Ben and Juliet, grad students and friends in Berkeley, got married in Australia earlier this month. Earlier today, they sent an email with pictures from their wedding, "proposal weekend," and their engagement party.

I was at the engagement party, back in January, and I remember that it was right after "the shit hit the fan" and it was very hard for me to go because I was so depressed and wanted to be alone. But I went and had a very nice time and thought I looked really pretty.

Looking at those photos now, I think, "My God, I'm as big as a house!" I had already lost about 25 pounds at this point--a loss that was noticeable to people I hadn't seen for long periods of time--but I will admit that the shirt I was wearing was very unflattering and hanging on me like a tent. I didn't realize it was so bad.

After looking at those photos around 10, I didn't eat anything for the next 14 hours, when I finally broke and cooked some pasta.

I'm really depressed today and it's not so much about my body. That's only one bit. The main component is that my time in Europe now feels finite, which, I suppose, it's always been, but I can see the finish line: Leon will visit, I'll celebrate my birthday with Caroline before she leaves to work at a summer camp for a month, I'll visit Dirk, and I'll see Barry in Paris. And then I'm done. It's over.

Yesterday I received an invitation to Spain for some time in August, and I honestly don't know if it is serious or how it could possibly solve any of these little problems that I seem to be having. But if the invitation still stands in a couple of weeks, I will accept it. I'll push it back to late August/early September, if possible, but I will go to Spain.

...Well, after discussing it with Leon, of course. And since I can speak Spanish and not Czech, it might be a more sensible place to be. But I'm getting way ahead of myself.

Let's concentrate on the here and now: I lost some more weight.

The HR department of the company at which I recently applied emailed me. I will be contacted "shortly" so they can interview me.

Not to sound cocky, but I think I'd have to botch this interview pretty badly for them not to offer me a position. And botching the interview is certainly a possibility, as I've given some pretty lousy answers to interview questions in the past. So I'm trying to think of what they're going to ask me and there are three potential questions for which I'm struggling to think of answers.

1. What do you do if you aren't able to make a deadline?

I was asked some version of this question at the first interview I had post-college, and I failed to give them a satisfactory answer. We must've spent five minutes on this one particular topic, as the three or four people interviewing me kept rewording the question in an attempt to extract something of value from me, but I just couldn't deliver.

I was all, "You do whatever you have to do to make the deadline."

And they were all, "But what if you can't?"

"What do you mean you can't? You do what you have to do; you pull out all the stops; you make the deadline."

This was obviously not the right answer.

2. What are some of your bad habits/traits?

I can't quite think of how that question is usually phrased, but it's generally a call for something negative about the interviewee.

A couple of months ago, I was out to dinner with Leon and some of his grad student friends, and they were joking about this question.

"Oh, gosh!" one of the said. "I just work too hard and I never ask for raises and I never complain about anything!" And everyone laughed, of course.

"But what is the right way to answer that question?" I asked, and no one had an answer.

3. Why did you leave your last job?

The challenge of this question is to say something that makes neither me nor Ask look bad. Typically, interviewees answer something about personal growth or exploring options (or whatever). But I, unlike most, quit my job without securing another one, and this requires explanation. And even though I've had to explain myself to many (many) people over the past two months, I still haven't cultivated a great, interview-appropriate answer.

Anyway, I hope they take the six hour time difference into account and call me before too long. This waiting around isn't as fun as it sounds.

So the party last Saturday night--the party at which, sadly, there were NO brandied cherries--was supposed to be a dance party. This was evident from the we'll-supply-the-music-and-dance-floor invite as well as the dimmed lights and twirling disco ball that created a space with lighting that was completely inadequate for the card game Set. Which Leon and I brought. Because we are dorks. Heh.

No one was really in the mood for dancing, though, just for mingling, drinking, and noshing on Tim Tams. At one point, I was seated on the sofa with three other people and when a fourth attempted to squeeze in, someone suggested that she bring over a chair. So she did.

There were a few wee chairs (purchased in Chinatown, it would seem, because of their wee-ness) by the bar, so she brought one over, positioned it in front of the sofa, and sat in it. A few minutes later, someone else did the same. And another.

By this point, this had set off a CODE RED among the party's hosts, who remarked to each other that their attempt to discourage seating was failing--because we were supposed to be dancing, not sitting. Dancing! And so the hosts politely told the people in the chairs that they couldn't sit in them, because they were taking up space on the dance floor and, clearly, if they weren't there, people would dance! So they lost the privilege of sitting.

