Shuttle. Train. Bus. Ferry.

So, I started work on July 30 and haven't had much time to post. Between work and commuting I have had very little free time during the week; I can't even stay up late and watch the Olympics :(. The first month is completely filled with training so most of my days are spent listening to lectures, but there have been a few days that I felt were really educational. Today was great because instead of going to the office we went to a Halfway home in the Bronx and spent the day working with the kids that lived there. I had a little girl named Ciane, who was originially paired with another guy but she refused to talk and was extremely shy so I let him take my teenage boy that seemed upset that he was put with a girl. Ciane ended up talking her head off by the end of the day and we had a lot of fun together. The past couple of weekends we've had Matt's friends from high school come and visit and then last week Jay and Nina came up. Although I love having guests, this weekend is our first free weekend since we moved in and I could use the rest. I'll try to keep the blog updated as much as possible, but until I get into a routine I am just too sleepy when I get home to log on and post.

Tours from a homeless guy are highly recommended

This past weekend my dad's girlfriend, Debbie, wanted to do something special for my dad's birthday. Since she just had surgery and I still haven't started working, we had plenty of time to plan a nice trip weekend trip to Philadelphia. Matt, Dad, Debbie, Christie, Wade and I all left early Saturday morning, checked into our hotel and then visited the historic district in Philadelphia. We saw the famous bell with a crack in it, Independence Park, Independence Hall, Benjamin Franklin's old house and lots of other things. For lunch we had the only lunch acceptable in Philadelphia, Philly cheesesteaks. For dinner I found a really fun restaurant called the Melting Point, a fondue place where you cook your own dinner. Matt was a little concerned because he doesn't ever cook, but he seemed to do okay. I loved it! After dinner we walked a couple blocks over to Helium comedy club to see Aires Spears. He was actually pretty funny, haven't laughed that much in a while.


On day 2, Matt and I woke up a lot earlier than everyone else and decided to take a walk around the city. We didn't really know where to go, so we headed towards a tall clock tower with a statue of Paul Revere on the top. On the way there we ran into a relatively clean, nice homeless man who struck up a conversation with us. When we asked him a little about our surroundings, he began to give us a tour of city hall. He also showed us where the Masonic Temple was, where part of National Treasure was filmed and the steps that Rocky raced up. That was the best tour I had all weekend. We headed back to the hotel and gave the rest of our group the tour we got from the homeless guy. We headed home right after lunch, which made Matt very happy because on Friday afternoon our new tv was delivered and Matt didn't get a chance to play with it yet.

The new apartment

Matt and I are finally settled into our new apartment. It took a week or so of trips to Bed Bath and Beyond, Linens N' Things, Target and furniture stores in order to make our apartment home. I would write more, but Matt's blog is pretty detailed so you can read his Apartmentlog posts at www.loopforever.com.


The one thing I love about Stamford is that we can walk everywhere. There are numerous restaurants within a mile of our apartment, Target is 3 blocks away, the mall is across the street, we have 3 movie theaters and a huge public library right around the corner. The library is great because I have almost nothing to do during the day so I have resorted to reading. I just finished Jodi Picoult's 19 Minutes and it was amazing.

In case you were wondering where I've been

After graduation, I went to Connecticut for a week to visit with family. The highlight of my visit was a family graduation party that turned into a massive food fight. My aunts decided to pour water on my grampy while he was sleeping. Grampy then retaliated with some water balloons that I lovingly made for him. More water was thrown, but somehow it got a little out of hand and my uncle Mark was covered in cake and my cousin Wade wore a combination of iced tea and coke.

After a week or so in Connecticut, I was getting a little bored so I took a ride up to New Hampshire to visit Tina for a while. We went to see "What Happens in Vegas", which was a really good movie, but definitely a chick flick. The highlight of this visit was hiking to the top of Mount Monadnock. Our friend Dan Shea went hiking there earlier in the week and since it was close we decided that we wanted to tackle the mountain too. We didn't know that the hiking we would be doing didn't involve following a well beaten path, but mostly consisting of rock climbing. The picture above shows just how rocky the climb was. However, it was a great work out and the view from the top was amazing. I spent a few more days in New Hampshire attending barbecues and parties and we had a good time.

