Summer!

So there has definitely been yet another lapse in my blog posting. I was hoping that since I had finished classes I would be able to post more regularly, but as it turns out, my computer decided to just stop working, so I've had to deal with that first. So here's what I've been up to:

-End of the quarter! Finally, the courses for the year have finished and I can focus on some research for once. Since I've been putting off my independent study, I only finished two classes for the quarter, but I did well in both.

-Movies!: Since the end of classes, I have been watching an inordinate number of movies. Included in this list are Tremors 4, Stranger than Fiction, History Boys, and Da Vinci Code, and I'm planning to watch the Last King of Scotland this week. It's a nice feeling to be able to just sit back and do nothing for hours on end and just relax.

-Picnic!: This past Sunday, several of my friends and I dragged a cooler and loads of food to the beach near Lake Michigan to grill out for the afternoon. We had loads of hamburgers, hot dogs, watermelon, chips, strawberry pie, and who knows what else to gorge ourselves on, and we spent the rest of the time throwing around a football and frisbee or walking on the beach. I think we might make this a weekly occurrence to replace Sunday brunch during the summer.

-Nonfunctional appliances!: So as I have mentioned, my computer decided it would stop working the day I turned in my final paper (luckily after I turned it in, not before). For the past week and a half, I've had to deal with a computer that would randomly not turn on or decide to freeze when it was working. I have since purchased another hard drive (for only $57), and while it works much more dependably now, I've been having problems with my video card since I reinstalled it. I may just need to start over and reinstall it again, since I don't think it's a hardware problem as I would have noticed it before. On an unrelated issue, I also bought an air conditioner, which has a fan that works wonderfully, but does not cool at all. Some Frigidaire person is supposed to come take a look at it. Maybe I'll have air conditioning in like 2 weeks....

Okay, that's about it for now. I'll try to update more regularly now.

Here's a picture of Joe, Matt, Andres, and I at a picnic for the department last week. I think Nikhil is the partially hidden person behind Joe. Anyway, my face is classic as always...