This led the majority of us to seek out a new place to sit, and we ended up in one of the bedrooms, where there was a card table, and we commenced a game of...Set! A victory for dorks everywhere! (And, actually, for dancers. Because when we emerged from the bedroom some hours later, there were actually people dancing.)

The other event of note that evening was when some guy dropped a bottle of Wyder's on the off-white carpet. When we had first arrived, we were encouraged to take off our shoes, so one can only imagine the amount of panic that a spilled beverage would cause in the three party hosts. Leon, oddly enough, leapt at the spill with paper towels, while two of the hosts emerged ready for action, each with a bottle of Resolve in his hand. They sprayed and dabbed and cursed at that Wyder's while a room of 40 people looked on, fascinated.

"Why do three bachelors have more than one bottle of carpet cleaner?" I asked, and the answer was something practical, like one bottle was nearly empty. But I prefer to think that they have alter egos: grad students by day, stain-fighting dance-party hosts by night. They'll write algorithms and later, they'll put the moves on you AND the cocktail sauce in your berber.

…Or something.

All of my anxiety last week resulted in my losing one pound. But then as I began to feel better, I started hitting the Frosted Mini-Wheats hard and promptly gained it back. Go team Kate!

The fried calamari, beer, and late-night drunken pizza orgy probably didn't help matters either, as I more or less took a big steaming crap on my diet. Good thing it was only one pound.


There's a lot that I want to say, but I kind of feel like I'm under a gag order right now. All I can really say is that I feel sad and lonely, and I think Leon is getting sick of my neediness. I emailed him yesterday to see if he'd have lunch with me, but he was too busy. Last night, he said he was irritable, and who can blame him? This semester, he's taking his quals, which basically means he's presenting his PhD thesis idea; he's TA-ing a class, which requires that he teach two sections and hold office hours; he's still working on research; he's still taking at least one class; he's still in charge of social events in his department, and he's contracting for the company he interned with over the summer. If you add my drama to that pile, it's no wonder he's on edge.

While we were talking about his irritability, he brought up the subject of brandied cherries. Leon has wanted to make brandied cherries for at least a year, ever since his friends first mentioned wanting to make them and commented on their delicious tastiness. Leon wanted to surprise his friends by making some brandied cherries to share with everyone. So, when Sam visited earlier this month, the two of them finally made and canned brandied cherries.

There was a party on Saturday, and Leon really wanted to take a jar of his brandied cherries, but I insisted that it wasn't that kind of party where people planned to sit around and share canned goods; it was more of a turn-down-the-lights, turn-up-the-music kind of party. And, in the end, he was glad that he'd left the jar of cherries at home.

Still, he couldn't help bringing up the subject with Alex, who told Leon that the point of brandied cherries wasn't the cherries; it was the fruity liqueur they yielded.

"Well, why didn't they tell me that before?" Leon asked, perhaps feeling as though all his efforts had been crushed. "I found plenty of recipes for cherry brandy."

Later that night, as I was trying to fall asleep, I heard him open and eat a jar of cherries, and my heart sank.


Two weeks ago, I was talking with my therapist about my myriad problems and wanting, as always, that she tell me how to solve them. But she had another agenda.

"What I'm hearing," she said, "is what everybody else wants, and not what you want. What I want to know is what Katie wants." Yes, she calls me "Katie." I hate that.

Somehow this led into a discussion where she, honest to God, asked me for my first memories of childhood. Now, I don't believe in that. I don't believe that to solve my problems now requires that I deal with unresolved issues from when I was three. I think that's a great way to circumvent the real problem and postpone any real progress.

Nevertheless, I bought into what came out of this. Okay, I don't think it has to do with my childhood but she did nail a part of my personality that I didn't even know existed: my desire to be protected.

Telling others about this sounds so silly, especially when I tell them how it came about. But I really buy into it as something that needs to be fixed in me. And so now I have goals--goals that I came up with on my own--to make myself a stronger individual who doesn't need to be protected. These goals don't answer the question of "what Katie wants" but they ought to make me into the kind of person who feels more fulfilled and who knows "what Katie wants."

For now, if you're wondering about The State of Kate, here's a little breakdown:

1. Big bad news that I told my parents about = Still an issue, but sort of sitting on a shelf because of...

2. The shit that hit the fan. This is related to the big bad news and has sort of turned it on its ear, but it still seems to have a happy resolution available, but that just takes time, which leads to...

3. My little gag order. I can't speak of what is happening until I know what is going to happen, which unfortunately causes...

