Hey Friends

Wanted to catch you all up with how things have been in D.C. I'm sorry I haven't been in better touch--for some reason it took 3 weeks (!) to get internet in the house.

I've moved into my new house in Mount Rainier, Maryland (sounds like ray-near). It's a great little place. The rent is obscenely cheap and it's a great set-up. It's a really nice four bedroom three bath with a front and a back yard, a living room with a fireplace, and a porch.

My Living Room

I'm living with three other guys who all went to Guilford, and it's been great getting to know them. Will is a Friend who works with me at FCNL. He also volunteers at a local bike co-op and plays in a really great band, Ugly Purple Sweaters (they're really good). My other two housemates are Will and David one of whom is an editor and the other of whom is a lumberjack/rugby player. They're all musicians, and there are no less than four copies of rise up singing in the house.

Work is great. I talked a little bit about what I did in my earlier post. Being in DC is a rush of information, talking points, and committee hearing. It's exhilarating, challenging, and exhausting all at the same time.

Anyway, please feel free to get in touch with me. A blog is great, but nothing replaces seeing someone's face or hearing their voice. I'm on skype (patrick.lozada) and g-chat etc. I'll let y'all know if I'm up in the PA/MA/NY area.

With care.

Patrick

Copyright

We must copyright the term strollick. Apparently the young'uns are getting hold of it.

Spicy grapefruit margaritish

Oh MAN this is good. Wanted to share.

Ok, so I'd say this makes 6-8 drinks?

2 Grapefruits

2 cups limeaid

Tequilla

Course sugar

Mellon (optional)

Hot peppers (like jalapenos)

Juice two grapefruits. Save the juice.

Blend the pulp with sugar, and a little bit of melon if you have it.

Take wine glasses, coat the rim w/grapefruit juice. Fill a plate w/sugar and dip the glasses into it.

Optional: Put one melon ball and a sliver of pepper in each glass.

In each glass put:

2 parts tequilla

1 part grapefruit juice

1 part blended mixture

Top w/limeaid

SO GOOD. (Then we went to a costume banquet.)

Grrrrrr!

I wish I had a pic of Nathan as a bumble bee in tights.

boston frostin'

This weather makes me feel like a true eastcoaster: It's about as cold as if someone, coming in from the summer air, put a freezing cold drink down on top of me. Boston is frigid, and I am wearing two coats in the morning despite it still being summer. The rain hasn't been bad at all, though.

I work at a small web development company called vermonster, not named after the ice cream but about as air conditioned, and thankfully, I work 9 to 5. I have been told this is untrue of virtually every company my size that works with code, so I am grateful. We do consulting; we spend our workdays coding with clients (who work 9-5; thus we do too), side by side with people who change every couple of months as we finish our projects. We meet new people, we bond closer with each other, or at least that's the idea. The environment is good; people are happy; I'm a little insecure because I'm not that useful yet, but I'm learning fast enough to be confident that I will be. And confident that I will be able to project enough confidence/interpersonal skills to work well with clients, which is important.

As Solomon said, we + Andrew S-H spend most of our time playing starcraft or immersing our brains in various other interesting distractions. I think we are united in our sense that we want to Get Out More, although it's tough. We get home and we're tired, hungry, bewildered at the setting sun. The three of us have a lot of fun though, despite two of us being very confused whenever Solomon calls our shared name. For me the atmosphere of this group's collective friendship remains in our house, although I know things are changing too.

Things I'm doing: I've joined a chorus with many young people and start real rehearsals next week. It's called the Boston Choral Ensemble and it's pretty sweet. I _almost_ decided to join a different chorus called the Cambridge Chamber Singers, and I learned just today that Mickey McCauley joined that choir! The world is small and 'Fords, despite their terrible gas mileage, seem to encompass it. I've been going out to concerts with Matt Stern (and sometimes his step-grandma), which have been fun. I'm feeling good about my life so far; despite my shyness amongst all this newness I haven't really retreated from a social possibility yet, which is important to me. Between quaker meetings, music, and work, I think I have enough social legos to build one of those... you know... lego things that you keep under your bed for an embarrassing number of years. What I mean to say is I feel optimistic about living my life, in these futures we are likely all trying to define, while at the same time retaining connections and drawing on the surplus code of our past.

