whoa.

i just sat down at my favorite, generally delightful coffee shop only to be sandwiched between two people talking obnoxiously loud on their cell phones. whoa.

anyhow, this week has been total insanity. here are the highlights:

1. crazy hippies have set up shop high atop the redwood tree directly outside my building on campus. the tree is in the middle of a rather unsightly parking lot that the school has decided to tear down. in place of the current pavement paradise they are going to build a rad biomedical building! this makes the tree huggers hella pissed because that means they have to cut down that one tree in the middle of the lot. the tree sitters were fenced into the parking lot by cops. their angry hippie friends pushed through the temporary barricade to give them food. the whole front line was shot in the face with mace. then about a million more cops came with big beating sticks and beat down a few students who were being really crazy and dangerous.
aside from all the violent madness the fire alarm was repeatedly pulled in my building. lucky for me all that meant was escape from a rather dull seminar. unfortunately, however, this resulted in our building being put on serious lock-down for an undisclosed about of time. security guards man the doors, both inside and out, 24 hours a day. even the coffee cart was closed down today. insanity! luckily i just got a new set of keys 3 days before all this happened, so i am free to roam the eerily empty halls all i want.

2. the professor i really want to work for asked me to present on a paper for group meeting tomorrow, which, according to everyone i've asked, basically means he wants me in his lab. woo hoo! unfortunately the paper is almost entirely biochemistry, a course i've never taken before. not to mention the fact that the one and only biology course i ever took was over 8 years ago! so, these papers are about as easy as reading french.

ps. i never took french.

3. i love riding my bicycle. i've just recently tightened the headset on my lovely french road bike, which has unexpectedly enabled me learn how to ride no hands. at first i was all wobbly bits, but now i am so good i am starting to coast down big hills. it's the closest to flying i've ever felt in my whole life. especially with all the foggy days we've been having. nothing but huge heavy clouds of mist to fly through everywhere i turn!

ps. dad i promise i'm always careful.

4. all i do all day long is read chemistry papers. i have another (the second of 12 potential exams) cume exam next weekend. these exams entail a rigorous reading of 12 papers chosen by 3 different profs. the exams are 2 hours long on saturdays. lame. wait, Lame with a capital L.

5. i passed my first set of cumes! if i pass 3 more i don't have to take them ever again! hoo haa!

6. today sucked so i went shopping. weird.

7. i'm going to start another fabulous free fun scheme after cumes. it's similar to breakfast on bridges (a cool event that happens in portland), in the sense that i will be giving away treats to bicyclists to show my support for their choice to ride their bike. BUT, instead of giving away coffee and pastries i'll be giving away pie! we'll be called the "pie pedalers!" ha ha ha. i crack myself up.

8. i met a fantastic man on a tall bike a few weeks ago and sent him my tall bike zine. just this week he replied via snail mail with an AMAZING letter. i hope he will be my pie-pedaler-partner.

9. life feels extreme lately. i'm either extremely cheerful and happy. or extremely annoyed and concerned i've made an incorrect life choice. graduate school is all consuming and that bums me out. i need to hang out with non-students. pronto. last week i was so stressed out i pinched a nerve in my back (again!). i had to go to the health center and get a crazy shot to the hip to stop the pain. then they gave me a bunch of muscle relaxers and sent me home with the advice that i chill the fuck out. that kind of stuff freaks me out. when my body is so tense that it results in extraordinary pain somethings wrong. unfortunately there isn't much i can do about it. i have 21 credits, 4 classes to teach, cumes to study for, and i need to feed myself too! all those commitments chomp up every last hour of the day.

excluding, of course, the time i screw around on the computer or write letters to my buddies!

rant finished! sorry team.

other stuff: santa cruz is a really sweet place to live. once i meet all my new slew of bicycle buddies i'll be snug like a bug in a rug here. hopefully this pie scheme will help!

hoorah!