Philly, Here I Come!

it is official now, guys. chad and i are going to philadelphia in march. that will be an extremely busy month for me, with two scientific conferences (one at the beginning of march and one at the end of the month), the usual pilots games, probably a camping trip to port st. joe with the in-laws, and now a 4-day, 3-night excursion to philadelphia. i'm going to freeze my ass off in philly the 2nd week of march, but i'm going to love it. if i survived connecticut that time of year, i can definitely handle philly.

i bought our tickets for the flyers/panthers game on march 8th today. i even saved us $13 by ordering them through stubhub.com (where season ticket holders and others can offload tickets they aren't going to use) instead of through ticketmaster or the flyers website. that $13 kept the order from being over $200 (yeah, dudes, NHL tickets are pricey...well, good ones are pricey). they're pretty good seats. lower level, 12 rows up, in the corner, at the end where the flyers shoot twice. basically, they're in the same place as our seats in pensacola, only a few rows higher up. and they're better than any seats we could get by ordering them through the flyer website. i checked. and there were worse seats selling for more dinero on stubhub. i think i did good, especially considering that $80 each for the tickets, the 10% stubhub fee and the $12 shipping and handling charge (2 day shipping via fedex) still came out to be less than the total price would have been through other methods.

i also booked our flights and hotel today. we will be staying at the holiday inn philadelphia stadium, which is just about as close as we could get to the wachovia center. no parking trouble for us. we aren't going to bother renting a car while we're there. we'll take a taxi from the airport and then take the subway and trolleys wherever else we want to go. we'll be flying out of pensacola (which is $80 cheaper than flying out of mobile and the same price as gulfport) on march 7, hanging out in philly before the game, cheering on the flyers against florida march 8, then taking a trolley tour of the city on march 9, visiting the liberty bell and the constitution center and whatever other historical places we feel like, and we can't forget that we'll also visit the rocky statue and take lots of pictures. then we'll head back home on march 10.

i can't wait. i'm so excited. hopefully, the flyers' atrocious preseason record isn't an indication of how poorly they'll do during the regular season. i want them to actually win when i go to philly.

One Step Closer

that's right, guys. i am one step closer to getting my Ph.D. i FINALLY got my prospectus signed today at my committee meeting, and i've set a general time to take the dreaded comps (late spring). i was going to do this before maine, but then my mom got sick and stuff, and i lost my head. so today it got done. i just have to email my outside committee member (he's in pennsylvania) and see if dr. v. can sign his name, and then it goes to the department chair and off to the folks at the graduate school. and then i get a raise. yay!

i got another piece of exciting news today. you know what that was? in may i'll probably get to go to the bahamas for a week for free. yay again! dr. v. told me he was close to saying 'yes' to teaching the coral reef ecology class, which spends a week in the bahamas, and he said, "and i'll need a TA who can collect parrotfish-grazed turtlegrass for her project." sweet! that TA he was talking about is none other than yours truly. i've got a pretty sweet advisor, dudes.

it was also decided today that i should present at two conferences this spring instead of just the one that i was planning on. that's fine by me. i can do essentially the same talk at both of them. one will probably be at DISL (the one i didn't plan on), and the other one is in atlanta at georgia tech. my little italian friend from maine is supposed to be at that one. i'll miss 2 ice pilot home games, though, which is sad. :-( the conference is march 21-25. perhaps there's an interesting thrashers game during that time that i might convince someone to go to... hmm. san jose on the 22nd is the only home game during that time. i dunno about that one. maybe not. oh well.

ooh! but chad and i ARE seriously considering taking a trip to philadelphia this year. probably in march or april when it's not ass cold there. then i can lick the liberty bell! like on how i met your mother! if we go, we'll spend a few days and explore philly while we're there, eat real philly cheese steak and all. let's hope this really happens. if it does, we'll know soon, 'cause we'll order our tickets (and our plane tickets) far, far in advance. i like not taking regular classes, because i'm not limited in when we can go. awesome.

Back in the States

hello all. i am once again back in the states, using my own computer instead of one with a spanish keyboard with extra keys and some in the wrong places. i was very excited to come home, though i had an excellent time in spain. when we got to the airport in memphis yesterday, kate, rochelle, and i were all excited about boys who don't look gay (i.e., no man capris or man purses), waiters who split checks and actually come to your table to check on you without your flagging them down first, not having to argue with people in a foreign language, being able to use a debit card anywhere, and a whole host of other american conveniences that i totally take for granted. it was an extremely long trip (23 hours if you count the time when we left our hostel), and i was beat when i got home. no jet lag on the return trip, no siree. i only slept for about an hour during the entire 23 hours we traveled, and we only got about 4 hours of sleep monday night in madrid.

our three nights in madrid were pretty excellent. just was worried about me, kate, and rochelle being alone in such a big city in a foreign country, but we took care of ourselves just fine. we literally took every form of transportation available while we were in spain - cars, planes, trains, taxis, buses, subways, and the airport shuttle. it was pretty crazy. we took a train from alicante to madrid on saturday and checked into our hostel, which we've been told was pretty sweet as hostels go. we were so starving when we arrived that we ate at burger king because it was the only place open (it was 5 pm, way past the spanish lunch time and way before the spanish dinner time). then we went out for a tapas dinner later on that night and split a pitcher of sangria. i was poco borracha on the walk back to the hostel. then we crashed relatively early because we had kind of a big day planned for sunday. between burger king and dinner, we met a bunch of people in our hostel by just hanging out in the common room for a while. they were a pretty cool bunch.