4. Feelings of anxiety and uneasiness, because I like resolution. It also causes me to be as boring as hell in this blog, because this is all consuming and writing about other things doesn't satisfy me. But writing about this can't possibly satisfy you, which suggests...

5. I need to get over myself. And I'm working on that! I have goals, and I'm trying to resolve things as much as I'm waiting them out. I'm hoping this won't take longer than a month. Let's see how many pounds I can take off and put back on in the meantime.

Whenever my life is remotely interesting, I don't feel like writing about it. I think this is perhaps because I always seem to make interesting things seem dull, whereas if life is dull, dull entries are only fair.

Suffice to say that I am well, and maybe I'll feel more inspired to write when things are boring again.

For now, here are some pictures from Halloween. Leon and I went to a party at our friends' apartment, where they made fondue, ziti, and pumpkin bread, and it was all delicious. We spent the time playing board games, and I had one of my most embarrassing Trivial Pursuit efforts ever. But there were actually several WTF questions, including one about former Idaho Senators, so I won't feel too bad.

Anyway, Leon made us some last minute costumes. We were conspiracy theorists.

Yesterday I went to a barbecue in the South Bay at Ben and Juliet's place. They have moved down there for her summer internship at AMD and have set up their home in a well-shaded apartment complex with ample parking and a pool.

It was quite warm, though, with the temperature climbing into the 80s outside and easily ten degrees warmer indoors. It was cooler outisde on the balcony by the grill, where several of the guys took their turn cooking up meat (or, in one case, veggie burgers). It's funny how barbecuing is sort of a male thing, and they were all impressive cooks. Leon made kebobs, and Alex made these skewers of marinated beef. David cooked prawns/shrimp; Ben cooked sausages; and Pratik made quesadillas and veggie burgers.

But because the grill was small and they couldn't toss everything on it at once, it was in use for a full four hours. And we just kept eating. Eight hours, we were gone for this barbecue and we continually put things in our mouths for at least five of them.

I think I gained five pounds--one for each hour. But I didn't eat anything else the rest of the day and Leon and I went for a walk when we returned.

Some pictures:


Getting the cat drunk.


Louis attempts to entertain the cat.


David, Juliet, and Alex relax on the balcony.


The whole (okay, most of the) BBQ gang.

I'm leaving for the airport in about ten minutes, and I should be in Seattle by 10:30, I think. I have all of this nervous energy that I seem to get whenever I'm about to get on an airplane but I'm sure I'll calm down before then.

Last night, Leon and I joined some friends for a little shindig hosted by The Onion's AV Club. The event was held at a movie theater in Oakland and they served beer and pizza and showed Dr. Strangelove. It was quite fun, and the movie was even better than I had remembered. Subbu offered to drive back to Berkeley, so Leon and I were both able to drink, which is quite rare.

Anyway, I just finished a shit ton of work and that, combined with my impending departure, has made my mind really scattered. I'll post again when I return!

Did you know that it's possible to make $8000 a month as an intern? It's true!

Several of Leon's grad student friends have secured internships for the summer with companies like Yahoo!, AMD, and Intel. Now, these are grad students who have completed two years of the PhD program at UC Berkeley--programs in computer science (artificial intelligence or human computer interaction) and electrical engineering. These are not your average interns.

Still, Leon didn't apply for an internship because he has a fellowship and thought it would be dishonest to accept income from the government while raking it in for another company (although I think the fellowship can be put on hold). He's also had a difficult time choosing an area of focus, so hunkering down in his research over the summer sounds like a good idea.

Also, $8000? Who knew?!

I think he assumes I'm upset with him for not getting an internship, but I'm not. I want him to do what is best for him, and right now, that's focusing on classes and research. He can get an intership next year.

But if we can sock away an extra thirty grand next year, it would be pretty fucking incredible. Especially considering that his current fellowship only lasts three years, after which he needs to secure another one or be paid the piddly $20,000(ish) grad student salary. If that's the case, you can imagine what the $8000 a month will feel like…

Yaaaaahoooooo!!!!!!

We were awoken this morning around 9:00 by repair work on our roof. Directly overhead, we could hear loud hammering and what must have been stampeding buffalo. Assholes.

Last night was insane. I couldn't get over the number of green-clad people out in North Beach, many of them toting those jumbo beer cans in brown paper bags. The city felt so alive and so very, very drunk.

