. (I'm using the term "considering" loosely, btw. It's more like "thinking about occasionally when we're bored"). She wants a little Teacup Poodle named Vito, and I want a Scottish Terrier named "MacDougal." Other suggestions for names are welcome, of course.

Hi Everyone!

This has to be quick, but I have been meaning to post for a long while now and I finally had a minute before work, so I'm sitting down and doing it.

Everything has been going great for me over here in the Big Red Stick. I'm making some friends at work, finally. I've gotten pretty friendly with three other young engineers, two male, one female. They are all really great people. We've been down to Bourbon St several times now, and it's so much fun. They also come over to my house once or twice a week for dinner, which you all know I enjoy. None of them really cook, so I guess it means a lot for them to come home to a cooked meal. Raj keeps joking that he hopes that soon I'll start packing their lunches as well.

Work is going well. I've been working on a couple of different project and am starting to feel like I can depend on my boss's direct supervision a little less. Which is good, because he's gone this week, and when he gets back I really want to be able to show him that I've made some good progress. It looks like one of my projects is going to wither and die because the process engineers, who I need to help me with it, are too busy and the project isn't a high enough priority for them to help me.

Oops! Gah, how did it get so late?! I've gotta get going, but I wanted everyone to know I'm doing great.

Carley

PS. Yesterday I sat down and went through my calender and I'm going to be really busy until about Thanksgiving. And of course, right after Thanksgiving is Christmas! So it's August, and I'm already getting excited about Thanksgiving. :-D

The most random thing ever...

I got a permanent apartment! YAY! However, the events leading up to it were odd. Derrick and Della have heard most of this... it's random. It's bizarre. Read on...

While I'm waiting to hear back from jobs, I decided to spend my time apartment hunting, because my first month is up September 4th at the place I'm at now, it's really expensive for the furnished place, and the lady who runs the place is probably the most incompetent person I've ever met. So I went online and drove around and called a few places, took a few tours, and then decided that I really liked this one place right near downtown- its called The Decatur. So the lady who works there- her name is Lyrica- said she would hold it for 24 hours for me. That was Thursday afternoon.

Friday I decided to look at a bunch of other places really fast just to be sure, and I went to this one called the Garden Court and it turns out that Lyrica is the manager there too... we were very surprised to see each other, but it worked out really well because her two buildings were my top 2 choices. They both were the same price- the Garden Court was newer and nicer, but The Decatur was way closer to downtown. So I pondered and called people for advice and decided to go look at The Decatur one more time and make my decision. So I get there and Lyrica says to come have a seat in the office and she says that she has something weird to ask me and she closes the door... at this point, I'm like "Is she gonna kill me?" So she sits down and explains that she has a friend who just graduated from college in Oregon and he moved to Seattle in June and is staying with her and her partner in their spare bedroom at their place in the Garden Court. He's looking for a roommate and she thought that I was super nice and would make a good one... there were 2 open 2 bedroom units at the Garden Court and we could rent one of them- it'd be cheaper to split. So I decided to meet him- he worked down the street at the hospital so he took at 15 minute break and we chatted on a street corner. He was nice, but we decided to hang out again on Sunday to get to know each other better before we made any decisions. So yeah, it all happened so fast...

Well, this morning Lyrica gave me a call and said that both 2 bedroom units were rented out last night at the Garden Court, and that someone wanted the 1 bedroom at The Decatur, but she was holding it for me. So I ran right down there and left a deposit. So, in the end, my plans didn't change. I think I might still hang out with that guy tomorrow night. He seems nice and I don't think he knows too many people in Seattle yet either. So yeah, that was my random, bizarre apartment hunting story. I almost had a roommate. Instead, I have a view. Which bring me too... my apartment!

