Too many good things!

I literally have 3 parties I could go to this Saturday night, and 4 parties I could go to on Sunday for the Superbowl.  Why does everything fun all happen at the same time??

Good Feelings

Here are little things that make me happy:

• Dreading make dinner and then realizing that I have restaurant leftovers waiting for me in the fridge.
• Finishing a bottle of shampoo/soap/etc. that you realized you didn't like the first time you tried it, but felt obligated to finish anyway.  This just happened to me with my shampoo, and I'm so happy I can finally go back to one I like.  : )

Rock Climbing

Rock climbing gym at the Manhattan Plaza Health Club

So I'm going rock climbing tomorrow with some of my labmates at an indoor gym near Times Square (at 3 pm on a workday...I guess academia sometimes has it's perks).  I haven't been rock climbing since high school.  Princeton had a wall and it was free on some nights, but it was always on weekend nights when I had lots of fun things to do at Quad, so I never went.  Anyway, in high school I wasn't that bad, in fact it was pretty fun (as long as I was on the "easy" wall, lol).  I remember that it takes a lot more upper body strength than lower body strength, so hopefully I haven't lost that since high school.  Anyway, I have no idea how it's going to go, hopefully I don't completely wipe out in front of my labmates, but either way I'm glad to be trying something (kind of) new!

Traveling

So I've been thinking about places I need to go to visit old friends, and it's quite a long list:

• San Francisco, CA
• Los Angeles, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Madison, WI
• Chicago, IL
• Atlanta, GA
• Little Rock, AR
• Washington, D.C.
• Boston, MA

So, in 2011, I will either be taking an awesome road trip, or a couple of flights.  Either way, it should be tons of fun : )

More Musings

I love it when you're rushing out the door in the morning and don't have time to think about what you're wearing, so you just put together a new combination of clothes and it turns out to be an amazing outfit and you keep using that outfit combo for many months afterwards. 

Musings

• At the gym the other day, I saw a couple walking around, doing every weight machine together.  Overkill, don't you think?
• While we're on the topic of the gym, I always dread the onslaught of people that Jan 1 brings.  Last year at the Bally's in Philly, most of them were gone by March or so.  I just hope it doesn't mean all my exercise classes will be insanely full.  
• A lot of students here at Columbia (both undergrad and grad) don't have Microsoft Office on their computer.  So when I'm trying to work with them and e-mail files back and forth, they come in these weird file formats from OpenOffice or whatever.  Really?  You can't pay the extra couple hundred dollars to get Microsoft Office, which is basically a prerequisite for any type of educational/business environment?  

That's a picture of the Columbia gym.  The track goes around in a loop on the upper level, over looking the court below, and each of the 3 floors you see has cardio equipment and weights.

Done!

I just submitted my last fellowship application! 5 for 5.  NSF, EPA, SMART, NDSEG, and Hertz.  It was a lot of work.  It reminded me of two similar periods before in my life:  when I was trying to take classes, do my senior thesis, and apply for jobs during my senior year fall at Princeton; and last fall, when I was trying to work full-time at my consulting job and apply for graduate schools and study for the GRE at the same time.  It's tough, but somehow I manage it.