...have been good, on the whole. A few unpleasantries, but on the whole nice.

On Tuesday I had tea with melindasmonster. She's working on getting her paper studio off the ground. If you have ever wanted to make paper or marble, your chance awaits at the Boston Paper Collective. Paper and book arts are pretty awesome, and Melinda is excited to share! We talked for way too long. It's good to be back at Toscii's, I haven't gotten to go much since redstarrobot left Cantabrigia. The staff is always so nice.

I've worked a lot on my slides for my Xerox talk, and it's really shaping up well. I'm feeling more confident, and I think I'm going to be able to make all the changes suggested by my lab-mates.

I've watched a few movies with Ross this week, as we have a new source. We saw Balls of Fury, which wasn't particularly good, but alright and quite short. Like, "That's it?" short, less than 80 minutes I think. WE just watched Stardust, which I thought was very charming.

I got a package from Esther in the mail this week, I am so excited. She knows exactly what I like, what can I say. And now I won't have to use a crappy improvised camera strap...

I talked to my dad for almost half an hour, that was cool. We usually have very short phone conversations, so that was neat.

I made it to Vigil last night, djdirge was spinning, and that was sweet. melindasmonster, siryuse, and Jamie all made it out. Jamie and I split a drink, and I have to say that I really do like the bar at the Middlesex. Y'all should come out with me next month.

The bummer this week is that today I sprained my left ankle. Not badly, but still unpleasant enough that I skipped the pool today. I was doing so well! On Monday, I even swam a mile, because I could, and on Tuesday I cut down my time on my normal 3/4 mile. Boo. It's better I hurt the left than the right, since the right has prior issues, but it also means that the ankle brace I do have is right-footed, so I might have to get another.

See you soon, all.

I am going to Vigil tonight, y'all should come. I had a blast last time. No cover, and parking in Central is rather easy at night. You will have fun, really! Doors open at 9, I plan to get there between 9:30 and 10, and leave a little bit early.

See you there!

Hi All...

Yeah, I have been crazy busy for the last few weeks, which is why I haven't posted...

I went on a 10 day trip to Hawaii, partly on business, to the NSF conference in Waikiki, and then to visit my Uncle Otis, who's an organic farmer of fruit and ducks, in the town of Haiku in Maui. I had a quite good time. My mom and I went together. We did some Scuba diving, planted 8 fruit trees on my mom's property in Maui, a Valencia orange, a Minneola tangelo, a Dancey tangerine, a Tahitian lime, a starfruit, a lichee, and two avocados, saw sea turtles, swam at many beaches, went birdwatching, and ate like hippies. Did you know that some hibiscus plants have edible leaves? Cooks up like beet greens or so. I wrote about it in my paper journal, so if you want to hear more, I'll show you some time. Also, I put up photos on my Flickr!

For the Fourth, I went to a couple of barbecues, one at the Technodrome and one at the Victorian Manse.

For the rest of the week, I did school stuff. I swam at the pool. My labmate Natalia got me cute jewelry from Colombia, a carved ring and vueltiao hat earrings. Aw! On Thursday, I gave a presentation, practice for an upcoming talk at Xerox, and then we had a lab lunch at CBC. Yum!

This weekend I went to New York. minxwolf and I got a hotel in Brooklyn. We wanted to see Miranda and her family, to help cheer their spirits a bit. We ended up going out to brunch with the whole clan on Saturday. redstarrobot even joined us! Nice to see everyone, even in sad times. Vi and I went to museums galore on Friday, the American Museum of Natural History most of the day, and the Metropolitan Museum of the Arts for a bit at night. It's all sort of a blur now.

Well, hopefully this week will be less busy. lagaz, byakkodan_slash, let's go to Vigil again this week, it was so awesome last time!

I've been pretty lazy the last few days. I managed to make it to the pool on Monday. My legs have been kind of sore since then, which I find surprising since I have been going to the pool at least a few times a week for quite a while. That night Ross picked me up at school. He brought home a giant pair of old speakers, large enough that one had to be in the trunk, one in the back seat. Huge. We'll see if they work.

