Happy New Year :)

The high school friends seem to have developed a custom of hanging out together on New Year's Eve in someone's home to socialize and catch up rather than spend gobs of monies at a club downtown. We had another pretty good showing of people, delicious cheese and crackers, and many bottles of interesting liquids.

I have completed in entirety 9 of 11 applications for architecture grad schools, with one more portfolio to print off and two more applications to write up. The process got complicated by the advanced placement requirement of more documentation. I needed to bring up the graphic quality of much of my plans, sections, and elevations to the same level as the rest of my portfolio for consistency, and thus rather than smooth sailing since Dec 15, there were more all-nighters, gallons of hot tea, and 22 additional pages added.

Two unexpected guests stayed with me since Dec. 21. Shannon is in from Prague and missed her train to southern IL from O'Hare, so she ended up spending the night with me. We caught up, and she told me about some of the crazy adventures she's had while teaching English in Vietnam and Prague, Czech Republic. She lives next door to a Louis Vuitton, saw Catherine Zeta-Jones shooting a commercial down the street, and deals with teaching English to foreign people with good grace. Anita is in from Guatemala, and Tim and I convinced her that coming up to Chicago and socializing with other nerds from Lab School for New Year's would be more fun than sitting home alone watching tv. She's been working at a clinic attempting to alleviate malnutrition problems and having a difficult time trying to fix the world's problems with limited knowledge, budget, and resources. It's like Bike and Build on steroids.

Still got some more work to do before I can kick this bad habit of applying to grad schools, but then I will be free to sit back and anxiously worry while I await my fate for Fall 2009.