And we saw a fight. An honest-to-God fight between two groups of men that resulted in one guy bleeding from the forehead. What was scary about it was that no one was being reasonable. Two guys went at it for whatever reason (this was happening on the sidewalk while we were in a cafe), and their presumably less drunk friends didn't try to break them up. Rather, they got into it too.

One guy was being held to the ground, and another just came up and punched him while he was down. And the one that was doing the holding received an atomic wedgie from someone who didn't appear to be involved at all. The wedgie giver then darted across the street and to safety.

But a wedgie in a street fight? I couldn't believe it! Everyone in the cafe was on their feet by the window watching this happen. It was so crazy, I can't even explain.

The police were out in full force too. I tried to snap some pictures with my camera phone of three police cars arriving on the scene across the street from us. Some guy said to me, "You're taking pictures?" and I said, "Of course." I think it was a pretty natural reaction to the situation, whereas with the fight, I was so paralyzed and my heart was racing that it didn't dawn on me until after the men had all left the scene that maybe I should've taken a photo or two.

Anyway, here's the best of my blurry photos of the police.



We also enjoyed a nice dinner with some friends:


Juliet and Ryan.


Divya, Lenny, and Ben.

And there were desserts and hot, caffeinated beverages aplenty.


Louis and Alex.

And please, please, please excuse this terrible picture of me, but we did get to meet Colin Quinn! It's really a bad angle for me, and all my make up has been worn off and I'm drunk, but should you care? No, because I got to meet Colin Quinn and that means I'm still cool!


Me, Colin Quinn!, and Leon.

Tonight, Leon and I are joining some friends in San Francisco's North Beach, which is supposedly having block parties in celebration of St. Patrick's Day. That's not why we're going, but if I can snag a green beer, I'm all for it.

We're going to have dinner and then see Colin Quinn, which is perfect and I'm sure there'll be plenty of Irish humor. I intend to get drunk, unless Leon wants me to be the sober one. I think it's my turn to be the sober one, but I would lurve to drink. Perhaps he won't mind.

Tomorrow, he and I will go for a nice long walk to Telegraph and have lunch. That's technically what I would consider "urban hiking." We didn't do any yesterday evening, because it rained. So he picked me up from work, and we went out to eat at a restaurant in Berkeley called Pomegranate. It was quite lovely inside and the food was delicious. I had lamb with roasted garlic, vegetables, and potatoes. Leon had a gyro salad. We also had some sort of nutty, red pepper spread on pita bread. Yum!

Also this weekend, Leon wants to teach me something in Unix, for work. I'd like him to teach me something in Javascript, for purely recreational purposes. I think I may buy a domain this weekend or at least fantasize some more about how I will want my new site to look, when I get it. I still haven't chosen the name for the domain, but I have some contenders.

I want a laptop computer, I realize, but I don't expect to get one any time soon. My current desktop is pretty top notch, and laptops are expensive. But I would love to go to Berkeley Espresso and share a chai with Leon while I play around on the intarweb and he does real work. That would be fun.

I'm also starting to think more and more about how we plan to move this summer. With the move will hopefully come a new sofa. I really like the sleek, modern look of this one:



But it's really not so different from our current look. And I'm not sure my guests will want to sleep on it. And I'm not sure how I feel about getting leather.

Anyway, I'm wearing a green t-shirt with a shamrock on it in honor of today's holiday. I feel like a cool dork, if that's possible. And I'm looking forward to the weekend.

I wish we had taken a camera to last night's "Beauty and the Geek" party, because I thought it'd be cool to get a photo of Ankur standing next to the TV while he was on screen. But it's just as well, because there were at least 35 people there, and we were crammed into a space that might have comfortably accommodated ten--tops.

Some people actually stood for the entire show, which must have sucked. Fortunately, Leon and I arrived early enough that we had good seats in just about the only corner of the room that didn't look like a pile of overlapping body parts.

Anyway, if you watched the show, you know that Ankur's team was eliminated in third place, which is not too shabby. He had sort of led Leon to believe he finished in second place, so we were a little surprised by the results. But it made us all the more pleased that we got to watch an episode with him while he was still competing and during which he provided a lot of interesting commentary about the other contestants.

(Most of that commentary centered around how the team of Josh and Cher was putting on a big act for the cameras, complete with scripting out what they would say in their testimonials and producer interviews.)

Oh, and a gaggle of about six girls showed up, and no one knew who they were. They eventually confessed that they knew Ankur through MySpace and they wanted to have their pictures taken with him. "Wow, you have groupies!" someone remarked.

