continental ballroom 4

Hey dyyyyudes –

I’m sooo at work right now. One of the printers is busted in the back of the room and is constantly beeping. You know the sound. Eeeeeep. Eeeeep. Eeeeep. Constant. The Neverending Eeeeeeping. The entire staff has been hearing it for 3 hours straight now, and I think we’re all going a little mad. It’s hilarious to watch, especially my senile CEO’s reaction. I thankfully found my ipod in my bag, so jim croce and jelly roll morton are now pulling me through.

Reena and lars are in town for the American Association of Geographers conference, lars on the futon below the loft, reena in my luxurrrrious bed with me. IT HAS BEEN SO GOOD TO SEE THEM. Lars was here for a few days before reena, so ive actually been able to “bond” with him for a bit. Bonding, how cute. We went birding last weekend and it completely rocked. We stayed up north at his old work site with his old research friends in Bolinas near Point Reyes. We were actually able to talk a lot, more than we ever did in grad school really – and yes (Mario) he is a bit bizarre, but he’s actually fairly awesome as far as sense of humor and wit is concerned. Also mario: he said great things about living with you in Iquitos. He actually said that he misses you (!!), and that you’re research was going really well (something Ken told him). Yes!!

ALSO, this is super cool, Lars is going to be able to NAME A NEW BIRD SPECIES. How cool is that?!!! He found a bird that noone knew existed. So freaking cool. His dorky birding dreams have come true.

And reena. Oh reena. How I love her so very much. I wish she lived closer, man. Shes so wonderful. Makes fun of me, constantly snickering, shocking and laughing. I love her so much. And she one yet MORE awards, her "Working the Night Shift" paper (how risque!!) won best paper of her specialty group and received funding to write her dissertation so she doesn’t have to teach next year.

They are both here until Monday. Lars went back up to Bolinas this weekend (i think to mate with someone??! apparently he is not, in fact, asexual - ha) , so thankfully I will have some girl-chat-hang-out time with Reena until Sunday. Oh how I love her. shes also stoked about coming down to Iquitos, Mario - get ready - haha-

On a related note, I ran into a ton of former professors from Geography at UT when going up there to see Reena and Lars present… (Names for Mario): Kelley, ken, bill, paul… and everyone seemed really glad to see me, asking me how I was and all that. I told them that I was still interested in geography as a potential topic of study, but was still trying to figure out exactly where I would fit in. they seemed happy to see that I was taking my time with it, still exploring, etc. It was great to see them too - a bit uplifting somehow. Although that was a really rough period of my life at times, i have some great memories of that place.

So my life over the course of the previous week and week plus has been my grad school friends. Theres more to write about other things of course, but I can only write like mad for so long in the office.

Hope all is well out there. More as soon as Monday. Or sooner. Who knows.

Love you kids a lot,

Jen