junior year of grad school begins
it has been a long while, my friends - many things to report on. summer is over, school is starting again, and here in grad-school land, things is moving fast. that is to say, what day is it? holy crap. classes are back in full swing, and boy are they geeky: programming, web development II, information security, and research methods. i'm still not quite sure what my master's paper topic will be, or what i'll be doing next may, but for now, things are good. school, work, and life: going well.
also, caitlin and i went on an epic midwest roadtrip two weeks before school started. pictures below. and hopefully more updates as the semester progresses, now that i've gotten this initial oh-lordy-i-haven't-blogged-in-a-while hump. faincy.
one year in carolina
it was a year ago today that my folks helped me move my ass and all my crap up to carrboro, north carolina, to begin my life here. it's been a twisty-curvy year full of new friends, new life experiences, new school experiences, and new directions for me. i started out with some substantial fears about the future, but those sadnesses were quickly squelched when i was welcomed into the librarian fold and began learning the ropes of life here in carolina-ville. a year later, i am loving north carolina, its offerings, and its fine denizens who have welocomed me into their lives. without getting super-sappy about my life here in NC, the cadre of awesome people i've met and come to care for in the past year, and how damn happy i am just to be here and have this opportunity to be in school at UNC, i will just say thanks, north carolina, for the past year. it has been quite wonderful.
___ of summer
- badass dusk activity: biking around the neighborhood with a posse of ladies
- congratulations: david and ellen, for stella kate
- dessert: homemade horchata popsicles
- dinner: burgers 'n' brats grilled out in the back yard, with homemade slaw on top and on the side
- excitement: the new x-files movie, which may or may not be terrible
- highlight, june: hanging out with the wonderful women of wanderlust
- highlight, june (II): housesitting for a weekend in deep pittsboro
- highlight, july: fourth of july on the porch with seven librarians, right as the gullywasher began
- hombres: enlightened librarians, hippie roommates, deli gals, open-source advocates, IT geeks, carrboro
- life-planner: google calendar
- life-saver: window AC units (seriously)
- missed person: lnb, in my life
- operating system: ubuntu linux on the house computer
- snack: yogurt + fresh-picked blackberries from the neighborhood
- sucky phone company: verizon wireless, for not providing adequate cellular coverage to carrboro. what gives, verizon?
- tv on dvd: the wire, strangers with candy, 30 rock, planet earth
- watering hole: the front porch
epic summer day
yesterday was the quintessential summer day. in honor of hk's birthday, we took an epic bike ride up to the eno river quarry, close to durham. it was about 15 miles up -- hk, jen, ethan and i covered it in about an hour and a half. that was my first lengthy bike ride, and i was pleased that i made it to the quarry alive. the second half of the posse arrived shortly after we did, with wonderful mediterranean deli foods in tow, and we hiked down to the quarry, gorged ourselves, and went swimming. afterwards we drove into durham and got some excellent vietnamese tofu at bahn's on ninth street. after a lethargic drive home, we all parted ways and took what could only be described as tandem disco naps. night fell, and soon after we got up and moving again, danielle and caitlin came by with a beautiful sprinkle cake (amy sedaris's recipe!). birthday jubilation! followed by another carpool to durham for a michael jackson vs. prince dance party. overall, a long and ridiculous day, but in the best possible way.
i flew home to alabama last weekend, saw my family and an old friend, and drove my dad's new pickup truck to town. surreal times. i am (slowly) getting used to the idea of flying home, rather than driving. since i moved away from home the first time, i've always been tied to the notion that all i needed to do was steer my car to i-85 or i-65 and find myself at home within a few hours. nowadays, though, it's more practical to fly--it just saves time, money, and though it doesn't do a lot, it means one less car on the road.
so, that's how things are going here. oh! thanks to a few friends kind enough to bestow some recommendations, i've started seeking out music again. we'll see how this newly rekindled relationship goes. for now, as i sit at work on a sunday, nary a patron in sight, i am temporarily caught up in the sweeping, epic, cocteau-twins-meets-80s-teen-movie beauty "skin of the night" from m83's new album, saturdays=youth (an apt title, given our youthful activities yesterday):
summer goals
it's another incredibly slow sunday in the SILS lab, and i figured it's time for a life update before i close up shop here and bike home in the sweltering heat that is north carolina on june 1. i am very excited that i have a wonderful new home and new roommates to go home to, now that we've gotten moved in and are settling at poplar. beyond the not-having-central-air thing, this house is going to rule--once we procure internet from the time warner's beastly talons. but hey, a tech detox was not un-called-for in the past week, and it's been nice to just sleep and read a lot.
so, things have definitely slowed a lot in the past few weeks since school has gone away and work and summer have taken over. the lack of huge academic obligations has been very nice. i've made myself a lot of promises in the past few months about how i'd use all this newfound time this summer, and with the support of caitlin, who is also creating a list of goals, i've come up with a few:
- cook--more often and more healthily
- take at least 3 longer (7+ miles) bike rides
- not drive my car unless absolutely necessary
- learn ruby on rails
- go on a trip
- get my master's paper topic nailed down
there are others, but those are the most interesting. i'm daydreaming now about the the plan once i get home: put on some flip-flops, ankle over to
tres amigos taqueria in carrboro, and buy me a delicious gordita for dinner. oh yes. more boring, lazy summer stories to come, rest assured.
may again
it's been forever again, and a ton has happened since my last post. most importantly, this semester came to a quick and forceful close, and my summer began with a tiny, tiny roar. rather than even attempt summing anything up, i am, as usual, just gonna put stuff in bullet points to keep all involved interested:
- my semester wrapped up at 9:30pm on april 30th, at which point i breathed a gigantic sigh of relief. our systems analysis group project about WXYC's music cataloging was my proudest accomplishment this semester (maybe even this year). it was a ton of work, but a semester and 56 single-spaced pages later, it's through. and damn good, if do say so.
