Guess what I bought today -- plane tickets! Hooray! I'm flying down for Big Dance! Of course, that's not until May, but it's still exciting. Yay! And I finally signed up for the Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan thing, so I get miles every time I do practically anything -- including about 1500 for the combination of signing up and reserving tickets for the first time as a member. :)

Lots of stuph has happened since last time I blogged, which was yonks ago, I know. I had my last lectures in both of my classes last week, and now I have to study for the finals -- both on Wednesday, Physics from 2-4, Diff Eq from 4-6. Ugh. I hate back-to-back exams. At least they're only 2 hours, though, instead of the 3 that I'm used to at Stanford. Small comfort. :{ Hugo is down in San Jose from now until after my finals are over, though, so I have two and a half days of slightly less distraction in which to study.

Work has been rather insanely busy lately. We're working on a bunch of new label styles that have to have everything ready to go up on the website before the ads about them come out in another week and a half. Aren't deadlines wonderful? And there was a little article on our company on dailycandy.com (apparently very big in NY), which generated an enormous number of orders, so business is going to be booming next week on top of working on new styles. Fun. Oh, yeah, and there is no longer a women's toilet on our floor at work. I came in one day last week and Diana told me, "By the way, we don't have a toilet today." I thought she just meant it was out of order again (it does that a lot) but, no, apparently she meant exactly what she said, because they'd taken the whole thing out to do something or other with it. They put a sign up telling us to use other bathrooms on other floors. But Diana got clever and made a little sign that says "Woman CAUTION In Here" (like the (Automatic CAUTION Door signs) -- so now we just use the men's bathroom and stick that on the door. Their bathroom is nicer anyway -- it has two toilets (and a urinal, of course, but the women's only has one toilet), is painted, has pretty handle-taps and even a fake flower in a vase on the counter -- not fair! :}

Yesterday was Hugo's birthday (Happy Belated Birthday!). He was out for part of the afternoon, then came home and asked if I wanted to go out with him, because he'd finally found something to trade in his electric classical guitar and amp for. I, of course, said yes, and so I went with him to pick up his birthday present to himself -- a gorgeous and wonderfully loud acoustic mandolin. It's really nice. He also got a three-instrument stand for various guitars and mandolins, so we can shove the cases under the futon and get them out of the way. Yay for new musical toys! We went to dinner at The Chart House, a fancy-schmancy restaurant on the top of a hill with a beautiful view of the Portland city lights. The food was lovely (I forget how much I like spinach! :P) and it was a gorgeous evening so the view was lovely (it's been raining here for the last several days, so that part was a bit iffy. Rather than drive, we took a couple of buses and walked up the hill to the restaurant, which was very pleasant. We laughed at the valet parking and were very proud of ourselves for getting there so nicely on public transportation.

Speaking of public transportation, my wonderful friend Phil has just secured me extremely cheap public transportation for the next six months. He, like Hugo, works at IBM, and they have special transportation deals for their employees. The way public transit works here in Portland is a system of buses, light-rail trains, and streetcars collectively called "Tri Met." So a transit pass works for any of the three, and transfers work from one to the other as well. Regular monthly Tri Met passes cost $56, or $45 for student-subsidized passes. But Phil picked up the pass allocated to him by IBM and gave it to me because he doesn't use public transportation. It's a little sticker that goes on the back of my i.d. card, good through August. And how much did it cost? $26! Thank you, Phil!

Oh, and just in case I don't blog tomorrow, here's wishing a very happy 21st birthday to Jonathan! And good luck to all the Stanford folk who are taking finals this week. It's almost Spring break!