I hosted my first party the other day. It was a potluck and a bunch of my friends came by. It turned out to be pretty fun. I was nervous, as I always am before hosting things (I tend to throw parties for friends birthdays). I even cooked something.

For whatever reason, my parties tend to turn silly. There was a little wine involved, but not that much. Grown men and women talking about strategically placing a fart machine near our stats professor so it goes of intermittantly during class, playing soccer with a balloon, and making a hat out of newspaper.

In other exciting news, I used "Evites" to send out invites to another party. This one is at my parents house, and my mom is making Indian food for everyone. It should be great. I'm such a dork, I love checking the evites to see if I got responses. Im addicted to my evite. I love writing my own form of "Yes" (Right on!), "Maybe" (Decisions, Decisions), and "No" (Bummer.) I want to invite people to something (or nothing) just so I can have the joy of designing a lovely evite, and checking for responses.

I'll be out soon.

I can't take the enormity of Christianity that is on the news day in and day out.

There I said it. It may sound awful, but thats just how I feel.

I like religion of all types. I have friends who have brought me into the worlds of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Atheism and many subtexts of these. I think religion helps many people retrieve a sense of peace and hope when they feel like there is none. I don't like people selling their religion to me, telling me why I should believe one way or another. If my heart takes me one way or another, then that way I shall go.

It seems like everyone is consulting The Bible to make decisions. Concerning Terri Schiavo, I do understand it, since people are divided by science and morals. (I think there is a diplomatic way to handle this, but I'm sure for some legal reason, its not possible) But I just read an article about a man in Colorado who was served the death penalty, and had his sentence switched to life in prison since jurors consulted the Bible during deliberations. The Governor of Colorado and the prosecution saw no problem with this.

Did someone throw out the Constitution? Didn't many people come here from England for the separation of Church and State? We are seeing the effects of the combination of Church and State.

I suppose the part that angers me is the question of, "What if that were me?"

If I were Terri Schiavo, would people be rallying to make sure I get fed, or would I be considered destined to hell since I am not a Christian? And would this same line of thought be valid in other situations where others would be required to decide my fate in some way?

I hope not.

2 great things.

1) Monday, after doing double time on the phone and the computer, I got U2 tickets!! I'll be in the nosebleed seats at Madison Square Garden in November!! I think we are higher than the scoreboard!! I can't wait!

2) I will be spending 10 weeks of my summer in Athens, Greece (as opposed to Athens, Georgia) for my internship. I'll be working on some sort of Health and Policy development to protect women from ending up in a sex trafficking ring that is going on in Europe, in collaboration with the World Health Organization.

No wait, one more thing...

3) It was a beautiful spring day today.

I feel like I should break something myself before the streak gets too good.

ARGH!

That is all I have to say.

I am a victim of Tremendous effort leading to bad luck.

U2 tickets went on sale this weekend. Now I have never been physically present to ever buy concert tickets, so I wasnt sure what to expect. Last time I found out they were touring (I saw them during the Elevation tour), I was in India, and I emailed my friends to see if they could get tickets. Sure enough, one did.

Moving on...

Tickets went on sale at 10am, Tasha and myself headed over to our nearest Ticketmaster location around 8:30. We find out that there is a lottery for buying tickets. This means, they hand you a raffle ticket with your number on it, and this little ticket basically decides your fate. I had no idea this was how it was done, but ok, now I know.

We were standing in line, in a row, since we figured lottery meant they draw all the tickets and thats how we form the line.

Here is the dictionary.com definition of lottery.

Did you notice the word RANDOM in that definition? I did.

When this so-called 'lottery' time came up, the manager of the store picked ONE number (not so lucky for me, it was the ticket for the last people in line, and we were one of the first), and started lining up people in a sequental order. The last number was ticket number 590006, and the next person in line was 590007.

This went on until the latter numbers were done, and then he began lining up the earlier numbers. What was my number? 589089.

Needless to say, the latter half of the line was in an outrage, trying to tell him the definition of lottery. If I knew that was his definition of lottery, I would have had one of us stand in the back.

We knew we weren't going to get tickets, and we tried calling ticketmaster to no avail, and tickets were sold out in 30 minutes. The reason why it took so long? Jimmy Buffet tickets were on sale at the same time, so people were snatching those up too.

I was bummed, because I felt like I got robbed. If the "Lottery" was the way I assumed lottery to be, I would have felt a little better if my particular ticket was chosen last. But no. My fate was in someone else's hands.

I know there are many worse things in life than this (like Gonzaga losing to Texas Tech yesterday in the NCAA basketball tournament), and I know my life will go on, but I hate it when my fate rests in others hands. ARGH!

Allow me to introduce another excerpt of "Conversations with Mom"

The Setting: Mom and I are driving back from seeing my brother. I'm driving, mom is in passengers seat, radio is on.

Radio: "Big Pimpin' spendin' cheese..."

Mom: "What is he saying? Spending cheese? What does that mean?"

Me: "He's spending a lot of money."

Mom: "That is stupid. Why doesnt he simply use the word Money? Whats this cheese? Sounds so stupid."

Me: "Its ok."

Radio: "..Jigga man..."

Mom: "What?! Jiggle Man? Is he fat?"

Me: "No Ma, he's not."

Mom: "He just said he was."

Me: *Promptly changes the station to the LITE station*

A lot of my friends have been through many milestones which I havent reached yet, and I always cheer them on.

Then, along comes that one friend who I thought would be behind the times like myself, who reaches a milestone I'm not close to.

This weekend I had 2 of those friends reach milestones. One got engaged, and one had her baby shower.

The baby shower was nice, although I was the only one who was neither married, or with child. Even the girls who I went to high school with were talking about teething and day care, and the older mom's on the other side of me were talking about grandchildren. I felt a little out of place. Then I received the Yahoo photo album for the shower, where there's a picture of me at the corner of tables grandmother and new mothers with the caption, "You'll be at the mommy table soon Dr.P!"...glad to know that was sent to all her family and friends *sarcasm*.

So after seeing way too much pink for one day, I went to my parents house where they proceeded to tell me that they would like to being their process of moving back to India by December. So by the time I graduate in May 2006, they'll be done too. I know they want to go...they've spent more time in this country away from their mothers and siblings, and they've done all they need to do here, so they deserve not to be tied down by us (Me). Knowing that my stable home will not be ours anymore is a little saddening. I like knowing my parents are at least in the same time zone as I am. My friends have said I can go visit their parents if I need some parenting. heh heh.

So I've been reassessing. Where I am, where I am going to, and what will become of me. To be honest, I havent come up with any answers, and I think I have to get used to that.

Since I wasnt able to go to my old job on a regular basis, I had to get a new job. (Meaning=I got fired)

My new job will inspire you.

Have you ever wondered what Universities do with all the applications they receive once they are done with them?

They save them in a dingy basement somewhere in the depths of the school. Now that everything is becoming computerized, they have to somehow put all of these applications online.

This is where I come in. I get to remove the staples from the application, place them in a specific order with each applicant's specific identifying bar code on top, so the school can scan the information.

Although there is an interesting perk...I read some of the applications. There are a LOT of intelligent people out there who have done some amazing things.

I know. I never thought my skills would ever be put to use.