Ski Trip: Alumni addition

Hey All,

Most of the second year graduate students in my program are in the midst of an epic battle with qualifying exams. The final show down for us in the middle of January, and with any luck, we will all be allowed to stay in the program.

In order to relax after this final exam, I'm putting together a ski trip for Jan. 25-29 in Killington, VT. There are already a number of Doesn't Matter grad students in my department interested in going, but I thought some of you still out on the East coast might like to come as well. The cost of the trip is $400 with rentals, $310 without.

It was great to see some of you at the Game. Hope to hear from you soon!

-Ben

Recent Alum Tickets

Hey guys,

Kevin C. Jones is organizing a block of "recent alum" tickets for The Game. If you're going to be there, email him at senoj.nivek@gmail.com so we can all sit together. He's putting in the order tomorrow (Tuesday, Oct 14) so don't delay!

Cool!
~Kelly

Re: Fall Games?

I think it's probably easiest if we all just reply to Rebecca Merz (class of 98 I think) who is willing to get tickets for all band alums. Tickets are $30 through her and she's willing to mail them to us in advance if possible.

If you didn't get the email, her email address is:
merzrl@yahoo.com

She set a deadline to order tickets of October 9.

Hope you all are well!
~Kelly

Fall Games?

Ahoy! Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!!! YARRR

Are any of ye landlubbers planning on going to any football games this year?


BAlumni Weekend is the weekend of the Princeton Game, November 15. And THE GAME is the next weekend, November 22 at hahvahd.

I think tickets for The Game are already on sale. Maybe we should try to buy a bunch at once so we can all sit together? yarrrr

I miss ye all

Hi everyone!

Nothing too exciting going on here in apothecary land but yesterday I was g-chatting with my friend Emily and right before she left to freak out about her first LA earthquake she sent me this from an overheard in law school blog:

"Legislation Prof: This is how you tell that the author of the textbook is a professor at Yale. He starts to use words like "meta" and "exogenous". You know that when you hear the word meta, the plane has stopped in New Haven. "


A week from Friday I am leaving on a family vacation to go back to the old countries- we're going to Hungary/Ukraine to see the town where my grandfather was born (it was Hungary then, now it's Ukraine) and then stopping in Rome to pay homage to my Italian grandfather for a couple days on the way home. I'm sure I'll have lots to share about that trip!! I miss you all a ton and hope you are all adjusting to year two of the real world better than I am. lots of <3

YPMB lives!

I don't know anything about this protein, but hopefully evolution will lead to its prominence.

(I'm trying to blog this from Dashblog for the first time...hopefully it works!)

I Feel Old...

From Discuss:

"So, I'm about to go on an awesome camping trip, and for the purposes of this trip, my friends and I are all contributing some of our favorite songs for rockin' out to the group playlist. The problem is, I have no idea a few of the greatest YPMB songs are called by their real names.

If you could help me out with any of the following names, I will love you forever.

Sabbath Slammasters

Kick his ass, seabass

Madness of King George"

I understand Seabass, but Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting and Basketcase shouldn't be that hard, should they? Oy vey.

Floods!

Luckily I live pretty far away from any creeks or rivers, but the entirety of downtown cedar rapids is under water. The river swallowed up tons of buildings, including a Dairy Queen, the water reached its roof! Bridges are closed, and since yesterday, the plant I work in has had to shut down, because the city water supply is dangerously low.
So here I am, with water my horde of water (in a nice little variety of containers: glasses, mixing bowls, bathtub), and am prepared for a long haul in case I get water shut down.

Luckily I have electricity and internet, plus the water in town has crested.

Other rivers in iowa have yet to reach their crest, and over the next few days will be getting fucked up by water as well!

Damn I wish I had a hovercraft. Or one of those things they use on duck tours (ducks?).

Anyway, thought I'd let you guys know! Bracing for the long possibly waterless weekend!

Warren

A bit delayed...

