Another post...

It's a laundry and tv watching night. Originally, I thought that I would get home early but by the time that I got done with this seminar and set up some experiments, it was late. I am looking forward to the days when it gets light again coming home and I can just fire up the grill in my backyard...Anyways, it was a busy weekend -part of Sat. I spent at this conference, then got my car washed for the first time in 6 months (dust and dirt gather much more on the car here than in Tucson if you can believe that) although I need to replace some belts on it, just don't want to spend the money yet. I also saw the dentist last week and eyedoctor. The dentist told me that I am a powerful grinder and need a nightguard, ha, I guess that's the price of stress although I am going to wait a while because it costs big bucks. Meanwhile, there was some stupid glitch in my health insurance so it was deactivated without my knowing so I spent some time on the phone this week dealing with that. I still have to go back to the eyedoctor and pick out some glass frames. The good news is that my eyesight hasn't changed since 5 years ago-just as bad as it was-ha!
Yeah-I did end up getting my haircut and blond highlights-it cost me a huge amt of money, basically a plane ticket(144 bucks) but it was worth it, I feel lighter. I just need to get my ass in gear and shed my tummy weight.
I met a new neighbor-well rather he has lived here a few months already but the other night was the first time that we talked. He's an architect and we realized that we share a 6 degrees of separation thing. He's from New Jersey and went to college in NY. His best friend from college was in the same graduating high school class as the brother of my best friend from high school, so 2 grades below me. Pretty funny. We were talking about having a block party or bbq. That would be cool although I do have some odd neighbors. One new guy likes to push his grocery cart around every night really late-no idea what's in it.

Oh -so since the days when we all did karoke in Tucson (grad school year 1 or 2?), I did it for the first time again this past Fri nite at this place in Culver City called The Scarlett Lady. It reminded me of the bars in Tucson-like the Red Garter. I went with a bunch of postdoc guy friends, and no, as usual, I drank little but belted out my favorites-Madonna and Annie Lennox. We were out till like 2am. One drunk guy who is a regular apparently kept on coming up to shake my hand. Apparently the last time that this crowd went here, there was an ex playmate bunny serving as dj who was hitting on all of the guys.
On Sat nite, this conference held its reception at this W hotel in Westwood-very fancy! I had a good time chatting with my boss and some other random people. Later that night, the bar was really crowded-lots of yuppies. I got nervous when the valet took my car off to park-they drive super fast. Although when I picked it up, I was listening to this classy Brit guy and his girl-the valet had given their rental car to the wrong couple -how stupid is that!?

This week has just been busy with experiments and classes-I am sitting in on a microarray analysis class because I will be doing those in the future-it's pretty neat but I am still not crazy about going to classes for 8 hours a week! Thurs night I am going to try a new dinner place in Santa Monica with a bunch of gal pals, actually get out during the week!

Julie