anyway, on sunday we visited el rostro, the huge flea market in madrid. i bought a really cute skirt there, and kate bought the same one. we got a wee bit lost on the way there, but it was ok. we stopped to take my picture by the la latina metro stop. the market was phenominally huge. we walked around there for hours. we saw a guy trying to steal a bunch of perfume, and the police took it away from him, then he tried to take it from the police, and they started hitting him with their night sticks, and the guy was still trying to take stuff from them.

after el rostro, we took the metro over to all the museums. they're free on sundays, which really cool, and that sunday was the last day of the picasso exhibit at museo del prado, which was even cooler. so we walked around the prado for hours, too, and it was awesome. i was disappointed in the lack of prints for sale in the gift shop, though. they had some postcards featuring some of the paintings, but they only had a couple of my favorties.

after walking all day long, the three of us went back to the hostel for a siesta, then we went out for a tapas dinner with our roommate michaela. after dinner, we met up with a bunch of people from our hostel and a couple of others in the area for a pub crawl. it was so much fun. we paid 10 euros to visit 4 pubs with a free shot and a discount on drinks at each one and then free admission to a salsa club. it was such a long night (we were dancing for 6 hours), but it was so much fun. everyone was pretty drunk. we got to meet tons of cool people through the pub crawl, though. we hung out a lot with a gay english boy named david, and he was a hoot. i danced salsa with him for a little while. unfortunately, i'm not good at salsa dancing. there was also an australian boy who was sort of stalking me all night. i'm pretty sure he said his name was bone. weird. he was cute, but he was a little frisky, and kate had to rescue me from him once on the dance floor at the 4th bar we went to. at one point at that bar, i was really hot and sweaty from all the dancing (as was everyone else), and i turned to rochelle and yelled over the music, "rochelle! blow me!" we do this thing where we blow on each other's faces to cool us off when we're hot and sweaty, but it sounded very inappropriate. david was like, "did she just shout 'blow me' in a club?" and the australian boy was like, "did you just say what i think you said?" then rochelle blew on my face and it was all good.

the australian boy had a spanish friend from the santa pola area (that's where we were before we went to madrid), and his name was juan. he said he didn't really like santa pola and that it was no fun. i told him that i had a ton of fun in santa pola at the clubs near the castle. he was all like, "what castle?" so that was weird, because the castle is right in downtown santa pola. anyway, since i managed to have fun in santa pola and i mentioned the castle, he started calling me the queen of santa pola. and then he bowed. it was kind funny, but also kind of weird.

we got home from the pub crawl around 5 am and slept for a few hours. then we got up and took a bus over to san lorenzo de escaloria to visit the monastary and stuff there. it's where all spanish monarchs are buried, and just told us it's a good lesson in spanish history. and when we got there, it was closed. that was disappointing, but we walked around the outside, which was beautiful and HUGE. then we walked around the little town for a while and had lunch, then headed back into madrid for some sweet shopping. we hit a souvenir shop and then a bunch of really expensive stores. and then we found it. the one store that made us all extremely happy. H & M. i know we have them in the states, but nowhere near mobile. and we found such cute stuff for so little money. i bought the cutest top for 2.90 euros. i literally squeaked when i found it. ask rochelle, she was there, and she made fun of me for it. i also bought a couple of super cheap tank tops and an adorable striped, short sleeve, button up shirt that i couldn't live without. in fact, i'm wearing it right now. i love it. it has a bit of spanish sluttiness to it, since the highest button is pretty much right between my boobs, but i still love it. that was a trend we noticed in spain - slutbag. we saw a 14 year old wearing ho-veralls (overall shorts that were pretty much up her ass), and we never felt like we dressed slutty enough to fit in at any of the clubs we went to. or even slutty enough to go shopping. that's how slutty the girls dress there on an everyday basis. everything is super short, super tight, and super low cut. and a lot of it is weird. but like i said, i found some cute stuff too. but i hate european sizing. it makes me feel fat. i bought a pair of shorts, and i had to get a size 40. ick. give me a size 8 or 9 in the states over a european 40 any day. i could fit a 38, but i felt like it squeezed in odd places, so i went for the bigger size.

after shopping, we went to dinner at the vacquita argentina, a little restaurant right near our hostel. i got veggie lasagna, and it was delicious. we ordered wine with our dinner, and when we told the waiter our first choice he looked horrified and asked, "are you sure?" so kate asked if it was really bad, and he recommended a different one for us. it was pretty good and not very expensive. that whole experience was pretty funny. after dinner, we went back to the hostel to pack, and we had a new roomie. it was an american boy who's been studying arabic named tully. i liked him. michaela was on the prowl for a cute spanish boy, but we told her to go for tully. he was american, but he was cute. and funny. he seemed like a nice guy. too bad he only got there the night before we left, so we didn't really have a chance to hang out. he was trying to study for the GRE while we were packing, and i'm sure he got nothing done.

so, that was our stay in madrid. the next morning, we caught the airport shuttle at 6:30 and began our long, long series of flights home. and i'm really glad to be back.