I like this format of short sharings! We should continue it.
-Andrew

Once more, slowly. . .ar-kay-tuh.

Unlike the last three posters, I'm not actually that busy, but today is the first day I've had internet (hoooooray, I can feel the horrible withdrawal symptoms receding into memory already) so I'll jump on the life update bandwagon.

So I'm finally getting settled down in Arcata, CA.

It's a strange town of 17,000 people with a big state university. We're snuggled into the redwoods and the government is the green party, so I am back in hippy country big time. The climate is Londonesque, as you can see from the picture, and I think most of the people may be stoned most of the time. It is also not Arcadia California, which is more fun to say but hundreds of miles south.

My life right not now consists of lacklusterishly looking for a job and equally unvigoriously studying for the GRE. There isn't a lot of work in Arcata.

Other than that it's all about setting up our super swell new digs. It's just me and Nathan and it's a townhouse with way cheap rent. Two levels. Back deck. Beautiful kitchen. My god, I'm in love with this house . . . I could write it sonnets. I never knew I could feel this way about a space. Maybe it has to do with sleeping in a car for a bit a while back while looking for places? Anyway, all the strollickers have an open invitation to visit and come stay with us. Arcata does have an airport, and if you make it out here I will cook for you, clean up after you, sing to you, maybe write YOU a sonnet.

Here are some pictures from a couple of days ago.

Still pretty messy and mid-set up, as you can tell.

This is the door.

This is the kitchen.

This is the deck which also has a creek behind it! Woo creek. I think I sort of suck at taking pictures.

Among recent adventures, two days ago I went on the "skunk train" which is a many hour ride train that takes you though the redwoods while everyone gets quite drunk and then parties in the woods. We didn't get drunk, but had fun watching the strange california neo-hippies and middle aged semi-professional rural sorts get trashed on free beer and fall asleep on the train.

I miss everyone a bunch.

Eastcosters: Everyone fair ok with the recent crazy weather?

Sol: Can you give us the recipe for the homemade Kahlua?

O hai there

Hello friends! I too have been super-busy, but would like to briefly update everyone on what I've been up to.

My job at Penn is going well. I'm working with the Drug Discovery group at a center that focuses on a range of neurodegenerative diseases. Most of my work so far has been going towards making preparations of a protein that leads to Alzheimer's, and using that protein to test new drug compounds as well as attempt to discover new things about how the protein fibrillizes. It's a big lab, and there are plenty of young people here too. Since it's connected to Penn, I get some cool benefits and access to stuff. It's interesting being around the campus right now when all the new students are arriving for the first time and undergoing orientation; it makes me think back on Haverford's customs week.

I'm living in my own studio apartment in West Philadelphia, right by Clark Park. It's really working out great. The area is very friendly and feels like a community, and there are always people hanging out, making music, or holding barbeques in the park. There's a farmer's market 1-2 times a week, and it's less than a mile's walk to work. My apartment itself is quite small and one room (I will include pics once it's tidier), but is perfect for my needs right now. I'm very much enjoying living on my own. I've also had a lot of culinary adventures; this past week has included ventures into stuffed acorn squash, buckwheat banana pancakes, frittata, and multitudes of blueberry muffins, now that I have a muffin tray that fits my toaster oven. (I would share pics, but usually things get eaten before I remember to take them.) I have also discovered my new favorite GreenThing, Kale. Does anyone else like Kale? It's cooool. :O Why did we never have this in Quaker House? It's like the perfect hippie alternative weird vegetabley food thing, right up there with quinoa. (love it!)

Oh, my kitchen = two electric burners, a toaster oven, a mini fridge, and enough counter space to almost fit one cutting board, which makes my culinary exploits even more impressive.

I've been going to a lot of live concerts lately - this weekend I saw Incubus, the other week I saw Ke$ha (Because I'm that classy!) It's really awesome being right in the middle of everything and so close by to all these amazing things. If anyone wants to attend any concerts in Philly or stay the night at some point, potentially in conjunction with a 'ford visit, let me know! I haven't visited any of our friends at college yet this semester, but if anyone wanted to coordinate that together, I'd be down.

