man, my summer's been cut 2 weeks short thanks to a 2 week family vacation at the end of july. i thought it was only gonna be one week, but two?! granted, it's gonna be fun (hopefully) but still, things are a little cut off now...i think the thing most affected is my research..by the time i get back Dr. Striedter will be gone and i'm left to fend for myself to find a lab to join. i was looking up stuff on Dr. Tang and his lab sounds pretty interesting...i thought i wouldn't be too interested in it (b/c of the focus on mol bio etc) but after looking a bit more closely, his lab doesnt' seem so bad at all...plus Dr. Carew's been trying to get me interested in Dr. Tang's lab for a while now. I still want to try Dr. Carew and Dr. McGaugh before i approach Dr. Tang. what else is cut short? time with erin! all this commuting to and from irvine is doing a number on my car (the weird thing though, today, i'm at half tank and i've gone 25 more miles than i have previously when i reached half tank), and i'm tempted to just stay in irvine to save up on gas and all that, but then i lose the time hanging out with erin or visiting other people. it's so agonizing - stay in la and hang out with erin and my other friends in la, or stay in irvine and hang out with my apartmentmates and cambridge buddies and reps? or have the best of both worlds and commute? argh!

at any rate, i love being so busy. makes the summer less boring, especially since i've made little projects for myself to do at home. i was writing down things in my organizer and found that i have something to do every weekend in august, pretty much. to me, that's simply amazing. it makes me happy.

mm...what else...i have lunch with the ex on thursday (shudder)...let's all hope that goes okay.