Yesterday I had lunch with my sister at the Cosi in Kendall Square. I do like their signature salad, and their bread is tasty when hot out of the oven. My sister had a pizza, which was also good. Of course, the place is packed at lunch, but whatever. After, I was kind enough to take her furniture shopping at the Salvation Army. We managed to find some awesome stuff, we got her two nightstands, and we scored some great tapes for her bf's new truck, including the single of Divinyls "I Touch Myself" and a National Anthems of the World collection. Sweet!

Last night I went shopping at Downtown Crossing with Natalia. We both are in dire need of new swimsuits for the pool. We had a total miss. Natalia managed to find all kinds of stuff otherwise, to take to her mom on her upcoming trip home. But no good pool swimsuits. Tons of beach stuff, but... I've got to figure out a good sports store near me, like Burlington Coat Factory or something. I don't want to buy a full price suit! Suggestions for good discount places in Boston?

Been playing a lot of Resident Evil 4. Getting close to the end. It's quite enjoyable, I might even play the extra missions and such at the end. I want to finish it before I go on my business trip, shouldn't be a problem. I've been watching more Lost Season 5, hopefully I will be caught up soon. Maybe I will do a little Lost touring in Hawaii, there are some guides online. I've also been watching Breaking Bad. It's a pretty awesome show, pretty intense.

Today I had lunch at Beijing Tokyo with Keith. It really is hard to decide what to get there. In the past, I've had the sushi, once the pad thai, and today I decided on the Ma Po Tofu, which was quite good. I do like that place. Otherwise, I've been doing errands today for my upcoming conference trip. Sending stuff to be printed, getting a carrying tube for my poster, etc. Hopefully my business cards will be in soon.

I think tonight I am going to go to Vigil at the Middlesex. It's been way too long since I've been out clubbing. lagaz, I am looking at you here, hopefully I will see you there. Anyone else wanna join me? Starts at 9pm, free. I will likely be there on the early side.

Has been pretty normal and boring. Mostly the good kind of boring. I spent the week working on my random school stuff. I went to the pool every day except Wednesday, in part because my foot has been bothering me. The swimming has been a lot of fun.

Otherwise, this week, I spent some quality phone time with my mum and a friend. I went to lunch with Keith, at Thailand Cafe. What can I say, I love drunken noodles. I've been watching Lost (Season 5), playing Resident Evil 4, and mostly having dinner at home.

On Thursday I went to Hi-Rise Cafe with my sister in the morning, to hang out and say hi to Jamie. As always, everything there is really good. I had a blueberry lime muffin, it was so good. I think my sister had like 3 lattes, got all caffeinated.

On Saturday Ross and I went on a double date with Laura and Alex, to see Drag Me To Hell and have dinner a Pho Pasteur. I made sure to buy some candy before hitting the theater, Mike and Ikes and Sugar Babies. Laura, she buys movie theater food, the nachos and the works. Icee! Drag Me To Hell was pretty awesome. It was great, and what you would expect from Sam Raimi. Parts that make you laugh, parts where you jump a little, and parts where you turn away from the screen going, "Ew gross!" Dinner at Pho Pasteur was great. We all got huge portions of food. I got my usual Cahn Chua, so yummy. It was a beautiful night when we were done. I am kinda puzzled by how nice the weather is, how cool, even though it's getting later into June. I can put up with the rain to have the temperatures this low.

Well, today I am just going to keep working on my random stuff today...

Friday was Commencement. Yes, that special event where you sit outside for hours and listen to everyone's name. This year was OK weather, compared to last year where I was soaked before they even started. It was sort of humid, and not too sunny. The commencement speaker was Deval Patrick, I didn't really love his speech. HE made the mistake of admitting that he had basically given the same speech at 4 other graduations this season already. Super lame. It was sort of boring and long. After they pronounced Ross's name wrong (and I asked, yes he wrote the phonetic pronunciation on the card and they still screwed it up) I went to get a quick chai latte. I ran into Sarah Cole, whose degree had her name spelled wrong on it. Oof. (And yes, they get you a new one next week.)

After graduation, we went to the Fairmont and waited for our table at the Oak Room. The Oak Bar had a beer tasting that was lovely, and we snacked a little on mixed nuts. Our table at the Oak Room was great. The dining chairs are so plush and huge, and the service was of course great. I really enjoyed the Viognier we had with dinner. Overall, I was not in love with the food, but it's really essentially a steak house type place, so all the other diners were quite pleased! After, Ross and I headed home to relax a bit before heading to vtarasov's party, which was hopping! I ran into Eerik there, he and Vlad are both working at 1366 together. He says that Matty B is coming back to town this fall, which is awesome. Later we headed over to 5E, where Ross managed to help put Jesse and Nick off their winning pong streak. We stayed there way too late.