- jen and i found time to buy me a bike from some folks in cary, somehow, during the last couple weeks of school. it's a beautiful royal-blue 20" men's 1985 trek 400-series, and damn if i am not jazzed to have a road bike again. my old-ass huffy got stolen off the porch of our pulaski house a couple years ago, and i've been riding mom's teal 1994 gt mountain bike since then. the trek is a nice lil' change and feels faster and easier to ride on these chapel hill/carrboro streets.
- i dropped down to athens for a few days that weekend of may, took in meghan's exit show, and saw tons and tons of beautiful familiar faces. there is a whole photo set up on flickr, of course.
- i started work at webslingerz in carrboro once i returned from ATH. the folks there are super-cool and the atmosphere is very supportive, so i'm looking forward to working on some good projects with them this summer and learning a ton. i'm also holding down the SILS lab for 30 hours/week this summer, learning a lot there and wearing the manager's cap, which basically means i make the schedule.
- i got to hang out with a bunch of lovely visitors from various cities who were coming in to visit my sally girls, ate some delicious barbecue, went down to the haw for river-times, and generally enjoyed the company of some fine new friends. i'm immensely sad that lnb will be leaving us for a while to hang in STL, but i know she'll be back soon--at which point, river-times and barbecue will be had in spades.
the house on poplar is almost ready for us to move in--we're about halfway through painting the upstairs bedrooms. hopefully when all's said and done i won't have permanent kilz primer stains, which i'm currently claiming are artsy white tattoos, all over my hands and feet. i'm very excited about moving into this huge old house with sam, heather, and jen -- it will be an adventure and a welcome change to live in a house with close friends again. last weekend we went to durham and picked up some lovely green-gold velour couches with beautiful tassel-fringe for the living room. let the summer begin.
april showers
another busy week in chapel hill. aside from carolina's devastating final-four loss to kansas last night, the past week has been pretty good. this wednesday i turned in the largest chunk of my user interface design project, which was a huge weight off. the other large project in my life, working with WXYC's music cataloging system for systems analysis class, will begin consuming the rest of my time very soon. this semester is rapidly drawing to a close, which both frightens and excites the hell out of me. it means the coming weeks will be increasingly intense, but it also means that in less than a month, i'll be relatively fancy-free for a few months. yes, please.
in other news, i got to hang out with some wonderful visitors last weekend: elizabeth, kristy and alex were in town from their respective cities, north and south, and it was good to see all of them. there are tons of photos up on flickr, of course.
spring in carolina
things that make me happy:
- my first carolina spring: warm climes, beautiful skies, flowers burstin', and scores of students laying out on the quad in the sunlight;
- carolina basketball! yet another tourney game tonight;
- UNC, because it is so good and brings much joy to my life;
- stephanie haas, my systems analysis teacher, who will dance across the room to illustrate a point;
- the promise of summer: work, no school, porch-sittin', river-going, bbq-eating, beer-drinking, and general destressing.
things that fill me with rage:
- seeing bicyclists wearing headphones instead of helmets;
- the fact that, with the end of the semester coming soon and all the subsequent work needing to be done, all i want to do is go outside and lie down in the grass.
things that i have recently encountered that are good:
- mia doi todd's new album, gea;
- google news alerts RSS feeds
- XML, XSL, and XML schemas -- beautiful, beautiful code;
- whether i like it or not -- twitter, which has turned out to be the best tech support method ever;
- photo booth:
SB2k8, new york and other goodities
this week i've been enjoying some temporary free time in the middle of this ridiculously hectic semester. first, i was able to get up to manhattan again to see my rach, miles, john david and some other cool kids who i haven't seen in quite a while. we had a lot of fun: saw the upright citizens brigade, scaled the empire state building, ate some delicious food, and otherwise enjoyed the city and each other. i was only there for about 56 hours, but the city is best enjoyed in quick, intense bursts anyhow. sickeningly cute photos are up at flickr, of course.
i enjoyed carousing around the city again for a few days, but was glad to get back to quiet little carrboro and get some much-needed R&R. it's been a super low-key break, which is exactly what the doctor ordered. i've started getting my affairs in order around the house, with school, and with the summer in general. looks like i'll be sharing a huge old house in downtown carrboro with three lovely librarians starting soonish, and the idea of having a yard and a sizable porch in time for summer sittin' is one of the things getting me through the end of this semester. that, and i was contacted by some of the awesome folks at webslingerz and am slated to be doing some part -time web design stuff for them over the summer. cool gig! i am very excited about it, as well as having some non-school time this summer to decompress.
in other news, unc's recent shocker is that eve carson, our student body president and all-around good kid, was murdered in the middle of one of the most affluent chapel hill neighborhoods a few weeks ago. i don't really have anything original to add to the commentary, beyond being shocked and losing little faith in the world. i took this photo at a memorial on the main quad at unc; about 5,000 of us showed up. wow. rest in peace, eve.
new york coming soon + geekery
classes and work are chugging along here in chapel hill, and as spring break approaches the pile of work to do gets higher and higher. but then i'll forget all about it for a few days during the week of spring break, when i'm set to fly up to new york and see rach, miles, and john david in the big city! it's been about a year and a half since i've been up to new york, so it'll be good to take in the city with some people i love, if only for a couple days. last time i went to new york it was on UGA's dime for the college music journal conference, and i got to see a lot of the city, which was great. this time i'll be able to see the city through the eyes of folks who live there. and hopefully when rach and i travel together nothing crazy will happen like last time.
on a completely unrelated note, my achievement of the week was fixing a friend's ibook. yes! the computer geek remains...