As of September 1st, my new home will be The Decatur Apartments! I have a 1 bedroom unit on the 11th floor- I have big windows with a view of the Space Needle! It feels like a downtown penthouse! It has brand new carpet and tile and an updated bathroom and kitchen (though the kitchen is little- and the fridge and dishwasher are smaller than normal, but it's just me and I won't mind so much when I'm sitting in there eating looking at the skyline.) The building is a mix of old people who have lived there a long time (the building was built in the 50's) and grad students and young professors (its right down the street from Seattle University.) It's located in the First Hill neighborhood, which is a small residential neighborhood located adjacent to Downtown and Capitol Hill (where I live now.) If you want more info, you can check out these websites:

http://www.rent.com/apartments/washington/seattle-tacoma-and-vicinity/seattle/capitol-hill/450360/

http://www.apartmentguide.com/Property/property.asp?wsv_psPropertyID=8179&wsv_psReturnTo=2&wsv_psRownum=&wsv_qsSessionID=274384101&wsv_qsListType=1&wsv_qsPartner=-1&wsv_qsGeoKey=1,48,122&wsv_qsKeyword=&wsv_qsRegisteredFlag=0&wsv_qsBrowseStatus=0&wsv_qsSearchStatus=0&wsv_qsReferringURL=&wsv_qsSCartStatus=0&wsv_qsLowPrice=&wsv_qsHighPrice=&wsv_qsBR=&wsv_qsTerm=&wsv_qsAdvancedSearch=&wsv_qsNoAreas=&wsv_qsSFlg=&lk=ovTb

In the meantime, here are some pics that I've added captions to because it was fun and I was bored...

-Phill

They have White Castle up here!!!

So I'm here in Ann Arbor! Whoever said that the journey was as important as the destination was on a ton of crack. That or maybe they've just never met my parents. Here's how the trip basically went.

8:30 AM: We leave the house.
8:32 AM: I get a call on my cell phone. Apparently my parents have left all of their gospel CDs in the house. (This is because they've been playing them 24/7 on the stereo in an attempt to passive/aggressively convert me back to Christianity. Very awkward)
8:33 AM: I turn around, knowing this to indeed be a bad omen for the rest of the trip.
9:00 AM: I get a call on my cell phone. Again. This time it's to let me know that I have passed my Dad's car. Shocking, I hadn't realized. Nor really cared for that matter.
9:10 AM: I get another call. I'm driving too fast.
9:15 AM: Apparently now I'm really driving too fast. I am at 75 mph trying to accelerate on a road where people in the right lane are going at least 80. I could listen to my parents. I could also die. So I chose to ignore them.
9:45 AM: Mom calls. Asks if I need to take a break, get a snack, or go to the bathroom.
9:46 AM: I nearly die while telling my mom no on the phone.

That's enough for you to appreciate the wonder of my 500 mile drive to Ann Arbor. But indeed I am there now. We stayed in a hotel and I started to take on a rather murderous rage. It was unfortunate. Luckily the place has wireless internet so I sign onto AIM and Jenny tells me that murdering my parents is a bad idea because they may prove to be useful the next day.

The hotel we were at was pretty decent, they had a bunch of premium channels. Yet as all people over the age of 40 apparently do, they naturally found the weather channel and proceeded to let me know of the 10% chance of rain I would have tomorrow. I nearly lost my hearing blasting my music through my headphones to drown out the 45th explanation of what heat index is.

Anyway, this morning I'm woken up at 7 AM by my dad, who wants to go to Bob Evans for breakfast. Now I've never been to Bob Evans, but it became the ideal conduit for my anger at the time. So I said no, and was then scolded an hour later when they both returned from their wonderful breakfast. Why you might wonder. Because I'm still in the bed. At 8 AM. I'm told I can't sign my lease until 9:30 anyway. Ugh.

I sign the lease, and get the apt. It's sweet. It's on the 2nd floor (or like the 3rd floor I guess, the bottom floor is underground). Only a few things were wrong with it and it's minor enough for me to easily tolerate the week it'll take for them to fix it. When I find my digital camera among the rubble of my apt I'll take some pictures. My favorite is the multiple signs warning about watching your step in icy weather. They weren't there in June. I guess winter is just a few weeks away up here. Actually, before I got my keys I had to sign 2 different waivers saying I wouldn't sue if I or my property received any damage as a result of snow, ice, or cold weather. And I don't even have a coat yet. Though the phone guy almost tripped on the sidewalk on the way up, so maybe I should be more cautious. Oh, and apparently he changed my phone number after installing the line. I only figured this out after calling SBC sounding like a moron. Why not I guess.

