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Evolution of the Facial Hair - AKA Last chance to See

OK!
So I'm back. A lot and not a lot happened in between. Anything of interest is probably documented in a photo album on my facebook, yaaay, that's right I just sailed over a month. Well my computer crashed for a week, that was a shitty week. But for a month I've been growing facial hair for a halloween costume. At first I just shaved it strangely, with really no particular halloween constume in mind, I thought hey... maybe something D'Artagnon-y, buy a sword, be a muskateer, or if I was really lazy, write "Douche with a Moustache" on a shirt. But then Professor Levine had a radical (tubular? Gnarly?) idea! Go as Frank Zappa!
Well it turned into a really hilarious DIY spectacular costume... I look more like a Klingon Warrior who's sneaking to earth to watch NASCAR, but it was still hilarious.
So I present, last chance to see me with this much facial hair. It was a strange feeling biking to school and feeling the wind rush through my moustache:

Week 1!



















Week 2:


















Week 3:


















Halloween!:

Vamos a la Playa

So after three weeks of being in Florida, I finally went to the beach. It was a small but adventurous group of first year grads and older grad students. We grabbed lunch at the local Shwarma place... from which I ordered a burger and fries, I swear, I'm not that white.
The beach was beautiful, the sand was very white. It was very shell-y and painful down most of the beach, but once you hit the water it became a very very fine powder and perfect for walking barefoot. The water actually felt warmer than the air outside, I could definitely get used to that! There were diving pelicans and spiky shells with animals still living in them and talks about sharks. Although I feel the talk of sharks was more a ploy of the older make us "New F'n Gs" paranoid.
After playing beach volleyball with some random douchebag, all there was left to do was drink my six pack of orange soda, watch my ridiculous farmers tan become a little less ridiculous, watch the sunset and stay for the fireworks at 9pm and call it a day.

Good times.

Keeping in practice

So I'm trying to get over the idea of how much mundane patter goes into blogs. The key is to get into the habit of posting, maybe then interesting things will start to come. When I'm out in the world and I'm doing something I think, "Wouldn't this be great to post", but when I come home to post something, nothing comes to mind to post!

Tomorrow an important chapter starts in my American experience. I get my social security number! This winds down the two weeks of brutal bureaucracy I've been going through since I can't even apply for a SSN until I've been in Florida for ten days! I can finally get a debit card, buy a cellphone, get a USF email id, get my tuition waiver, apply for health insurance, get a credit card in two weeks and finally start accumulating credit. Can you believe my credit resets to zero just because I move to a new country?? Sadly frosh week is over and a new term has already begun. I have a lot to read ahead! I hope some of the first year PhD students feel adventurous and still want to do touristy things, otherwise the most exciting part of Florida I see may be the local pub! They seem a fine bunch though. Usually my closest friends come from Residence, but this time around, it may be different. Especially because it seems I will be interacting with these people for at least 3 years! Anyway, I have an hour long bus journey to the SSN office, but it'll all be worth it to get the last of the running around out of the way. Maybe I can take more pictures of the fauna! I'm think I'm still going to be taking pictures of the fauna for a few months now, I'm still in awe. It's very surreal to see palm trees everywhere.

Anyway, here's a Floridian duck.

I'm here!

Yes lady's and gentlemen, I'm speaking to you from sunny Florida. I've been really procrastinating on this thing, I'm not really sure of what to write here, so I'm just going to write whatever comes to mind. Today I had an Odyssey to find a bike. I got this sweet vintage raleigh bike with a basket on the back. The guy who sold it to me was some sort of connoisseur of bikes, really nice guy. I had a 10 mile journey home, so I went down the "ripped backside" of Tampa. It's really lush, but you can tell you're in the South. The brand-verse here is completely foreign to me. CVS pharmacy, chick-fil-a, checkers, sonic burger there's very little I recognize! I'm trying to think in gallons, farenheit and miles, but it's hard, I'm always trying to convert to something familiar. Especially with money! My God, everything's crazy, toothpaste can cost you a good $4 while I found a dozen eggs for $0.75.

Today I attended my first TA class. The grading scheme for these poor first year students is wild!
97-99.9 is an A+, 87-89.9 is B+ and 59.9 and below is an F!!! Poor kids get double screwed! Triple screwed if you remember in Canada, if you get an 89.5, I'm rounding you up to a 90! No wonder many students don't reach completion! I realize under this system I would have completely flunked school and I wouldn't even be here doing my PhD. It's a little harsh on late bloomers.

Here's a photo of the cool guy who sold me my bike with the philosoraptor.