Saturday I went to hang out with mzsylver and drakul, we chilled out and I did a Walgreens run. Oh, and had really good toast. Later I went to story night and Trogfest at Fenway house. I was able to dig up the infamous Walt Disney World postcard, which was in Housebook L. I got a little time to say hi to Miranda, Trevor, byakkodan_slash, and siryuse before I headed home.

Yesterday I took care of a lot of little things and relaxed some. I played some more Resident Evil 4, did some art stuff (summer is peak art season for me), worked on my to-do list, made some calls and emails, and the like. And today, I am back in my office, tooling away. Trash Track meeting at 2!

Really, not too much. I've had a moderately busy week or so, but nothing out of the ordinary.

I've had lunch with Keith, I've had lunch with rax. I've gone to the pool a whole lot. Mostly by myself, since Esther and Natalia have been very busy. This weekend was mostly relaxing around the house and taking care of errands and the like.

Saturday I helped my sister with the very last of her moving, the part where she had to move her fish tanks. Ross helped her take Obie to the MSPCA on Thursday :( Sad. His tank was both huge and messy to move. My sister was thinking about donating it to the Goodwill or Salvation Army, but neither of them take tanks, so we just had to take it to her new place and leave it to deal with later. Boy was that thing a pain. Both of us got bruises moving it. The bruise on the back of my arm from stabbing it on the screen door latch is still horrible looking now. We took her small tank and some accessories to her place, but the large tank stand just didn't fit in Ross's car! This was the absolute last of her stuff. After we went to Starbucks for frappucinos and treats, since we were both dehydrated and hungry from all the moving!

On Sunday, Esther came over for dinner, we had roll ups and some delicious fruit wine. Esther brought over chocolate-dipped fruit skewers for dessert. This further fuels my belief that all they do at her sorority is dip things in chocolate and make a lot of desserts. Seriously! They bake a lot of cookies there.

Monday, Ross and I went to CPK at the Galleria for lunch. They have this new weird promotion, where they give you an "Don't Open!" ticket thing, and at your next meal the restaurant manager opens it for you to show you if you have won a prize. I think you are guaranteed a minimum of a discount on your meal, which we got. It was a good excuse to go there and have our favorite, the wild mushroom pizza. So good. After, I did a little shopping and Ross went on his way on his motorcycle. For dinner, Ross made cauliflower casserole and baked cookies. Yummy! We relaxed, and watched Venture Brothers. At this point we have finished all three seasons. In general, I enjoyed the show, even the spotty third season. I was not a fan of the show initially, to me it was one of those shows where seeing one random episode now and then did nothing for me. Getting to know the show a little better helped me enjoy it.

I've also been watching Star Trek: TOS recently, which I think I mentioned before. I'm at the beginning of season two. Maybe I should be giving this a blow by blow, a la redstarrobot's Pretender musings. The episodes do sort of blur together, so maybe I will have to if I want to remember them in the future.

On Tuesday, minxwolf and I went to Faneuil Hall for snacks and shopping. Specifically, we were looking for a father's day gift at GeoClassics, which sells minerals and jewelry. We ended up getting at slab of rutilated quartz, and she bought a pair of earrings for mom's birthday. We stopped at the Slugger's Dugout and had root beer floats, which are of course delicious.

I finished Silent Hill 2 last week. I got the "In the water" ending, I suspect because I looked at Angela's knife a lot, since I tended to try everything when key item issues came up. I liked the ending of the game, and would give the game an overall high rating. While it didn't give me nightmares, it certainly got to me. Like with all games, there were some "meh" parts, for example I thought the two Pyramid head battle was far more menacing than the final Mary battle, where the moths thing was irritating and not that terrifying.

