Yesterday, Jennifer and I threw a Belated Housewarming Party. Jennifer referred to it as "Worlds Colliding", which was apt: we had people from her high school and my high school (Aaron Azlant; Michelle; Eric and Andrew Ow), from Harvard, and from our lab at Berkeley. Chanda drove up from Santa Cruz, Chris from Davis, Sam from San Francisco, and several of Jennifer's friends roadtripped up from Caltech and Santa Barbara. Craig, Zack, and Drew came with Ken Ferry, who I hadn't seen in at least two years; this morning after the party Craig, Ken, and I had a rather sedate brunch at Saul's in North Berkeley (I had a somewhat dry turkey pastrami sandwich on rye, and sadly the gefilte fish Craig ordered had eggs in it). Zack got most of his homebrewed "Hefeweizen" liquidated, and Pete brought a fantastic, very foamy, home-brewed porter. It was a great party, although part of the reason so many people came was probably because we had both been living out of the country and lots of people hadn't seen us in a long time.

With the coming of fall I've felt like I'm back in Cambridge. On Friday I walked to the Oxford Tract to give water to a labmate's Hawaiian spiders and the chilly breeze and leaves falling off the street trees reminded me of early fall in Boston. Friday also saw the awesome annual University of California Press book sale (paperbacks $5, hardcovers $10) which led me to buy way too many California Natural History Guides. That evening Drew and I went to see The Tempest at the Cal Shakes in Orinda, a really entertaining and very creative production in an open-air theater. And I have a fake research-proposal due and a midterm on Wednesday, which I need to get working on. Another reason it feels like I'm back in college.