apartment

Well, it's finale furioso over here getting ready for my trip. I'm soooo excited but at the same time a bit stressed that I will forget something. As long as I have all my documents with me, everything else is replacable right???
Anyway, you wanted to see some more pics of my new place - so here they are with the foyer in the pics on the right, top two on the left are the living room, and bottom left is in the dining room. They are not the gratest quality, but that's all I've got right now. Hope you like them.

girls just wanna have fun...

I've had so much fun in the last couple of days!!! Thur night I was going to dinner with some girlfriends from work and then we decided to go to a karaoke bar after. Pretty soon, we were singing horribly, but with gusto-lol. I haven't done karaoke in years! Well time flew, and it was rooouuuuugh getting up in the morning to go to work. A little reality check that I'm not in college any more lol. But it was worth it!
Yesterday, I went with a few other friends to see a movie showing outdoors in Little Italy. They have a summer series where every Fri night they show an older movie on the side of a building in a parking lot. Everyone brings their lawn chairs and watches while eating the best pizza in town and then tops it off with the best Italian desserts at Vaccarro's. They were showing an Italian film called Bread and Tulips (never heard of it until yesterday). It is a romantic comedy, and it was hilarious! And the tiramisu after - hmmm,hmm good! But laughing with friends - priceless!
Today, one of my friends is coming for dinner. She is vegetarian so I will make pasta with spinach and feta cheese, and a couple of salads. And then, who knows? Maybe we'll go out somewhere. Afterall, girls just wanna have fun! ;-)

People I work with

Here are some pics of people I work with.

On the left is my boss (Dr. Raja) and Shefali (another girl that worked for him on the clinical side of things until just recently). On the right are Tim and Sandy in my old apartment. Tim is a technician in our lab. He is married to Sandy and they have two sons - great people! I will try to upload some more tomorrow but I have to download them from a website first. The pictures will be from our annual golf outing as a lab - yes, golf! It's pretty hilarious to see me out there, but we all have a blast anyway.

Sleep

I am in desperate need of sleep. I went to watch a tennis tournament in DC last night - the first "live show" i've attended. It was great! I had a blast, from watching really good players (these were the quarterfinals) , to wispering because everyone is supposed to be "quiet please!", people watching etc. DC is so well organized in terms of public transportation. The metro is great and gets you to most areas, but also, events like this one have shuttles organized that will pick you up from the nearest metro stop and take you directly to the tennis courts. Free of charge. And they do it as an incentive for people to take the public transportation instead of driving in. Fine with me! I prefer that anyway. Tennis was great - especially the doubles because they have fun and show a sense of humor when they play. It seems a bit more relaxed. There are also more unusual plays where they return the ball when noone expected it, so the stadium fills up with ooohhs and aahhhs. So much fun!
Well I didn't get home until 1:30 or so and by the time I wound down and went to sleep it was 3am. So then I had to get up at 6:45 to take a friend to the airport and have been up since. I'm beat! Saturdays are usually my day to sleep, and skipping it is really painful this time. I'm still hoping to catch a little afternoon nap maybe, but my chances are kind of slim. I'm at work right now trying to catch up on some unfinished business. I get so much more done with noone around. And then, I'm planning on going out again tonight, so I guess, it will be my fault that I am not getting enough sleep again. :-)

Learning

Do you believe that we can learn something from everyone we meet? I do. Even those people who we feel are not very compatible with our personality or such, have something to offer that is interesting, intriguing, or important to know. Most of the time I hope to surround myself with people I admire and trust who can teach me how to become a better person and stand firm in who I am. But sometimes, it is also important to recognize people you can't trust or people who are successful but practice things you would never participate in. Why? Because it is important to understand how they justify their behavior, and more importantly, it is good to predict when it might be directed towards you. This is what I think anyway. I'm not really talking about the obvious vices we may stay clear from like drugs or alcoholism, etc. but more subtle nuances of human behavior, something you might refer to as the "politics" of life.
I had dinner tonight with an acquantance (sp?) from work who kind of irritates me at times so I can't spend too much time with her. She is very attention demanding and always has a crisis, and yet, people love to talk to her because she is very bubbly and animated in her communication. Fun. Personally, I can only take that for a little while, but people seem very interested in her and attracted to her. OTherwise, she is very very bright, knows her job well, and I think is a good person overall. So can I learn something from her (I mean socially)? How is it that the same behavior that seems annoying to me (all this drama about things that happen), is so attractive and amusing to strangers we might encounter? She strikes up a conversation with a stranger in no time - and these guys are usually both good looking and well polished. So how does that work? Is it that they are hoping for an easy date, or is it really attractive? And is it the kinds of dramatic stories that she tells that are attractive, or the manner in which she tells them? Of course, it help that she is cute too, so there is a physical attraction as well probably. Well, after a couple of margaritas I can't really say what exactly I learn from all this,but I did have a good time, and I do love thinking about stuff like that. And, I'm glad that we don't go out every day, because too much interaction I couldn't take...

Evenings

The evenings go by so quickly. I come home, eat something before I "waste away to nothing" (yeah like that's possible in my case), do some dishes, and it's already Jay Leno time. Then I stare and chuckle at his jokes, and before I know it, it's tomorrow! The reaction of course is "Oh #!*$^#%&$, it's so late, I gotta get up in the morning!" And invariably, by the end of the week, I'm setting up 4 alarm clocks instead of the usual two, just to get up semi-on-time. Tomorrow will be a real treat - I have to be at work at 7am. I should be zzzz-ing away already, but I really wanted to see what's new in the blog world. Plus I was cooking a soup for tomorrow until just recently, so I couldn't go to bed anyway ;-)
In case you are wondering, it's still soooooooooooooo hot here! It was 84 in my apartment when I got home despite my one unit running ALL DAY! Crazy.
Well, stay cool (as Julia Roberts said in Pretty Woman)!

The heat

I think I live in Texas again. It has been so hot the last few days - we even broke a hundred I think, and the heat index is well into the hundreds. The humidity is unbelievable - pretty much feels like Houston in the middle of the summer. The worst part is - my apartment is not airconditioned. Well, at least there is no central air. I have three window units and if I leave all of them off during the day, my plants look like they're dead by the time I come home (I made that mistake yesterday). So today, I left one unit running all day and when I got home at 7:30 it was 81 in my apartment. Just imagine then what it was like yesterday! Since I got home they've all been on full blast and it finally got down to 75 at 10:45. Fabulous huh? I keep telling myself that I'm practicing for my trip to Europe where most houses aren't airconditioned either. Big difference though - there is a beautiful blue sea you can jump into to cool off during the day!
With all the heat, I find myself being very lazy after I come home. One of those staring into the space, lounging on the couch kinda feelings... (The photo is a few months old, but it conveys the feeling very well, lol)