one more miracle

I had a most lovely weekend! My dear cousin Meg came down to visit me from where she lives near Lansing. She's 36, married to a great guy with two kids, and she and I have received many of the same genes from our shared side of the family so we have clicked ever since I was a wee thing. She is made of awesome and win and we had such a great time with our girls' weekend! The weather was PERFECTION the entire time - sunny, 70s, with a light breeze. Saturday we went to lunch at a great place, and then we went to a bead store, the used bookstore, a great fair trade clothing shop where Meg bought TWO awesome jackets, and my favorite coffee shop Lab (where the adorable German barista remembered me again and I found out his name is Toby - which is also Meg's son's name, hilarious) where one of the baristas recommended a iced raspberry mocha to Meg and she was very pleased. Then we went to my actual lab and I showed her around, and we hung out with Francisco because he was the only one there late in the afternoon on a Saturday, what, nerd. She was super charmed by him and even sadder for me that he's leaving. This was a theme of the weekend.

We went home, watched some Big Bang Theory with my roomies, and one of my roomies and her boyfriend grilled chicken and veggies for us! ♥ Then we went out for cocktails because Meg wanted to pretend to be a grad student for a night. :) We hit up two of my favorite bars with my roomies and Francisco, and there was some hilarious girltalk over martinis while Francisco literally squirmed and tried not to look like he wanted to die. IT WAS ADORABLE. Meg reiterated that the universe is a cruel cruel thing for stealing him away from me, and all I can do is agree. Ugh, it's ridiculous.

Hilarious explication of my post title: my roommate Nichole has a super intense Korean boss who frequently drives her to tears. However, this boss sometimes comes out with hilarious gems when they are out drinking as a lab (which they do pretty frequently!). Apparently, according to Nichole's boss, if you don't meet the other person's eyes when you are clinking glasses, you will have SEVEN YEARS OF BAD SEX. LOLOLOL WHAT IS THAT. So, APPARENTLY, when they are out drinking and people go to clink glasses, Nichole's boss just says "Seven years. SEVEN YEARS." and is super intense about it. OMG HILARITY. So of course we kept clinking and staring intently into each others eyes. Awesomeness.

We ended up going to sleep at like 4 AM, what, and then Sunday morning we went to brunch at this amaaaazing place downtown. I had a spiced apple and walnut crepe, om freaking nommmm. Also amazing coffee. Then we went to my favorite, the Cupcake Station, because it is an Ann Arbor MUST. Thennn we walked around an art supply store and Borders, walked by Lab and saw the Cute German Barista there again (he seems to sit outside reading a lot - we hypothesized that he might actually be one of the owners? Hmmmm!), and finally headed to my apartment so she could drive back home. All in all it was a relaxing/exhausting (because of all the walking!) weekend filled with good chats and good friends. Meg has worked nonstop for the last 7 weeks (LITERALLY - she runs her own company dyeing yarn, and works 65 hours a week, on TOP of being a mom to two) so I think this downtime was really good for her. She seemed to enjoy herself, anyway! Yay. :)

I finished off my day today by taking a beautiful drive through the country in the sunshine - there are few things more relaxing to me than zipping along back roads, blasting music and generally feeling at peace with life. Then I went to Kohl's, where I got an AMAZING deal on luggage - I bought this adorable five piece luggage set for only 67 DOLLARS. Down from $180! Eee I love Kohl's. I had pretty much no decent large suitcases, and I wanted something good to bring to Dublin. I got more than I was hoping for, because the small suitcase is going to be awesome for short trips too! Love itttt. And it's all pretty too. :D

OH YEAH I'M LEAVING FOR DUBLIN IN TEN DAYS OMGGG MY LIFE WHAT. :DDDDD

Ahem. Yay for good weekends! Now I am numb with exhaustion and have to face a Monday morning, but whatev whatev. ♥

Firstly: Happy birthday glamorous_nymph! I hope it is a lovely one. ♥

Secondly: LOOK I HAVE A JACOB PITTS ICON. He's so pretty siiiiigh. I maaade it! And I feel I should share the original picture with you, because HOLY PIERCING EYES BATMAN. *___* ( Click at your own risk! )

Speaking of Jacob Pitts, I rewatched some of Justified episode 2 today (and right after I tweeted about it, Brian Schechter tweeted only the words "Justified episode 2" - it was creepy) and man, I forgot that Tim (JACOB PITTS) has some really great scenes there! I love the conversation he has with Raylan about watching targets when he was a sniper in Afghanistan. I want more character development like that, and more one-on-one hotass dudes time! C'mon show! Overall, though, I'm REALLY loving Justified. A lot. You should watch it!

