HAPPY BIRTHDAY (e:MK)!! I hope you have a wonderful day and that your year is even better :)

Today spring break officially begins for me, which means home to Buffalo tomorrow. The past couple weeks have been so stressful that knowing I would get to come home was the only thing getting me through. It's weird though, this year is the first that I actually considered not coming home for my week of vacation. It just felt like there wasn't really any point. Everyone works all day while I sit at home bored (albeit enjoying my house and relaxing). I definitely miss my mom and my Buffalo friends but everyone has adult lives now. They aren't around to spend very much time with and it might be just make more sense to say in Boston. Then reality hit. If I stay here it would be a week, nonstop, of my roommate Lauren with no classes to save me. I definitely can't handle that! So in the end, yes, I will be home for the week. But maybe I'm starting to move on from Buffalo a little. I mean you never move on from your family and friends, but I guess you can move away from them.

Anyway, onto a small dilemma I'm dealing with. I met, and ultimately ended up living with Lauren because she was dating one of my best friends in college, Alex. Recently (mid January) she broke up with him for reasons she explains differently depending on the day or the audience. Right after they broke up they talked occasionally, but recently they started talking at least as much as when they were dating. Alex told me that he believed they were going to get back together because Lauren said she might move to DC to be with him if he got a job there this summer. However, what he doesn't know is that she's been talking to her ex-boyfriend from high school too lately. Trust me, they are not just friends. Over her spring break she even went to visit him in Arkansas (which she lied about to me and then mistakenly admitted later) and he's going to visit her in June for almost two weeks. It really bothers me that Lauren is leading Alex on about wanting to get back together. When I talk to her about it she says there is no way they would get back together. I know she must have told him that she would consider moving to DC because he would never have made that up, especially knowing that I live with her. Now I feel torn. I don't want to get involved in this because it's not my business and I want to minimize any problems with Lauren. On the other hand, Alex has been a good friend to me and I hate seeing him treated so badly. If he knew Lauren was seeing someone else and had no intention of getting back together he would probably have moved on. Plus, she is using him because she likes the attention but she doesn't realize that he is factoring her into LIFE DECISIONS that he is making. I know he should be more careful since they are broken up but he shouldn't be expected to assume she lies to him. I guess ultimately I can't do anything about it. It's not my business, right? But I still feel like a terrible friend and if it were me in his position I would want someone to tell me. But still, I should stay out of it, right?

OMG... Heidi's bank was robbed!

I lived with Heidi all four years of college. Her family lives in Vermont and they basically live in the bank they own (her house is the part of the building with black shutters in the picture). It's the smallest privately owned bank in the country. Anyway, yesterday, in braod daylight, it was robbed! I guess they won't tell much about the heist but I'll get the details from her tonight. All her life she was afraid in her house because of movies about bank robberies, now just as she was getting over that this happens. I can't believe her bank got robbed!

I have to make a big life decision by Friday. Last year I deferred my acceptance to a doctoral program at Penn State to come to Harvard and go to the School of Education. Now, I have been notified that I need to let the fine people at Penn State know whether I will be coming in the fall or not. I was under the impression that this decision would need to be made by April (like the deadline for new students) since I have been getting all the new student material in the mail, but I was wrong. I have applied to other schools because I'm not sure if I want to do an exclusively psychology program instead of one in education and psychology. Unfortunately I won't know the other programs' decisions until after I need to make my decision about Penn State. To make matters more complicated Penn State is offering me the best financial aide package possible...I would probably make money by going there. The downside is that it's in a very isolated area (I've really enjoyed living in Boston :( ) and the program might not be a perfect fit. I'm not sure what to do now. I asked them if I could have more time to decide but they understandably said they needed to know right away. It's such an important decision and I honestly don't know how I'm going to decide. Not going there would be such a huge risk...what if I don't get in other programs, or what if they don't offer enough funding? Of course I already have student loans, and I really don't want to be in even more debt when I finally get done with school. On the other hand, I don't want to go to Penn State and then find out I got into another program that is more appropriate and offers financial aide. I guess I want it all, and I want it to be easy. If anyone has advice I'm all ears right now.

Classes start on Monday so this is officially my last weekend to be lazy. I was looking forward to hanging out with my friends but then I found out that everyone I know in Boston (Lauren, my roommate, Heidi, and Jeremy) were going home. So, without friends to hang out with or homework, this weekend looked like it would turn into three straight days of pjs and tv. Then just in the nick of time, I met someone new while waiting on line (for 2 hours!) to register for courses. I invited him and some of my school friends over for the Superbowl this weekend. My mom always had really fun Superbowl parties when I was younger so I thought this would be nice to try it myself. I have spent most of today preparing for tomorrow’s festivities. I baked some football-themed cookies and made a potato and prosciutto thing. Since I don’t care about either team playing tomorrow, the party can just be able the food for me. I know I won’t ever be a great cook like my mom but I’m trying to get better. I hope everyone has a good weekend and enjoys the game tomorrow.