my brother is home from spring break this week. he was supposed to come home on saturday, but ended up staying at uva until sunday because he found out a good friend of his was killed in a car accident. the friend and a group had been traveling down to florida and swerved to avoid a dead deer on I-95. their SUV flipped over. the boy killed had been my brother's battalion commander in his navy rotc unit, someone whom he admired and liked greatly.

my brother was obviously upset, but handling it better than i expected. when we were talking about it yesterday, he said, "well, i mean, we actually take classes to prepare for this sort of stuff. this is the first time something like this has happened, but we realize it's probably not the last time that we're going to lose someone we all know."

definitely not liking thinking about my little brother in those terms.

ANYWAY. trivia night is out; galaxy hut or starsky & hutch is in. except i am working late, terribly, sadly, so pathetic. well, like 45 minutes later than usual. big deal. i am a huge whiner, and will stop it here.

i'd just like to say to my female readers: happy festa delle donne!

it's a march 8 italian holiday that celebrates women, women's rights and all around female-empowerment. throughout the day, men are supposed to give the women in their lives bunches of mimosa, a yellow flowering branch.

even michelangelo's david is celebrating.

This is all over the gadget sites. All I can say is: "ooooo".

And hey, speaking of wanting to pad out blog entries, have a peek over at gizmodo -- Rojas is out, and the site's got content again... including smut! Yay!

mugato and derelicte come to life!

was uma dressed by galliano? if so, brian called it.

i hope natania doesn't mind, but i'm going to post a few photos of hers from milan (since i never take interesting photos anymore). natania is a hysterical girl and dear friend whom i met when we lived together in milan last year. she opted to stay a second year at asm teaching early childhood education (2-4 year olds) and is getting her masters at the bank street school in nyc next year. anyway, here are her pictures, but it will have to be without my signature commentary because, you know, i wasn't there, and basically have no idea what's going on in many of these.

this is natania. as a zebra, i suppose. and i can only assume that is GABBIBO with her!! maybe. christy cox? halloween at asm!

this is miss christy, my teaching partner from last year, at her annual christmas decorating tree contest. i won last year for "sexiest ornament" - i made a hula girl out of a wine cork. this year i submitted an entry via natania for the category of "most interactive ornament." it was a lump of playdoh on a paperclip. i don't think it won.

for white week, christy and natania went all over the arctic circle area. they were up in estonia, finland, sweden. here follow a few pictures:

here are some pretty colored houses in stockholm. just thought they were nice looking.

norvay!

here's christy and natania, chilling in some huge ass jackets, at an ice hotel in sweden.

tallinn, estonia.

sunset in tallinn.

and the best photo of all -- natania next to a photo of mr. agre in the nobel prize museum! yup. our friend claire, who worked with us at asm, well, her dad won the nobel prize in chemistry this year for discovering water proteins or something, i basically have no idea. so i love saying: i've met a nobel prize winner, AND a nobel prize winner once commented on my blog saying he loved my photos. i am bizarrely proud of this for some reason.