So I had a whole bunch of things planned to post about, and then I randomly clicked on a tab in which I've been going back and reading all my Dublin LJ entries. I found one where I talked about Niall, near the end of my time there, and god, it's SO OBVIOUS that I was completely ass-over-teakettle for him, and he was for ME, and we did nothing about it until my last week there. Why do we fail so hard? I don't say this lightly, but - I love him. I do. We've been an ocean apart for two years, yet I feel closer to him than most other people in the universe. We've maintained a beautiful friendship through emails and talking all the time, and he's just - so important to me. I love him. I do. I think I might do something about it this time I'm back in Dublin, because even though we can't really be together, I want him to know how I feel. *decisive nod*

Okay, current things! On Thursday, I was starting a new big experiment I've never done before. And it was my second to last day in the lab. It was a day of total fail - the fire alarm went off twice for no reason, a machine I was using cut out, etc. Long story short, I was in lab until past 11 PM, and ate Cheez-Its for dinner. Awesome. So needless to say, I was exhausted, and the next morning my alarm made nary a dent in my rock-like slumber. I woke up at 2 pm, woozy and confused, and went OH SHIT. I emailed my boss and rushed in. She told me she hadn't laughed like that in a while! Haha. Anyway, it was a great motivator to have such limited time (I had a dinner party to be at at 7:30!) and I got a shitload of science done in a very short time. I got one very exciting result! As in, the first result that made me go "oh wow!" all semester. Better late than never right? :P So that was my last day of experiments. On Monday, I'll give my research presentation, then I'll be done! *hands*

Apparently, I "matched" with four guys from speed dating - three engineers and a computer scientist. Hilarious. All three engineers have emailed me, which is sweet, but I honestly don't really remember which they were, except for one of them, and he's pretty zany. Which can be a good thing, but I don't know. I'm dithering. Anyway, my roomies poked and prodded at me until I just said yes to the one who set a concrete time and place, so we're going for brunch tomorrow! *hands* We'll see. I highly doubt this will turn into anything (these guys, like, embody my problems with Dave multiplied by a billionty, and rather made me miss him, honestly) but it could be, if nothing else, a nice brunch and conversation. Plus, it's at Zingerman's, which is kind of what Ann Arbor's famous for - it's a whole block away from my house and I've NEVER BEEN. So he wins at setting up a date, haha. He might actually be the one who liked Supernatural - I can't remember! That would be fun.

On Friday, Emily and I went to Noah's for dinner with a bunch of his friends, which was fun, and then we all went out. We went to a bar called the Jolly Pumpkin where they distill their own liquors, and I had I had this AMAZING cocktail called a Cran Strawberry which was their in-house cranberry vodka and muddled strawberries and OMNOMNOMNOM. Amazing. And a huge plus, the waiter was SO CUTE I COULD HAVE DIED. He had short curly hair and this really deep, sexy voice and unfffff. I left my number on the receipt because he was so hot I just couldn't NOT, but obviously nothing came of it. No way a guy that looks like that is single, and no way he finds me attractive anyway. :P

Hmm, boy-crazy, ME? And to think I let a perfectly nice one go. /o\ Gah, I don't know. I still wonder if that was right. But then I think about how much more intensely I feel about Niall than I did about Dave, and I probably did. Just that one happens to live in my town and the other is across the ocean. :-/

Lalala, rambling entry is rambling. I'll just put it out of its misery. I really should go to bed, so I can be up and at em for my brunch date. Do you realize that this is kind of my first actual date with a guy that I don't already know quite well, or that I'm not already seeing? Yeah. Guess it's time!

So as you may recall, I've had to keep the fact that I've gotten into Jason's lab a secret from the people who it affects, i.e. other people who want to get into his lab. But it's been driving me nuts, having to lie directly to my best friends. So today this happened:

SCENE: Sidewalk, University of Michigan. STEFFEN and ANNE have just left FRANCISCO after lunch.

ANNE: Can I tell you a secret?
STEFFEN: Okay.
ANNE (rushed): I got into Jason's lab.
STEFFEN: I didn't think that was much of a secret!
ANNE: Oh! Why?
STEFFEN: Well, you haven't slit your wrists yet.