Leaving New Hampshire wasn't fun because I had to travel all the way to New Jersey to my Dad's to pack for the new apartment. I drove through New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey all in the same day. Matt and I move into the new apartment in exactly a week, so I'm getting very excited and I have a lot of packing to do, so that should keep me busy. This weekend Dad and Debbie want to go to Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell, go to the zoo and eat cheese steaks. Those all sound like fun and Philadelphia is only about an hour and a half away.

I can now wear a tassle on the left

Matt and I had an alternative Senior Week. Neither of us really drink so we didn't want to pay outrageous prices to events that we probably wouldn't enjoy. I spent a couple days with the girls visiting Vanderbilt Park taking lots and lots of pictures. We also packed into the bed of Tina's truck and went to the drive-in. It was freezing outside, but we took every blanket we could find in the house in order to stay warm.

Matt, Jay, Nina and I took an afternoon and went to New York City. There we went to the Museum of Natural History, which is always fun, but we only had a couple of hours and there is just way to much history to view in such a short time. We then went to Jekyll and Hyde for dinner. It was entertaining, but the food was overpriced and wasn't very tasty or satisfying. It was still a nice trip though, next time we'll have to be a little more prepared. The next night was senior formal and Matt and I didn't want to pay $70 per person for sub-par food and an open bar that we wouldn't take advantage of, so we decided to go to Beekman Arms with Jay and Nina. The food there was amazing, everyone else ordered the steak and I had duck with a balsamic fig sauce. All in all, I think we made a good decision.

Saturday was my college graduation. It was raining all day Friday and the forecast for Saturday had a few people worried, but the skies opened up and the sun came out just for us. It was a nice ceremony, but entirely too long to hold my attention. The only thing that got me through the hour and a half of name calling was a discussion with some Math professors about Battlestar Galactica. After the ceremony, my family and Matt's family met at Amici's for dinner and presents. Our families seemed to get along very well and I'm glad that they finally had a chance to meet. Yesterday, my memere said "Matt's mom is so beautiful and nice. I wish I had a chance to talk to her a little more." It was so cute. So now I have 21 days away from Matt until we move into our new apartment on June 10th. Luckily I have family parties, packing and a trip to NH to visit Tina to look forward to.

Doctor Who's new companion and why I don't like her

Matt and I started attended Sci-fi night again. We took a break from our usual Tuesday routine because we just weren't that interested in Babylon 5. The new season of Doctor Who started last month and last week, we finally sat down and watch a couple of episodes. Doctor Who is usually one of my favorite shows, but so far I've been a little disappointed and that mostly has to do with the new companion. I didn't Doctor Who's first companion Rose, she was entertaining and the only thing that really annoyed me about her was that her eyebrows were black and her hair was blonde, but that's something I can get over. Martha was a great companion and I wish she didn't have to go. Now the show has gone a new direction and decided to have an agitating old lady as companion. Catherine Tate looks old enough to be David Tennant's mother and that just takes away from the fun of wondering whether or not Doctor Who will fall in love with his companion this year. Take a look at the pictures above and you'll see what I mean.

Update: I have now warmed up to Donna was the new companion, and was pleasantly surprised when Martha joined the show for a couple of episodes.

It's almost over....

I haven't posted in a while so here is a brief update on what has been happening in the life of Brooke Lowell. Gaming for Hope went really well this year. In the past the club has raised $1,400 consistently, however this year we raised $2,282 for Child's Play Charity. On an unrelated note, I am allergic to the changing of the seasons and spent most of last weekend sneezing uncontrollably. This was very unfortunate because Matt and I took a trip to New Jersey this weekend for Denny's 4th birthday party and it's hard to enjoy a barbecue when you can't breathe. My dad recently got a Golden Retriever puppy, Holly, and Matt and I finally got to play with it. Matt would love to get a puppy when we move, but we'll never be home and it costs $500 deposit and $50/month for a puppy in the apartment. My ideal puppy would look like the one below. We both really love Great Danes and so we should probably wait until we have the time and space for a dog.


This week is my last week of classes forever, next week is my final week of finals and then I have to endure a week of drunken housemates and then graduation!! I will miss my friends at Marist, but I am looking forward to my new apartment and my new job.

Finally, a place to live!