I´m Here for the Party

so, today was our last official day of the spain course. and, of course, we had to have a party to send off the class right. so, we had a huge shindig here at the lab last night. i don´t think i´ve mentioned that we american girls might have frightened the cute spanish boys here just a wee bit. i think they thought that kelly and i were stalking them at lunch, since that´s always when we´d see them. the two grad students who have been here since we arrived are named fran (short for francisco) and andres. they don´t really have much confidence in their english skills, so they were a tad afraid to talk to us at first. so kelly and i started talking to them at lunch every day. this was pure coincidence. they always just happened to come into the kitchen every day while kelly and i were eating. kelly and i are kind of silly together (as you might imagine), and i tend to talk sort of fast (as i´m sure you know). so they always had to tell me to slow down, but they were perfectly capable of having conversations with us in spanglish. my spanish isn´t great, but i can usually get my point across. anyway, i think they were a little intimidated by our hotness.

so, we kept trying to convince fran and andres to come out with us one night, and they both said they would definitely come to the party (which they did). it was a blast. one of the guys who works here made a HUGE bowl of sangria, there was much beer, and we did apple pie shots (apple juice, vodka, whipped cream, and cinnamon). i think i may have had a wee bit too much to drink. oh, did i mention that i haven´t slept since 11 am on thursday? it´s about 2 am saturday morning right now. i don´t possess the brain power to figure out how many hours i´ve been awake.

anyway, back to the story. there was much drinking, much dancing, more drinking, a little chasing, and lots of fun. we really brought fran out of his shell at the party. he´d always been a little shy before that. andres, on the other hand, is a dirty, dirty boy. but he´s a nice guy, and i took lots of cute pictures of myself with his camera.

let´s have a look at some photos of the madness, shall we?

here´s me wrestling whipped cream away from fran. he had sprayed it on me and nicole (also in the pic), and i wanted to get him back.















here´s one of fran taking an apple pie shot. it takes a lot of hands to coordinate those things.















now here´s one of andres after his team lost three rounds of flip cup in a row. for some reason, the idea to remove some clothing if that happened materialized. i never removed any clothing.




















so, after all the madness here at the lab, just wasn´t ready to let the party go yet, so he took some of us into town for churros and dancing at a club. there were five of us who went - me, nicole, fran, just, and mercedes (one of the female grad students here, whom we just met). we ended up having tons of fun. fran even danced without any coaxing. he even twirled me of his own accord. then i twirled him. the nicole and i twirled each other, and just danced on a little stage thingie until he was mobbed by 40 year old women. it was funny.

see, the reason that only 5 of us went was because everyone else was in bed. because we didn´t leave until 3:30 am. and we went to the aquarium in valencia today. so we had to catch a train at 7 am. so nicole and i did not sleep. we got home from the club at 5:30, showered, and headed for the train station. then kelly and i had to take down an experiment after we got back from valencia at almost 10 pm, and i have been attempting to burn all of our pictures to dvd, but i am having some difficulties. seeing as i haven´t slept in nearly two days and that i am going to madrid tomorrow, i think i should go to sleep now.

Blah

you know what´s almost as bad as losing your luggage in a foreign country? getting sick in a foreign country. that happened to me yesterday, and i still feel shitty today. after kelly and i collected our seagrass from the way salty mediterranean yesterday, my throat started to hurt like whoa, as kelly would say. i thought at first that it was just because i´d gotten so much salt water up my nose and in my ears, but i just kept feeling shittier as the day wore on. it was really bad because last night was our big party night in alicante, and i felt horrible. just ended up taking me back to the marine lab early (well, not exactly early, but earlier than everyone else).

we started out our trip to alicante with a tour of the castle there. it was really cool. then we girls did some good shopping while the boys hung out and had a drink or two. i bought some sweet knee length shorts and a really cute pair of brown sneakers. i also stopped at a pharmacy and bought some aspirin because my throat was killing me at that point. i took three, but it did nothing for me. we met up with the prof from the university of alicante for dinner, and we ate around 11 pm, which is pretty typical for spain. we had pitchers of sangria, which was really tasty, but i mostly drank water because i thought i was going to hurl. i didn´t eat much either, even though the food was tasty. whenever we go out as a group we always order about ten or twelve different tapas (snacks or appetizers) and split the ticket. all of it was tasty, but i didn´t feel like eating.

after dinner, we were planning to meet up with one of the grad students from the lab here for drinks and dancing. we did that, but i still felt like shit, so just took me home early. well, not really early. it was about 3 am. everyone else got home around 6:30 am. we all slept until 1 pm, then jose luis (the prof from alicante) came over and cooked us paella and made us mojitos. the magical mojitos perked me up a little. jose luis said it was vitamins for me. mojitos are really freakin good, dudes. we should all drink more of them. after paella and mojitos i went back to sleep for 3 hours. i think all the sleep did me good, though.

i have more, but i´m kind of tired. here are some pictures for your entertainment. i´ll have much more to tell you later, i´m sure.



this is nicole kissing antonio on the cheek at dino´s.
















this is me and kelly cowering in fear at the bull run.
















these are the bulls we were cowering in fear of.
















this is an exapmle of all the sweet man capris (ignore the guy in the foreground).

















this is antonio sticking his tongue out at me after he got into the whole ´sweet americana taking his picture´thing.

Mullets & Man Capris

check it out guys. the boys here in españa dress funny, and they dance with each other all close like girls sometimes do in the states. we went to the festival in santa pola last night for the running of the bulls (in which i did participate after all), and all of us americanas had a good laugh at the way the boys dress. they wear man capris and tight t-shirts, and they carry man purses. oh, and the mullets abound. but not just mullets. special european mullets in many different varieties. oh, and rat tails.