Touché, sir. Touché.

We (meaning my whole program - 14 people) had a conversation with our program director yesterday. He's kind of a douche, and we haven't had much contact with him, but he asked us for our feedback on the first year of the program. The issue of how hard it's been to get into labs came up, and we had a pretty good discussion. He highlighted explicitly that we are the first class in this program to run headlong into a fucking recession, and that it's affecting us profoundly, via how its affecting the professors. Everyone's tightening their purse strings, and we're getting a lot of the fallout of that. I personally hadn't drawn that concrete of a connection between the two phenomena, but it was really helpful, I think, because we've been resentful of the older students who are like "Oh everyone always finds somewhere they're happy! Don't worry!" but no, it's a genuine worry this year. Fantastic students are caught in limbo and honestly have no home yet. It's very sad. I am incredibly, INCREDIBLY lucky to have gotten exactly what I wanted. I'm a quite humbled by it, to be honest. Jason had an array of great students to choose from, and he... chose me. I only hope I live up to that huge vote of confidence. (Can I share one amazing statistic? Jason published SEVENTEEN PAPERS during five years of graduate school. SEVENTEEN. Seven in 2002 alone! INCLUDING 4 first author papers! INCLUDING A FIRST AUTHOR NATURE PAPER. How is he real?!???)

Francisco's still up in the air. I'm so sad for him, and sad for me likely losing him. Sigh. :(

More cheerful things! THE AMERICAN IDIOT BROADWAY CAST RECORDING HAS BEEN RELEASED! Yay!!! I just bought it and I'm currently basking in my first full listen-through. It's amaaaazing. *___* I might be a little biased, but my favorite so far is Are We the Waiting - STARK. His voice has this beautiful, subtle rasp to it and unffff. I also really love the Last of the American Girls/She's a Rebel mashup, with the gorgeous cello weaving in and out. Favorite Son is beautiful - it's nice to have a song that I haven't heard before. And Whatshername is exquisite. AW HELL THE WHOLE THING IS AMAZING. I know what I'm listening to for the next month. :DD

valmontheights found a super awesome preview video of the musical, with clips from some of the greatest numbers. UGH IT LOOKS SO AMAZING I WANT TO SEE IT TWENTY ZILLION TIMES. STARK SANDS YER FACE AND YER VOICE OMG. AND YER BICEPS OM NOM. <333

OH AND: A FANGIRL HEARD FROM JON HUERTAS HIMSELF THAT THE GEN KILL BOYS ARE PLANNING A TRIP TO NYC TO SEE STARK IN AMERICAN IDIOT. MY HEART GROWING TEN SIZES, LET ME SHOW YOU IT. :DDDDDDDD

I've been floating on a cloud of YAY I'M IN JASON'S LAB YAY YAY YAY! Unfortunately, my current reality isn't quite that awesome and consists of fucking up experiments and a really really shitty group project that I honestly don't know how well we're going to do on. Ugh. So thank god he said yes or else I would be an utter wreck right now. I'm just clinging to it - I'm IN JASON'S LAB! Officially! He even sent out an email today about new lab photos and I was on the email! :DDDDDD

Today has not been a decent Saturday of any kind. I woke up, ate breakfast, went to lab from 2 to 8 PM, ugh, came home, went to grocery store, and worked on aforementioned group project, in the process stressing myself out so badly that I chewed on my fingernails until they all ache and it actually hurts to type. WONDERFUL. Now it's 1:30 AM and I'm exhausted but trying to get through Doctor Who without falling asleep because OMG IT'S AMAAAZING!!!

Tomorrow should be nice though - brunch in Detroit with one branch of my family, then back to Ann Arbor for dinner with another branch! Good times and good food. :D

Although that means no time to work on STUPID PROJECT ARGH. The only good thing about this project is that the one other person in the group actually doing work is this insanely pretty guy. I mean, he would not be out of place on television for us to swoon over. The other day he came to class having not shaved and he had the most exquisite stubble, like Ron Liv's 5 o'clock shadow, and I was captivated. It was kind of a problem. He also has these super blue eyes with long black lashes and a smile to die for... unf. Unfortunately, he's kind of not really my type at all, being from Connecticut and you can TELL. Like, he should be a lawyer with the way he talks sometimes. Gah, I don't know. He sure is purty to look at. And we commiserate about how awful our group is, so that's fun. :P

Random question: how do we feel about the new Youtube layout? Overall I feel it's quite functional, but why did they get rid of the starred rating system? Also, there's no way to tell how many comments there are on a video. They're strange changes that I don't quite get! Overall it does look more streamlined though.

