open up my eager eyes

I'm tired, but happy. It was a really strange day, or rather strange combination of strange things. I woke up early to open the mafia board, and then went straight to work for an 8am meeting. Mafia itself was crazy, due to a bunch of occurrences that are funny only if you know the game in our peculiar variations, and which I can't talk about because people who are still alive read this occasionally.

Even if it was only mafia, it would have been a fun day. But no...first, you can add to that the fantastic dinner I had tonight. It was my group's Q3 offsite, and we went to Left Bank (the santana row branch, not the Menlo Park branch). I had very tasty steak (with a roquefort/butter sauce), and a drink (champagne w/some peach schnapps in it, awesome), and appetizers, and desserts, and tea, and it was *great*. I love that place. I could have eaten a dozen oysters, though, and I only got one, so I'll have to go back at some point. We got into a heated political discussion at the end, made all the more heated when I very stupidly came out as a Republican rather than keeping my mouth shut like I normally do. Two years of being on staff taught me to keep my political views to myself, and I should have stuck to that policy, but I like a good argument sometimes, and I like it better when it's me vs. everyone, so that was great.

But no, the *strangest* thing of the day was that I took a break from work this afternoon, sauntered over to the cafe, and got to listen to a Q&A session with former president Jimmy Carter. So weird! To be able to take a break from work and go listen to a former president...awesome. Simply amazing.

Oh, and I found out that there are like four straight paragraphs on me in this article in the Stanford Report: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2004/september1/sophcollege-91.html

I talked to the dude a few weeks ago after my prof passed my name to him for his article, but I forgot all about it. However, my old manager came up to me today and said that he'd read the article. So, I checked it out--and was amused/slightly horrified to note that the magazine reported that I only intended to stay at work long enough to save money before grad school. Hahaha. They always say you shouldn't really tell people you are planning to exit until you have the exit strategy in place--and now, I have no strategy (since I don't know if I'm applying this year or next) and anyone under the sun can read that I am planning to leave work in the near- to mid-future. Ah, lovely.

Anyway, time for bed! Take care, my friends, and come back to school soon--I miss you.