Good day

In an email I received this morning:

To Melaniec c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c Millerc c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c:
I am delighted to be writing to you today to tell you of your acceptance to the graduate program in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at MIT. You will receive a formal notice of acceptance from the Institute, but we wanted to get the good news to you as quickly as possible.

Yay!! And on my birthday, even. Good timing! Now, if I only got a second email that went something like this...

To Melanie Miller (sorry about all the weird boxes last time - we cut them out here):
I am delighted to be writing to you today to tell you of your enormous grant to cover all your expenses while in the graduate program in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at MIT. You will receive a formal fatty check from the Institute, but we wanted to get the good news to you as quickly as possible.

Ah well... in any case, I'm excited. :)

Pictures

The only picture I have of my (former) hamster Nina

Yay! I finally figured out how to use the photo posting on blogger. Now if I could only set up links to my friends' blogs from my own...

My other big accomplishment for tonight was buying a plane ticket to go to Vegas this weekend. Ahhh! I've gone back and forth on it for a long time - at first I was really excited to go, but then I found out from my friend who's organizing the trip that it would basically be me and 10 guys. That would have been a little too weird, so I decided not to go. But then last night he told me that there would only be four of them going from Boston and meeting up with their friend Ehren in Las Vegas. So then I wanted to go again. But tickets were ridiculously expensive. So then I decided not to go. But then the more I thought about it, I realized four things: 1) It's my 23rd birthday on Friday and this would be a great way to celebrate, 2) I've never been to Vegas, 3) We'll be staying in Ehren's converted school bus (yes, the yellow cheese wagon variety) the whole weekend and have a chance to go climbing/hiking/camping in Red Rock Canyon, and 4) In two months I won't be able to tell you the price I paid for my ticket, but it'll definitely be an unforgettable trip. Therefore, I bought a ticket. Guys, I'm so sorry I'll be missing the shot party on Saturday night... take lots of pictures!!

President's Day

The b-friend left yesterday morning after our long weekend. It was definitely a good weekend, but not really long enough. Although, no weekends are long enough these days, so I guess I should stop complaining about it. Anyway, the highlight of the weekend was celebrating my early birthday on Sunday - we went downtown to see the Houston Chamber Orchestra and then had dinner at the Sambuca Jazz Cafe. The first piece the orchestra played was the Pelleus and Melisande Suite by Sibelius, and after intermission they played a violin concerto by Beethoven. The soloist was a guy from Hungary, and seriously, when he first walked on stage, I thought he was one of the stagehands. Everyone else in the group was wearing a tux, but he was wearing just black pants, an old black t-shirt, and a wrinkly black silk shirt over it. His hair was kind of curly and disheveled... looked a little fro-ish. Absolutely amazing player, but definitely looked like he just rolled out of bed and plopped onto the stage.

We stuck around for the reception after the concert, mainly because they were serving champagne and neither of us would have to drive for the next few hours. On the table behind all the champagne glasses was a very large bowl of what looked at first to be potato chips, and when I first saw that, I couldn't help thinking, "Wow, only in Texas..." The chips actually turned out to be banana chips, which I guess are higher on the chip ladder than potato chips, but I would argue, still not the chip equivalent of champagne. Anyway, at one point I disappeared to find the restroom, only to come back and find C. chattering away with one of the members of the Houston Chamber Orchestra board of directors. This only furthers my claim that this boy can carry on a conversation with a brick wall. :)

Anyway, we had a great time doing not much of anything the rest of the weekend. Saw a couple movies, ate lots of food, and had fondue at Becca's house on Saturday with Sarah, Nick, & Cari. Mmmm... cheese and chocolate...

Random side note - I was picking up my mail last night after coming back from Zio's and it occurred to me that I should get a decision letter from MIT in a couple weeks, and right as I thought that, I saw a large envelope with MIT's return address on it in my mailbox. Gasp! Nope - just the alumni association wanting more donations. Heart attack avoided.

Random side note #2 - my hamster can climb stairs! A couple weeks ago I let her run around on the landing, and after much scratching at the baseboards and attempting to dig a hole in the carpet, she decided that she didn't like being on the landing anymore, so she climbed up to the next stair. This went on for three or four more stairs before she got tired, but this past weekend I put her on the landing again, and she climbed the entire flight of stairs! Pretty impressive for a hamster that's only three inches long.