Since then, I've been playing a lot of Resident Evil 4. minxwolf gave me the game for Christmas when it first came out, along with Silent Hill 4, I think. I remember trying to play Resident Evil 4 and not liking the controls, and getting swept up in another game. Revisiting it with more focus, I've gotten into it. This is one of those games where you are sort of expected to try things and die a few times to figure out what is the right strategy, the right weapon, etc. I've gotten much better with the irritating aiming controls, though they are still not my favorite. I'm near the end of chapter 2, where you are with Ashley. I actually don't hate her as much as I have hated other useless tag-a-long characters. You can tell her to stay put, to hide, and she actively ducks when there is weapon fire. Far better than the females in Silent Hill games. And for the first time, I filled up my memory card! Eep!

Apparently, since I don't usually eat lunch unless I am going out with friends, my office mates have decided to bring me snacks to eat during the day. Yesterday I got a bunch of lychee, today I got some peanut butter popcorn and some grapes. (I shouldn't tell them that I actually brought a yogurt for lunch today... I'll just leave it in the fridge for later.)

Tomorrow is graduation! We will see how that goes.

So, I have a photo-stream on Flickr. Just to mention that. I just put up a last batch of my January vacation photos, and it's actually some of the cooler ones, including Dolphins Plus, and Jules Undersea Lodge. Yeah, feel free to check it out. And friend(?) me on Flickr if that's how it works. I haven't really looked into that....

I haven't been doing too much, other than relax and read. I've started reading "Lonesome Dove" in the last few days, which is a sort of classic western tale. I've been enjoying it a lot. Being home alone makes me more likely to stay up later than I intend to reading.

I've been doing a lot of swimming, still. It's been kind of killer. They changed up the pool layout last week to a long lane layout. The pool is 25 yards by 50 meters, so you basically end up swimming laps that are twice the length. It really goes a lot faster for the same distance, you have less decisions to make, though it is brutal. I try to swim about three quarters of a mile a day, and in the long lane layout that's just 24 lengths.

I've been watching Star Trek: TOS lately. I'm near the end of the first season. It is like I remember it from reruns - good, but a little cheesy, and very period.

Tonight I am having minxwolf over to dinner. Last week's dinner with her and Jamie was quite successful. It was the first time we made rice paper roll-ups and there wasn't any random leftovers. My simple peanut sauce recipe is working out great. As odd as it sounds, using Skippy or Jiff works out just fine. It has just the right amount of sugar and salt in it already, though it is a little harder to blend in with the oils than natural peanut butter. Who knows what I will make tonight, though I expect that I will make some spring rolls...

Well, I am off to the pool again...

I've been up to all sorts of stuff, doing a lot of socializing, and some work too.

I managed to grab a drink with Laura, at Alex's place. I do love champagne. I had lunch with Keith at Mary's, where we ran into about a million people we know, including rax and androidqueen.

mzsylver took me and minxwolf to see "Pirates!" at the Huntington, it was pretty amazing. Mzsylver and I had dinner at Pho & I first, I really love their take on Drunken noodles. Not as spicy as some versions, but very tasty, with maybe a hint of a sweet curry thing going on? Once again, somehow, we had seats in the front row, which was supremely pimping, considering they were free tickets. The show is a slightly modernized version of Pirates of Penzance, with slightly more bawdiness. For example, Ruth is sort of a loose woman, as opposed to funny looking. And Frederic attempts to woo the ladies involves some appeals to their base nature in the form of shaking it. Mabel is a "girl explorer" type. Etc. On the whole it was very well done and a lot of fun. Minxwolf was slightly terrified, though, since there was a little bit of audience interaction, and she fears it. Luckily they had pre-selected an audience member for bantering, so we just had the Major-General's daughters brushing past us. It was pretty awesome.

Thursday I went to Medieval Manor on a last minute plan with dragonfriek and Fred. Good grief, that place is hard to drive through, especially on a week day. While the meat-eater food looked pretty awesome, the vegetarian food was kinda sad. The show was overall quite funny, though. Very adult, and I am told it is more adult on weekend nights. The show itself is a sort of comedy and music review, with the plot being that you are basically at a royal feast. Boy, we did drink a whole lot. Poor Fred was really the designated drinker, and I think we drank the most heavily of all the parties at our table. I attempted to be the designated pourer, but really, by the end of the evening, I was a little to tipsy to pay attention to both the show and the glasses!

