Music is my hot, hot sex

ACL 2008 was incredible. And Camelbaks are brilliant. 

Best shows were Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band and Okkervil River. I particularly loved Conor's cover of Paul Simon's "Kodachrome." Jenny Lewis' solo act was more alt-country/folk than I expected, but at least it was less pop/funk than most of Under the Blacklight. M. Ward was really good, but I just wasn't feeling it. 

Favorite quote of the weekend: "WaMu stage? More like FDIC stage!"

And I'm glad James isn't as hairy as Kyle.

That guy

Why does he have to be so lame?! 

WHY?!?

Hello

I think I love Kevin Devine. He just soothes my soul and makes me do a double take at most redheads. Props to Andrea Yee for introducing me, even though I don't think she remembers that. 

I know I love James Durand. And oatmeal raisin cookies.

I'm super stressed. And my body's slapping me around right now. Thanks to everyone that's helped me out. That cheesecake was incredible, and it feels so great to have family right next door. I'll still probably retake the GRE.

Within the last 2 minutes, I received my first spam in my Gmail inbox. Weird.

My family still doesn't have power. And whenever I think of Ike, I just can't stop singing the Scorpions song. 

I can't wait until ACL. I can definitely wait until EXPO on Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm not sure how I feel about waiting to find out if I get to interview with Apple.

My brothers are OLD

They just turned 20 and that totally freaks me out. They're my little brothers and now they're voting and drinking and growing up. They were raised too well. They act way too mature to be 20. Or maybe I'm just too immature to be 23. 

Graduate school

I really wanted to go to graduate school in California. Now I'm realizing that the programs I want to do aren't all bundled up in one little west-coast package. 

I'm in the process of writing my statement of purpose, and it's a lot harder than I thought. I want to be honest and get my heart onto the paper, but it's not as easy as it seems.

I have the best research adviser ever.

James broke my heart

So I thought I had a flu, maybe strep throat worse-case scenario. So I go to the UT Health Clinic and they diagnose me with the flu and the doctor does the routine stethoscope on your back and says "take deep breaths". And then she pretty much says "WTF YOUR HEART IS WEIRD! WE NEED AN EKG IN HERE STAT!" And she had a point, I checked it out and she was right, my heart was skipping every third beat and it was a little scary. 

So I get an EKG.  And it looks really weird. The doctor consults a cardiologist and she says I have an irregular irritated heartbeat. And she's totally freaking out because she doesn't know what to do. I need tests to figure out what's wrong. There is some kind of electrical imbalance in my heart and my natural pacemaker is off. But UT's health test system is a little lacking in resources, so I need to go the ER. Now. 

All those big bumps and jumps in the EKG shouldn't be there. Everything on the right 1/3 is normal, and all the stuff on the left side is "WTF YOUR HEART IS WEIRD!" And my blood pressure was over 120 after resting in the UT clinic for an hour.

So James picks me up after he gets out of processing lab and he drives me to the ER. By this point I had already cried a lot because the doctor totally freaked me out and made me feel like I was going to die. Even though I felt just fine. I got James to feel my heartbeat and he admitted it was pretty weird. 

So after a while they take me back and run a bunch of tests: X-rays of my heart, another EKG, pee tests, blood tests, throat test, and other stuff. And they hook me up to the heart/lung/oxygen monitor with the screen. So I have those probes all over my chest and I'm just confused and being pumped with fluids through an IV. And James left after an hour to go to work, so I'm all alone. And I may or may not have breathed in and out really heavily to make a square wave on the lung chart. 

So after waiting over two hours to get all my tests back, the doctor pretty much tells me I'm fine. An irregular heartbeat isn't that big of a deal. If I want to follow up, he referred me to a cardiologist. But I'm fine? My heart's okay? Everyone just scared me for no reason? I mean, I guess it's kind of a big deal, but I don't think I'm dying anytime soon. So then I walk home from the hospital and go to sleep for 4 hours.