If it weren't probably illegal in Alabama, I would marry Trader Joe's. Even though the ones in Maryland can't sell alcohol, they still rock. For those of us who don't like to cook, the rice bowls are cheap, reasonably healthy, and delicious and microwave in 4 minutes. They're Weight Watchers as it should have been. And I got delicious baby peppers, and cheap good cheese, and a Greek pizza that was very good....

Also, I've decided that I'm going to attempt to go through the Czech beers at the Brickskeller. One down, thirteen to go.

I like Czech beer because I can associate it with a very good memory. My second to last night in Prague, E--, C--, C-- and I went to an empty bar and had a bunch of very cheap Pilsners. Then, drunk, we went to the Charles Bridge to see it at night. It was amazingly creepy, since you were never sure that everything you saw was a gargoyle and not someone hanging out in the shadows. Once we managed to scare the hell out of each other, we walked back to the Mala Strana, to our awesome flat.

Romania, III:

We spent the evening and the next day walking around Cluj, a university town known for its cosmopolitan attitude and mix of cultures. The Uniate Church was founded here. Unusual in this part of the world, the university is secular and the students are a mix of Hungarian and Romanian. The university is the only place where Romanian and Hungarian mix, though. The city was run by a mayor who insisted on putting the Romanian flag everywhere as a reaction to Hungarian chauvinism. The main square is the site of the Hungarian cathedral, but there is another beautiful square a couple of blocks away on which sits the Romanian Orthodox cathedral and the Romanian national theatre. The city is beautiful, with parks and squares, a cemetery on one hill and a giant cross on the other.

We climbed up the hill with the giant cross and sat on a rock wall. As we're sitting there talking about nothing, a boy leaned in between us, directing his friend in Romanian, "take my picture." He threw his arms around us both and the friend took the picture. He then continued to climb. We got up a few minutes later and went to the plinth of the cross. There was a larger group of boys, probably in their late teens up there, including our friends from before. "Please stop. You wait here," one said in English. He gave his digital camera to a friend and came up between us, throwing an arm around my shoulder. Another boy came up behind us too and attempted to get between the first boy and T, but he spoke harshly and the boy backed away. We decided he wanted to look like a pimp with two American chicks.

Old friends:

My good friend from high school was up in DC yesterday (for one day only) to interview for a job. She really liked the job, so fingers crossed that she gets it. It would be great to have her here!

We ate, wandered aimlessly around between Dupont and the Mall, and then I took her to the airport. Where as it turned out, her flight was ridiculously delayed. But National is a very attractive airport, if lacking in food options outside security. Not that there are none, but there aren't many, and there wasn't anywhere we could just get something to drink and sit for awhile.

It's funny to talk to someone you've known for that long. So many of our stories are the same, the last time she was in DC, we were together, on our ninth grade class trip. I remember New York much better from that trip. The Empire State Building with Tim. Eating in the nine story mall. Buying pizza near Times Square (but not too near. This was 1997 and we were in high school). The woman who got on our bus and told us that her son invented buses.

I remember the Air and Space Museum, and the Holocaust Museum, after which even our ninth grade selves were silent. I remember finding my uncle's name on the Vietnam Wall. I remember not going to the White House. I think we went to the Capitol, but Congress was not in session. But otherwise, that trip to DC is sort of a blur. I'd been there before, with my parents, when I couldn't have been much more than 5. From that time, I remember the house where Lincoln died. The blood-stained mattress he died on scared me as a kid, in a way that meant I couldn't stop looking. I remember my aunt's dog, Blarney, who knocked me over with kisses when we first met. I remember taking my first taxicab ride, to the church that my aunt went to that was downtown somewhere.

A scandalous history:

I just finished reading A Scandalous History of the Roman Emperors, and I wasn't really scandalised at all. I mean, Tiberius liked little boys, Augustus was sort of a hypocrite, Caligula didn't actually name his horse consul... Maybe it would have been more scandalising if I hadn't already heard it before.

The book did have an interesting section on Roman daily life. It included a discussion of cooking and specifically baked goods, which was had been talking about at mah jongg about a week before. Apparently, the Romans baked bread before discovering yeast, so was it just a flat bread? It's actually called maza, is that related to matzah? How were cakes baked before the use of baking soda? I know that the Romans made filo dough-type pastries, but did they make other cakes?

I don't know why I find the history of baked goods so fascinating, but if anyone knows any of this (or any other interesting tidbits about ancient baking), I'd love to hear it.

Bites and camping and whatever else I think of:

A certain pony who shall remain nameless bit me today. I was moving him around his stall so I could bridle him and he wanted to eat his hay and reached over and bit my hip. It didn't break the skin, but it did kind of hurt. Also, we were practicing emergency dismounts and I fell. The dirt mixed with the sweat on my arm to make me muddy.

However, I am about a hundred times cleaner than I was this weekend, when I went camping with Amanda and her colleagues. Despite torrential rains both nights, we had a good time and even stayed reasonably dry, except when we were swimming in the lake. It was fabulously warm, at night even kind of grossly warm, since it felt like a bathtub. A nipple-biting fish lived there, apparently, though it stayed the hell away from my nipples. OK, and I got much drunker than I'd been since college on box wine Saturday night, like drunk to the point of singing Irish songs around the campfire. It was a good trip.

Oh, T-- is coming to DC for a job interview this weekend. Fingers crossed for her, please. Not only would it be awesome to have her here, but her current job, well, isn't her ideal job, so this might be a really nice change.

I'm taking a real live graduate class in the fall (assuming my funding is approved before the 17th), and I've pretty much decided that I'm going to talk to my advisor there about whether I would do better in a different program. I don't think applied math is for me, really, and I feel like I would be happier in a regular math grad program.