when your life is boring

i haven't written in a while and that's only because nothing truly exciting has been happening in my life lately. i mean, i haven't been winning tickets to go to the world cup, i haven't had mystique experiencies in an eastern european train station, and i haven't been to any international economics workshops lately.

at least, i've been thinking that must be the reason of my lack of interest in sitting down and writing.

well, i take that back.

first, because some interesting things have been happening. second, because i guess what's interesting to me might not be of interest to the general public.

one significant event in my student life is my success in the macroeconomics oral i took on 7 september. now i have some proof that i'm a real macroeconomist! how accomplished i'll be as one still remains to be seen, of course.

after the exam, i took a few days off and they were phenomenal. my friend katsuuuuuuu arrived from japan just because he wanted to see agassi at the u.s. open. pretty krazy, no? he just e-mailed me one day out of the blue and asked if he could come to the u.s. and stay with me for almost a month! so he arrived a bit before my exam and suffered the consequences, since i couldn't really hang out much. chapo visited the weekend right after my oral. with reena, we went all to the u.s. open final and i saw federer win his 9th grand slam! well, that's exciting, no?!!?

then i started studying again for my labor economics qualifying exam... the last exam of my life!! so, during all this time, not too many exciting things have been going on. katsu's visit might have been one of the most fun things. he hung out a lot with the slutskys and we learned a lot about japanese culture... ochinkos, omankos, mo dame po included. he got my really psyched about going to japan soon. and if that was not enough, federer is blogging this week in the aig japan tennis championships! it's his first time in japan and i've read some great stories about the food and the country... besides the funnier stories about how he put some wasabi on mirka's sashimi, which burned the hell out of her mouth... or how he had a nightmare after a night of sake bombing, woke up hysterically in the middle of the night and hit his shin against the bed's corner (ouch!), or how tim henman tried to cook for them in a fancy japanese restaurant but after a few pictures, they all sat him back down.

anyway, besides that, james heckman was in town last week and i went to all his lectures. the man is ridiculous. the man is so old and he's as lucid and clear in his presentations as ever.

actually, i just checked his age on a website and he's not that old! he was born in 1944, which means he's only 62! i thought he was older because i also thought he had won the nobel prize back in 1995... but that was robert lucas, another u. chicago laureate.

anyway, i guess the more exciting part of my life lately has been planning ahead. my labor oral is on 27 october. after that, my birthday is coming up and i'm thinking of having a piñata. usually, i don't like to make much fuss about my birthday but i thought a piñata would be fun. and especially now that i spend most of the day in the recently inaugurated party office, i must live up to the expectations.

and then there's thanksgiving break. need to make plans for that (any suggestions?). then back to monterrey, and pipi and kanna are coming to visit! and chucho will join them! that will be a good end of the year.

should add pictures to this post... jajaj it looks more like a to-do list than a blog, but what the hell.

oooooooh, and other things i can talk about in the future is: my macro students and my new loud sex-maniac neighbors (yes, again!).