This weekend we spent at Ross's parents' place. We mostly relaxed, wandered around the country side, did some shopping, watched some movies. I finally finished the New Super Mario Brothers. Which is not to say I hadn't beaten the game before, I just wanted to land all 3 stars in game. We watched the fan film "Hunt for Gollum", which was good flavor-wise, but I am not sure I loved it. There were a lot of montages, and it just didn't seem to build very much steam. It was worth seeing, though. We also watched Species, which was a fun sci-fi thriller. We did a lot of eating, as usual, which was nice. We had dinner at Brio Tuscan Grill one night, which I thought was pretty good! We also went for a round of mini-golf, where I think I played decently well. Ross ended up the low-scorer, but I did get a hole-in-one to score a free game on te 19th hole. Oh yeah, and we played a killer game of Scrabble, which I barely won. Overall, we had a fun weekend. And now I am back here in Boston, while Ross is staying in CT to work on his motorcycle. No playing Silent Hill 2 for me I guess! I can't take it when I am home alone...

After that nightmarish weekend of working, then presenting, my semester ended on Wednesday after my last Global Climate Change class. Since then I've relaxed some. Though by relaxing I mean half relaxing, half working, which is fine with me. Wednesday night I went to AXO to have dinner with Esther, the food is pretty good at her sorority! Their house reminded me a lot of when I lived at Fenway, though it's true, their house is in better condition, with a lot more wood-work.

I've continued to be good, going swimming like 4 times a week. I think it really is getting easier. I helped minxwolf move on Thursday, after I had already swum for the day. My legs were sore after that! We had dinner at Sound Bites, I had a waffle brinner, and we started off with drinks and nachos. They make a good mojito at Sound Bites! We went to Nick's graduation celebration that night on 5E, it was a lot of fun. Whoa, I really liked his lab project, pong on an oscilloscope. Pots for controllers, and I think the rest of the whole thing was analog as well. Gonna have to ask him about it again.

I think I am almost done with my planning for my trip to Hawaii at the end of June, I did a lot of the reserving on Friday. I am going to Honolulu for the NSF CMMI conference, since my advisor can't make it. (I'm actually working on that poster right now. It's looking pretty good. This will be my third poster I've put together in the last month or so.) So, three days ocean front in Waikiki, then almost a week in Maui with my Uncle O. My mom is joining me for this, I really look forward to it a lot. In Waikiki, I will be relatively busy with the conference, but I will also have time to have some fun. Maui is just for fun. My uncle lives up in Haiku, which is on the North side of the main mountain, the Haleakala, about 500 feet above sea level. It will be a very relaxing time.

This weekend, I did a lot of putting away around the house, took care of laundry, and got groceries and the like. Our place needs some more cleaning, but it's going well. But, man, when is it going to get warm enough to spend time outside? Ross mowed our backyard, he wants to plant some garden stuff too, but it would be good if it stopped raining so that he could plant stuff...

This coming week I will be taking it kinda easy...

I have been so hosed. I have been doing an awesome job on exercising though. I've made it to the pool a whole lot. Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri, and Sun, so far. Pretty good. It has been getting easier, though I am not sure if the swimming has been awesome for my allergy laden throat. I have managed to find the proper medication for my eyes and nose, but not throat yet.

Thursday I saw Star Trek in IMAX! Stan and I went with Lex and Jamie. We were down near the front, in the center, so it was a good view but pretty overwhelming. Overall, I thought it was awesome. Lots of action, bright shiny tech, good music, and hot guys. To me, the hotness was actually Karl Urban as Bones... sure, Kirk, Spock, and Sulu were all hot too. Mmm... Distracted by hotness. While I don't think Star Trek will be the most meritorious movie I see this year, I might actually go again to take Ross, since it was pretty exciting.

I spent most of this weekend suffering. I worked Friday till late, then Saturday, then Sunday. This has mostly been for my group project, with my delinquent group, but also some for my Xerox thing. I am a terrible presenter, so I had to write myself some notes, which I did not use at all today when I presented.

Saturday night I let myself off around 7:30, and went to joyfulkel's birthday party at Sacco's. I can't candle-pin bowl to save my life, but siryuse is surprisingly good. On his second game he got three spares. After the bowling, I popped over to kayunderscore's for the Victory Day celebration, and got a little tipsy.

I did call my mom on Sunday, so I am not a horrible daughter. Now I need to actually put together some letters for my grandmothers. That will come quite soon.