Matt and I have spent a lot of our time lately scouting apartments and making appointments. Since our ideal locations are about an hour and a half away from Poughkeepsie, we wanted to set a date to visit as many apartments as possible. After making a wonderful color coded itinerary, printing directions, maps, emails and floorplans we were prepared to take the trip. We left around 7:45 this yesterday morning for Stamford, CT in high hopes. We absolutely loved the third place we visited, but decided that we should keep looking just in case we found something better. The fifth place we looked at was extremely similar to the third place, but a couple hundred dollars more expensive. We then decided to take a risk, cancel our remaining appointments and put a deposit down at the third place we went to, Avalon Grove. Some of the perks of the property are: heated in ground swimming pool, gym, indoor racquetball court, indoor basketball court, beautiful outdoor grilling area and the best of all is the free shuttle to the train station that comes every 20 minutes during peak commuting hours. The apartment we chose is a 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom with loft and an extra large storage unit that could be used as a guest room.

Floor plan:
I am very happy with our decision and it's nice to not have the stress of looking for a place to live. Our official move-in date is June 10th, which is nice because it gives us a little time after graduation to prepare for the move. For pictures of the property click here.

So much to do, So little time

With only 5 weeks of classes left in the semester I find myself with absolutely no free time. On top of my school work, Matt and I have the task of finding a place to live. We are going to visit 2 places tomorrow and I'm hoping we really like one so that this quest can be over. I'll post in a couple days and tell you how it went.

My last week of midterms

Even though midterms aren't my favorite part of the semester it at least marks that I am half way through my last semester here at Marist. I have already completed 2 of my midterms this week, both went well. The only midterm I have left is a presentation for US military history. My portion of our project is complete, but the rest of my group seems to be slacking.

Gaming for Hope planning has been going very well. Prizes this year will include a PS3, iPod touch and a 19" LCD monitor. If you live in or around the Poughkeepsie area it will be held on April 19th from 1pm - 1am. We will have numerous console and PC tournaments. Table top games will also be a much bigger attraction this year! Yay for Munchkin and Carcassonne.

Matt and I just finished watching every episode of Battlestar Galactica. I was a little disappointed in the last few episodes of season 3, since the trial of Gaius Baltar wasn't very thrilling. However, the ending was amazing! We also watched Razor, which wasn't as bad as others have made it out to be, but it did answer a few questions. To fill the void in my life created by a lack of science fiction, I decided to start watching Stargate Atlantis. I find it entertaining, but it doesn't quite compare to Battlestar Galactica and Dr. Who. Luckily, in April I will have plenty of sci-fi to keep me satisfied.

Yesterday, Matt and I decided to have a movie night. Now as many of you may know I am extremely indecisive and Matt made me pick the movie. I found an amazing movie that is definitely worth seeing if you haven't yet done so. "The Man From Earth" is a science fiction movie that relies more on plot and the imagination of the viewer than CG to captivate their audience.

Best MOTD Ever!

For some strange reason Putty keeps aborting my connection to one of the school servers. Every time I log back in my connection fails. I have checked my internet connection, re-installed putty, had Matt Bertolini log into the server on his machine and everything seems to be fine, except I still keep getting kicked off. This server seems to hate me and I'm not sure why. The last time I logged in my Message of the Day read "GIVE UP!!!!!" and after about 5 minutes of laughing with Matt I have decided to do just that.

MOTD

As many of you may know I am obsessed with what the school servers give me as my Message of the Day. This all started when I logged into server at work one day and it told me "Be careful when biting into a hamburger". As it turned out Matt and I went to dinner that night with Jay and Nina to The Dubliner, where the only item worth ordering off of the menu are the hamburgers. However, I just couldn't bring myself to eat a hamburger, since I was clearly warned not to do so earlier that morning. Ever since then I have been recording interesting MOTD's that I encounter when logging into school servers. The day I received the message "You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture." I was extremely lazy and spent most of the day lying in bed watching movies, until I read the message and had to get up and do something. I haven't encountered any messages that were as good as the one involving the consumption of a hamburger, but here are a few others I thought were interesting:

12/12 - Be careful when biting into a hamburger.

12/14 - You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.

12/19 - Bliss is ignorance.