we went to a bar after the running of the bulls (actually, we went there before and after the bulls) called dino´s. there is a waiter there whose name is antonio, and he is muy guapo. he gave us two free shots, and they were yummy. kelly had flirted with him a little the day before, so when rochelle, kate, nicole, and i got there we knew his name already even though we weren´t there when everyone else had gone the first time. it sort of freaked him out that we knew his name. he liked talking to us because it gave him a chance to practice his english. we tried to get him to speak spanish to us, but he said something like, ¨you can speak spanish all the time, but i only get 5 minutes to speak english with you.¨ that was after he gave us the first free shot of black wildberry vodka and lemonade. then everyone else got there and he gave us another one. then marcus bought me a rum and coke with lemon. i usually don´t like alcoholic drinks with soda because it makes the soda taste flat, but that was really good. sometime over the course of all that i started taking random pictures of antonio with marcus´s camera. i think it weirded him out a little at first, and then he kind of got into it. in one, he stuck his tongue out at me. i like that one. after the bull thing we went back to dino´s, and i asked antonio if he would take a picture with nicole, and he said ok. then i was like, ¨kiss his cheek! kiss his cheek!¨so nicole did, and antonio didn´t seem to mind because nicole is cute. marcus´s camera is slow, so they ended up holding the pose for something like 20 seconds, and the picture turned out really cute. as soon as marcus puts his picutres on this computer, i´m going to post it.

earlier in the night, antonio had told just (our prof, pronounced joost) to tell us that the festival wasn´t celebrating santa pola, it was celebrating the fact that he´s not married. then he was asking for my address, which didn´t make any sense, and just was all like, ¨what do you do to make all these men love you?¨ because kate told him that all the boys in maine loved me. rochelle told him i´m married and wanted to know why he wanted my address, but i´d already told antonio that earlier. anyway, antonio just wanted copies of the pictures, and i got his email address instead of giving him mine. the thing is, i´m pretty sure he doesn´t know my name. it was interesting anyway.

as for the bulls, that was freakin´scary. i was the only one in our group who really didn´t want to do it, and when we got there i was more scared of getting lost in a crowd of skeezy men than of the bulls. we´d decided to meet up at dino´s after, but i wasn´t confident that i could find it on my own, and there were definitely some shady characters there. one of them grabbed rochelle´s boob during the bull run. i´m glad i decided not to hang by myself. anyway, i went into the street where they were running the bulls with everyone else. just asked what the plan was when the bulls came, and i said, ¨we run away!¨ so i hung out with andy and carly, and i ended up running and screaming like little girl and hiding behind andy when the bulls came. i never got close to one. carly took some good pictures, though. i´ll post them as soon as i can. after about half an hour, when the bulls really started to get confused and started veering over to the sides i was really over the whole bull thing, and i was scared anyway. when i was hiding behind andy i kept saying, ¨tengo miedo! tengo miedo!¨ so we crawled out under a barricade and went to dino´s. once it closed, antonio told us about a dance club that was open until 5 am (the bull run didn´t start until 1 am, and dino´s closed at 3 am) that was right around the corner, so we went there.

that was the place where we saw all the boys dancing very close to one another. we thought maybe antonio had sent us to a gay bar, but we kept getting hit on by guys, so i guess not. i had four different guys try to give me their drinks. not to buy me a drink, but to give me theirs. i refused. rochelle had some guy try to force a random shot on her, and marcus drank it for her. then this group of 18 year old boys came over and tried to hit on us. one of them flicked his lighter on my nose when i refused the cigarette he offered me. it was weird. then this other kid was standing beside me trying to get me to drink this random shot that had been sitting on the table for an hour. he kept putting his hand on my back, and i kept moving it off. then he tried to give me his drink, and i said no and told him i´m married and showed him my ring. then he left, and when he did he grabbed my ass. i was like, ¨i just got molested by an 18 year old boy.¨ that was so wrong.

at last call the bartender gave everyone in our group a free shot of this really tasty peach whiskey. then we drank lots of water and went home. we went to bed at 6 am. that was insane.

Greetings de España

hola, mis amigos out there in internet land. i have to say that my trip to spain did not start out on a pleasant note. neither did my friend kate´s. see, they lost our luggage. we have it now, but we´ve been here since sunday. it sucked. our luggage got stuck in amsterdam, and we went to madrid. it really sucks losing your bags in a foreign country (especially one whose language is not your own). but anyway, our luggage eventually made its way back to us, and i was really glad i packed some clothes in my carry-on.

our first night here, we spent the night in the dorms at the university of alicante, and we took a tour of the campus the next morning. there was drama over phone cards, but it all worked out. the next day, we made our way here to the marine lab, where we´ll be staying for the rest of the trip. the facility here is really nice (except that every time you take a shower, there is a lake in the bathroom floor). the weather is beautiful (i.e., not cold), and the mediterranean is amazing. we did some good snorkeling a couple of days ago before we had to actually start our projects. of course, in addition to the work we´ve been enjoying the spanish culture (our prof is from alicante) and having a little fun.

they eat weird things here, dude. i ate an ovary yestertay. how freakin´crazy is that? you did not read that wrong. one of the profs from the u of alicante bought it for us. it was a smoked and dried tuna ovary (called a hueva). it tasted extremely fishy, and the thought of eating an ovary just generally weirded us all out. i´ve also eaten cuttlefish since i´ve been here, but those were really tasty. our prof is making sure that we are well immersed in real spanish life.

there is a big festival in santa pola this week (santa pola is 5 minutes from the marine lab), and tonight a bunch of us are going to run with the bulls. not like in pamplona, though. this is supposed to be pretty tame. i´ll probably chicken out. it should be fun either way. there was drama this morning when we went to sign up, and some guy kept yelling and touching himself, and then he yelled at an old lady.

i need to run now, but i´ll try to update again soon. for those on facebook, there are a few pictures on there from maine and spain. i´ll put up albums of my own soon, though.

hasta luego!