I'm definitely bummed that I didn't get to see the gang in New Haven over Memorial Day -- not to mention Blair and Beatley-legends (complete with D-port flags, apparently!). Still, though, it was time well-spent: Michael and I flew to Clarion via Pittsburgh and were joined on Saturday by Michael's mom and dad, who had never been to my little piece of the Appalachian foothills before. Aside from it being really nice for them to see me and my parents on our home turf, it was also really nice to celebrate Mike's and my engagement with both sets of parents.

Yes, you read that right: Michael and I are engaged!

According to numerous sources in the greater Clarion metropolitan area, engagement is closely tied to imminent wedding plans. This comes as news to me, who thought there'd be a nice grace period to adjust to the extra weight on my left hand before adding to it any further. In any case, though, we haven't even decided what state to get married in (PA? MA? Indiana? [Where I'm headed into a linguistics PhD program in August @ IU]), let alone a date. For now, we're just enjoying the new, happy status!

testing!

Hello '07 list?

Coffee and Sunshine

Hey guys!

I'm so sad I missed graduation and seeing you all! I didn't know everyone was going (not that I could have made it anyway). Sounds amazing. Interesting that Tony Blair is still considered "more important" than Obama.

Chris, congrats on moving on in your career. Sounds like you're really gettin' it done. And considering my last job paid $5.00/hour (illegal, I know), I have to admit, it sounds like you're livin' the high life :-)

As for me, the sun is finally out in England. It'll probably only last for a day, but for the moment, I'm enjoying it so much! My masters thesis is due in 6 days, but I'm making progress so hopefully there won't be too many all-nighters required before that. Engineers aren't supposed to have to write long papers! Now I know how all you non-group-IV majors felt before! But alas... there is no Discuss at Cambridge to keep me company at night.

I've been rowing this year for my college and we have our big race coming up next Friday as well, so I'm getting super pumped for that. Hope I don't die.

Also, I decided to head West next year to do a Ph.D. at Berkeley/UCSF in bioengineering so Chris and Ali... I'll be coming your way :-) I'll really miss being able to hop on a plane for a weekend trip to Italy, but I'm excited to start on that epic journey. I think I'm going to be in school until I'm 80.

Anyway, sounds like you all are doing wonderful things and changing the world! I can't believe it's already been a year since we graduated!

Does anyone know how to make this blog send you an email when someone posts things?

~Kelly

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

New Haven was great. I have to say, I missed the East Coast for the first time. Pizza, bagels, and Rudy's frites aside, it was great to see all of you who could make it!

Anyway, the reason for the David Bowie title - I finally quit my job today! My immediate supervisor laughed; she definitely saw it coming. Not that I'm a crappy employee - well, the fact that I'm on Blogger in the middle of the afternoon is evidence to the contrary - but clearly I am not the Corporate America type.

If you or anyone you know is thinking of becoming a paralegal - don't do it! Yes, it seems like an obvious choice for pre-law school types, and it compensates fairly well, but it is B-O-R-I-N-G. Like, worse than a Steven Smith political philosophy lecture.

So, it's onward to summer classes at UC Berkeley, as I try to figure out if I want to pursue a master's in city planning. I'll also be working for the City of Oakland's environmental services division - meaning I will be an energy efficiency number cruncher. Sounds kinda boring, but at $27/hour, it's not a bad temp gig!

Am I the first '07er to be launching a career change? Also, does anyone have independent health insurance to recommend? I'm not looking for anything fancy like annual checkups and prescription drugs, just something that'll have me covered in case I get hit by a bus. Thoughts?

ps!

This man with Sir Paul is Eytan, a D-port resident fellow. That is Sir Paul holding Eytan's D-port pennant. When Eytan processed past me, he hugged me and gave me his d-port pennant. Therefore, I was carrying a pennant that Sir Paul had held all day without even knowing it! Totally freaking out.

Commencement was sweet

Despite having to move to our new (and super awesome) apartment in downtown DC this weekend, I abandoned Will for 24 hours for a whirlwind commencement tour. During that wonderful New Haven day, I came to the conclusion (again) that Yale is basically the best place on earth.

