What type of wedding...

Josh just asked me, "What kind of lame wedding has you home by 6pm?" My reply? "What kind of lame wedding has you shit faced by noon?" He laughed. It was more like 1pm.

Stephanie's wedding to Bruno was really fun - the church was totally cute and Steph's dress was really sexy. Not typical for a wedding dress. Hopefully I'll find some photos to post eventually - my batteries died in my camera after taking the first picture. I could have found some more between the ceremony and the reception but I didn't want to have a camera in my face the whole time and anyway I'm never in the pictures I take. I'm very vain. I always prefer a picture that has me in it.

Instead of wedding cake they had something called... emm.... Croque en bouche? Something like that. It was a tower of creme filled pastry topped with spun sugar and I ate it until I was sick. I'm like a pony. Ponys have to be locked carefully in their stalls because they're clever and will escape and then go find the food and eat it until their stomachs explode. Chris dragged me away from the tower of yumminess for my own protection. He he...

Sking and wedding

Last weekend Chris and I went up to Tahoe with Shannon for possibly the last weekend of skiing we'll have. The cabin lease runs out on May 3 or something. The snow is still good though - at least at Heavenly. We even got snowed on! When we got back Laurel was in the throes of thesisness and Chris and I helped her get it formatted in LaTeX. Can you imagine - she actually wanted to do it in Word!

Stephanie and Bruno get married on Saturday and Brandy and I are hostessing the rehearsal/out-of-towners dinner tomorrow night. Bran and I went to Costco today to get food and I marvelled at the American-ness of it. I mean, those huge shopping carts! They sell cars in Europe that are smaller!

My advisor told me he wants to meet with me basically every day. The guys in the lab were amazed - Prof. Rock usually never gives such tight direction to a project. I'm not sure if it's good or bad - I might just seem so hopelessly lost that he knows the only way to get me going is to push hard from behind.

My tension headache finally went away - just on its own I think. I've been thinking that maybe I should see a chiropractor about the headaches - Brandy went and she said it helped her a lot. Of course insurance probably wouldn't cover it. But Bran said I probably wouldn't have to go that often anyway.

I finally finished Chris's afghan - photos to follow.

Tonight was our last tango class and we decided to skip. Tango was just painful - neither of us had a clue what we were doing. I'm hard pressed to say which is better - neither of us knowing or just me knowing. I thought neither of us knowing would be better but even though I don't know tango I know when a lead isn't solid so I know we're not doing something right. Ah well. I shouldn't have bothered with tango. We'll take all the beginner classes again next year and hope for the best.

OooooooBitch

The other night I asked Chris to tell me a story as we were going to sleep. It started out good enough - with once upon a time there was a princess, and so on. But I guess we were tired and I kept interfering with the story and so it got warped. A lot. The story ended up that the princess's parents married her off to this prince. She was from a blue country and he was from a red, but he was hot so she thought it would work. But then he expected her to bring him beers in front of the TV, so after hot lovin' produced triplet girls she offed him with some poison in his food. He came back to haunt her though and would hang around saying "ooooooooooooobitch." We laughed so hard.

Photos, etc

I finally posted photos from the bachelorette weekend. Also I posted a bunch of photos to Stephanie and Bruno's wedding webpage.

The newest entry for the Institute of Presumed Science is that my mouth has been really dry and I've been strangely thirsty today. So I decided that it must be Type 1 diabetes. I know that this is wildly unlikely, but once you've had something really rare once statistics lose their significance. I mean, it used to be that I would get a headache and think "Oh no! What if it's a brain tumor! Nah... it can't be a brain tumor. That's so unlikely." But then you have something really unlikely and just can't get over the fact that if it happened once it could happen again. Maybe I should enter the lottery since I'm so convinced that lightening will strike twice...

Talking with Jill that weekend was really interesting. She made a comment that really resonated, which was that once you've been really ill once you stop thinking of yourself as a well person who gets sick sometimes and instead think of yourself as a sick person who's well sometimes. I do that. I wonder if I worry too much. I wonder if anti-depressants would help. What really helps is to talk to Chris about it. I feel totally paranoid saying my worries out loud - like if he knows what a hypochondriac I am he'll care about me less. But just saying these things always makes me feel better. I guess I'll just take the risk.

I'm reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. It's interesting so far...