Maine in Pictures

so, it's my one day at home between maine and spain, and i'm incredibly busy... but not too busy to share some photos of my trip to maine. i'm sure the whole thing sounded pretty crazy from my last couple of posts, and it was. i hereby make a solemn vow to drink less in spain than i did in maine. that actually shouldn't be that hard, seeing as all i'd have to do is stay sober for more than three nights. despite all the drinking, i was never hung over on the trip, and i never puked. i had one iffy moment after stupidly taking a swig of vodka straight from the bottle, but i got over it. i heard from cautious eric today, and apparently all the boys at the darling marine center miss us already. he says it's way too quiet without us wacky girls.

anyway, here are some photos.



the hill we walked up many times on the way from the wet lab to the cabins...
















me and nicole making funny faces in a lobster





















the dead seal we saw at the tide pools (gross!)
















boston college mike, ali, and other mike
















canadian ben and nicole
















me with anothony the nice italian boy

















bc mike, ali, other mike, and cameron
















canadian ben, nicole, randi, cautious eric
















that's all i've got for now, but i'll try to make an album to share soon.

Everybody Loves LaTina

wow. no posts for 12 days, and now i manage two in one day. i'm having fun here in maine, despite being chilly (really chilly at night) and despite having a guy pick me up and jump into 60 degree water with me (fully clothed - that was saturday night, and those clothes still aren't dry). i've met lots of cool people (plus that one ass, whom i think i've pissed off because he's stopped talking to me when he sees me). i've given most of them nicknames. that was mainly to help me remember their names. i'm also pretty sure i've told all of them what i call them. here are some:

serious tim, canadian ben, boston college mike, other mike, captain jack (he left a couple of days after we got here, but he was fun), marco (that's anthony, and i didn't give him that nickname, some lobsterman did), cautious eric, and son of a bitch cameron. there are a couple of other guys who don't have nicknames, 'cause they don't really hang out with us that much. their names are jon and randy. jon helped nicole and cautious eric pull me out of the water after son of a bitch cameron chucked me in. oh, and then there's nate. he taught me to salsa, but i don't really remember how. then he tried to teach me and anthony to salsa together, but that didn't work so well, since neither of us really knew what we were doing.

anyway, all of those guys except for cautious eric know their nicknames. i told serious tim his the other night in the bathroom. yeah, in the men's bathroom. it was ok, 'cause boston college mike took me in there. see, kelly was shaving canadian ben. she was drunk, and so was he. i don't know why he let her do that, but it was funny. anyway, i basically followed serious tim around the bathroom while he was trying to brush his teeth and take out his contacts, and my mouth did not stop running. it must not have bothered him, though, because he joined the party for a little while.

so, i've probably been drinking a tad too much on this trip, but my sea lab friends are a partying bunch. last night we took a break. but everybody loves drunk latina. i'm funny when i'm drunk. i say classic things like, "do you mind being quiet, 'cause we're trying to drink out here?" and "if i fall in the fire you can touch me in inappropriate places." there's a story behind that, but i'll save it for later. right now i'm going to see when dinner will be ready.

Maine

hello from maine, everyone. i just have time for a quick update, since i'm about to go walk some trails with my roomie for this trip, nicole. here's the quick version of what the last week and a half have been like:

set up experiments, drank more than we should have (only 3 sober nights since we arrived), hanging out with the boys from the darling marine center ('cause their girls think we're bitches), trying to get a ride to the airport thursday. i met a nice boy named anthony who doesn't try to take advantage of me when i'm drunk. he gives me lots of water when he thinks i've had enough. his roommate cameron is a bitch. they all went pier jumping one night (in the freezing cold water), and i refused 'cause it is fucking cold here. so, anthony gave me his wallet to hold while he went in the water, and then cameron snuck up behind me, picked me up like a baby, and jumped in the water with me. once again, it was fucking cold. i could have killed him. i called him a son of a bitch, like, twenty times, and for some reason that inspired him to hug me, but not to apologize. because the SOB is not sorry. he thought it was funny. anthony gave me dry clothes after that (because our cabins are about half a mile from the water, and their dorms are right there). i like anthony. he is a nice boy (which i swear i've told him at least 50 times). because i repeat myself a lot when i'm drunk.

ok, nicole is here now, so i'm going to run. ciao!

Stupid Terrorists

so i guess i lied. that last one wasn't my last post before i leave for maine. i was just checking out the weather for the next 10 days in the small town of walpole, maine, where the darling marine center is located (that's where i'm going, in case you didn't catch that). you know, to plan my wardrobe and all. and dude! it's, like, cold there for summer! highs in the mid-70's, lows in the 50's and 60's. holy crap. combine that with 58 degree water, and that doesn't make for a happy latina. at least we're going in summer and not later in the fall. i'd really freeze my ass off then. their high temperatures are what i'm used to for the overnight lows way down here in the south in august. that's like april and late october weather for us. i'm defitnitely going to minimize the time that i spend actually being in that freezing ass water up there. it's only 30 degrees colder than the water i've been in all summer*. that's not that big a difference, right?

anyway, i'm a tad bit peeved at the stupid terrorists (but i'm glad their evil plot was foiled) who made liquids in my carry-on bag a no no. i can't take toothpaste? or eye drops? what the hell, man? i'll eat some toothpaste in front of you and squeeze some drops in my eyes to prove it's legit. i swear. but at least they haven't banned carry-on luggage all together like they did in the UK. and here i was checking to make sure i'm allowed to take a disposable razor in my carry-on (which i am). but now, it doesn't matter, since my shampoo and conditioner aren't allowed. i guess it will all just have to go in the suitcase that i check.

i'm the teeniest bit nervous about flying now. i hope that no one has anything against atlanta or portland... or memphis or amsterdam or madrid. those are all the airports i'll be visiting in the next month. yikes. i'll have lots of reassuring phone calls to make once i get to maine and spain and back home. oh, and i also hope that no one has the urge to blow up any spanish trains. that would suck.

ok, enough freaking myself out about flying. it'll be fine.