Well, today I finished my last real work for the semester. I dressed nicely today, wearing my sweet new Steve Maddens and actually putting on make-up. There was lots of mild terror on my part. Our presentation and paper and the like seem to have been well received. My Xerox poster looked good, and I feel like I actually did a lot of good research this semester, so that helps compensate for my fear. The dinner was pretty good too.

Anyway, now I am going to relax a little for the next few days. Tonight, I am going to go to bed early, and sleep late. I am debating if I am going to do anything else tonight, but I think I have earned the right to totally slack.

Victory!

Yeah, I've been crazy busy. I've been working really hard. After the Patriots' Day weekend, I worked to get that poster together for the LMP Summit. It ended up looking OK, but it was really stressful since I found out it was due earlier than I thought, and everyone else who was giving me a section for the poster was late with it. The summit was fun, though, the talks I caught were enjoyable. I finished that awful homework, it turns out the model they gave us had issues.

I took my sister shopping for her birthday. I think minxwolf bought 4 pairs of shoes. But don't judge, they were all cheap pairs, and she never gets to go shopping anywhere. On Saturday, Ross and I worked a little, then drove down to Connecticut to spend time with his family. I still had work to do on my 15.023 project. I shouldn't have volunteered to head that assignment, it was another one of those things where people give you their stuff late. That preliminary report worked out OK, though. My group seems overall pretty nice, but I am afraid that our final report thing will be one of those last minute pushes that drives me crazy. We had a meeting yesterday and the realization that I had done 8 hours of work for the meeting and everyone else had done like two or less was a little harsh. Anyway, we had a good time in CT, even if I had to deal. We hung out, played some games, ate a lot, including at Carmen Anthony's, which I really enjoyed, for Ross's birthday. Overall, the weather was pretty good, we got to have dinner out on the patio twice. On Monday, Mary and I dropped the guys off at their Escoffier dinner around 6:30, and they didn't call for pickup until nearly midnight! They had stuffed themselves pretty thoroughly, were modestly drunk, and were still working on their cigars, which they got into the car with. They both totally dropped some of their ashes into the car... Ross's mom was pretty displeased. We drove back the next morning.

I had a lot of very nice lunches last week. One with Rachel, and one with Keith. On Friday, I went swimming at the Z-Center with Esther, to start my new "get healthy" kick. She can totally outswim me, I'm a total tub at this point. We managed to swim yesterday and today, too, so I feel pretty good!

This weekend was Steer Roast. Natalia came to Friday night for a bit. We hung out in 366 for a couple hours, then went to see the bands. I saw the first two, they were pretty good, Zoig-ma-noig, and Triangle Forrest. Zoig-ma-noig is an 80's cover thing done with a guy with a megaphone and some gameboy sound effects, super sweet. I went to the casino after that, and played black-jack, some of the Zoig-ma-noig guys joined us at the tabl. It was awesome. We headed home on the subway around 12:30.

Ross and I joined for the feast on Saturday, I saw a lot of people I wanted to see. And then I got all allergic and had to go inside. Stupid stupid trees....

This week I will be doing work. Yeah, a lot of work, that's the plan.

1. Write note on energy use in recycling for Natalia
2. Do 15.023 Assignment 4 (requires Excel on Windows, boo.)
      a. Check software compatability
3. Do research/write note for 15.023 group project on China's climate change negotiating position
4. Finish my part of group poster.

Well, now I have to work on my homework. Their simulation model is crazy slow, especially on the ancient PC I am using for it. For a 15 year simulation, about 4 minutes, and it's sort of finicky too. I think I am just going to run all the simulations, save the results in separate work sheets, and then just plug the data back into the model on my computer instead. Doom.

Last night I played some Silent Hill 2. I really do enjoy the creepiness. I especially like when the game asks you stuff like "Will you jump in?" "Will you open it?" "Will you reach into the drain?". It's very much a "Do I have to?" moment. So far there haven't been any trap endings, but I really think they should have them. Like, open door, get killed by horrible monster, jump in pit, fall to death. It would add a little spice.

Ross and I have started watching the Venture Brothers, and I do admit I appreciate it more in sequential order than seeing the random episodes on Cartoon Network. That's generally true for most of their Adult Swim shows, except Harvey Birdman, which just always worked for me. Of the core cast, Dr. Venture (Rusty), is my favorite, and I love Dr. Orpheus's melodramatic tendencies.

