A couple days late, but I have a bit of an excuse; it is actually a good excuse for any grad student - programming a nonlinear industrial production equation in Stata. Well, it was neither enjoyable nor informative, so I'll get on to the "good" stuff.

I really wanted to avoid celebrating my birthday this year. I thought that I would like to avoid the reality of how long I will be in grad school for. However, Dina discovered on Facebook that Saturday was my birthday, thus it quickly spread. So, we needed to go out to celebrate, thus I thought maybe a German restaurant would be a good change of pace. After reading a couple of reviews in the Tucson Weekly online, I thought we should check out Mountain View restaurant. Unfortunately, when we got there, we quickly discovered it was recently converted into a Mexican restaurant. While there are plenty of good Mexican restaurants in Tucson, the city really could expand their horizons a bit.

I wanted to try a new place, so Gabe recommended a steakhouse a couple miles away called Shooters. Evidently it was originally a Middle Eastern belly dancer joint in the '70s so it had minarets and the whole bit. After being seated outside in the courtyard, the owner eventually came out and apologized for taking so long. We were in a pretty good mood and were joking around a bit. The owner hit us with a bombshell, telling us that his son died last Monday. It was definitely a bit of a downer, but at least the steak was good.

Afterwards I was surprised to an awesome Cheesecake from Trader Joes. Well, that was about it, no drunken orgy or broken couches like last year, but a fairly relaxing dinner and some bullshit afterwards. In any case, rumors have it that we may go mini golfing this weekend, and there certainly is nothing crazier than grad students mini golfing... .

Reading through this post, I definitely killed the excitement of the day. I really did enjoy it though, so for those of you reading that were there, it was a great. I almost forgot to mention I had cable internet hooked up last Saturday as well. I even got free expanded basic to boot. The download speeds are fantastic, though I shouldn't mention what I've been downloading the past few days (no, it's not porn)

-Trevor