Fragments, shored and otherwise

Let me, right away, express regret that my writing skills have regressed to bullet points only. I'm corporate now; what do you expect?

In some unspecified order of importance:

-I applied to law school (remember?) and got into Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley. I turned down Harvard and Stanford and chose Berkeley because that's the only place Mike was accepted, and yes, I fully intend to use "I turned down Harvard for you" as a fighting tactic for the rest of our lives. I think that's well worth the $75 application fee, don't you? In any case, I've deferred law school for another year to hang out and mooch free food and laundry services from work. (They ironed my jeans last week. Hilarious.)

-Mike finally, on his third try, got accepted to a Berkeley Ph.D. program. They initially rejected him, but after he won an award from Army (a three year fellowship, plus a seal for marksmanship), Berkeley was persuaded to take him on. (Apparently you really can get anything in this world for money.) He'll be in the Materials Science department, so if you ever want to know anything about tulle, gingham, or silk, you know who to ask.

- We're leaving next Tuesday night for an Epically Amazing Trip to the Middle East (EATME2010, since I love travel acronyms) and, as usual, I have woefully underplanned. Last year I left for a month in Vietnam without ever once opening a guidebook, and this year I'm only slightly better about details--I've skimmed a guidebook, at least, if not acted on any of the knowledge. Last year's trip was fine, though, aside from the arrest, so I'm comfortable adopting "winging it" as a travel strategy since I don't plan on doing any illegal research. We'll be in Turkey, Egypt, and Israel, and I fully expect to have that damn "Istanbul, Not Constantinople" song in my head for at least the first full week.

-On that note, in one of our many planning conversations that have led to few or no actions, we discussed the possibility of renting a car to explore Mount Nimrod in Turkey and I realized that of all the adult things I've done this year--getting married, getting a full-time job, having a subscription to The New Yorker--renting a car makes me feel the most grown-up. After all, the minimum age limits on those other things are much lower. We'll see how the car rental goes before I commit to giving up my "poor student" bus-oriented travel style.

-I always used to joke that since I already had short hair I was guaranteed not to be one of those girls who gets married and cuts all her hair off. Instead, I seem to be doing the opposite: I haven't cut my hair since the wedding and, even more frighteningly, neither has Mike. We--meaning mostly Mike's beard--are out of control. As it turns out, gaining weight is not the only way to let yourself go.

Yes, we are dressed as pirates. Pirates with hippie hair. Make love not warrrrrrrr.

-Since I seem to just be rehashing all my recent Facebook status updates in this post, I'll continue: I'm obsessed with Trivial Pursuit, even though I can't answer any of the sports questions; I've been reading a lot lately (93 books so far in 2010, plus every single New Yorker); I've been running barefoot and my feet are horribly cut up; I fell down the stairs a while ago and hurt my foot; I make terrible puns; and I felt gypped when we spent 4.5 hours at the San Francisco Opera's production of "Die Walkure" and didn't see a single fat lady in a horned helmet. Gosh, I'm boring on Facebook.