out on the town

so last friday, me and a bunch of the other physics grad students went out on the town to de-stress from the week of midterm hell. we started off at dos gringos, a place trying to be like the fun mexican bars south of the border (except for being clean and more expensive). unfortunately, one of our friends, angel, is from puerto rico and hasn't gotten an arizona id card yet, so they wouldn't let him in. it's such a stupid thing, because he's a u.s. citizen and all that and just because his id is different they won't let him in. sooo dumb. so anyway, we left that place and headed over to mill avenue so we could all hang out together. the first place we went to there also wouldn't let him in, so we were starting to get really annoyed (at the stupid people, not angel). he wanted to just leave so we could go in, but we wouldn't let him. next we tried the sushi restaurant/bar and they wouldn't let him in at first either. but then something happened, and they changed their mind. thank goodness. so we all found a table in the back and ordered our sake bombs. and a good time was had by all. here are some pictures from the evening:



clockwise from left: katie, oscar, angel, tedman, steve, keeley, alec, and seth (well, the back of seth's head anyway)


me and katie


me and angel (don't worry, james, nothing is going on here. hehe. i miss you!)


katie and alec


adam not being drunk. someone earlier in the day said adam was like a quantum state: he was either drunk or not drunk. (haha. physics joke. sorry guys.)

reverse the curse

wow, what an exciting and interesting game six. curt schilling rocks. I am so excited for the red sox. they actually might pull it off and get to the world series this year. we'll see what happens tomorrow night. I should be able to catch the last half of the game after my late class. reverse the curse! this is the year!

in other news, jon stewart is my hero. he went on crossfire last friday and totally kicked tucker's ass. it was awesome. you can watch the clip here: http://www.ifilm.com/filmdetail?ifilmid=2652831&htv=12&htv=12
so great. then, last night on the daily show, he continued to make fun of them when discussing what happened when he went on the show and such. it just gets better and better.

I figured out how to do international text messaging today, so hopefully it works. keep your fingers crossed. modern technology is only great when it works correctly.

yesterday I turned in my e&m midterm which I spent all weekend working on (literally, I was working on it all weekend. my life sucks). by some act of god, I have nothing else due this week (except reading articles for tomorrow night), so I'm excited because I should be able to get a normal amount of sleep starting tomorrow night all the way through early next week. sooo happy. it's scary that little things like that make such a difference.

the debate comes to ASU!

well, today was definitely not an ordinary day at ASU. the third and final presidential debate was held on our campus. some classes were cancelled, others were moved, but most were just poorly attended. luckily, since I ride my bike, the road closures and parking lot closures did not affect my trip to school. but, basically, it was impossible to get to campus if you didn't walk or ride your bike there. after I finished teaching my classes, I wandered over to the student union and basked in the glory of the craziness and chaos that was unfolding there. there were lots of kerry supporters, lots of bush supporters (less than the kerry supporters, though), and also lots of people who were just using the excuse of the debate to be funny, annoying, or just weird.
the media were swarming everywhere; it seemed like cnn was campaigning for something, although I'm not sure what. we saw lots of great signs throughout the day. some of my favorites that I didn't get pictures of: "promote abstinence in 2004: no bush, no dick" and "save the environment: plant a bush back in texas". and then there was also the yelling match over at the bush booth. apparently some republicans are really angry about something. it was hilarious.
so, here's my photo journal of the day. enjoy the insanity.


some signs outside the MSNBC stage where they were broadcasting live (I saw chris matthews last night).


the lawn by the library where the CNN stage was set up.


some people had really really big signs, fighting for space behind wolf blitzer.


here's wolf blitzer reporting live from asu. does anyone else think it's weird that he has a teleprompter to do an interview? (one of my favorite protesters of the day was over here, he was saying, "dan rather should be fired. wolf blitzer is the best reporter ever." it sounded like he wanted to marry wolf or something. it was pretty funny).


this guy gets the award for most inventive way of getting your sign seen.


although it seemed like everyone had either a kerry or a bush sign, there were some people that didn't...


taping some show for MSNBC. they were interviewing some students on their views about the candidates. it wasn't that exciting.


the campus was overridden with media people. they were everywhere.


the award for cleverest sign.


the republicans were getting really angry with a couple people and started full out yelling at them. it was really amusing.
at one point, the bush people started yelling "four more years", so the kerry people responded with "three more weeks". that was nice, even if it will be longer than three weeks even if kerry wins.


traffic was an absolute mess. they had to close a bunch of streets. it was a big big mess. a lot of my students didn't even make it into class.


kerry's supporters were lined up all along the street leading up to the auditorium where the debate was held. we were waiting to wave to him as he drove by on his way there and wish him good luck.