Oh, I finally got plane tickets to Austin and Knoxville in June. The ones to Knoxville I got for a song - I was so excited. Only $99 each way from San Francisco. And they're almost perfect in terms of timing and such. It's such a relief to have those. I saw that Independence Air (that's how I'm getting to Knoxville) is having this deal where college students can pay $250 and fly anywhere they want east of the Mississippi in the summer on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday. I've never seen an airline do anything like that before. Although I have some friends who did this thing... I think it was with American Airlines... whichever was the first airline to fly to all 50 states. If you flew to all 50 states in like a month or something they would give you a one year pass to fly anywhere any time. And they did it just for the fun of it.

Awesome Weekend!

I had the most awesome weekend. I found 24 geocaches (some of them with Julia and Merrie), I played Settlers of Catan (also with J&M), I got yarn to finish Chris's blanket and start another one, I ate Susan's Downfall at Trellis with Shannon and Carlson, I had Hunan Garden with Brandy and Yasha, and I watched Pride and Prejudice. (That last one, by the way, is being remade with Keira Knightly as Elizabeth. Weird.) I'm at 288 caches now - almost to 300!

Also this weekend I finished reading Sarah, by Marek someone or other. It was about Abraham's wife. It was pretty insipid really. And filled with typos, but that might be because it was an advanced readers edition. The funniest one was where it referred to the land of Canaan as "fartile." I'm just about to finish Morality for Beautiful Girls - the 3rd in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. It's cute, as they all are. The writing is like something for children though.

You drive like a girl

I just came from a talk by Tatiana Temm who was on the design team for the Volvo concept car YCC (Your Concept Car). They got 9 female Volvo engineers to design a car especially for women and it sure is cool! When the doors are closed the backend looks a little weird (kinda like a Honda Insight) but it also has some neat features. Like really good storage compartments in between the seats and wooden rails in the trunk to make sliding things in easier. It's not a good car for people who need to use their back seats for something other than storage but it's still very cool.

The speaker showed some media clips in the seminar including some of Jay Leno's funny commentary on the car: "Volvo says it has a new car out that is designed by women for women. It even has a global positioning device, where if it spots a husband anywhere in the world cheating, it positions itself to run the guy over. Volvo says its new car, the YCC, is the first car designed and developed exclusively by women, for women.  They say it is safe, it is fuel-efficient, and the exterior is designed to always make the trunk look as small as possible." He he.

Sunburn

Back from Austin now - it was really fun! We all went down on Friday afternoon to Port Aransas/Mustang Island and stayed at this really nice condo/resort place. Jill has really great friends and her 2 sisters even flew in from Tennessee for the event. We went on the water slide (yee haw!) and ate and sunbathed. I was really desparate for a little geocaching so I walked down the beach 2 1/2 miles each way to get to the nearest cache. Silly me though. I forget that in the war between skin and sun, the sun always wins. I didn't sunblock my legs and so I burned the living shit out of my calves. (At least I didn't burn my whole legs like Jill's sister did.) I also burned a few random places on my shoulders and body because I wasn't very even about the application of sunblock. Funny looking.

We played some fun games after dinner on Saturday night like Pin the Macho on the Man and I Never. They had a penis cake and penis confetti and a blow up doll that looked for all the world like Burt Reynolds. (Gross. That doll was nasty. And it wasn't even anatomically correct.) There was also a "how well do you know Jill game" that I won by a bunch. I was proud of that - I even beat her sisters. I think it was because I spent the previous 24 hours with her just asking her bunches of questions. I won a Tickler feather set. He he. Also we all gave gifts to Jill - mostly it was lingerie but her sister Beth gave her a shower curtain and giant bottle of baby oil. He he.

It was weird to be around so many women after so long around just men. For years the most time I've spent in close contact with only women was just for the monthly 6 woman bookclub meetings. This was 13 women for more than 24 hours. It was fun! But I kept having to escape to the back bedroom to talk to Chris. Because I felt socially awkward checking my e-mail - and no one wanted to talk about computers or cars or work. It's good but I'm really unused to it.

Anyway, I'm really glad I got to go to this. It was great to spend time with Jill and renew old friendships. Photos coming soon.

Austin - woo hoo!

I flew to Austin today. I'm here for the bachelorette party/weekend of my best friend from high school, Jill. We haven't stayed in totally close touch, but better than a lot of my friends from college and high school. What's the most fun is that even though we've not been around each other much for almost 10 years now, when we get together we're still friends. That's not true of a lot of people I know - you just go separate ways and when you see each other again you have nothing to say to each other. It's not true here.

Anyway, her fiance picked me up at the airport and I approve. He's a very nice guy and I think they'll be very happy together!