I got in just in time for Class Day. I got to sit with the Kappa clan, Hudson, and Duffy and Stephanie (who due to a change in rehearsal schedule were attending their first class day ever). Tony Blair's speech was filled with famous quotes and witty comments, and was generally inspiring. The weather was perfect- mid 70s and not a cloud in the sky. It was such a pleasant time.

There was a lot of oh sev <3 to go around this weekend; Chris and Ali came all the way from San Fran, Ben and Hudson came all the way from the Jerz, Kappa from the deep south (his accent thicker than usual), Nick and Christina were there and we got to see Phoebe and Errol. And Herg- I hear you were there too and I'm sorry I missed you! Liquid picnic was in Bingham this year because someone knew about Becton ctyrd and was going to close it down. We still watched the movie in Davies, and the picnic was still a shitshow. 09's movie was wonderful (probably, I forgot to pay attention to a lot of it). It was "InDiana (pronounced like "in diana") Jones and the Book of Life". Maybe someone else can give more details. I was just thrilled to be sitting next to Ali Fraz. And they said my name at one point in the movie!

Anyway, I was very happy with oh sev, BAR pizza, frites, and free booze (oh how I miss college!). The pomp and circumstance was great. And Nick got a photo of Sir Paul picking his nose!

As I said at the beginning of this post, Will and I just moved into a new apartment downtown (by Gallery Place/China Town). Doug and Ronli are probably starting their road trip out to Cali at this very minute. It will be sad not to have Doug around so I hope you all come to visit to cheer me up!

lots of <3

I work in a weird place

A government place, but a weird one.

The past few days was the Annual Trademark Expo. Well, I guess I don't work for Trademarks (we patent people kind of have no idea what they do...) but their expo was all over the part of campus that belongs to the city of Alexandria! There were booths for Caterpillar, UPS, Microsoft, Miller High Life...

Anyway, just wanted to post a picture I stole from someone else with the lineup of the mascots that were dressed up who were supposed to represent various trademarked...things?

I love Master Chief thrown in there.




p.s. I've definitely just been lurkily collecting blog links of people we know. =P Don't be weirded out! And let me know if it should be taken down ever.

Sad News

The Doodle has closed its doors.

http://www.thedoodle.com/index.html

Man, in less than a year since we've left CCL became Bass, CAs became STs, the Doodle went under and now Ethnic Counselors might as well.

At least some things have remained the same: Yale football sucking it up at the Game and Yale basketball blowing at least one game to Brown in the opening of the season.

And there has been one awesome change: a female DM! Congrats are in order for Rosa Li!

I thought the South was supposed to be warm...

Greetings from Biloxi, MS, home of the Sea Wolves and a Hard Rock Casino, which is awesome. The Devils are playing a lot better as of late, and its been a lot of fun getting to know the guys and travel.

Well, maybe not travel to Elmira, Wheeling, WV, Johnstown, PA, or several other hole-in-the-wall "cities," but this trip to Pensacola and Biloxi has more than made up for it!

Chris, Ali, and John, did you guys get a chance to help out outside of New Orleans? I'd love to know your thoughts about the other gulf cities hit, because its been two years now and while the casinos are back here in Biloxi, there's still a lot of devastation. The Sea Wolves just returned to the ECHL after taking two years off to repair the Biloxi Coast Coliseum, which had flooding as high as the top of the rink's glass (yeah, all the way up) for weeks.

The team's staying at the Hard Rock, and its been a lot of fun. I was nearly down 60 bucks at one point but rallied with two corners on 29 twice in a row to put me ahead by $36. I think that's where I'm going to stay; fate has let me get away with dabbling in gambling, but I feel the hammer ready to fall at any time if I continue. Even without the casino, the hotel rooms are gorgeous: flat screen tvs, three shower-head showers (big enough for four people), Bose speakers and the most comfortable beds ever.

I'm going to stop rambling now, but I hope everyone's having a great New Year! If you're traveling through Jersey you should let me know; I can definitely get tickets to a T-Devils game for you and even passes up to the press box with me. I miss you all and while the team's been fun, I definitely missed you during the Game (although I probably would have drank myself into a coma and/or gotten thrown into jail by halftime of that fiasco).