After two years of graduate school....

I HAVE TURNED IN MY THESIS! It is now out of my hands until my committee meets for my defense next week. This is the best feeling ever!

Sand volleyball

I joined a summer volleyball league. "One of those drinking leagues?" a friend asked.

Yea.

But we do also play volleyball. Sand volleyball!

Our first game was last night. We knew we were in trouble when after asking everyone on the team "hey, are YOU any good?" the consensus was a resounding NO.

The trouble we were in was amplified further when I caught a glimpse of the team we were playing. "Oh no." I said. "The girls are wearing those spandex volleyball shorts." Of course this means that they are serious players. Any girl who would willingingly put on shorts so short and so tight it looks like her leg's circulation is being seriously restricted must be "good".

I was right. The three 21 point games were over in a flash. Within half an hour, and we were alloted an hour to play. At one point me and another guy made a pretty great (probably average) play. We were so busy congratulating each other:

me: OMG great job!
him: no YOU did a great job!
me: no YOU!

That we didn't see it until it was too late. It landed right in between us.

So we had a (few) drink(s), at least we are good at hydrating. After becoming accostumed to such good beer here in Wisconsin I had forgotten how Miller Lite tastes like (and goes down like) water.

I think we will get better. But only time will tell. Stay tuned.

Real life

Currently I am in the library. I was making a brave attempt to focus on my thesis when I glanced over and saw a girl near me watching Grey's Anatomy on her laptop. This made me smile because it reminded me of a year ago when I spent a solid weekend in this very library studying for a stats final. The only way to keep myself from going insane was by watching two entire seasons of the Hills (a horrible, trashy, reality television show filmed in L.A. which makes you stupider by the second). However it actually worked and relieved my brain of some pressure. (Surprisinginly I did end up with an A).

I have since learned my lesson about cramming too much statisitics into my head in a short period of time, but I am still addicted to horrible, trashy, reality television.

Visiting George

As most of my 5-10 readers know, I've been in NC the past two weeks. Today I go back to Madison where I must get back into working on my thesis and working on my work for work at the place where I work.

Last week my mom and I took a little two day trip up to DC, we contemplated the beach but even though it is almost in the 90's today, it was not so warm last weekend. As usual she drove and I slept most of the way and then I got to navigate the visitor friendly streets of downtown Washington D.C. (If you cannot sense my sarcasm, I will tell you now that those streets are NOT visitor friendly). Even with the help of two GPS's and my natural sense of direction, I turned too early on Dupont circle and I've blocked out most of the screaming that ensued as I attemped other tricky manuevers. We did finally make it to the hotel.

The next day we went to Mount Vernon, home of our first president George Washington. Though we were told half a dozen times that the drive was "so easy" and "simple" the 30 minute trip took about 2 hours and lots of stopping for directions (did you know the GPS had no listing for Mount Vernon?!?!?). Finally a nice man at a gas station gave me very simple directions and after I filled out five lucky numbers on his lottery ticket we left and finally arrived at the estate.

The history of GW was very interesting. He married Martha, a widow with two children. While he had no children of his own, he must have adopted a third:

Also, he never told a lie. Yet he would never quite look you in the eye either....

To get into the acutal Mount Vernon mansion we had to wait in a very long line.

So to pass the time my mom decided to sport her very cool George Washington style sunglasses and didn't embarass her daughter at all!!

After the tour (no pictures were allowed inside the house but we saw some bedrooms, a dining room, GW's study, artwork, etc etc) we walked the grounds. On the way to his tomb we stumbled upon an escaped baby goat.....or ghost?:
Next was the museum where we got to see his famous wooden teeth (though they were not really wooden) and then after much bribery and James Bond-like moves I got to rub the world renowned and infamous George Washington "lucky nose".
The next day we checked out the newly re-opened Museum of American History where we viewed the dresses of first ladies, Julia Child's kitchen, a thing on Lincoln and the recently restored American flag that inspired the Star Spangled Banner!!! It was all I could do to not burst into song.

Then we ate a very exciting lunch:After lunch I stopped by the White House to give a quick speech for Barack. I wasn't sure why the crowd in the bag was wearing all those old-time clothes.

We arrived home safely later that day. And that was our trip.

awesome!

http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/04.09/antwerp.html

Wish I had been there!

Downtown Chapel Hill Monday night after the Tarheels beat MSU:


Timelapse: Franklin Street after the victory from The Daily Tar Heel on Vimeo.

Better than expected.

I was kind of mad at Monday. Why was this??

#1 I had to move offices and moving is always a pain.

However, it turned out not to be as bad as I thought. I really didn't have that much to move and the new office is much nicer. WINDOW! NEW LAPTOP! NEW MONITOR! BLUETOOTH KEYBOARD AND MOUSE! However I will miss my old officemates.

#2 I was going to have to miss the first half of the NCAA basketball championship! The Tar Heels were playing! They haven't won since 2005 and now was their time! Little did I realize they would be ahead by 20 points the entire game and I really did not miss anything.

But why did I have to miss the first half?? Because we had a photo shoot for my improv group Out-on-a-Limb-Prov! It was so much fun! My favorite pose was "sexy but injuried"...I guess it is supposed to make you sexier. Anyway a few of my favs are below.