I've been reading a lot of my old entries about just before Dublin and then during. That encompasses my slide into bandom, which is hilarious to watch - did you know at one point I genuinely, honestly thought Gerard and Brendon were gay? LOL. Oh, naive little self. I also thought Frank was the lead guitarist of MCR, gasp! Sacrilege. And it's weird to read myself squealing about Ryan when I really don't like him anymore. Anyway, the beginning of Dublin stuff is even more interesting, to see how different I was. It's very pronounced, actually. Which I knew, but it's awesome to have LJ as a concrete record of that. I hope I keep my LJ archives for my whole life, it's such a potent piece of personal history.

And I need some advice - does anyone have any ideas on the best way to get from either NYC or Philly to Cleveland without a car? I've checked plane, bus, and train, and everything either has wacky layovers (ATLANTA?!) or detours or just takes bloody forever, and it just seems so STUPID. Fucking American public transportation. Or the lack thereof. So any thoughts as to ways I could work that out so it isn't soul-crushingly horrible?

Finally, in Twitter Continues To Be Awesome, Brian Schechter responded to my Twitter-stalking for once. And I just - ahahaha, what.



Love him! He's such a dork. I totally get why he and the MCR boys got along like gangbusters. ♥

Augh so tired. Happy Easter, to all who celebrate! I hope you have lovely days.

Thank you crediniaeth for the adorable Peep bunny virtual gift!! I am nomming on it happily. :D You are so sweet! <33333

I just finished watching the Buffy series finale (well, last two episodes) (for, to clarify, the 80 billionth time). So many tears!!! ;___; Willow's transformation is still one of the most striking images I have ever seen. "Oh. My. Goddess." SRSLY TEARS. But man, my Buffy/Angel OTP heart still beats so. fucking. hard. When he appears and her face is just glowing and they kiss all sexy and beautiful and just kind of gaze at each other for a while? sldkfjlksdjf my heart grows like 20 sizes. And then I rewind and rewatch and it grows ANOTHER 20 sizes. Seriously, I love them with alllll of me. ♥___♥ The cookie dough speech is so ridic but also so lovely, sigh. I love themmm. I also love Faith and her mountain of issues, and how Robin starts to help her through them with a bit of tough love, they're very much great together. And Giles and Xander and Dawn and Spiiiiike and Anya and Andrew and LITTLE FELICIA DAY and everyone! Man, I kind of really really love this show. Still #1 in my book.

Also tonight, I received a most spontaneous invite from Francisco to go to the movies with him and Steffen and Kate, and I was very excited about this! Because I have been home and quarantined and sad and unsocial. So we went to see How to Train Your Dragon in 3D, an animated film from Dreamworks. It was very, very adorable, and included a lot of awesome dragons. It was kind of extremely weird in that the human characters were supposed to be Vikings, but the adults had Scottish accents while the children were American (seriously? um) so I had to seriously handwave that, but a major benefit of the Scottish thing is that CRAIG FERGUSON IS ONE OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS. I had no idea and I totally called it during the movie! I looooove him ridiculous amounts. <3 So yes, another fun, lovely movie from those wacky animation folks!

Then I kind of really wanted to have some time with Francisco and watch either Inglourious Basterds or Band of Brothers, both of which we've been wanting to do for a while. But a girl in our program had organized a night out at a bar, and both Francisco and Steffen wanted to go, so I said okay. We went to the bar, I couldn't even drink cause I'm on penicillin, and we just kind of hung out for a while. It was nice enough, but I just don't feel super duper comfortable in that friends group, at least not like I can let go and totally be myself. And without any alcohol at all, that was kind of accentuated. So I stuck around for about an hour and a half, but eventually I just left. I was kind of over it. It was one of those unfortunate cases of feeling kind of lonely in a crowd. I don't know if Francisco's uncomfortable around me right now or what, because of the whole lab issue thing, and it's all just kind of awkward. One way or another, things will be resolved on Tuesday (Francisco and I are both meeting with Jason separately), and I'm kind of scared.

I am currently listening to Backstreet Boys thanks to yet another video of Marines dancing and being ridic. I think this is my favorite find of the whole day (thanks to wordsalone!):



And I'll leave you with that. ♥