Weekend stories

The weekend was great! I went to Lake Somerville with some friends (4 humans, three dogs). We spent Saturday afternoon swimming in the lake and wandering around and taking an afternoon nap. Sunday, we walked in the woods. It was nice to be out of town and just enjoying being outside. On the drive back I tried to explain Labor Day to Julia. I just gave up and spoke in British-ese and said "its just a random bank holiday!"

On Friday night, I went out with Sarah's Georgia Tech gang. It was pretty fun, we went to a Mexican restraunt near the Galleria. It was nice seeing Tech people, but honestly most of those we went out with were those I didn't hang out with too much while I was at school. It was nice to catch up and see how they were doing, though. It reminded me how much I missed people I was much closer too, though. I haven't seen Karen in over six months! Though she doesn't seem that far away -- it will still be nice to see her in two weeks from now. I really need to go to Seattle and visit Irwin and George. And I need to go to D.C. and visit Heather. While I'm at it, I haven't seen the twins or Maayan or Sharon Liz or Charu from high school, either. I am such a slacker.

Other news and links

Lance Bass, is here at JSC for his training this week (read about it here.)

And the coolest thing is our (Jen, Karen and I) freshman experience of crashing fraternity rush and pretending we were from Enu, Alaska has been immortalized in the Technique. Read about the whole story here.

Dream

Last night I had a funny, frustrating dream. Basically, I dreamt that I woke up and I was 12 years old again. Everything (my birth certificate, passport, everything!) had the wrong birthdate on it. There was no way to prove I was me. I tried going to work, but realized it was illegal for me to drive. Then the police came and made me a ward of the state and said since I was 12 I had to go back to school. I tried demonstrating to the math teacher that I could do differential equations and fluid dynamics and had read everything they were going to assign me in English class. But they said they didn't care because I was so young I had to be in school and take all the required classes! I was very frustrated by the whole thing. Basically everyone told me that everything I did up until I was 23 didn't count and I had to start again. From scratch. Most people didn't believe me about what happened (it seems memories were selectively changed too).

Anyway, in the end, I decided to flow with the possibility of me being a "child genius". It was pretty funny.

This makes me wonder what I'd do again if I started at 12 all over (but retaining the experience I've had up until now). I thought about it, and I think what I'd do differently would be taking more advantage of my summers. Playing a sport in school. Dating a LOT more (you wouldn't believe the number of guys I shot down my freshman year of college). Since I already got to study aerospace engineering in college, I would probably do something different the second time around (physics? pre-med? archeology? journalism?). But in reality, I probably wouldn't change too much about the way I did things. This is probably why in my dream I was frustrated by having to do everything again, instead of happy. Still a very funny dream.