Birthday

Yesterday was Chris's birthday. What fun! We had lunch at Patxi's, worked a short day, had dinner at Zibibbo (yum! It was so good - interestingly, it was also the most expensive meal I've ever bought - probably not the most expensive I've ever eaten though). We had a yummy chocolate souffle dessert and I had these amazing butternut squash tortelloni. I'm still stuffed from all the food. We also went and saw the movie Flightplan, which was ok, but unbelievably full of plot holes. Oh, for his birthday I gave Chris 5 t-shirts. Two were just plain. The others say "I make stuff up", "Squirrels Gone Wild", and the best one: "Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, All my base are belong to you." Tee hee...

Heisenbug

I've spent a couple of hours looking for what Chris has termed a Heisenbug. I thought Chris invented that word, but apparently not, as Wikipedia can explain. (Actually, that webpage has some amusing other types of bugs.) We use this phrase to refer to an error in your code that changes when you try to observe it. Usually it means that you've done something dumb with pointers - if you accidentally run off the end of an array then you access a random chunk of code in memory that might change the way the code runs every time you run it. Anyway, today I came back from vacation determined to track down this bug once and for all and discovered that it just went away on its own... hmmm... I'm sure it will resurface at a later date.

Thanksgiving Ski Day

Hello from Boise! I just spent the most wonderful 4 days in Boise/McCall with Chris and his family. We arrived in Boise on Thursday afternoon, had the traditional turkey dinner (I partook of the side dishes) and then Friday drove up to McCall to hang out at the cabin. Chris's brother had come too, as a surprise, and so we spent a lot of time hanging out with him and Chris's parents. On Saturday we went skiing at Brundage, and the conditions were amazing! It was clear and cold with 6 inches of new powder. Just beautiful. Unfortunatelly Chris had a minor accident and strained a muscle in his leg, so in the interests of not further injuring it we just hung out at the cabin on Sunday (instead of more skiing). I already can't wait until Christmas - cruising AND skiing! The cabin is so relaxing - it's beautiful outside, they have this wonderful warm fire stove (with catalytic converter for maximum enviromental protection), and besides skiing I just read and knit and work puzzles and relax. Oh, and sledding. Chris and I held the Crazy Slide World Cup on Friday night and unfortunately I only got silver. Tee hee...

Also on Thursday Chris's grandmother was calling for singing so I sat down at the piano and ungracefully hammered out the few songs that happened to be in the music cabinet. It made me miss playing though and now I'm thinking about buying a piano - probably the electric (and therefore easily movable) kind. We'll see. They're pretty expensive.

We return to the world tomorrow. Wish us luck.

Lost Coast

The Lost Coast was awfully fun! I've posted a trip report already. Something that's interesting to note is that I seem to have finally figured out how to stay warm on these freaking trips. You'd think that it wouldn't take 4 years to learn. But then you'd think wrong.

Anyway, the trip was pretty cold since it was foggy almost the whole time. Nearby Whitethorn reported temperatures down to 35 deg. Here's how I stayed warm. I hiked in a cotton t-shirt and socks since there was little trouble staying warm as long as I was moving. As soon as I got to camp, all sweaty, I took off all of my upper layers that were wet. I changed into a fleece cap, coolmax type long sleeve shirt, thin fleece, and down parka. The parka is a new addition since my sister just gave it to me when I was visiting and it is TOTALLY KEY. It's amazing how warm I feel as soon as I put it on - and it's so light and stuffs down so small! And it makes a great pillow!
Another key addition on this trip was silk pants. I got these fancy Victoria's Secret pajamas ages ago but while packing for this trip I remembered that I pretty much can't wear them at home because I sweat so much I soak through the sheets. Perfect for a cold camping trip! So when my legs started to get cold I took off the cotton socks and put on dry synthetic socks and the silk pajamas under my hiking pants. Finally, before bed I filled a Nalgene bottle with boiling water and took it into my sleeping bag with me. I don't think this was totally necessary actually since the parka and the silk kept me so warm, but it also helped keep my hands warm before I actually went to bed.