I also like that Austin is not like Tennessee or most other places in the south. Tonight Jill took me to a vegetarian restaurant. Not many places in the south have that! And I was all worried about if I'd be able to connect to the internet (will it be like Europe? Will I need to find an internet cafe??) and she has a wireless modem in her house in addition to recieving the signals of like 4 neighbors. Ha. I forget that California isn't the only civilized place in the world.

Seventh Son

I'm going to be trying to use blogger to keep track of all the books I read also. Hopefully. Over the weekend I read Seventh Son, by Orson Scott Card. It was ok - I felt a little overwhelmed by all the good and evil stuff he threw in there. In general I love OSC - I've read Enchantment (v. good), all the Enders series except the shadow books (i.e. Ender's game (v. v. good!), Children of the Mind, Xenocide and Speak for the Dead). I guess Seventh Son was good enough because I found myself getting the next one in the series, Red Prophet, at the library when I was there.

This weekend I also read Pride and Prejudice for about the zillionth time. It's the only one of Jane Austin's books I'm really fond of - I think I also read Emma and Sense and Sensibility but didn't think they were that great.

I'm going to visit Jill in Austin this weekend. Yay!

More Tahoe

So I'm back from Tahoe again. It's really fun to practically live up there. Although Chris's roommate is starting to wonder if he even has a roommate. We skied at Alpine Meadows on Monday and it was great fun. They had had another foot of snow and so we spent a lot of time powder hunting up in the bowls. I'm actually learning to ski powder - although I think I need different skis for it. Mine are practically skate skis compared to Chris's - they're easy to carry but I get knocked around a lot.

I just can't believe how much snow they've gotten in Tahoe this year. But don't take my word for it, see for yourself:


Since I can't really ski powder I ended up falling a lot. Fortunately powder is pleasant to fall in, but still this may have been the best part of the day:


Our cabin is so cool. Anyway, we ate massive fondue on Monday night and then Chris and I came home sort of late in the morning on Tuesday. For more photos click here.

Tahoe again

Up in Tahoe again. This time with Chris's 3 friends from college. I feel very much outnumbered by the male MITness. But the skiing is good. We went to Sugar Bowl today - my first time - and they were having a blizzard. You have to love horizontal snow. I got a good introduction to powder skiing because it was coming down all day and gradually accumulating until I was in knee high powder by the end of the day. It takes more effort to ski in but it's still very fun - certainly better than the awful ice underneath all that powder.

I'm on a dial-up connection here and waiting for some e-mail to download. Its subject is "[POSSIBLE VIRUS ###] hey" and it's the first of 21 messages and I've been waiting for it already 5 minutes. If it's a virus I'll be very annoyed. I can't get any of the later e-mail until this one loads.

I volunteered on Friday to give a presentation for Professor Latombe's lab group in 2 weeks. I'm intimidated by this. (Kind of a theme really - being intimidated by people and things in grad school. Since when am I so easily intimidated?) He told me he wanted to see what I was doing about a certain problem with my robot (specifically force control) but I haven't been working on that. But I don't have a good reason for why I haven't been working on that. I don't want to give a disappointing presentation though, so I don't know what I'm going to do. A couple of days ago I gave a practice presentation for something called Affiliates at Stanford. Anyway, they hype it up a lot and make all the students give practice presentations and turn in abstracts a month in advance. I gave my practice presentation to my advisor and a labmate and it was about the worst presentation I've ever given. They gave some good advice though and I think I can fix things up.

The file downloaded. It's a photo album from a guy who went to Death Valley for spring break.

Arrr

You are The Cap'n!

Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some slit the throats of any man that stands between them and the mantle of power. You never met a man you couldn't eviscerate. Not that mindless violence is the only avenue open to you - but why take an avenue when you have complete freeway access? You are the definitive Man of Action. You are James Bond in a blousy shirt and drawstring-fly pants. Your swash was buckled long ago and you have never been so sure of anything in your life as in your ability to bend everyone to your will. You will call anyone out and cut off their head if they show any sign of taking you on or backing down. You cannot be saddled with tedious underlings, but if one of your lieutenants shows an overly developed sense of ambition he may find more suitable accommodations in Davy Jones' locker. That is, of course, IF you notice him. You tend to be self absorbed - a weakness that may keep you from seeing enemies where they are and imagining them where they are not.

What's Yer Inner Pirate?
brought to you by The Official Talk Like A Pirate Web Site. Arrrrr!

My pirate name is:

Captain Bess Roberts

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. Two things complete your pirate persona: style and swagger. Maybe a little too much swagger sometimes -- but who really cares? Arr!
Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.