i intended to stay home in the morning to study for my exam at 12, but at 9:17, lo! do i not get an email saying that there is an emergency staff meeting please attend. against my better judgment i go, and it is an utter waste of time except for the big packet of lindt chocolates that is sitting on my desk as a christmas present from the advisor. anyhow, i scurry back home, making the most of the walk by picking up a falafel expert sandwich on the way back, and then something goes wrong with the email script for the final exam, and it is delayed by 1.75 hours. it's not just airplanes these days. this scuttles my plan to finish all my work for the semester by friday 5 pm. and then go out and drink myself silly; however, i decide that the drinking myself silly part has never been contingent on anything in the past, and that grad school oughtn't change that. (besides, it was our last beer sem for the semester. except, as it turned out, the "sem" part was kind of missing).

we started at roosevelt's at around 8 -- all psych people at first, and then the random hangers-on who always seem to appear and who are different every time. the smoking ban has come into effect, so all the bars have stopped smelling like cigarettes and started smelling like fries. going into one is very disturbing, like walking into a giant steaming potato. i'd had dinner (my lame attempt at cooking bak chor mee and getting all the condiments wrong -- help?), but the craving for grease and salt set in immediately. dopamine rules us all. we had decided to do a pub crawl, but the drinks at roosevelt's are so cheap for this city that it was difficult to initiate the "crawling" bit -- when jared started settling into a burger it looked like we were there for the long haul -- but eventually credit cards started appearing and we managed to extricate ourselves from $4 whiskey and sodas. two blocks down was monkeybar, a place slightly reminiscent of somewhere in singapore that i couldn't quite put my finger on. pulp fiction was playing (on mute) -- the very last bit where sam jackson opens up marcellas' suitcase -- and when i mention the fact, it transpires that jared, who, i found out at the advisor's christmas party, shares my birthday (to the year), also has the same favorite movie that i do. freaky! i entrust alyson to order drinks, and she orders a really weird thing that looks and tastes exactly like a shot of strawberry milk.

pulp fiction finishes, and monkeybar is starting to suck a little, so we proceed to the cafe, where we get stuck in for the rest of the night. i end up being drawn into one of those "are you a neuroscientist or a psychologist" arguments, which i can never seem to win no matter which side of the fence i try to land on. i have decided that functional imagers live in a DMZ between the two disciplines. we're allowed to do our thing, as long as we don't use either of their names. it's a bit sad. of course, it's not as sad when you've had about eight drinks, so the night was good, and ended with k. and i in a cab talking about home and her brother's ORD, and half-promises of ikan bilis in the spring.