the end... for realz

Tough, silly, and chill,
Strike a balance to recall,
Another year passed.

Yeah, it's gone, alright. Hard to believe that a year ago today I'd already started my job at Google and moved to California, but a lot has changed since then. I'm pretty sure that I spent time last summer (and over the past school year) growing up... but not so much that I won't be excited to get water guns in the mail (thanks, Mom and Dad).

This last semester was dandy. I got cut a break from homework, but that left time to explore other interesting things; I'm getting really excited about logic programming and miniKanren, which was, incidentally, the PhD thesis project of one of my AIs this semester. He's trying to get me to convince the NLP people in Deutschland that they want to use it for their research. :)

I guess this is the part that I think about what I'll miss when I'm overseas this summer, but I don't really know what to say. I'm actually pretty terrified of the move. It's one thing to move across the country to California and meet up with someone I know there. It's an entirely different thing to move 7 timezones across an ocean to a country where I don't even speak the language and have never met in person anyone within 3 hours of where I'm living. It's scary!

But I suspect I would be denied the opportunity to expand myself if I didn't do things that terrified me once in a while. Skydiving was a blast! :P

So this is the last entry in this blog... I don't live next to 666 anymore, and I guess I'll miss it a little bit, at least. The painting we did was a lot of fun, but I learned some stuff about what kinds of people I can live with and what kinds I'm not so good at living with. Let's hope that Mathieu and Titilayo are the former. :)

(next posting will be on awesomehaus.blogspot.com)

time

Where is my city?

The Midwest has so little.

I can't wait to fly.

And school is started.  So much work!  I was sad, but I didn't try out for the Spanish play.  It would just be too much, I think.  :(  This grad class is keeping me on my toes, for sure.

But there's still time to kill on weekends.  And it's a total bummer that there isn't much to do around here.  I miss all the crazy stuff that happened in and around San Francisco all the time.  There isn't really an audience for it here, though.  I talked to Kam about a thing Evan had mentioned to me: a rave in the forest called "Dance of the Primes."  His comment?  "You know, Val, if we had a 'Dance of the Primes,' nine people would show up and six of them would be wearing capes."

It's true.

I want to get something like that started for Btown, though.  Just, you know, anything really cool.  The dance party last year ("People are Still Having Sex") was a lot of fun; I hope that it happens again in the not-too-distant future.  I think our first comedy club is opening sometime soon.

The career fair was yesterday.  It's amazing the looks you can get from people if you dress sharp.  I walked around with my friend Stuart (or maybe Stewart, I don't actually know), who was in a nice suit with a tie and all, and I was wearing my suit, and we got pulled over by the NSA and some other people.  It was exciting.  I actually got an email today from Microsoft offering an interview.  I wonder if I'll do it?  I mean, it can't hurt to practice technical interviews, eh?  Plus that's kind of cool.

in

Back to Bloomington,
But I miss California.
At least I'm not bored.

So now all my stuff's in the apartment, which is pretty cool, I suppose. My room is massive (yay!), and Mom and Dad managed to help me get a box spring and a desk in just our little Matrix. I was pretty impressed.

We're all here now, too, which is nice. I don't know how Georgia survived the last week here by herself. I guess she had her newts? Anyway, we haven't had much time to catch up about our summers yet. I was woefully out of contact with them, and everyone else back here. Mary didn't get in until this evening, and then she went over to Colin's, so it was short-lived. Georgia's already abed.

We did get to have dinner together, though. The first meal I cooked in the apartment! It was just pasta and sweet corn, but that's the stuff that college is made of, right? I think Georgia and I are going to make spring rolls together tomorrow, which is pretty exciting. I'm curious how my social life will be different now that I'm living off-campus.

Tomorrow we're going to get paint for the living room (green) and the kitchen (yellow). I want to paint my room, but I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted it done. I'm pretty sure--enough that I already bought spray paint--that I want to reserve the back wall of my room for graffiti. I've never actually graffitied (sp?) anything before, so that should be interesting. After making the stencil for and spray painting my DEFCON laptop this summer, I wanted to try the real deal. I'm toying with the idea of letting visitors graffiti, too. I think that would be fun. I mean, you can write on a Facebook wall, why not write on a real wall? Hmm. I'm concerned about ventilation in my room, though.

Man, I feel so silly and girly saying this, but I really miss the friends I made in California. :( It's going to be excruciating waiting until October to see them. I need to find new people to adventure with, I guess. But every time someone says, "Delicious!" and I think, "and nutritious!", it's a pretty sad reminder. Ditto hearing the word "goat," seeing Segway lawn mowers, thinking about math, using my DEFCON laptop, holding Kung Fu Panda, riding my bike, wearing my Google apparel, ... Maybe I'll forget some of it as the year wears on and I find other entertainments for myself. I don't know whether I hope for that or not.

Ummm... yeah. I got a Wii this morning, which was pretty exciting. With Mario Party 8! ^___^ Now we just need a TV to play it on, haha. We're not getting internet until Wednesday morning, so it's going to be a few more days of biking back and forth to campus to get my fix. I've been keeping busy with unpacking and decorating and reading, though, so I guess it's not all bad.

Anyhow, it's been a pretty long day. I sleep with my shades up, so the sun woke me up pretty early. And I've still got 10 minutes or so of bike ride to get back home.