We grilled, chilled and danced. She showed me a few videos that she took at the Iowa City swing workshop. Out of the ones that we watched, the trip move with partner’s legs wrapping out mine was the coolest. So, we tried it and I finally got it after several tries. I found my mistake. I wasn’t tripping the girl hard enough for her legs to get off the ground. I’ll have to put a clip up sometime when I try that with a partner next. And oh, this move needs the dancers to be very close to each other, as in full frontal contact. Thereby marking this move as very intimate and not to be done with everyone..

After a Dairy Queen double fudge cookie dough, we head out to watch Take The Lead (Official, IMDB) starring Antonio Banderas, and a set of great young dancers. I enjoyed the dance sequences and loved the music. So, I got the soundtrack. Now, I wish I had better speakers to underline the bass in most of the hip hop music. I have noticed that the new fad in movies revolving around youth and creative arts is fusion. Fusion of the new and the old. This movie obviously mixed jazz and hip hop. We have always known that we can dance jazz forms to hip hop too. The style is more sensous and erotic. It’s amazing! I’ve danced to hip hop music and love the innovations that can be brought to the form. The friction, the spins, the rhytmic gyrations .

And while we are on the topic of dancing, I created a new YouTube group dedicated to swing dancing and all its forms.. A lot of swing dance videos have been added. So, go check them out !

There are a few nightmares that are really bad and make you sweat and palpatate. Well, I had one of those right before I woke up Friday morning. I had just given a test on Thursday on Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics. My dream was that I had gotten a D. I was really scared and depressed in the dream and then I snapped out of the dream. Thank God!

I need to remind myself not to wear jeans during the day before it’s getting really hot and I get awful sweaty. Yuck!

Thursday night, it rained and hailed. There was a tornado warning but I didn’t see a tornado again! I really want to see one before I leave. Kiki told that several car dealers in Iowa City were hit by the tornado and had serious damage to the cars..

Couple of nights back, I spent a few hours diagnosing and fixing yet another compatibility issue with Mozilla Firefox and one of the extensions. This time, the culprit was “Amazing Media Browser” which worked fine till the update I performed earlier in the week. I found the problem as firefox was not rendering Flash. I think I might walk through the process if any one cares. So, when I found the problem, my first impulse was to check extensions, especially the ones I had installed recently. But none of that worked. Then, I restarted the computer thinking it might just be that simple. Still no luck. So, I attempted to reinstall firefox which didn’t really work either. And then, I went through the list of extensions to find possible culprits. I decided to take a chance by disabling Amazing Media Browser, and that worked. I think the latest update screwed up something. Anyway, after two hours of poking and prodding, I found the root to the problem and hence the solution.

I went out with a bunch of friends to watch Failure to Launch and She’s the man. I drove up there with Jessi and caught up on the week. We also had some fantastic home made tacos from a small bar/restaraunt in Makoqueta, IA. Apart from getting really cold and taking a bunch of pictures while attempting long exposures, the movies were okay. I liked She’s the Man better, and that was the general consensus with the girls in the other cars too.

And then came Saturday. I helped people who needed an extra hand while cooking. It was also fun to taste everything . Finally, came the fun part of the evening, the swing dance at the Charlie’s. We got so many people from Cornell College and University of Iowa. They have big swing dance clubs and most of them are excellent dancers. I found three people from Iowa who had some of the best arm tensions I’ve ever encountered and then there were three from Cornell. I really need to pick up more moves and add to my repertoire because I get bored doing the same stuff. The dance floor is still extremely slick and I was sliding all over with my dancing shoes. So, I switched to my skechers and still managed to fall. Komal said that I fell while dancing with someone HOT! Funny, I am trying to remember who that was.. I did dance with Komal to a sexy number. She can move! Dancing with Nicole was fun! She can dance very well, and responds quick to my leads. I got to waltz with Sonya. And try out tandem and chase charleston with one of the girls from Iowa. I need to learn how to lead those better. Kiki suggested a hand position change. I’ll try that. So, it was a fantastic night filled with swing dancing.

And today, we had the biggest International Club event of the semester. The Banquet was a ton of fun and completely crazy. There were so many people that many were turned away once we crossed 250. There was a good variety of appertizers, entrees and desserts. I got lucky as I got to try most of the food. In the afternoon before the banquet, I helped Komal and Jobin make Mango Lassi which was a high-calorie concoction with mango pieces, buttermilk, heavy cream, sugar, ice and mango water. It was really good. It was so good that while serving I ran out of it and had to close my station. I took pictures with a lot of friends and I’ll put them up soon.

My mentor was gone all last week. So, I was able to experiment independently. Everything went peachy till the last day last sample. I forgot to turn off one of the vacuum valves while venting almost killing the most expensive motor in the whole equipment. He emailed back today saying that it was a close call but the motor is alright. You can’t imagine how scared shitless I was! If that had actually broken, it couldn’t have been fixed for two months or more essentially killing the rest of the days I’ve left at ORNL

The past few days at Callie’s has been great! Apart from the initial scare of being unable to find my keys, I’e had a lot of fun so far. We met Callie’s best friend, ate tons of great thanksgiving food, watched a few movies, ate at a multicuisine restaraunt and an Indian restaraunt. I’ve had my fill of wonderful food that made up for the whole semester. I watched Crash last night. It was one of the most intricately assembled movie I’ve ever seen. It left me breathless. I can see why it was so critically acclaimed. I recommend watching it. It’s racism and social hierarchy at it’s most vibrant pinnacle. And to provide cosmic balance, we watched Just Friends. It was incredibly dumb yet funny at the same time. I had a tight stomach from laughing so hard.

Anyway, the place I was going with the proficiency in using tools is now that I have to use tools and actually build user equipments and install the components of various instruments, its sort of new and refreshing. My mentor just told me that I have to drill holes so that he can install a plug. See, I have never done that before, especially around something that cost so much. It should be exciting nevertheless!

I woke up on Friday late enough to be well rested. I wasted the rest of the morning while feeling anxious about the GRE like last night. I decided to go to the test center early because Jenn said that she was able to start her test whenever she got there. It took me about 3 hours to finish the test. I was so anxious that my hands were shaking. The writing section turned out to be pretty comfortable as I finished both my essays on time and that relaxed me. I don’t know what scores I’ll get on the essays.. I felt like I was making too many mistakes in both verbal and the quantitative. However, once I got my scores, I realized I did fine. There were some words in verbal that I couldn’t understand without its context. All my friends were excited to hear that I did so well. I guess I don’t have to retake the GRE . All that’s left now is the rest of the application process.

James and I saw Zathura after the test and the movie was kinda dumb. Its a remake of Jumanji with a twist! Its in space! We then ate with Jenn and Khush at the Veitnamese restaraunt. We decided to hang out at Panera’s for a bit and I got som e of my favorite Colombian decaf for a buck fifty. It was fun just hanging out and talking. Jenn and I had to leave because we had planned to go to a blues bar and dance a bit. It was extremely out of the way but the cabin was very cool. The bar was very crowded and garners a good clientele. The music was wonderful and Jenn and I got to dance a little bit on the tiny floor space. It was awesome! There was an artist who was sitting in one of the booth drawing portraits of the crowd. He drew us and that was sort of cool. Apparently, a couple of people from our swing class thought we were married! How the hell did they get that idea? Last night’s late night Taco Bell run was weird. We were in line for so long. I can’t believe how alive the UT campus that late in the night.