The man who lived by the river

From "The West Wing", Season 1, Epsisode "Take this Sabbath Day":

There was once a man who lived by the river. He heard a radio report that that the river was gonna flood the town and that the residents should evacuate their homes.

But the man said, "I'm religious, I pray. God loves me, God will save me."

The waters rose up. A guy in a rowboat came along and he shouted, "Hey, you! The town is flooding! Let me take you to safety!"

But the man shouted back, "I'm religious. I pray. God loves me, he'll save me."

A helicopter was hovering overhead and a guy with a megaphone shouted, "Hey, you! You down there! The town is flooding! Let me drop this ladder and I'll take you to safety."

The man shouted back that he was religious, that he prayed and that God would take him to safety.

The man drowned.

Standing at the gates of Saint Peter, he demanded an audience with God.

"Lord," he said. "I'm a religious man. I pray. I thought you loved me. Why did this happen?"

God said, "I sent you a radio report, a helicopter and a guy in a rowboat. What the hell are you doing here?"

Rescuing the parakeet

On Friday afternoon, after our stats lab, Matt and I were walking back to the parking lot and came upon a white & blue parakeet. Now parakeets aren't birds that you typically see just chilling in nature. At least not in the greater-Houston area. Our first inclination was to watch it sit there for a few minutes, try to feed it, talk to it in hopes that we were on candid camera, and eventually walk away... only to return to it to try to rescue it. Now before you think that we snatched this creature from nature - realize that it was perfectly okay with us being within inches of it and a guy on a bike almost ran over the poor feller and the bird didn't even budge. So with a cardboard box, we captured it and I took to out to my friends house.

Within an hour my friends had a bird cage, food, and a setup for the parakeet and it was eating and quite at home. I'm confident that even though they have 3 cats, that the parakeet will survive. That and they're already talking about buying another one to keep it company! That's the kind of happy ending that really wraps up a week!

Video iPods

If you're having a rough day at the office - I highly recommend loading "Office Space" onto a video iPod. Even if you can't actually watch the screen - often listening to the dialogue alone can keep you going throughout the day. Those lines like "PC-load letter, what the fuck does that mean?" can turn around an afternoon of finding out that your elegantly designed queue of processes was wiped out by someone else for no reason.

In any case, it's official -- Greece, England, Yale, Houston, and Louisville. It should be quite a ride, although I was recently thinking that it would have been fun to work on a cruise ship for one cycle. The advantage to doing what I'm going to be doing is that it actually pertains to my future job goals and dreams. It's of course my hope that the summer travels and new job environments will both restore my interest in certain aspects of psychology as well as some of the self-esteem that's been slowly sapped away in recent months.

The hardest part of traveling is probably going to be how to get my SCUBA gear to Greece. There's absolutely no way that I'm going over there without doing some shipwreck and ruins diving. Particularly since I'm only about 20 hours away from my necessary Dive Master prerequisites. I'm pretty sure that the rules of diving are listed in a much earlier post - so I'll just share the story of going diving at Stingray city with my brother. See, stingrays really like calamari, and who can blame them - I like it too. The goal at stingray city is to feed the sting rays the calamari without accidently rubbing it on yourself. If you're unfortunate (like my brother) to touch the food and then touch your arm, you will quickly find a stingray showing it's affection for your arm - the result will be a huge hickey!

It's crunch time with lots of projects wrapping up, the thesis now in draft number nine, and finals about to come due. I feel behind even though I know I'm right where I should be in all of it. I've been debating what classes to take in the fall. I'm settled on Structural Equation Modeling and some readings with my mentor. I'm torn between a social psychology class and an I/O psych class - alternatively I could take a Human Factors class at Rice. Maybe some yummy psycho-pharmacology in the schedule too. Still no word on how I'm getting funding next fall. Hopefully info on that at some point!