An ambitious list of school obligations:

1. Write note on energy use in recycling for Natalia
2. Do 15.023 Assignment 4 (requires Excel on Windows, boo.)
      a. Check software compatability
3. Do research/write note for 15.023 group project on China's climate change negotiating position
4. Finish my part of group poster.

I also have a lot of errands to run. I'd also like to advance my hobby/entertainment stuff some too. I have lately been feeling the drive to finish books/games. And if I manage my time well I might be able to get some of my own artistic pursuits in this weekend.

Mmm... I had a Nehru, which is saffron gin, lemon twist, a little simple syrup, and a little cardamom. Oh yeah, it was delicious! Dinner was "Bollito misto" with braised winter vegetables and creamy truffled polenta. The veggies were good, lots of brussel sprouts and wild mushrooms. And for dessert, lemon-buttermilk pudding with huckleberry sauce.

I've been eating a lot of Easter candy lately, but not as much as Ross :D I just started in on the Cadbury eggs. I bought some of the orange cream ones, and they are quite good, much better than the caramel eggs. I've had a couple of the Reese's peanut butter eggs, and some actually quite good Russell Stover jellybeans. Oh, and the stick candy I got at Cracker Barrel. I am told that I am the only person who actually likes those "unbent candy-cane" type hard candies.

Today I just worked, lame. Oh, and ordered birthday gifts!

Man, I have been watching Dexter, and I am in the middle of Season 3. The first season was very awesome, the second not bad at all, this one, we shall see. It's been OK so far. I've been reading Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett, and been quite enjoying it. It's the third in a series, and having read this, I think I will have to go find the first two. Oh, and I finally finished Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin for the DS. It's in the Symphony of the Night tradition, with a few twists on that. There's a lot of map space in that game, a lot of hidden areas and side missions. I lent it to minxwolf, but I'm not sure it's up her alley...

This weekend I am going to have to do more working. I gotta finish up our group poster for the LMP conference next week, I'm almost done with that, but everyone else needs to get me their parts. And then I should work on my two class assignments. For one class. Due on the same date. Yeah. A *shudder* group assignment, and a simulation assignment that can only be done on Windows with real Office. You can guess I am loving it. Speaking of misery, I spent 10 minutes looking for one of my jackets this morning, and it didn't turn up. I don't have that much closet space, so that involves looking everything through everything several times. Hmph. I have no idea where it might be.

Mmm... I ate a lot yesterday, it was delicious. I had lunch with Keith and Dawn at Mary's. They do it up right, they order up a lot of appetizers! It's true, the best stuff at Mary's is the fried stuff. I had a delicious scallion pancake, and spicy tofu.

After class, I went down to the South End to meet up with mzsylver and siryuse. I was way too early! We had dinner at Picco, which we'd done as a before-show dinner in the past. The place is reasonably priced and very popular with chic parents, since pizza and ice-cream appeals to everybody. I got a delicious calzone with gruyere, caramelized onions, and wild mushrooms, mzsylver and siryuse got pizzas, and special guest Alan got a meatball sandwich that was out of control! Did I mention the free ice-cream? Yeah, if you see a Huntington Theater show, there's all kinds of free food perks, and at Picco you get free ice-cream with dinner! Yes! I had malted chip in a sugar cone. We were so distracted by the ice-cream, we didn't even notice that we were going to be late to the show. Dude, mzsylver put her ice-cream cone in her pocket while we were going into the theater. She didn't pull it out and start eating it again till we sat down in the theater. Like, maybe a minute after we sat down and started reading our programs. (Cos, you know, nothing every starts on time...)

"The Miracle at Naples" is a new work styled after commedia dell'arte, with a lot of raunchy humor, like incredibly not appropriate for kids. It was hilarious, and very much a regular comedy with a happy ending. I enjoyed it a lot, so if you have the time and the inclination, go for it. We met up with Aaron and Delia at the show, and we were lucky enough that the five of us were able to get tickets together, though that was probably why we were all the way in the back row of the balcony. Not that it mattered for this show, it would be pretty much fine from any seat. The stage set was a little dizzying though. It was a well fleshed out set, with forced perspective. Everything was trapezoidal!