Later I went back to the hotel to get the parents. In the span of several hours, we then become expert shoppers at Walmart and Kmart. Something I hate to admit, especially since I hate Walmart on principle. But when you're living right around the Federal Poverty Level and the amount of money you have for the semester only goes down and never up, then you swallow your quite literally worthless pride.

So now my parents have left me with an apartment full of assorted things. I'm not entirely looking forward to sorting all this crap out. I setup my coffee maker (though I have no coffee) and have halfway installed my water filter. This is an elaborate way of saying I have taken these things out of their boxes. Anyway, I'm just vegging out now. I don't know where anything is, let alone anyone really. I know a couple of people from Rice up here, and Dan is getting here in about a week- so it's not all bad. And I'll meet people next week when what I call Gradstudent O-Week starts. In case you were wondering, it's like O-Week minus all the fun. It starts at 8 AM everyday with a review of epidemiology and biostatistics. I bet you just wet yourself you're so excited.

As a fun little tidbit, my parents were originally planning to stay through Sunday morning. Luckily there's some huge NASCAR thing near Ann Arbor this weekend, so all the hotels have tripled their prices. They were less than happy at the prospect of sleeping in my furnitureless apartment, so they leave tomorrow morning after I show them the School of Public Health. I think I deserved that nice little surprise personally. I still don't think racing cars is a sport, and I will continue to judge them- but I'll never make fun of them in public again. It's the least I can do.

How Cookie Monster made my day...

Here's an update on my life...

I didn't want to post again until I had some good news. But just like Jiin-Yu, I am still unemployed. I've decided that I want to do college admissions so I applied to three different schools in the area. I've heard nothing yet... wonderful. If I don't hear anything by next week I'm just gonna apply for every job that I can find online and pray for the best. I had one interview to be the office manager / accountant for a product development firm... I should hear back from them this week, but I'm not so sure if I wanna take that one if I get it. So, basically, antsy spazzy Phill is emerging and probably will remain until I get a job. And a real apartment- mine is only temporary and I need to be out by September 5th. That's another mission. Bleh...

Other than my worried job and apartment life, other things are going well. I've had a lot of time on my hands, so I've done a lot of exploring. They have some great parks here to walk around and relax in and just a lot of other cool little touristy-ish things to see. I made a friend here too! Unfortunately, he's gonna be a senior in college and he left today to drive back to New York... my luck... but he took me to two really good brewery/restaurants and we went to a Natalie MacMaster concert in Redmond over the weekend- that was really cool. I told some of you about that girl from UPenn- my grandma's friend's grandson's best friend's sister- she arrives this weekend and she doesn't know anyone here except her cousin- so I think I'll have an insta-friend there. Della arrives in 2 weeks (YAY!!!) and a friend from high school (who went to William & Mary) has a friend who is moving out here also to do Ameri Corp like Della. She seemed really cool when I talked to her online. She doesn't know anyone either- so that will be another insta-friend when she arrives in 3 weeks. So I'll have some good fag hags! That's all I need in life (oh yeah, and a job...)

Oh- and it's been super hot for Seattle (it got up into the 90's last week and over the weekend and all the weathermen on TV were flipping backwards.) I, of course, thought it was gorgeous because it was breezy and so much drier than Houston or Florida. Today, however, I'm getting my first taste of real Seattle weather. The high is in the 60's and the sun is nowhere to been seen. I'm still in shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops just enjoying the cool weather.

That's my life. And instead of jobs and apartments, I think my mission today is to find a good barber shop- I'm looking rather shaggy.