*that was sarcasm, folks.

Looking Up

hello again. i seem to be disappearing for long periods of time, and for that i apologize. i've decided that i just don't blog when i'm sad and sappy. i'm sure you all realize that the last couple of weeks have been, um, emotionally trying for me, and i just didn't feel like laying all that stuff on you guys. but i'm back for now. this will probably be my last post for a while, too. see, i leave for maine on saturday, and i'm not sure how much internet access i'm going to have while i'm there and then in spain. i'll try to let you guys know how things are going, though.

things are definitely looking up for me now. surprisingly, they let my mom out of the hospital monday, so no more daily trips to pensacola for me. she's doing much better now, but she's going to be on all kinds of diabetes medicine now, what with her pancreas being pretty much fucked and all. but at least it's not trying to eat itself anymore, and it's not leaking digestive enzymes around her other organs anymore. so, hooray for that. i think she's going to be kind of taking it easy for a while. i'm going over there tonight to see her and sammi before i leave for a month.

oh, and some of you know that my 24th birthday was sunday, so that's always fun. well, this one wasn't fun exactly, but still. chad and i ate dinner at san miguel (it's the nicest mexican restaurant i've ever set foot in, btw), and we unpacked a little. we still have crap sitting everywhere, though. i really hate that, but i just don't have the time or the energy to devote to getting the rest of our stuff into the appropriate places.

sorry this post couldn't be more entertaining, but i have to run now. adios!

Magically Delicious

i cannot even begin to tell you guys out there in internet land what a hellish week i have had. i mentioned that my mom got put in the hospital, and let me tell you guys, pancreatitis is BAD stuff. and she has the worst kind possible. the kind where the chances of survival are basically 50/50. she got moved to baptist hospital in pensacola wednesday, and she was moved into the intensive care unit later that night. her doctor thought she was going to die that night, but he didn't tell us that until thursday. but she didn't. she's still in really bad shape, but they moved her out of ICU saturday and into a private room last night. my whole family flew or drove in. it's like some kind of twisted family reunion. my brother had to go back to tennessee last night, though, and my uncle jimmy had to go back to south carolina. i'm not sure when uncle george is flying back to california. all the demerol and morphine mom was on was making her loopy, and the nurse told me that she woke up sometime last night and didn't even know her name. they've backed off the pain medicine by a lot now to avoid that in the future. when she was in ICU, they had her on so much pain medicine that if they gave her any more she'd stop breathing. she's talking much better now, though. she's still not allowed to eat or drink anything, but they've started to feed her a little bit through a tube in her stomach instead of through her IV. for the first 6 days, they were pumping her stomach constantly. so, there are signs that she's getting better, but she won't be out of the hospital anytime soon. sammi is staying with me and chad until wednesday. the only reason she can't stay after that is that chad and i are going to port st. joe thursday and friday. i feel crazy guilty about it, but i have no choice. i have to go. there's no one else to do it. so, sammi's going to stay with my granny this weekend. i might go pick her up saturday.

on top of all the stuff with my mom, we've been moving. and what a pain in the ass that's been. the house reeked of cigarette smoke after the previous owners moved out, so we were forced to paint the living room as well as the purple fairy room (which chad says is now "thrasher blue", as in the atlanta thrashers - a terrible color on a hockey jersey, but nice on a wall). sammi helped me with that. plus, there was a raging flea infestation... and those little buggers find me magically delicious. i seriously look like i have chicken pox. and kind of feel like it, too. i am covered in flea bites from head to toe. literally. i have them on my neck, back, stomach, arms, legs, feet, hands, chest, and even one right at the top of my butt crack. they decided to get invasive for that one. chad's been putting poison in the yard for days, and we flea bombed the house (we used all 6 foggers in the pack), but they're still on the back porch (despite spreading and spraying a couple of different things). poor krull. he's scratching like crazy. i feel his pain. we're going to ask the vet if he's too young to get a flea pill instead of the puppy spray stuff. it doesn't work worth crap. i even had fleas in my car. chad took care of that last night, though. they seem to be gone from inside the house, so i'm ok now. still itchy, though. chad and sammi don't have anywhere near the number of bites that i do. probably because all the fleas flock to me.

sammi and i have to go and clean up the apartment today so we can turn in the keys. then we can turn to the task of unpacking. our new bedroom suite is being delivered sometime tomorrow, so we can start that while we're waiting for the delivery guys.

all right. time to wake sammi up so she can shower and we can get to work.

Back Again

hi guys. it's been another one of those weeks where i don't have much time for blogging. i went back to port st. joe this past thursday to check on an experiment. i only killed 12 sea urchins this time (compared to the whopping 60 that were dead last time i went out), so i was excited about that. when i go back next week (for the last time this summer) chad is coming with me, so he will finally see exactly what my field work entails and learn why i always come home with so many cuts and bruises.

in other news, chad and i are planning to begin our big move on thursday. i'm going to go and paint the guest room ('cause right now it's a purple fairy room, and i'm just not that into purple fairies), probably wednesday or thursday. i'll take krull with me so he can get a feel for his new yard. he's growing pretty fast, and it's becoming obvious that he was born to be a yard dog. he's still doing ok with the not pottying inside, but he chews on everything, and he's growing like a maniac. i swear he's gained a few pounds since we brought him home a week ago. yep, he's definitely bigger. when he gets rowdy (that is, when he gets bitey), i try to take him outside and let him run off his excess energy. he doesn't, like, bite bite, just little puppy chewing. but it still kind of hurts sometimes. and he shouldn't chew on people. we tell him "no" a lot (using our "we mean business, we're not just playing with you" voices). but, he sits on command, and he fetches (sometimes, when he's in the mood for chasing), and he's really cute when he's kind of sleepy and just licks the crap out of you. he particularly likes feet. he's a big toe-licker. so if you come visit us, beware. krull the warrior king is going to lick your toes. and he might try to eat your shorts. don't let him do that. i refuse to play with him anymore when he starts trying to eat my clothes, no matter how big and pathetic those puppy dog eyes are and no matter how much he whines.