Can't think of anything else to say!

my-my-my-my, like pelican fly;
-Julia

Heyo Brochachos,

I am just up to my face in stuff and things out here! but I will make an attempt to continue to update.

IBM has been treating me pretty well; I haven't died of it yet, and the people there are mostly pretty neato. I'm doing QA for supply chain software. Supply chain software are tools that businesses use to track inventory; our piece of it falls in distribution, so we deal with placing orders, shipping, returning/cancelling orders, and stuff like that. If you've placed orders through the websites for places like Gap, Best Buy, and yes, evidently even Williams-Sonoma, you've invoked the use of our tool. QA means it's my job to test the software, which essentially means finding interesting ways to break it before the consumers do. So that's neat. I don't want it to be the only thing in my life, though, so I've been trying to write a little bit on the sides and I plan on going to a dojo for Aikido tomorrow. I've also been trying to keep making lots of delicious food, and pictures will follow.

I am of course living with the Brothers Andrew (Ross and Soule-Hinds), who are both doing well also. We have a lovely house in northern Cambridge, with a reasonable train commute in for the two of them and a not unbearable drive out for me. We've been having evenings filled with movies, good food, and Starcraft, which is a pretty good party all told. Still, hoping to start getting out a little more once things settle down some.

Also, I know I'm going to try to be in NYC next weekend, meeting Juliaty and visiting Eli and Claire. I don't know who else is around but I might like to try to see y'all if that sounds good :D

Upper-Left: Our homemade Kahlua, a very easy mix that is cheap and, in this incarnation, very, very almond-y. Observe. (Bottle and pan both contain delicious mix.)

Note Bene.

Hey dudes,

I wanted to make a quick note that I forgot to say as we began this thing. I didn't really have any clear idea of what specifically it would be for, except that it could be a cool way to stay in touch. That's up for us to figure out. What I do know, is that I never meant to cut anyone out by accidental exclusion. If any of you realize that someone wasn't invited, or worse, doesn't know about the site, let me know! Right now I don't know if I can make anyone else full administrators, but if I can, I will promote everyone. Otherwise, I can invite anyone who should be involved to be posters at least.

Keep up the awesome,

-Eli

Update

Sup sup sup!

I've been super busy, but I just wanted to give y'all a quick note on what I've been doing. I've been quietly stalking our blog, but I've been busy enough that I hadn't found time yet to contribute until now. What's been keeping me busy? As of August 24 law school has kicked in, which surely has sucked all my time and (more importantly) psychic energy up.

So at the moment I'm stilling getting used to this whole business. There's a hella steep learning curve, not so much for the literal work we're doing but more for the ways that work interacts with the classroom. The entire business of school changes dramatically when it is not conceived of as primarily academic, but rather pre-professional. People care a lot about perfection and presentation -- being on top of your game is key. On top of that, it's been a wild environment where more students than not are coming out of the Ivies, and many seem naturally at home in this (lawyerly, professional, New York) setting.

That being said, I can already sense that school is really going to be a blast. For one, there are people with amazing backgrounds here. A handful of students in my lawyering class (kind of like home room, the 30 people I know best) have founded non-profits. So one side of this is intimidating, like Haverford also was at first. On the other hand, because everyone is older now, people have perspective and well matured identities that are connected to these achievements. Even people who aren't sure what they wanted to do, like another guy (Yale grad) who wasn't sure whether to write screenplays or go to law, have enough life experience to get a little closer to the hows and whys of what we're up to, even in that confusion.

So, I'll be sure to keep you folks updated on what classes are like as we go on. Right now I'm cautiously optimistic. They are incredibly boring in subject matter, to a large degree. Criminal law, of course, promises to have some pizzazz. Civil Procedure, on the other hand, which is basically a course on the byzantine arcana of suing and being sued, has less of a "wow" factor. Same goes for "contracts." Lawyering is cool enough. In that class we've been doing hypotheticals and active role-playing every class, which pretty much rocks. I got to argue for why evidence should be suppressed following an illegal search and seizure, for example, which rules.

Phew! I'd better get back to work for now. I some writing to do before a social at 5:00. I'll have to wait to catch up with each of you in greater detail.

Long live the strollick!

-Eli
























My Civil Procedures professor, here, Arthur Miller. He's a bear.