Run-in with the TSA

Rich and I met up during his cousin's wedding in Maine. Since we split our stuff in a rather hasty manner, I have boxes of his books and CDs, and he has some things of mine. I asked him to bring a small plastic backpack that I knew had toiletries stuffed inside of it. I got woken up by a call from him early Fri. morning at the airport. He'd been stopped and searched during the security check. I then remembered that we had used that plastic backpack as the "random stuff bag," tossing in loose things around the apartment as we were clearing out of it. Apparently, the bag had been filled with a hammer, screwdrivers, nails, a lighter, an exacto-knife/blade thing, and......... a cap gun. Needless to say, they removed all of those things from his bag, and he was allowed on his way with the original toiletries that I had wanted. Rich was not happy, but at the time when he called, I couldn't stop laughing. It was like a TSA training exercise, or a rundown of the list of what not to bring on a plane.

Been a Long Time

I haven't posted in a while. So, of course, I'm using this opportunity of staying up late to finish homework to blog instead. I'm in my first month of school. Life is extremely busy with homework due all the time, and research all the rest of the time. I spent most of my days and nights in my office on my new Mac PowerBook. My classes are really interesting; I'm taking Quantitative Methods for Policy Analysis, Probability and Estimation for Engineering Systems, and Privacy Policy, Law, and Technology. I'm also doing research related to privacy and security on the Internet.

Since I've been here, I've met a lot of cool and interesting people. I had a birthday party the 2nd week of school (Fri. 9/9) which was a big success. I grilled pizzas, and made sangria and margaritas for about 40. I've made dinner for people a few times, and have also met various people who also went to Northwestern! The international students are cool, coming from Portugal, New Zealand, England, Canada, and other places.

Scott's been up to visit, taking me on a trip to Ikea to funish my room. I finally got my bed upstairs after much grief over not being able to get the box spring up the stairs to my room. (I ended up buying a split queen size box spring.) I went clubbing once before school started at a church turned club called Sanctuary, going early enough so that we didn't have to pay a cover (that's still too early). In between all of these things, I've also hit the Strip District twice; and I saw "Voces Inocentes" as part of the Amnesty International Film Festival with Charles and Cole.

Wedding-wise, I went to Ed and Cynthia's wedding in Buffalo, and then just attended Phillip (Rich's cousin) and Michelle's wedding in Maine. I missed Jaci and Thaddeus's wedding this past weekend, and I'm missing Josh and Erin's wedding this coming weekend. Oh, and lots of people had birthdays!

The bad stuff: I lost Dean to kidney failure. He was a good cat.