Green with envy

This morning I got an email from a friend of mine from high school who's studying abroad in Prague. He included a link to a set of pictures that his brother took while visiting him over the holidays, and in addition to the random bar shots in Prague, there are several pictures from their trip to Cairo, Alexandria, and Paris. Ahhhhhh!!! All I could think of was the fact that I'm stuck in Houston instead of gallivanting all around the world. I never traveled abroad in college, and I knew only a few people at school who spent a semester or a year studying somewhere else - it was extremely rare. Granted, it was pretty expensive to spend an extra semester at MIT if you didn't get all your requirements completed while you were abroad, and it was often difficult to arrange since so many classes were only offered during particular semesters or had to be taken in a strict order, but many of us thought that MIT didn't really encourage that sort of thing because the administration had sort of a big head - if you're studying at the best engineering school in the world, why on earth would you want to study anywhere else?? You can always travel to those places during school breaks. It's slightly cruel that during your college years, you have plenty of time to travel but no money to do so; now that I'm working, I have the money to travel, but no vacation time to do it. That's it - I need to retire.

Anyway, the point is, if I can't wheedle an invitation to Prague out of my friend, I at least need to take some other sort of exotic vacation this year. Ugh, I guess this means I actually have to go through all the work of getting a new passport, since mine is currently lost. Or turn my apartment upside down (again) to look for it.

Hiatus

Dear all,
Sorry I haven't written in a while. It's been sort of a blah past several days. Last week definitely ranked up there for one of my worst weeks at work, and then I was a giant sloth over the weekend. I came home from work on Friday and went for a run, then showered and was in my pajamas by 7 pm. I was totally looking forward to spending a chill night at home with my new cross stitch and the TV, except that my roommate came home around 8:00 and decided to tell me that she "couldn't believe" I wasn't going out on a Friday night. Ugh. Anyway, Saturday was a little better... I ventured outside to run in the morning and then went downtown with Josh, Sarah, and Becca to see this dance group called Diavolo. (Dee-AH-vo-lo, in case you're wondering) Their performance was really good, to my relief, since I was the one who had convinced the other three that it would be worth their time and money to go, and we ended up sitting in the very first row of the orchestra pit (yes, that would be in front of all the seats in the regular theater). I wouldn't have necessarily chosen to sit that close, but there wasn't a lot of choice left when I bought the tickets on Friday. Lots of grunting and flying sweat.

I spent the rest of the weekend putting off most of the errands I had to run, like going to the grocery store, although when I went to the mall on Sunday to return a pair of shoes, I ran into a Latin model search at the entrance to Foley's. It was cute to see all the kids try to strut down the runway... less cute to see all the teenage girls hooched out for the model scouts.

Okay Becca. I'm done.

Babies & Border Crossings

I found out yesterday that a girl I graduated with from MIT is four months pregnant. !?! Okay, she got married a while ago, and I knew that she wanted to have children pretty early, but still... it's a little weird. I don't know why it continually surprises me when people my age are doing things that I can't imagine myself doing at least for another 10 years, if ever. For example, when I first moved to Texas, I had three people in the space of about a week ask me if I was married. I'm 22! Who's married at 22? I have enough trouble doing adult things, like buying a car, signing a lease on an apartment, scheduling my own dentist appointment... getting married would be much more difficult. Plus, I look back on the last four or five years of my life and can't really imagine where I would have fit in getting married and pregnant. Ahh well... different priorities, I guess.

One more rant before I move on - why is it that men put their hands down their pants as if it's just another pocket? I was in a meeting this morning, sitting behind a guy who just casually stuck his hand (well, just his fingers, really) underneath his belt as he was flipping through the presentation slides. Do they not realize that this looks weird/inappropriate? Is it really that much further to reach the actual pocket in the pants? I don't get it.

Okay, end rant.