1/24 - Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

1/25 - When I said "we", officer, I was referring to myself, the four young ladies, and, of course, the goat.

1/27 - Be ALERT! (The world could use more lerts)

3/4 - Hear about the Californian terrorist that tried to blow up a bus?
Burned his lips on the exhaust pipe.

3/7 - Q: How many Bell Labs Vice Presidents does it take to change a light bulb?
A: That's proprietary information. Answer available from AT&T on payment
of license fee (binary only).

3/7 - There was a phone call for you.

Leap Day Post

It's been cold, wet, snowy and disgusting outside lately, which has caused me to spend my time watching entirely too many movies and old episodes on tv shows. Here are my movie and telvision reviews:

Atonement - Amazing story with a touching ending. Writer Briony Tallis, as a 13-year-old, irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's (Keira Knightley) lover (James McAvoy) of a crime he did not commit.

August Rush - A touching movie with fairy tale elements, where an orphaned musical prodigy uses his gift as a clue to finding his birth parents. I am a sucker for happy endings. My favorite character would have to be the little girl in the church choir. She has an amazing voice and "Raise It Up!" should have won the Oscar for best song.

Michael Clayton - I thought the movie moved too slow and I couldn't really get into it.

Jumper - Very entertaining, but the plot was a little "jumpy".

Battlestar Galactica - Matt and I have been slowly watching all 3 seasons of Battlestar Gallactica over the past couple of months and I am addicted. However, the character Starbuck is really annoying and every time she's put in danger I wish they would kill off the character. My favorite character would have to be Sharron, it's nice to see a her being accepted my humans even though she's a cylon. I can't wait for new episodes in April.

Lost - Could this show get any more confusing, every episode brings more unanswered questions. I really want to know who the Oceanic 6 are and why does Kate have a son named Aaron?!? Despite my confusion, I still can't wait for Thursday nights!

A New Post

I seem to be neglecting this blog lately, so I decided to take this snow day to post an update. Some great things that have happened lately are the birth of two new beautiful babies. My mother has yet to send me any pictures of my cousin's new baby Kiara. Matt's mom sent me some new pictures of Matt's new cousin Joseph earlier today. Isn't he cute...

This month Matt and I took a trip to Stamford to look at a couple apartments. We found a place we really liked, but it was a little too far away from the train station. We also realized that it is still a little too early to find private listings for apartments since we don't want to move in until the beginning of June.

Another wonderful thing that happened this month was a flu epidemic that visited out school. Over 300 students were sick the flu, including me. I still have a bit of a cough, but so do most students on campus. I think it needs to stop snowing and Global Warming needs to kick in and boost these temperatures. Speaking of warmer temperatures, what is with Groundhog's Day? I don't understand how you know whether or not a groundhog sees it's shadow. Can people not see a shadow so they conclude that the groundhog has no shadow? Or is there a person who can speak to groundhogs and can ask the groundhog? I also have no idea why the appearance of a shadow or lack there of can tell you anything about how long winter will be this year. I have always been perplexed by this issue and if anyone has any insight into Groundhog's Day, I would appreciate the information.

I have also been extremely busy lately with Gaming for Hope planning. For those of you that don't attend Marist or don't have any idea what I'm talking about, Gaming for Hope is a large LAN party run by the Computer Society and Anime Society. The event involves PC, console, table top games, tournaments and prizes. All proceeds will go to Child's Play Charity, which provides entertainment for hospitals and centers that treat children with terminal illnesses. This year Gaming for Hope will be held on April 19th this year from 1pm - 1am in the Marist College McCann center. For more information go to: http://www.gamingforhope.com/.

That is all for now, but if I will try to post regularly from now on.

Short and Sweet

I have been really busy and haven't had any time to post. However, I thought I would write about 2 links that I think are amazing. The first one I found when I had to write a program that contained an array of 15 regular expressions. I came upon Regex-Tastic when looking for a regular expression tester and it is one of the best I have seen. You can input large amounts of test data and it will highlight all matches and total them. This tester works for PCRE and POSIX. The other extremely helpful link was www.ilovejackdaniels.com. Such a great domain name, especially since it has nothing to do with Jack Daniels. The site contains a number of very helpful cheat sheets for HTML, SQL, regular expressions, JavaScript and many others. I have entirely too much homework to do so I will end this post with "GO PATRIOTS!".

