orientations galore

since wednesday, i had some sort of orientation every day. first the general grad student orientation, which was pointless but they fed us. then the ta training/orientation, which was mandatory, useless (since i'm not ta-ing this year) and generally boring, and they didn't even give us coffee! and then yesterday was the psych grad student orientation, and that was better. it was very, horribly long (8-5) but we learned useful things about the department and some policies and such, and we got to meet each other. there are 17 new psych grad students, with 6 in clinical, plus 3 transfers to clinical from other programs/schools. one girl, for example, is from asu, in phoenix, but her professor got a job here and relocated his lab, so she decided to transfer. amusingly, she lives in the same condo complex as me. even more amusingly, another guy from orientation lives, with wife and adorable baby, literally next door to me. we were very surprised to run into each other in the evening! there's a also a new zealander in the group, complete with cute accent. heh.

so everyone seems nice and excited about school and all. we went out to the grad student social afterwards, which was a bit boring, but not too bad, and then met up with some of the current psych grads at a random bar. not really my thing, but it was nice to socialize with people, just get things going a bit. it was too loud when the band started playing, and i was developing a headache, so that's when i went home. still, it was a nice evening, and nice to be out on a friday night. and if i couldn't understand half of what the new zealand guy was saying, well, that's ok. i could still drool over the accent.

classes start on monday. i already have homework for one class, despite the fact that it hasn't started yet. sucky, but that's ok.

yesterday was the first day since i've been here that i didn't cry, not even once. that was nice.

my calendar is packed with classes and meetings and stuff, but that's good. i'm excited to be doing things again, finally. dancing will be nice, too, i think. the club meetings start next next monday, a little over a week from now. i'd like to also go to hillel, so maybe i'll do that next week. however, they were supposed to have a booth at grad orientation, but no one was there. if that's how they feel about the grad community, i'm not sure they're gonna be useful to me. i guess we'll see.

off to do homework, and laundry, and then cook for the week, weee!

p.s. i need a new default icon. i just changed mine to the toy me, but it's too similar to several other people on my friends list, so i wanna find another one. suggestions? i can't really use my old default one anymore, it's davidturtle and me holding hands, and it makes me sad to use it.

adventures in cooking

one of my cookbooks has an easy and delicious-sounding recipe for chilled cucumber and yogurt soup. you basically grate the cucumber, mix it in to the yogurt, add white wine vinegar, garlic, mint (but i don't like mint), salt, and pepper, and then chill. easy, right? and then, after i stirred everything in and tasted it to see if it needed more spice, i realized that i had acquired vanilla yogurt. d'oh! elaine is dumb. it actually tastes surprisingly good, all things considered, so i will eat it over the next few days. still, that was ridiculous.