If you're wondering about the "border crossings" in the title, I saw an article in the New York Times yesterday about a pamphlet that the Mexican government produced with some advice for illegally crossing the border into the U.S. The first thing that popped into my mind was Border Crossing for Dummies. The government's rationale is that it's "simply being realistic." The best parts of the article are the quotes from the immigrants that the New York Times interviewed about their opinions on the pamphlet - apparently the government left out some key pieces of advice.

R.I.P. Nina

This morning my littlest hamster died. She was acting slightly weird yesterday morning, like scratching herself a lot and sleeping outside more often, and then when I came home from work yesterday she was hunched over outside again and wouldn't open her eyes. I tried to wake her up to make sure she wasn't hurt or anything (I still suspect that maybe she was getting beat up by the bigger hamster), but she was pretty groggy and kind of grumpy when I tried to pick her up. I had some errands to run last night, so I left her alone, trying to tell myself that I was just being paranoid. But when I got home later that night, she was even worse - walking around with her eyes closed, losing her balance, bumping into things, falling over when she tried to scratch her face... it was really sad and scary. But bless her little heart, when I picked her up to see if I could tell what was wrong with her, she perked right up, opened her eyes, and tried to look interested in the outside world, even though she still had a lot of trouble balancing. I called the only emergency vet rescue I could find that would be open at 10pm, not really expecting much help with a hamster, and I was right - the woman I spoke with was very nice, but explained that her clinic didn't have much experience with "pocket pets," and there was an $80 fee for emergency services. I planned to call Petsmart or a regular vet this morning, but by the time I got up, it was too late. My little hamster had died underneath the exercise wheel.

Cars & football

Yesterday I went to the Houston Auto Show. We had barely been there 10 minutes, and only pushed our way past people to see the first exhibit of a zillion (Ford), when this overweight man in a wheelchair ran over my foot. Okay, it's crowded, and I accidentally bumped into my fair share of people too, but this guy fully ran over my left foot. After his front right wheel thumped back onto the ground, he turned around with a little smile and said, "Oh, I didn't get your toe, did I?" I gave him a cross between an injured smile and a glare (that I'm apparently unable to reproduce - trust me, I've tried) and walked away. I obviously wasn't really hurt, even though this definitely wasn't the skinniest guy in the world, but the worst part was that I was wearing my new shoes! I know they would have gotten creased/scratched/dirty eventually, but I was kind of annoyed that it happened only the second time I had ever worn them, and it wasn't even my own fault. So now I have one new shoe and one slightly mushed, used shoe.

Anyway, the rest of the show was pretty cool. The only other car show I've been to was the Detroit Auto Show last year, and I think I was sort of spoiled by the extravagance of it, because I kept walking around the Reliant Center wishing I could see more Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Maseratis, etc. Also, I was somewhat surprised to discover that the average person could buy about 90% of the cars there. But there were a lot more cars that you could actually get inside than I remember from the Detroit show, and the neatest part (I thought) was seeing the Pontiac Solstice as a concept car in Detroit last year and then seeing it as a production vehicle in Houston this year. Another highlight was seeing the Dodge Ram SLT-10, which is a regular Dodge Ram with a Viper engine (!). Care to guess what the gas mileage of this monstrosity is? 9. That's right, 9 miles per gallon. But don't worry - it's got a 26 gallon tank, so you can go over 200 miles before you have to fill up your tank. Any by the way, I'm sure the Viper engine needs Premium gasoline.

In other news... the Patriots won the Superbowl! Ahh, who am I kidding - I'm not a football fan. I'm only a fair-weather New England fan. So for me, the Superbowl is just like any other football game - run 10 yards, fall down, pile up. Run 10 yards, fall down, pile up. The only reasons this one was different were because I went to a friend's party to watch the entire thing and the commercials were funnier (my favorite was the Ameritrade ad with the cat, knife, and spaghetti sauce). Plus, we all got to scan the halftime show for more "wardrobe malfunctions." Unfortunately though, Paul McCartney was more of a "family values" entertainer, so there was nothing scandalous. Oh well... there's always hope for next year.

