eggs!

haha.

today, i checked my hotmail account (this is momentous, as i typically only check it ...oh, once every one or two months), and lo and behold, i found an email from silver diner.

:)

it beckoned for me to come back and eat some eggs, and i thought of splendid times of chalky hands and awesome omelets while being squished into a tiny booth and make totally inappropriate jokes... loudly.

the silver diner email also made me remember the ORIGINAL eggs place in alexandria, va... the place whose name is completely forgotten and can really only be referred to as "eggs". yum, those were good times after climbing days at sportrock. i'd get scrambled eggs and potatoes (for cheap!) or an awesome greek salad, and crazy-gil would get a full-blown slab of pork chops, and opie would furiously munch on waffles. oh dear.

i tried instituting an eggs tradition out here, but alas, we're lame and could only make it to ihop a handful of times before we sorta ditched the idea. people had to "go to sleep" or "get home" or something like that. booooooooooo. moo. eggs.

flag day, wahooooo

happy birthday to meeeeeeeeeee
happy flag day to everyone else :)

actually, both were yesterday, so i'm a bit belated in my greetings. nonetheless, happy june 14th.

i am now officially ... GASP.... 24. that's. um. old. i know i know, i'm not really aged or wrinkly or stooped over just yet, but hey, 24 is no young chickadee. i've hit the mid-20s. yikes-o-rama. i'm just waiting for the gray hairs to appear. haha, and my mom specifically warned me to take care of my skin and health and.. well, everything else like she typically does.

i spent my 24th birthday aboard our 90-foot research vessel all day from 8am to 5pm. we did drills (man overboard! fire! abandon ship!) under the intense sun from morning to late afternoon, and despite some serious heat and delirium, it actually turned out pretty well. i EVEN got to jump in the incredible (and salty and plankton-y but COOL!) bay water for our man overboard situations. haha, it was awesome. we bobbed around in full-blown floatcoats and lifejackets. totally hilarious. and dennis, our land program director, managed to act as a victim for all 8 situations. he's great at flailing in the water and getting hauled up and down out of the water. hehe. "it's a good day to be a victim" :)

and now, it's friday. phew.

aloha june

summer has arrived. which basically means, in northern california, that the weather is still in the mid-upper 70s along the peninsula, sunny, and breezy in the afternoons. it's a little warmer during the day, but it's still foggy and cold in the city, and there's certainly no rain in the forecast.

my friends tell me that i'm tan. and it's definitely true.. though i haven't noticed it too much 'cause i spend most days outside in the sunlight (don't worry, i wear lots of sunblock!) and my co-workers are equally tan. the summer programs at MSI have started... so for the next 9 or 10 weeks, i'll be dealing with little and big kids on a week-long basis instead of a 4-hour basis. it should be fun, and refreshing, and pretty solid. the other day, at our staff party, i noticed just how awesome my co-workers are. we're all about the same age, about the same mindset, and we tend to spend our non-working hours with friends, in the mountains, or munching on food. we also spent 3 hours of the staff party playing around on a slack line. haha.

come next fall though, i'm not entirely sure where i'll be working. finding the "perfect" (in quotation marks because it probably doesn't exist... but despite all my amazing pessimism and practicality and realism, i refuse to give up hope that an ideal job isn't out there somewhere) job is an intricate balance of a bunch of factors:

timing
money
challenges
location
environment and co-workers
interest
goals

timing has to do with "where am i in this stage of life." money is... well, money. challenges is "how hard is this job? do i have to THINK?" location has to do with whether or not the west coast is the right place, or europe, or greece, or wherever. environment and co-workers play a HUGE, almost more-important-than-it-should-be, role in how wonderful a job is -- cubicles? lame-o employees? interest: do i wake up dreading the day? goals: where am i going?

ahh, questions that almost always remain unanswerable. i've discovered that i only have very vague ideas for timing and goals, whoops. but with regards to money, challenges, location, interest, and environment and co-workers, i know what i want now. isn't that awesome? (no really, it is good. no sarcasm here) now it's just a matter of finding it. hm. hm hm. hm hm hm.

but really, how many people can say that they play with sharks all the time? :)

mini-epiphanies of a monday

today, i discovered

- gas went down 7 cents. wahoo, only $3.46/gallon.
- i'm a pretty good teacher
- i always contribute almost-too-much effort
- my room is a disaster
- it's june, and my calendar says may
- i sat and breathed this weekend but not enough
- san francisco is really pretty