hey, look, i'm back! i'm still somewhat sick, a little congested, but much much better than i was last week. i got lots of sleep in the past four or five days, which certainly helped. i'm waiting for the aleve cold and sinus to kick in so my eyes will stop itching, because i'm already tired from trying to catch my nose (you know, because it's been running.... thank you, thank you, i'll be here all week. try the veal. on second thought, go for the turkey instead. it's much more humane).

the great and benevolent zoltán was up here this weekend (that would be my brother, by the way. he insists on being called by his given name now, and i have trouble thinking of him in a formal manner like that without the "great and benevolent" part. sorry, zol, big sister privileges ;)). it was good to see him, as always, but what his visit signifies is somewhat sad. we've been putting off putting my lovely dog down until zoltán could get up to northern california to see him... and now that he has, does that mean it's Time? it's really hard to decide that, especially after a weekend where my poor old pup was looking happier than he'd looked in ages, since his whole pack was home. duna has his good days and his bad days, and while his good days are somewhat decent, his bad days are starting to get pretty bad. when the bad days outnumber the good, i guess. it's just such a difficult thing. i know people lose their pets (and family members, and friends, etc) all the time, but it's always so damn sad...

went to maples pavilion to see the ucla women's basketball team lose to the pac-10 champion stanford. it was a decent game, although ucla trailed the entire time. fun to be at, especially since it was almost a full house. impressive turnout for a women's game. not as many ucla alumni showed up as i would have liked, but the crowd that came was fun. i had breakfast beforehand with my long-lost screaming buddy ronnie (a fellow alum) and her roommate carina, who are both in grad school/med school at uc berkeley. i like ronnie immensely-- she's one of those people who just seems to have it all: the brains, the charisma, the charm, and the unfathomable amount of personality that just makes everyone love her. i'm excited that i've actually reconnected with her, seeing as she disappeared for two years of peace corps duty in ecuador and i totally lost contact. i'm glad to know she's just across the bay now :)

she may be even closer, if i start looking into moving out to the berkeley area. my roommate is talking about moving farther down the peninsula to be closer to work (in san mateo), and that's not really feasible for me. it depends on what the situation and location are, but i'm going to look into a place for myself as well so i have some options. i need to make my living situation work out as what's best for me, rather than getting sucked into something because i feel like i don't have an option to do anything else. while teddie and i are really good roommates and pretty good friends, in this particular sense he seems to be only thinking about his needs. if it ends up working out, great, but if not, i'm going to be needing to find an alternative for myself so i don't end up short shrift. so, if anyone knows of a good place in berkeley, sf, or daly city area, let me know! :)

my office is now the proud recipient of 21 new yellow pages phone books. the delivery guy asked me how many we needed, and i told him "two." he thanks me, leaves, and returns with three delivered directly to my office. they were all packaged together so i figured he was just too lazy to take out two. three is close to two, so i didn't say anything. i walked out of my office a few minutes later to discover that he had dropped off yellow pages packages all around the whole floor! there are a total of nine people working in my office currently, but we have 21 phone books! woo hoo! morons. and wow, what a phenomenal waste.