Erin Miller

I am sitting in a computer lab on the 17th floor of the NY Presbyterian hospital, looking out a sun-filled window over the densely packed city. I came in and annoying raised the blinds in front of my computer to allow for some sunshine to stream in — the New Yorkers are not amused by the glare I am creating, but I find that I am pretty dependent on getting at least a few minutes of sunshine a day, and besides being on the 17th floor of some building or another, it can be hard to find.
I should be working on environmental health economics, or my research technologies lab, but I know that a certain someone has probably checked this blog three times today and rolls his eyes every time he sees that I still haven’t made a post, even though it’s been three weeks since I posted. I guess there is a reasonable argument out there too that if I have time to play on the staff dodgeball team I should at least have time to create some minimalist blog post. Our team name, unfortunately, is not “Off in the shower” and that probably had something to do with why we lost in a close 7th match last night, but I don’t like to talk about it.
I just got back from a long weekend visit in Denver where I spent three wonderful days celebrating Valentine’s day with Dan. I got to meet up with the bro for dinner, make some delicious crab with Dan at home (which seems to be rated as the eighth best way to celebrate Valentines day), and check out a flobots show with some friends. Dan got my number at a flobots show over two years ago. At the time, Dan and a small group of his friends constituted the majority of the flobots fans at the show and we danced to their performance at a small venue where they were opening for some other band. The flobots have grown a lot since then. They won a big radio contest in Denver over the holidays and are now on regular rotation on a Denver radio station. It was wild to see them in their own head-lined sold out show at a 1000 capacity venue in Denver. It was amazing to hear complete strangers singing along to their songs and cheering wildly. It’s good to be reassured that good things really do happen to some really good people. I was telling this story to one of my friends in the city and he said, “man, you and Dan don’t just have a song, you have a band.” I guess that is sort of a fun way to look at it — the band’s growth mirroring in some way our nearly two-year relationship — though it also might be so mushy as to border on disgusting.