All right, I promise I won't turn into one of those people who only talks about their pets, but I got my hamsters less than a week ago, so I'm allowed a little more time to tell meaningless stories about them. For the first couple days I had them, they slept in their little plastic hamster igloo during the day. I also stuck a toilet paper tube in their cage that they could play with, and this past weekend I also put in an old (clean) sock that I had. Now, my hamsters are a little dumb, so they didn't figure out right away that they could actually go into the sock instead of just walking over it and chewing it up. So I stuck the leg part of the sock onto the end of the toilet paper tube so they could see that they could walk into it through the tube. Well, that was the beginning of the end, because now they sleep in the sock every day. Not in the fancy little plastic house I got them, but in the ratty old sock I stuck on the end of a toilet paper roll.

2fer1 hamster special

Almost two weeks ago, I got a pet hamster. Today, I returned said hamster to the pet store and got two different ones. I can't decide if this makes me a horrible person or not. On one hand, it's only a hamster. On the other hand, I had it for 13 whole days. If this hamster were my kid, I just gave him up for adoption on his 15th birthday.

Okay, maybe I should start from the beginning. We had lots of hamsters when I was kid because my dad was allergic to anything that would have been more entertaining, but they were a lot of fun. Then when I was home for the holidays, I fell in love with the dwarf hamster my older sister got for Christmas, so I decided I would get my very own pet hamster when I got back to Houston. Two pet stores trips later, I drove home with my very own Chinese dwarf hamster (plus about $40 in plastic toys, food, and a "small animal igloo" that my hamster could call home).

My hamster was terrified. Every time I tried to play with her or get her out of the cage, she would scurry into her little igloo and refuse to come out because I, apparently, was an ogre. Curious as to why this hamster seemed to be continuously freaked out, I did a little internet research and discovered that what I actually fell in love with growing up was a Russian dwarf hamster - Chinese hamsters are much more timid and solitary creatures than most other breeds of hamsters. Upon explaining this to my friend Becca over dinner, she promptly told me that a hamster is just a piece of merchandise and could surely be returned to the store if accompanied by a receipt. It took me a couple days, but I decided that I could still live with myself if I returned the hamster. So on Tuesday I scooped up my hamster and took her back to the pet store, only to discover that the store was all out of the Russian dwarf hamsters that I wanted to exchange it for, and that there are people out there (i.e. salespeople at Petsmart) who think I'm a terrible person for returning my hamster. There was, however, one person who told me that I would have more luck on Thursday, when a new "shipment" of Russian dwarf hamsters would be arriving.

So today after work, I went home, scooped up my hamster, and returned to Petsmart with nerves of steel. The woman who took back my hamster gave me a disgusted look as she took the box and showed me to where I could pick out a new hamster. She also did a fantastic job of looking royally bored while I oohed and ahhed over the other hamsters and took forever to pick two out. But now all is well - I have the two cutest hamsters on the face of the earth, and I still made it home in time to watch the O.C.

I've arrived!

All right, I've finally joined the real world and started a blog. Not sure if it'll last or if it'll become just another passing interest that I have, but what the hell, it was free. The only problem is that now I have to justify my existence to the outside world, whereas before I was fine just sneaking by under the radar. Because honestly, weeks can go by without anything earth-shaking happening to me. Consider yourself forewarned.

So, today I went to my second funeral ever. Okay, obviously it wasn't my funeral, but the part about it being the second is true. The only other memorial service I went to was for my grandfather who died several years ago. This one was for a co-worker's wife who died of leukemia this past Saturday - she was only 24. I only met her once, at lunch a few months ago with a bunch of people from work, and I've only known my co-worker Ryan since July, so I felt a little strange being there, surrounded by people who had known Katie for years. It was an incredibly sobering event. Among other things, everyone who spoke at the service mentioned how close Ryan and Katie were and how they seemed to be meant for each other: "Ryan was Katie's one true love." And at the end of the service, the minister reminded all of us what we can learn from Katie's brief life, and one of them was that once you find your one true love, hold on to them as tightly as you can. Sifting through some of the past relationships I've had, I can definitely say that I've been in love, but have any of those guys been my "one true love"? Umm... I'm gonna go with no. Okay, so I can identify the ones who aren't, but then how will I known when this "one" appears in my life? It's too bad those people don't come with a big neon sign or something. But there are a couple people out there whose weddings I might object at... maybe that's my neon sign.