Yeah yeah, I'm posting

I'm a bad person- I read everyone else's blog but never post. Throw your proverbial stones at me now. Anyway, life has been busy for me up in Ann Arbor, but at least I'm enjoying most of what I do. Though I'd still like to sleep. This semester I'm only signed up for 4 classes- 2 in my department, one in policy, and one in biostatistics. There's an insane amount of reading and writing going on, but it's made more bearable by the fact that I find it interesting and actually useful. Unlike writing a paper about how Simba was closeted in The Lion King. But I guess that got me to where I am now.

When I'm not in class or studying for class, I'm at work. I work at University Health Service in Health Promotion so I pretty much design programs for the undergrads here. So far I've facilitated alcohol interventions for two different frats on campus (SO glad Rice isn't Greek), counseled students getting HIV testing, programmed a series of STD prevention and screening workshops for minority students on campus, designed a nutrition and avian flu website, and now I'm working on a physical fitness website. It's pretty neat stuff if you're a dork like me.

Meanwhile, I also do research over at the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture, and Health. There's a center on the UM campus for everything. It's some exciting stuff. My actual advisor blows major chunks so I've stolen one that I met at CRECH and am doing research with him. More like for him- that's the grad student/professor dynamic. Of course, not entirely interesting to you, but I figured I'd let you know why I haven't been blogging. I'm also co-chairing a conference on minority health in the winter (that means March here) so I'm excited about that too.

I also manage to have a social life. I've got a solid crew at SPH, and a few friends from physics thanks to Dan. I've also just stumbled upon friends in other departments so it's been a blast meeting other people. I even ran into a friend from middle school who's up here. As much as I love this school and the quirkiness of Ann Arbor, I'm already a little sick of it. Ann Arbor is tiny, but I guess I'll just have to deal with that. Hmm, what else. Oh yeah, UM football decided to suck this year. We're not even ranked anymore. How obnoxius, after I posted about my season tickets and everything. I'm glad to see the Astros made it to the World Series though, I'm excited for Houston. This weekend I'm going to a corn maze (no pun intended) and a haunted house. This house is supposed to be so scary that you get your money back if you make it up to the 7th floor. Bring it on!

And in other news, I have a fish. His name is Calvin. He's a red male betta, and his hobbies are eating, swimming, and contemplating his existence. If you want to see him you'll have to come visit me. Which you should before the entire state become a large block of ice. And you should come since I've become quite the little chef. Dan and I actually cook food every night so I've gotten pretty damn good. We'll see if I can go an entire semester as a grad student without eating Ramen. Well that's it- I need to get back to studying like the good little student I am.