our parents were all planning on coming to help us move this weekend, but i kind of doubt that my mom is going to be able to come. see, my aunt called me last night to tell me that my mom is in the hospital with pancreatitis. yikes. she's on tons of morphine, codeine, and other assorted pain medications with a tube in her stomach. and she's not allowed to eat anything until it clears up. my aunt was supposed to call me back today when she found out how long mom would be in the hospital. i read about pancreatitis, and it seems that it usually clears up after a few days (as long as you get to a doctor before excess bile and stuff leads to an infection), but it hurts a lot while you have it. so, i might be heading over to jay hospital tomorrow to see my mommy. i was also thinking about going to pick my little sis up so she can still come this weekend and help me clean the apartment up after we move and then help me reupholster the couch. sammi (my li'l sis) is currently staying with my granny. i'll call her in a little while and see how things are going over there.

that's about it from latina land. i'll try to post again in a couple of days. adios!

Meet Our Puppy

it's a little sooner than we'd planned, but chad and i now have a puppy. one of his parents' neighbors' dogs had puppies with the bull mastiff that chad's parents somehow adopted from the same neighbors (they fed him, and he hung around), and the puppies aren't being very well taken care of. the puppies are about two months old now, and the owners aren't really feeding them or anything. so chad decided to go ahead and "rescue [the one he wanted] from those pitiful conditions." so one came back to mobile with us. to live in our apartment for about two weeks. until we move and he can live in the back yard. he's a boy, and we named him krull. as in krull the warrior king. from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. it makes me laugh.

anyway, he's pretty good at the whole living inside thing. you know, for a dog who has been outside his whole short life. he sleeps a lot. right now he's zonked out on the couch. don't worry, he can wallow on that one all he wants, since i'm about to reupholster it anyway. isn't he cute?


































i left for a couple of hours eariler, and he managed not to potty anywhere in the apartment, so that's pretty good. he whines at the door when he needs to go. we tried to barricade him in the kitchen, but he's pretty crafty. so we just moved everything out of the living room that we didn't want him chewing on and closed the bedroom door so krull can only go in the living room, dining area, and kitchen. i didn't think he could get up on the couch, but when i came home from the lab a little while ago he was sitting on it, wagging his tail at me.

i was worried that he'd go nuts and bark his head off while no one was home (while he's awake, he pretty much insists on being in the same room with us), but he seems to be doing pretty well. hangin' out, sleeping, chewing on some rawhide bones and toys.

and that, my friends, is our vicious guard dog.

Officially Homeowners

chad and i are now officially homeowners. we closed on the house yesterday, and everything went smoothly. it took forever, but it went smoothly. yay! no more papers to sign and initial! we signed or initialed every page in a stack no less than an inch thick. some of the ones from the mortgage company, i would swear we'd signed before. but oh well. all the paperwork is done... and our first mortgage payment isn't due until september 1st. so we're basically getting away without having to pay either rent or a house payment for august. sweet.

we did get keys (but not all of them) yesterday at closing (the rest of them will be left in the house when the current residents finish moving). but the folks who live there now don't close on their new house until next friday, so we won't be able to move in until the week after that. our parents are coming down the 29th to help us move all our big stuff, and my mom and sister will probably stay that night and help us get the apartment spic and span, and then my mom is going to help me reupholster the couch. that will be, like, the busiest weekend ever.

so, the weekend after that is my birthday, but maybe i'll invite some of you peeps over to see the new house then anyway (and celebrate the fabulousness of latina?). or perhaps we will do a weekday dinner party like nessa. we shall see. i'll let you guys (you know who you are) know once we get settled.

for now, it's off to spend the weekend with the 'rents. we haven't seen them in a while (or, i haven't seen my people in a while. we just saw chad's people on the 4th of july). then, the next time we see them, we'll be using them as labor. but they won't mind.

An Awkward Visit to the Gynecologist

yeah, that annual exam deal that most women go through is not typically something i like to talk about. it's unpleasant, but over quickly. and today i feel the need to share. my appointment for the year was this morning. and it sucked.

so, i arrived ten minutes before my appointment, which was at 8:10. and of course, i was called back to an exam room fifteen minutes after my appointment time, and twenty minutes after that, the doctor came in. and he was cute. really cute. he's what you would get if you crossed jordan krestanovich with bill kinkel (for those who know what those two look like).

there should be a rule that says that a male gynecologist is not allowed to be cute. it just seems weird to me to have a cute guy poking around my private parts. my old gynecologist, who was also of the male persuasion, went and retired on me. that bastard. so i have a new gynecologist now. who is male. and who is not at all old. and who is cute. i want my little nerdy old man back. the attractive and not old guy weirds me out. he made me nervous. and he kept cracking little jokes, trying to put me at ease. like, when he listened to my heart, he said, "yep. still there." my little old man used to ask me about grad school and stuff. that's the sort of thing i can talk about with my doctor. i don't need a cute one who makes jokes. have i mentioned that it's weird?

anyway, the second item of business that weirded me out about the cute doctor was the way he introduced himself. oh, and the office has moved to a new building. so, new place, new doc, weirdness. but back to the point, he walks in (while i'm sitting on the exam table, wearing nothing but an open hospital gown with this thin paper blanket covering the exposed bits), and says, "hi. i'm cory." not "hi. i'm dr. jacobs." but "hi. i'm cory. i'm one of the OB/GYNs here." as if i didn't assume that he was a doctor. the doctor with whom i had an appointment. and he was cute. and that was fundamentally weird.

and then, he did the whole exam thing, which took two minutes, and then i was dressed and he was writing me a new birth control prescription, and then i got the hell out of there. because the whole thing was just so weird.

may none of my girls out there ever have a cute gynecologist. it's weird, man.

