Welcome to Philadelphia

So, it's been an interesting few weeks here. The humidity seem to have broken for the most part, which makes it more than bearable to go outside in the daytime. It also makes my gum less gooey. In Utah, my gum would dry out if I didn't chew it soon enough after opening the package. Out here, it absorbs water from the air. I learned not to carry gum in my pocket on humid days, and was complaining to Eric (a fellow first year who also lives in Summit Park) about the result. His response: Welcome to Philadelphia.

My Utah license plates stand out like a sore thumb. Yesterday when I came out of the salon after getting a haircut, there was a teenage girl taking a picture with her phone of my license plates. I didn't notice what she was doing until after I went to unlock my car. I think I scared her to death. I could tell she was embarrassed, so I attempted to flash a reassuring smile.

So far, people here have been very nice to me. At Home Depot, a fellow noticed I was from Utah, and walked over to welcome me to the city. He asked where I was going to be attending school, and was excited to tell me that Temple was his alma mater. And last, but not least, the night I rolled into town, some of the people in my apartment building were out playing bean bags. They pretty much unpacked my car and carried stuff into the apartment in 5 minutes flat. When I thanked them for their help one of the dudes told me, "No problem. That's how we do it in PA."

That's all I have time for now. I'm going to take some photos and post them in the next couple of days. I have my first day of orientation on Thursday, and then classes start on monday!

2100 miles to Philly - In Photos

So, I've finally got my desk set up in my room, along with my external hard drive. Now I can start posting some pictures and such on my blog. I didn't want to get ahead of myself and post anything until I got the roadtrip pics up here. They aren't as cool as I was hoping they would be, but hey, I tried. Basically, there is a picture about every 100 miles, taken by whomever was sitting in the passenger seat.

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end"

Summer Grilling

Even though it's been raining a lot over the past month I've still been grilling like it's going out of style. Kristen gave me a fabulous cookbook titled "Mastering the Grill" and I've been getting a ton of ideas from it. At pretty much any given time in the past week, there has been something marinating in the fridge. In any case, I wanted to share a quick and easy recipe for a chicken marinade. Mince some garlic and cilantro and mix it with half a bottle or so of Zesty Italian salad dressing. Pour into a ziplock, add a few chicken breasts, and toss it in the fridge overnight (don't tell Whitney, though). The next day, fire up the grill to high heat, and sear each side of the breasts for about three minutes. Then turn the grill down, and cook until the juices run clear. The result should be juicy and delightful. Give it a try!

Higher Education FAIL

I'm a regular subscriber to FAILBlog. Some of their posts are pretty hilarious. I saw this while driving home the other day. My mother was kind enough to hang out the window and take the photo.

Dental School Woes

I've only just begun to look at the full cost of going to dental school. Temple's tuition runs somewhere in the middle of all of the schools I interviewed at. While it's not nearly as expensive as University of the Pacific (in San Fran), and the fact that becoming a Pennsylvania "resident" is rather difficult (so, no in-state tuition unfortunately) it ends up looking about "average" tuition for an out-of-stater like myself. And, of course, tuition isn't the only thing I'll be spending lots of money on. The cost of living isn't terribly outrageous in Philly, but it's nothin' like the midwest, either.

I've been running spreadsheets for about the last week now, trying to estimate how much money I'm going to need to take out in student loans over the next four years. If you take out too much, you'll be the last person from your class to pay back the loans. If you don't take out enough, you eat Ramen six nights a week, and Mac & Cheese (not the kind with Gruyere) for your fancy meal of the week.

In any case, I'm hoping to have my loans paid off within ten years of graduation, if not sooner, and i'm totally prepared to drive my Camry until the wheels fall off in order to make that happen. Eeek. It sure is scary to see how much it's going to cost me, in sum. $300K, less if I'm smart about it.

The photo is a screenshot of a part of one of the spreadsheets, which shows monthly payments, as well as the fraction of interest and principal balance paid.

A bit of handywork

Two of my three Xbox 360 controllers have been unhappy recently. The buttons on one stopped popping back up after they had been pressed down. The other controller had the misfortune of being the one I was using when I lost my 10th straight game in Halo 3's fiesta double experience playlist a couple of weeks back.

I had two controllers in need of repair, so I bought a special tool online so I could undo the screws that Microsoft uses (tamper resistant Torx, size T8, just in case you care). Long story short, when I was putting the controllers back together, I realized I could mix and match the pieces from the different colored controllers (white and black) to make a unique look.

I was so pleased with the result, I took a couple of photos.