It's been a week since my last post and I guess a lot has happened, most of it having to do with the men in my life. And graduating. That's a big deal I guess.

Aron is taking the qualifiers as we speak (or as I speak) and here's hoping he passes with flying colors. He's been so stressed out lately (though not nearly as grumpy as he told me he would be) and he find out whether he passes in Ireland which means that i am crossing my fingers and my toes. If he doesn't pass, he doesn't get to do a PhD at columbia. He'll have a masters and he'll be able to find a good job, no problem, but its still a big deal. Neither of us slept my last night. I wasn't going to stay over but then my key fell out of my pocket somewhere between columbia and 94th where i went to dinner with Drew, Adrienne and Chris so I didn't have a lot of choices.

Stoops has been around all this week and I had forgotten how much I missed hanging out with him when he was gone. He belongs here, hanging out with me and then heading over to Taos and then watching south park and then stealing flags with Gabi. I missed him and it was good to see him and I'm going to miss him again. I don't know what else I can say about it. I feel lucky to have spent as much time with him as I did, and its good to know that he's still one of my best friends.

Ireland is going to be amazing. I'm pretty much done packing but my bag is still too heavy. I need to figure out whether i need both guidebooks or a camelback. We have the first 4 or 5 days totally planned and then after that things are a little more flexible. Today I need to do a lot of last minute errands like buying traveller's checks and printing out itineraries, but I'm ready to leave tomorrow at 7. Planning for this trip has been kind of stressful because there's no guidelines at all, other than the fact that we want to do a couple of hikes and I had to make a lot of decisions myself because i've had more time than Aron has. Despite that though, it will be so much fun to be on the road again.

Graduation is at the end of this post for a reason. I'm not sure why i did the ceremonies again. They're pretty boring. I guess I just wanted to be there with my friends. But two years in a row is too much, it loses its meaning. The cliches don't sink in and time drags on. I kept forgetting that I was graduating until someone would be like "we're leaving in a few." My parents came down yesteday and sat through it again and helped me move out before the skies opened up. Move out was actually really smooth and i appreciate them coming down to help me. I don't really feel like i got to say goodbye to anyone because everyone was busy with their families. I hope i see them again.

HEHEHEHE!!!! WHHEEEEE!!!

Last night was every bit as amazing as I had hoped. I can't even express how awesome it was to watch people's faces as they went through the thought process "stoops can't be here....wait, that looks like stoops....HOLY SHIT!" I couldn't stop giggling for the longest time. Gabi's face as she stood up and looked around the resteraunt while her eyes got all shifty.....oh man that was awesome.

The whole day was incredible. There aren't even words big enough to fill it. I met stoops at 72nd at around 8:30 and we chilled and hung out in the park and talked and ate ice cream until I had to go uptown to take my last final at 1. Which sucked a little bit but whatever, I'm done. And then there was tons of intrigue cause we wanted to go surprise tao but when i called up to see when it would be a good time to "umm....measure the room for a bed that i'm thinking of buying" he was like "yeah i'm home. goose is coming over soon." mayday mayday!!!! goose wasn't allowed to know stoops was home until DBQ. After a lot of diliberation, we called tao....

me: i'm going to make a series of odd requests. i'm going to put you on the phone with someone and you can't express any emotion when i do. Don't say anything except "uh huh" and do not reveal to goose the identity of this person. do you agree to those conditions.

hehehe, it was so sketchy. I put stoops on the phone and about a half hour later, tao called to say goose had gone home. We were pretty sure tao had said something like "you know what would be great right now? if you weren't here." So we went over there and then i went home to get pretty and meet everyone to go down to DBQ. About part way through the meal, stoops made his grand entrance and seriously, if anyone reading this ever goes to africa (or japan) for two years and wants to do something funny, surprising your friends by showing up on a continent that you're not supposed to be on is a great idea.

It was a great night and totally full of old people which was fun. Kelsey and corey and eliza and max and amanda murphey and vicki and paul jawlik up for maryland and eyton and of course stoops. it's just so good to see him.

By wednesday i'll be done. I'm so excited. And I'm happy that i'll get to see so many old friends that night, though organizing is a little complicated. After that i'm busy in an entirely different way. I need to plan ireland, pack for the trip, pack for real, move out, write to brett, plan go running more often, go to Fairway and cook lots and lots of food, hang out with my friends, play more ultimate, go climbing. Oh and graduate. I'm looking forward to that kind of busy.

The last thee days have been just as aweful as I anticipated. 14-18 hour days in Mudd trying to do all the tests that still needed to be done and figure out why the wind turbine didn't work. And then there was the final report which i was in charge of compiling that meant that every time I got into my own work, i'd have to stop to fit someone else's section into the framework and then edit and then go back with comments for them and then make sure they changed it..... it was exhausting. There was just so much to do and even though I knew it would all get done, i've still been flat out since sunday.

Even yesterday, which I expected to be at least a little relaxing was stressful. I thought we'd turn in our paper at noon and then people would come look at our giant blue wind turbine. Instead, I was still working on the paper at 2 and at 2:30 around 25 or 30 judges showed up. Some of them just came over, looked, wrote down a grade and left but many of them asked questions, some of them nicely and some of them not so nicely. Some of them would tell us about their columbia careers (there were a lot of old columbia alums) but some of them would rip us apart. They'd point out flaws in our design or tests we should have done or question us about the physics of it. After 2.5 hours of that, I was exhausted. If i had to explain one more time that the reason it wasn't generating much energy was because we were only putting it in front of 7 ft^2 of wind when the turbine swept out an area of 36 ft^2 I might have screamed. By the way, that's only one of many reasons why it didn't work as well as planned, but my team totally convinced ourselves that the design was perfect and only the wind was lacking. In our defense, we did everything we set out to do: we built a wind turbine that generates energy. It's not important that it only generates half a watt.

Compared to other projects, I think we did really well. Our project wasn't quite as complicated as some but it was pretty respectable and we were one of only two groups that actually had their thing entirely working. One group of total slackers was still building during the expo, like machining and designing. We had ours done last thursday. It was amazing looking around at noon and realizing that we were the only ones not tinkering with anything (except the report).

The team dinner last night was a lot of fun too. I'm glad they just handed us presents at the end. I remember last year people read mara and lesser poems which were awesome but i think i would have been entirely too embarressed to appreciate them. The presents are also awesome. I now have a disc with me on it! how awesome is that? And i love the books of pictures because i take so few myself. I need to rely on other people for my memories.

One day of rest and then to virginia on friday and then studying starts hard core. Even today i can't really rest. Too much on the to-do list.