But in lieu of posting pictures from last night (since none were taken), here is one of the better shots from several weeks ago. A group of us went into San Francisco and saw an improv group; Ankur ended up on stage. So that's him with a blurry improviser.

I felt my first earthquake yesterday. It was a 2.9 and about 2 miles Southeast of Berkeley, so not very exciting. Except that it kind of was. I felt our apartment building shake a little and it sounded like something exploded outside.

Leon also felt an earthquake yesterday, but his was earlier in the day and farther away. Actually, he didn't even feel it. He just saw the blinds shake and checked online if it had been a quake, which, obviously it was.

According to some little map/graph online, the chance of this area being hit with another earthquake soon has increased dramatically, and I'm a teensy bit scared that something traumatic is going to happen. I don't actually think there will be a huge earthquake any time soon, but I do worry somewhat about things that could kill me before I'm ready. Like electrical storms. Or Ephedrine.

Anyway, tonight we are going to watch "Beauty and the Geek" with Ankur. He's been hosting parties throughout the show's run, but we haven't gone to any of them, partially because some of them were hosted during the repeat Wednesday broadcast, partially because the parties were co-hosted by the sister of another one of the "Geek" contestants whom we didn't know, and partially because TiVo allows me to watch an hour-long program in about 45 minutes, whereas going elsewhere to watch the show would turn it into at least a 90-minute ordeal. I tend not to be a fan of ordeals.

But this will be one of our last opportunities to watch the show with Ankur--we're down to just three teams, as I'm sure you all know. And he is still a contender! So, obviously, he has a decent chance to win this thing. Go him!

I also met him for the first time about six weeks ago and there are photos from that evening, but they haven't made it online yet (and supposedly are really blurry), so no posting them yet. But he seems like a really awesome guy.

This weekend seemed spent almost entirely outside. Leon and I used the bulk of our time to refinish one of our dressers to match our bed frame. We stripped the wood, used steel wool on it, cleaned it with alcohol, and stained it with three coats. It still needs a coat of lacquer and its hardware replaced, but the project feels pretty much complete.

Unfortunately, even with the three coats of stain, it still looks nothing like the color on the can of stain--that is, the color of our bed. We even added "ebony" to our primary color "red oak" to make it darker and the effects were barely noticeable. I think Leon is pretty disappointed that we spent most of our weekend making our dresser look almost identical to the way it looked at the beginning of the weekend.

I'm not entirely pleased myself, but the wood has a reddish tinge to it now and looks richer and a bit darker. It certainly won't be a dead-on match but it's an improvement. Still, I will not be at all surprised if we do nothing but change out the hardware on the other dresser. It's a lot of work for a subtle tinge of red.

I'll post before and after pictures when we put on the gloss so you can see what I mean.

The other event that got me into the great outdoors was a barbecue, organized by Ryan. It was insanely impressive how he remembered everything. There were two kinds of bratwursts, hamburgers (which he spiced and made on location), salmon, corn on the cob, chips and salsa, fruit salad, three kinds of beer, and soda. That's not including all of his little tools. It was amazing and the food was delicious. I'm not excited about weighing in tomorrow morning, though.

Anyway, here are the men around the grill. Don't those cheeseburgers look fabulous?

Yesterday Prashant e-mailed a picture of me, Leon, and 12 other people to us. It was taken last Tuesday when we were out for dinner. When the picture was taken, I had just finished eating chicken broth with spinach and onions but from the looks of it, I had put away an entire kindergarten class.

That's right. I looked huge.

The picture was taken from my end of the table, which makes me one of the major focuses of the picture. My dining companions get smaller and smaller as you look down the length of the table, and one can't exactly tell if we are dining together or if I'm going to eat them.

Plus I had leaned towards Alex, so that Prashant could get everyone in frame. In doing so, my shirt was raised a smidgeon and the flash in the darkened restaurant really accentuates the section of fleshy white skin that is peeking out under my shirt.

Oh, and you can see my underwear too.

It's so freakin' embarrassing. Prashant sent this picture to everyone who was at dinner. He should have just titled it "Kate eats family of four, exposes self." Jesus Christ.

It seems like practically everyone has posted entries with pictures this evening, and I can't see any of them. What gives, livejournal?

Leon went to a party tonight and wanted me to go. I thought I'd be happy staying here alone. I don't think it's a good idea for me to be tagging along while he's meeting new people at Cal. Besides, I haven't had much time alone in the past month, since he's been working from home, and I'm at work most of the time.

This alone time is nice.

Ha! He just walked in the door.