Almost time to go

Its Friday. 8 days till i leave for Europe. I'm excited, but more nervous i think in a weird way. Been too busy here too to even really think about it. Defended my thesis a week ago Tuesday. Was really really nervous leading up to the date, but turned out to be pretty easy. The defence involved doing a 20 minute presentation to 5 professors (3 from the department, 2 from outside of chem eng) and then being grilled for 20 minutes by each prof. Ended up being more of a chat then really being grilled, then i left the room, they chatted things over, and then invited me back in and they all said congratulations, etc. They each gave me a page with changes that they wanted made to the thesis, so i've been working on those for the last two days. I definately did not get to them right away after finishing cause i was too happy to be done and was only erally in the mood to party....and as much as possible. The whole lab went out for beers the afternoon after i finished my defence to the Grad Club and then back to my place for bbq and beers for the rest of the night. The next night we had a 'Neal's finished' party at my place. I bought a keg and me and 30 of my closest friends packed her down. The next couple days i just hung out and finished packing all my stuff and put it into storage. I was lucky enough to get hooked up with a friend's sister who has a whole empty basement for me to put my stuff in. I was going to put it into storage for $75 a month till after xmas, so instead i put it in this girls basement for a case of beer and a $100 gift certificate to a good restaurant here in Kingston. When i went over to the girls place i found out that she has a 5 foot python! Pretty wicked. I couldn't wait to get my hands on it and play with it. I've never held anything like that before...it was a bit creepy, but more awesome than anything. Friday, me, Heather, Kelly and Sean, George and Becky, Lori, and Heather's brother Sandy and his girlfriend, Lindsey, went to Heather's cottage north of Montreal. Me and Sean rode together so that neither of us had to listen to the girls all the way to Montreal. We got there late Friday night and pretty much just partied all weekend, played in the water a bit, took some boat rides, and listened to tunes. Everybody but me and Heather and Sandy and Linds left Monday and we went to Sue and Ric's (Heather's godparents) that night for dinner. Me and Heather left the next day.

So now i'm living at Heather's place as i'm unemployed and homeless. Its a pretty awesome feeling actually. I've been spending my days working on my thesis corrections and my manuscripts that i'm getting published while Heathers at school. Then she comes back and makes me dinner. :) Just like a good girlfriend.....haha.

Heading to Toronto tomorrow to buy a few more things for the trip at the MEC co-op adn spending the night with Russ and Colleen. Back to Kingston Sunday and finish up last minute things for the trip and with my school stuff until Wednesday, then back to TO on Thursday probably, party downtown Friday night, and out on Saturday at 4:30 from Pearson.

Been talking to Faye abit about our initial plans for the first 10 days of my trip with her in Italy...i'll follow up later today with our tentative plans.