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)

real life

We can't all live in
A real world. School is far from
It, but we come back.

Today brought my first visit to ye olde dentistry shoppe in nearly two years. Being in school makes it hard to actually do things like that, but it turned out alright. The only thing I was chided for was flossing too hard; I had some indentations in my gums that were caused by it.

I did get a prize, though, for being good. And some weird looks for getting a prize. (see photo)

I wonder what constitutes real life. I mean, I haven't really felt the recession due to being in school, but some real life responsibilities are there. I pay bills, I cook, I have to keep my house clean (and my roommates happy). But if college is supposed to prepare us for real life, then where is my 9 to 5? Where are the scads of money that I should be getting? Where is any sense of stability?

But soon will be a return to an even more real life: work! Hard to believe that my flight is a week from tomorrow! Harder, I'm sure, for my parents to believe. :) Especially since I have yet to get an address for where exactly I'm going...

Oof.

germany!

I can't adventure
Enough during school, but in
The summer? For sure!

Just this morning I received an email from the DAAD-RISE program that I applied to many moons ago, and they told me that I've been accepted as an intern for the summer! That means that I'll be heading to Germany in mid-May and coming back stateside in mid-August. The work will be at a university in Darmstadt, a town (or city?) just outside Frankfurt. I have lots of research to do before I get there, though; I don't know the first thing about work visas or apartment-hunting in other countries or train passes or driving internationally or... well, the list goes on.

Anyway, I'm sure that I'll be posting more about that as summer approaches. Right now I've got some PL homework to do. *sigh*