Whoooo!

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Now that's more like it! It's been a very busy 10 days since I last posted. We had a great trip to the Bay Area for my commencement ceremony. Here's a pic with my very silly Harry Potter-style regalia. I was really grateful to have my family and friends with me on the day. Thanks guys!It was a lot of fun.

And it lit a fire under me to finish this thing! I'm going to file in the summer session, which formally started today, but ever since commencement, I've been writing like a man possessed. I wrote last week while still in Berkeley, I wrote on the plane, I wrote for 10 hours yesterday (Memorial Day!), I wrote for another 5 hours today - and it's generating a lot of great results. I have revised versions of Chapters 2 and 3, and I'm now working on Chapter 4, the Antioquia case study. It's the biggest one of all, and I have a fair number of things to add based on data I've already gathered, but I got a good start today by pulling together an intro section on Antioquia that justifies the choice of that particular state for my case study and introduces relevant context for the empirical work that follows.

As if that weren't enough, things are going well - and busily - on the job and volunteer fronts. I have a probably final interview for one job on Friday, and a second interview for another tomorrow. It's looking fairly promising, let's see how I feel tomorrow. On the volunteer front, I've been putting together a speaker event for my giving circle, which is next Wednesday, June 4. I'm really excited about the program, and we have a conference call with the speakers tomorrow morning, after my interview. More details to follow.

This past weekend, we went to a cool flea market in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, near where my sister used to live, because some of the vendors from the Red Hook Ball Fields were there. I had a carne asada huarache, which was basically well-made, but needed like a salsa or something. The flea market itself was super-cute, and I picked up a couple pair of vintage cufflinks on the cheap.

After seeing the new Indiana Jones, I went back and watched the first three to see how the new one fit into the overall series. Pretty well, I have to say. The first hour-fifteen are great, and then it all falls apart in the last 45 minutes. I was surprised to find myself liking the second one in the series, which most people hate, and which I don't think I'd seen it since it came out. The whole thing got me to thinking how lucky I was to be born a boy in 1973. These are the movies that came out between when I was 5 and 9 years old: Star Wars, Superman, The Empire Strikes Back, Superman II, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. They really don't make 'em like they used to. Although Iron Man got kind of close.

Anyway! I seem to have a lot to say; hmmm, maybe I should actually try posting on a daily basis - what a novel idea....