Today I am tooling in my office, and then I am going to Rendezvous with Ross's family... delicious!

Now I remember why I hate my office... My desk is positioned such that I get sun in my eyes about an hour or two before sunset during the summer months... Today was a little painful, my head is a little hurty, and it will only get worse. I am so going to change the desk positions around this summer. I guess being the senior lab member has its advantages, even if it meant that I spent all afternoon at an Environmental Health and Safety training session. Blah.

I need to get better about posting. I have had a pretty busy couple of weeks. I went to steam punk night at Ceremony. I don't have very much in the way of steam punk clothes, so I wore an old belted waist cincher I made a few years ago, a plaid skirt with buckles, a weird old blouse with frilly cuffs, and of course, my goggles. I had lunch with Antonio, lunch with Keith, tea with melindasmonster, early dinner at Guru with siryuse after tea. I went to see Chaz Palminteri's one man show, "A Bronx Tale", with Stan after having a nice dinner at Penang, the Malaysian place in Chinatown...

I went to Erie, PA for a business trip again last week. It was not as productive a trip as I was hoping; there wasn't enough material to work on a magnetic drum roller, our host at the lab was sick on the first day, and it turned out that the company we were visiting was closed on Good Friday. Also, our travel agent booked us into the wrong hotel. Same chain, just a different location 10 miles away. Sigh. The upside was that this hotel was next to Splash Lagoon, so we went on Wednesday night. It was crowded, but hilarious. We had to go to Walmart first and buy swimsuits, then we headed over to Splash Lagoon from our hotel using the indoor walkway. Splash Lagoon has about 7 slides, the most interesting of which is the body-slide version of one of those spiraling funnel slides. It's a very disorienting ride, especially the drop out of the bottom of the funnel. Esther's favorite part was the play structure where you could spray people with water and laugh cruelly. The best part of the play structure was the giant bucket of water that they tip over every 15 minutes or so. Yeah, it was pretty awesome. And we got to eat at Cracker Barrel one night!

This weekend was a little busy, too. minxwolf came over to dye Easter eggs with me and Ross on Saturday. We had the "Tie Dye" kit, which ultimately was pretty fun. I gave my sister all her Easter candy then, too. That night, I went to see "The Haunting in Connecticut", which was fun but ultimately forgettable, and out to dinner at Blue Fin with Laura, for her birthday. Sunday we went to Easter at Ross's aunt Lisa's house, and hung out with all of the family.

Today I'm just doing work and paying taxes...

I spent most of this week with my family in CA. I got to see both of my grandmothers, two of my cousins, one of my uncles, and our family friends Erik and Linda. I applied for my TWIC while I was there, my dad and I always do this sort of stuff together, it's motivation to deal with the paperwork. I got to see the Yves Saint Laurent exhibit at the De Young museum, and the decorative arts (Faberge, Tiffany, Lalique) exhibit at the Legion of Honor. The flowers were still up at the De Young for Bouquets to Art, which was a surprise. I feel like the flowers, while they are a nice addition to the museum, clutter things up a little. The YSL exhibit was packed, but rightly so. The decorative arts exhibit was pretty good, too. I am a big fan of the Lalique Art Nouveau jewelry.

I went to the zoo, which was pretty awesome. My sister really likes to go to the zoo, for whatever reason. We spent a lot of time watching the gorillas, who were grazing. The grizzlies were by far the most fun, though. The pair they have are 5 year old sisters, and they spent a whole lot of time wrestling while we were there, and then one of them went for a swim. The moves they work are pretty hilarious. Shoulder rolls, back-paw-to-the-face, eventually standing on their rear legs. We had drinks at the Cliff House after.

I saw Duplicity, which was entertaining enough, and had dinner at the Straits Cafe, which was tasty. I went out drinking with Clayton, yesimkgb, and minxwolf. I had dental work done (my teef hurt). I ate a lot of sourdough bread, salads, and chocolates.

I finished "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" on my plane ride over. I liked it, though my compressed reading was probably not the way to do it justice. I read "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. I liked it. It's a crime/mystery novel. The author is Swedish, and you get a feel of that in a positive way.

The last few days I have been doing a little working, a little video game playing, and a little bit of chores. I'm still a little sick, whatever I had when I left is not quite gone, but it's not killing me at all.

Now, to work on my NSF slides...