i saw john kerry! in the window you can see him giving us the thumbs up sign. sorry i couldn't get a better shot.

so, after the kerry sighting, I had to go to class (that was moved off campus because the debate closed the building we usually have it in). luckily class ended early so I was able to watch at least the last half of the debate. I think it went pretty well. go kerry!

the debate part deux

wow, what an interesting debate. I guess I wasn't expecting it to be that entertaining. bush is so hilarious. I really am scared that he is our president. oh goodness. who knows if kerry will actually "win" the debate or whatever, but that doesn't matter. I think most of the people that actually watched the debate with even a somewhat open mind will see what is really going on. at one point, bush actually totally interrupted and yelled at the moderator. I was talking to a couple people online during the debate and we all agreed we wouldn't have been surprised if they had started wrestling around that point.
anyway, on another note, next wednesday will be very exciting since the third and final presidential debate is going to be held at arizona state university. our whole school is starting to go crazy, with parking lots getting shut down, certain classes being cancelled or moved and just a general sort of feeling of excitement in the air. I can't wait to see what happens.

days 8 and 9 have been posted up on my travelogue. sorry it's taking so long. I barely have time to sleep and do all of my homework as it is. maybe I'll get some more done this weekend.
http://www.geocities.com/astrogirl720

black and blue

today was an interesting day. I had to teach four sections and those were just a mixture of insanity and boredom. we went over the midterm that they just got back, and some people were just outraged at their grades. other people it seemed could care less. it's weird, it seems like each of my sections has a different personality. for instance, one class is always talking and asking questions and contributing in class, while another one just sits there and stares at me blankly for 50 minutes. I have no idea how that happened. it's very weird.
anyway, the classes went relatively well, except each class kept asking me what was wrong with my arm and I had to explain how some guy elbowed me during my soccer game on sunday and left me with the hugest ugliest bruise ever. it is the size of my fist, and is turning wonderful shades of blue, purple, red, and yellow. at least it doesn't hurt as much today. monday was pretty painful. the worst part about it, though, is not that I have the bruise, but that they didn't call the foul during the game! argh. sooo annoying. and we only tied (although we were totally dominating; we should have won). oh well. next time, no mercy.

on a sadder note, one of my good friends from high school's dad just died. the weird part is that I read about it on cnn.com. the reason is that her father was one of the original mercury 7 astronauts. it was really cool in high school because he used to come to our soccer games and watch. they also had lots of awesome pictures in their house; pictures of him with important people and cool space pictures and things like that.

in other news, I got a wonderful email this morning which just made my day. :)

colloquim and karaoke at the vine

today (thursday - ok, technically yesterday since it's 1:30am) was such an interesting day.
it started off alright, since I got 8 hours of sleep last night, something that has not happened in a while. yesterday, after being on campus for 13 hours and doing an awesome job on my presentation, I came home and just vegged out in front of the tv. I got to bed early and slept really well. I was exhausted. classes today were sort of eh, but whatever, I try not to expect too much from them except to be something to complain about. anyway, after our last class, we were trying to decide if we all wanted to go to the weekly colloquim or not. the topic sounded kind of boring (some kind of biophysics thing about molecules) and we all had homework and other better things to do. but, the free food called us, and we ended up going. most of us brought something else to do during it, so that helped. luckily, we got there early enough to get seats in the back row (the very best place to be, especially if you don't plan on playing attention). however, this colloquim was different from all the other ones we had been to. it was hilarious. and not intentionally. that was why it was so funny. I think only the first and second year grad students sitting in the back were getting all the innuendoes, but it was hilarious to us. we had to contain our laughter. it started off talking about scruin, which is some kind of protein extracted from the sperm cells of horseshoe crabs apparently. however, every time the speaker said scruin we heard him say "screwing" and it just cracked us up for some reason. it didn't help that he had graphs about how to increase stiffness and the length of floppiness and things like that. it was all we could do to be quiet. now, maybe we were being immature, but whatever, it was hilarious and helped us get through the hour of usual boredom.

thursday night me, katie, adam, angel, and hwi went to the vine near campus for karaoke night. katie and I had been talking about going to someplace for karaoke for a while, so we figured we finally might actually do it. adam started us off with pearl jam's "jeremy" (very good) and then hwi did a great job of eric carmen's "all by myself". she actually hit all the notes and everything. it was awesome. katie and I took a while to pick the perfect song and then the guy in charge ended up losing our slip of paper, so we didn't get to actually go on until right before we were ready to leave. but, we still got our song in: journey's "don't stop believing". it was great, if I do say so myself. it's a good karaoke song, and everyone in the place got into it. we couldn't convince angel to sing, but hopefully next time he'll get the courage to do it.