Fourth of July

Hey all,

Ironic that this post is going out not on the fourth of July, but oh well. After the fun of this past weekend in Hampi, not too much happened this week until the 4th. There are, of course, no official celebrations around here (though I found out today that last year some interns got together and set off fireworks... Oh well, things to keep in mind in case I spend future 4ths outside the US), so we celebrated by taking a trip to karaoke night at Opus. We met up with the astrophysicists we met at Hampi, and about 8 people from the office came, so we had a pretty massive group. Dinner was really good (I've discovered that I can actually get beef at Opus! I didn't think I was going to get any at all while I was here!). I think there is some sort of tradition starting when we have events with Prasad because Ashwani smuggled a bottle of brandy into Opus (in case they didn't have any and because it is *way* cheaper than house drinks). In addition to dinner I had a couple of beers, and after mentioning that enough alcohol might convince me to do karaoke, Nels had some (delicious) brandy shots show up in front of me.

We finished up chatting and dinner right about when the karaoke actually started. Unfortunately, the people who got up to sing were, by and large, *really* good, which meant that I wouldn't go up to sing by myself. Nels is the only person who went up by himself and sung "We're so happy together," which was the closest thing to a 4th of July celebrating America song that he could really find. However, the high point of the night was when Nels, Rob, Christian (who is incidentally not American), one of the astrophysicists whos name I forget (the one that wasn't in Hampi), and I went up and celebrated the 4th by singing the most american song we could find, which turned out to be the Beach Boy's "Surfin' USA". I think someone has posted a youtube video of that, but I'm not going to give any further hints as it was rather horrible and embarrassing. Fun though ^_^.

After Opus closed at 11:30 Nels and I came back home and hung out in Tracy's room, watched VH1 and chatted for a while. All in all a good night ^_^.

All right, time for me to go to bed. Its almost 1:00AM and I've spent the last several hours posting to the blog / uploading pictures on facebook. I think I am *finally* all caught up, and I hope that you all enjoy the pictures and the posts.

Cheers & g'night,
Jason