-Phill

p.s. Have you all seen the Family Guy with Cookie Monster in cookie rehab??? And then there's the shot of him in the bathroom stall holding the lighter up to the spoonful of cookie dough!!! I almost wet myself! I have way too little human interaction and way too much time on my hands...

My new home is the library...

Hey all- another long post from me, but I guess I have a lot going on. So, I'm here in Seattle, and I have no clue what I'm doing. My first day was awful- the lady in charge of the apartment building is retarded, so I only have one month there and I need to find some place new before then... she didn't show me around the building or anything... like I magically know where the gym in and where the laundry room and such like that. Bitch. And then I found a Target online... I went... and it was in the worst possible part of the city. Then I got lost on the way back. I almost cried. Then things got better.

Friday night I went grocery shopping at the nearest grocery store- and it was SOOO upscale- SOOO me! Saturday and Sunday I explored- my part of town (Capitol Hill) is really trendy- lots of gays and other 20-somethings. I live an 8 minute walk from Broadway- the main drag through Capitol Hill- and a 5 minute walk from Downtown Seattle- which is super nice. I drove around most of the city on Saturday and then walked around Capitol Hill. Sunday I walked downtown and took the monorail to the Space Needle- went up, looked around, then went back downtown to Pike Street Market where they throw the fish around (you've seen it in movies, right?) Then I walked back to the big park in Capitol Hill and laid out in the sun to relax for a while. I even made a friend- we went out to a bar last night and chatted- too bad he's going to be a senior in college in New York and is leaving next weekend to go back. Oh well. I also found another Target- super nice- super upscale- right next to a Best Buy in this big 4 story mall thing. Tears of joy... I almost wet myself. I'll be heading to that Target from now on.

The city is super nice and lots of little cafes have free wifi if you buy a drink- yay! I only have AOL dial-up in my apartment and since I'm only gonna be there a short time, there's no point in paying for DSL. So now I'm downtown- it's about a 20 minute walk to the main public library in Seattle- they have free wifi- with power outlets!- so I can sit here as long as I want. They even have a little Starbucks cart :) Speaking of which- downtown has lots of Starbucks, but you honestly don't notice them unless you are really looking. Of course, I did really look- and I was on one main intersection downtown, right in front of a Starbucks, and I could see about 6 more just by doing a 360 at the corner.

Oh- and public art is really big here- so there is art in places you least expect it- for example, up and down broadway, they have these gold feet in the ground with dance instructions, and the feet are numbered for two people so you can follow the steps. You can walk up the street and learn how to do the Rumba, go up a block and Mambo, etc. Maybe Della and I will go dancing on Broadway when she gets here in a few weeks. YAY!

Also- Jenny and Alana created this blog and haven't really posted in a while- in fact, when I was in Houston, Alana said that she hadn't checked the thing for like 2 weeks. If you ladies ever read this, please post something. There's only like half of us posting regularly (I post extra-regularly, but I guess I have a lot going on).

Ok, that's all. I'm gonna sit here with my iced chai like a good little Seattleite and look for jobs online. My goal is to apply to 5 a day and I'll live at the library everyday until the my goal is realized. We'll see what happens... eeek.

-Phill

Two more weeks!

In just two weeks, I will be moving into my new apartment in Ann Arbor- I'm totally psyched! Of course, now I have to really get in gear about getting stuff ready to move, but knowing that it means moving out of this house makes it a labor of love. I'll show you all some pictures of the place when I get there in a couple of weeks.

Anyway, I figured I couldn't let Eric be the only person to post his pictures of season tickets. I am now the proud owner of my very own set of UM football season tickets (BTW, I took for granted not having to ever abbreviate Rice. I can't just say Michigan since that refers to a state and like 5 other universites, and University of Michigan gets old really quick, so as much as I hate it UM it is). Anyway, I love Rice and I'll always be an Owl, but that aside I'm going to vicariously experience college football through this team instead. And since I am a student here too (likely for longer than at Rice) this seems completely legit. Though I seriously doubt I'm going to get an argument from anyone that I have betrayed Rice football, when in reality they have betrayed us by sucking so bad.