A new phone and a strange call

Yay! Today I finally received my LG Voyager in the mail. Had to order it twice and call Verizon customer service a few times, but it's here and it's great! Not only does it have a beautiful touch screen and full keyboard, but i love how the phone vibrates when using the touch screen.


The morning after I received this phone, my deep sleep was interrupted by an unfamiliar ring tone. My father called to ask what he said was a very important question: "How many states are in the United States?" I thought this was an odd thing to call about, but my answer was that there are 50 states. I thought that the answer to this question was common knowledge to just about every American that passed the 3rd grade, but I was very wrong. It turns out my dad was up against 5 people telling him that there were not 50 states in the U.S., but that there were 52. I couldn't believe my sister, her boyfriend, my dad's girlfriend, her father and a priest had no idea how many states our country is comprised of. I decided to take a little nap and then start an investigation of my own. Here is a map of the U.S. to prove the accuracy of my answer:
I questioned 6 of my housemates, 5 of them said 50 immediately and begged me to let her google it and when I refused to let her she said there were 52. I called my mother, and sadly both she and my step dad both thought that there were 52 states. My mother was completely convinced that she had gone to school for 12 years and that she was always taught that there were 52 states. Luckily, 3 of my younger siblings were home that day for her to question along with a few of their friends. All 7 children in the house were questioned separately and all knew the correct answer; So don't worry the school system is teaching children something. When you search online for the 52 states there are a surprising number of people who really think there are 52 states. My favorite thread would have to be this one. In conclusion, I think that I need to find smarter friends and family! I am joking, kind of.

The first day of my last semester

Today was the first day of my senior Spring semester of college, which was not fun at all. This inspired me to write a post about recent things I've heard that have made me laugh out loud. Hopefully this post will improve my day and yours.

• People in glass houses should not throw stones. Actually, throwing stones is bad behavior... i propose that people should not throw stones regardless of the housing situation. However, if you are trapped in a glass house and have a stone, you should throw it!

• I don't like kids, they are small, smelly and eat most of the world's cookies!

• How fast does a zebra have to run to look grey?

Now completely off topic, how do I know whether or not to use grey or gray??? What is the difference! I have found and crayon and it says that it is "gray" and if Crayola uses gray it must be right! I decided to use Google to find an answer to this gr(a|e)y dilemma. I Google everything (if i need to know what time it is i don't look for a watch i just ask Google and it knows). Google let me down though, so many results for grey and gray that it was impossible to discover the correct word for the color. For now I will let this topic rest, but my quest to uncover the truth will continue. One last joke to end where I started off, this joke was on Comedy Central Presents: Kyle Cease and my boyfriend thinks it's hilarious:

• I hate people at Halloween they don’t carve their pumpkin out, they’ll just like paint a face on it; you know what I’m talking about? But some people won’t even do that, they’ll paint a face, but it won’t even be on a pumpkin, it’ll be like on a piece of paper. But some people won’t even do that, they’ll take like a bunch of words and put that on a piece of paper, and it’ll be like an essay on Ben Franklin or some shit, you know? And then they’ll hand it in at school and it won’t even be Halloween! It’s like, pffft, nice jack-o-lantern, jacka**!

So I decided to start a blog.

As you can see, I have decided to write down my thoughts in hopes that they will entertain the web community or at least help me keep track of my thoughts. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I change subjects every couple seconds, so you have been warned that occasionally I will make little or no sense.

Here are some random things I discovered today:

1) I hate - actually I don't like the word hate so let me rephrase - I strongly dislike rrdtool. I change one little thing in the rrdtool update script and my entire database gets erased.

2) If you run cold water over an onion right after you peel it your eyes will not burn and cause you to tear for the next half hour. I learned this a little too late, but it is useful for future onion endeavors.

3) Bamboo never dies; and believe me I've tried to kill it! I left my bamboo tree at college over winter break with little water to drink and it was still alive when I got back. In fact, it barely shows again signs of neglect. Don't worry, I over-watered the plant the second I returned to ease its suffering. I wish that there was a pet out there that would be this resilient because dogs, cats and even fish are entirely too needy.

That is all for today!