Greetings

hello all. i know it's been a while since you've heard from me. you must have been going crazy. but here i am, back for a short post. i've been busy lately, so i haven't really had much time for blogging. i was back in port st. joe last wednesday thru friday (where i was sad to discover that i had contributed to the deaths of 60 sea urchins), and i've been busy with house stuff... tons of mortgage papers to sign, questions to ask, meetings to set up, etc. chad and i are meeting with our insurance agent this afternoon to sign more papers, then we're doing the final walk through of the house tomorrow morning. then friday afternoon, it's closing time. and i'm sure there will be tons more papers to sign then. then there will be moving... and the purchasing of a new bedroom suite... and the cleaning of the apartment before we turn in the keys. there may also be reupholstering of the couch. i'm not sure about that yet. i just know that i can't find a slipcover the appropriate shade of green (though i did find a throw the right shade at linens n things). i'll probably hit some fabric stores later this week to consider my options for reupholstery. if it gets done, i'll do it myself. it doesn't look that hard. i did a search yesterday for some DIY instructions, and i really don't think it will be that difficult.

anyway, i have to run off to dauphin island to weigh and scan some seagrass leaves. sorry i don't have time to write more. adios!

Who Doesn't Love a 104 Degree Day?

so, i went out this afternoon around 1:30, and when i passed by a bank with one of those flashing time and temperature things, it informed me that it was a blistering 104 degrees. well, that blew the 96 degree forecast right out of the water, now didn't it?

wow. is it ever hot. and will it ever rain again? i seriously cannot remember a drought like this. ever. or a "week ahead" forecast with no rain in it. we are nearly a foot and a half behind our average rainfall for the year. it rained, like, a week ago. but where are the afternoon thunderstorms that we're all so used to around here? i'd much rather see afternoon downpours every day (or nearly every day) than have some tropical something come and dump two feet of rain on us in a day and catch our rainfall totals right back up to the local average for this time of year. i hope i didn't just jinx myself there, what with mentioning tropical weather and all. stay clear, tropics! stay clear! ...for at least another three weeks.

so, as of right now, the closing date on our house is all set for july 14. the inspection looked really good (did i tell you guys that already?), and our insurance agent has been out and is ready to write us a policy as soon as he gets the appraisal report. the appraiser went over to the house yesterday morning, but i don't know what he found yet. katy has advised me not to freak out about that, because the appraiser pretty much works for the mortgage company and will likely appraise the house for about $100 more than we offered. at least, that's the way it worked when she bought her house.

hopefully, we're done with paperwork until closing. or, we will be as soon as chad signs the seller's disclosure and we fax it back to our realtor. but anyway, we can't wait to officially own the house and move in and stuff. i've been watching tons of HGTV lately and making plans in my head for what i want to do inside (even though it looks really great as it is). the first thing i'll do is get a slipcover for the multi-colored couch so that it matches the other one a little better. and i want to put a chair rail in the living room so i can paint the walls two different colors. but that might have to wait until after maine and spain. but if i have some free time in early august, maybe not. we shall see.

Mission Accomplished?

so, chad and i fell in love with another house yesterday. it was not one of the houses on our list (you know, the ones we wanted to look at), but our realtor thought we would like it. and we did. the inside looks fantastic. it's practically within spitting distance of the university (but not in hillsdale, 'cause that's the ghetto and there are plans in the works to bulldoze the whole thing). the house is actually really close to the apartment we lived in before we moved to the one we live in now. i told chad yesterday that we just keep moving around in the same part of town. and we do.

anyway, we made an offer on the house yesterday, and it has officially been accepted. so we're well on our way to becoming homeowners. the house has been almost completely remodeled, so you absolutely cannot tell that it was first built in 1969. it got a new roof last year (it's metal, but at least the dark green color matches the fake shutters), and a new water heater. we talked to the seller yesterday while we were checking out the house, and he has done a ton of work on the inside - new kitchen cabinets (old cabinets transferred to laundry room), new insulation in the attic, new carpet, new marble surrounds and tile in the bathrooms (new tile throughout the whole house, really), fresh paint in the whole house, new sheetrock in the laundry room, and they're having a tree stump removed from the back yard before closing. see, a tree fell on the laundry room during katrina, so they sort of had to get a new roof and redo the sheetrock in there. on the plus side of that, all the trees that were going to fall during a hurricane have already fallen, and their stumps have been removed from the back yard. the current owner told us that the house used to be a 4 bedroom house, but he knocked out the wall between two of the bedrooms to make the master bedroom huge. he also put his and hers closets in there. like i said, the inside looks fantastic. this is what the outside looks like.

















the inspector is going to inspect the place tomorrow morning, so we will definitely know exactly what we're getting into before we close. the latest date that we'll be closing is july 14. we'll probably close before that. then we're giving the sellers a few days to move out. we should have about a week to move out of our apartment at the end of july. so no paying month to month rent for us. yay! let's just hope that everything goes smoothly from here on out.