That's pretty much what's up with me, sounds like everyone else actually has a life with work/travelling across the planet. As perverse as this sounds, I can't wait to start classes. It'll be nice doing something for a change, and it's not like I have to take stupid distribution classes now or anything. Besides, it'll be fun to meet some new people. Oh, here's my new address- keep in mind that I won't be there for another 2 weeks. Not that any of you were about to send me anything, but still.

1930 W. Liberty St.
Apartment # 9
Ann Arbor, MI 48103

And for some exciting parting information, I bought a new dress shirt yesterday. It's purple. You may now call me the purple shirt guy (as I fear everyone in Jenny's office now actually does).

4-year high school reunion

And the road trip continues! I had a blast in Tucson with my friend Angela (from Spain) and her friends and roommates. We just chilled mostly- watched TV, saw a movie, happy hour, etc. The weather there was well over 100 degress- but 100% dry- so I thought it was great! I stayed with Rachi's parents in Long Beach for a night. It was cute- her mom took me on a tour of Long Beach and showed me all kinds of Rachi things. Then she tried for like 5 minutes to make me drink a beer at dinner. Either she was just being really hip and cool or she was just trying to get me drunk... I don't want to know.


Now I'm in the Bay Area in Mountain View (just north of San Jose) staying with Samet. Lenora and Rea flew in for the weekend and have already left- it was just like senior year of high school. We did some touristy stuff in San Francisco and San Jose: Golden Gate Bridge, Ghirardelli Square, the Alcatraz evening tour, Winchester Mystery Mansion, Lombard Street, walked around Chinatown, Castro Street, and saw that spot where the opening sequence of Full House was shot (and yes we walked 30 minutes out of our way for that- see the pic!) Samet worked today so I decided to go down to Santa Cruz to see what was there- I walked around on the beach, boardwalk, and pier for 2 hours or so. Its really nice down there. I absolutely love the Bay Area! The weather is beautiful and it's liberal as all hell. I'm already planning my next visit out in my head. Anyways, I put some pics of Carley's apartment below as promised. I leave tomorrow for Oregon and I'll be in Seattle on Friday. YAY!

-Phill



Carley's Place: outside (her's is the 1st floor), living room w/ cat, dining room, and kitchen-

Business Trip!

Hi All.

I've got a couple of minutes, so here's an update. I'm in Houston taking a training course for my new job- it's an initial inspection course, which is basically just an introduction to all areas of inspecting. So far I haven't actually learned anything. Or not much at least. It's just a very basic class. Most of the guys have an operator background, and I kinda feel like the instructor is dumbing stuff down for them, but he doesn't need to because they are still sharp guys and they all have exposure to this. They don't need to know "the pros and cons of being an inspector."

I am also definitely the youngest person in the class and the most inexperienced. There's a girl who was born in 1979 and she was talking about how young she was. I chose not to pipe up and tell her that I was actually four years younger than she is!

Anyways. Job is going well. I am enjoying it and am starting to get some real problems to sink my teeth into. Of course, I still need a lot of help. There is definitely a very steep learning curve here, but they expect that of you, so that's ok.

I went to Bourbon St last week with some of the other young engineers. I had a really good time, but I have to say I was a little disappointed. The atmosphere was fun but I didn't think the drinks were very good- oversugary, sort of yucky artifical flavoring aftertaste, and very watered down. It was hard for me to get drunk because everything was so watered down and I couldn't drink much of it because it was so sugary. Regardless, I just loved getting out and hanging out with the other engineers, they are all really good people.

Actually, we are all going to Miami end of the month. I am looking forward to that a lot. There was an e-saver so tickets were only $100. I just couldn't pass up an opportunity like that.

Anyways, gotta go finish getting ready for my class. Hopefully today we will get into stuff that is less introductory. It is fun being on a "business trip" though- I can go out almost anywhere I want and charge it to Shell. It's fun!

Hope all is going well with everyone.

Carley