It's still wierd, unnerving, unsettling, to drive home from a night uptown and be able to see remnants of the city's skyline in my rearview mirror while being surrounding by the pitch black, unelectrified, mangled-ness that is my next-door neighbor of Lakeview. There's this dichotomy of despairing destruction paralled by people trying to have fun and fulfill that human side of the nebulous process we've taken to calling "rebuilding." (check out Tom's pictures from driving around Lakeview 2 weeks ago)

Friday night Tommers, C-cup, and myself (pictures coming soon...get a preview in my just-created album on facebook) attempted to play Eduardo 32-ounce Hands at Tom's amazingly '70s apartment before going to some bars in Uptown with other friends. Most Walgreens in Florida have an attached liquor store, yet in my new wonderful city that has drive-thru daquiri places the Walgreens are liquor-less; so what should have been Edward 40 Hands was modified to fit what the only store (a gas station) on Power-David-Hickory-Dickory-Dock (in all seriousness, the road is named all of those words in a 3 mile span) had -- 32 ounce bottles. After I dropped one, though, I had to substitute 2 regular 16 ounce bottles.

I have no regrets about the college experience I enjoyed, but I'm wondering how different it would have been if I had lived like I do now, partying hard every week. And compared to most of my friends, what's "partying hard" to me is run-of-the-mill to them. I'm a novice, under the tutelage of some of the greats in having fun. I've learned more liquid games in the past 2 months than I did in 22 years.

We broke the city's 2 am curfew Friday, staying out until we were kicked out of the bar at 5 am. Our penalty was getting ripped off by the taxi, since he had to drive past the blockade to get back into the city after dropping us off and he was afraid of the marines. (It was crazy to see on our way out -- a real Army humvee armored car checking the IDs of incoming traffic) I made my first official non-work friend in a 23-year-old Marine who had just finished 7 months in Iraq after being in Afghanistan for a while. At some points in the conversation, I just didn't know what to say: how do you comfort a person who can't legally rent a car yet fights tears in a bar talking about his friends getting shot out of the sky by a surface-to-air missile? How do you assure him that you care, that there's a difference between being "liberal" and a "democrat" and "against war" and supporting his efforts and his desire to join the military to get an education and discipline? How do you have a discussion about patriotism versus pride in your country's legal ideals in the middle of a dirty, all-American bar? I wanted to hug Z and squeeze out every horrible memory and image of bleeding patriots singed into his mind, but I didn't. I didn't want to belittle the emotions he was sharing by trying to take them away.

Saturday C-cup and I joined some older co-workers (do married people ever hang out together, by the way? I never see people with their significant others and it seems strange to me) to watch college football. The rest of Fat Harry's was happy because LSU beat Ole Miss into the ground and then they became huge Georgia Tech fans when it became a real possibility that my beloved Yellow Jackets were going to win out over Miami, causing UM to drop their 3rd ranking in the BCS to allow LSU to move up. It was awesome to have people conratulate me for my victory -- that never happens for a Tech grad! Usually it's consolation from friends, not excited "wooooooo!!!!!"s What a great victory. Though we missed a few balls that should have been interceptions and were typically sloppy at some points, we still looked like a real football team for most of the game! :) GO TECH!!

I signed up tonight to participate in my first ever road race, something I've thought about doing for a while but haven't for a variety of reasons, timing, distance, in-shape-ness; I'm super excited and think it'll be especially cool because my parents will be here for the holiday so they'll cheer me on at the finish :)

Don't worry, Sarah, I promise I'm not going to interview at NASA next and move to Houston, now that I've started playing soccer and running in races hehe :) (oh, and we lost our second game this week, but I still had fun!)

Tom pointed out Friday that I hadn't posted in "nearly two weeks...fine, maybe 8 days" and gave me the following suggestions for topics that I feel like I should still address:

"how you fell in love on the platform
the story we're writing
your love of fried seafood
Calorie counting
how standardized tests are racial biased
only 20 more days of Robert
How candy bars have come back to the cafeteria
your giant piece of cake
thanksgiving with the flies"

First, going offshore last week was AMAZING (even better than the first time). I fell in love, as Tom noted, with the drilling rig and the smell of mud and being on a huge metal beast and the salty air and the funny operators and feeling necessary to something working and exploring and learning and! I can't decide which I want to do more, go offshore for my rotation or go abroad for a rotation. I let my mentor know how much I want to go off, but (for good reasons, I understand) I won't be able to until next year after my next training course in the Netherlands. *sigh*

I just got annoyed with myself for writing in here about a list -- yes, I want to record the memorable things that happen so I can look back and remember little things I'll probably forget made me laugh or smile, but I'm not thinking here enough, and that's what I enjoy most about this medium, this being able to postulate about life and potentially make someone else think something differently or with a new consideration, just like I what I read other blogs for. So enough listing.