This trip was so relaxing - probably mostly because the sun sets at 4:30 and rises at... 6:30ish? So the sun set, we had dinner, sat around the campfire (the donut box we had laughed at Chris for bringing along worked great for starting wet wood), went to bed and slept for a good 12 hours every night.

Now I'm blowing off lab and my flakey robot and hanging out with Brandy and Amelia today and packing for our Thanksgiving trip to snowy Idaho! Yay!

Harry Potter

Whew - what a week! It's all been a whirlwind since last Thursday when I took off for Lynchburg. There's a lot to be said about that trip - including what fun it was to hang out with Steph - but I don't have time to do it just now and most of the people who read this blog already know about that part of my life because they were there.

I thought I'd mention instead that even though I've been going to bed at 11 and getting up at 8 every day, last night I decided that I couldn't leave for the weekend without seeing the Harry Potter movie so I got a bunch of people together and we saw the 12:10 showing. I went to bed at 3:15 am or so and now I'm pretty tired still. The movie was great - the middle third in particular was among the best movies I've ever seen.

Today I have some research and some young astronauts and some preparing for the trip this weekend. We're leaving for the Lost Coast at 5am Saturday, hiking for 3 days and returning Monday. That's going to be a whirlwind too!!! It'll be fun though. I've been wanting to go back ever since 3 Thanksgivings ago... I think that's when I last went. Whew. I'm tired right now though.

You know you're from....

This link is unusually funny and true. I especially like the Silicon Valley one because almost every one applies to me, and I thought this one was especially funny:

If someone refers to "SunnytogaDeAnzavale Road", you laugh and know what they're talking about.

I'd never heard that one before but I definitely think it's funny.

Crochet/Knit

Here's some photos of my most recent craft projects. First is a baby blanket that I made for Ab. It had some issues - especially around the seam up the middle - I guess the main issue was what the heck was that seam doing there in the first place? It was in the pattern but it was totally unnecessary. The blanket was pretty average until the border went on and that made a world of difference.

Laurel is the scale factor here.

My first knit project - a little dishcloth?

Knit 4, Purl 4

States I've visited

I'm jumping on that bandwagon - here's a picture of the states I've visited:

Create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Halloween Photos

Some photos from the murder myster halloween party at Steph's house. Here's me (Mata Hari) with Aimee (Dr. Death). The sultry look is in deference to the fact that I was supposed to be an infamous seductress in a contest with Black Widow (not shown in any of these photos) to see which of us can kill the most lovers. Ahem.

Martin is the Mad Bomber (note the dynamite and alarm clock strapped to his chest - actually they're road flares) and Gün is Apache.

These two were hilarious. Grandma Death and the Clown

The whole group. Chris played Ghost whose totally inventive costume was just supposed to be something that made him blend in. So yeah. Here he is in costume. Me, Stephanie (Cobra), and Martin (Mad Bomber). 2nd row is Jonah (Top Gun), Alex (Chef - he already owned his costume), and Gün as Apache. Lis is at the bottom and she plays Cowgirl. Wasn't her costume cute? Not shown is her boa holster. Funny.

Well, at least I'm not alone...

The New York Times today reports on problems with follow up care in cancer patients. (Which reminds me... when exactly was I last at the oncologist?) The paragraph that struck me most was this one:

Cancer survivors often experience psychological problems, including depression, persistent anxiety, debilitating fatigue and fear that cancer will return. Patients treated with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy may suffer infertility or impairment of sexual function, and have an elevated risk of developing osteoporosis, congestive heart failure and other heart problems, strokes and blood clots. In some cases, the panel said, chemotherapy may cause leukemia or bladder cancer.

So we're paranoid. But for good reason. Is it really paranoia if you're often right?

Sigh

The past couple of days I haven't been feeling very good - I think I have a little allergies. Whenever other people are sneezing and have watery eyes I get lots of headaches and I'm tired but have some trouble sleeping. While I've never heard of this being a way to respond to allergies, it seems too regular to be a coincidence. Anyway, I've been having these headaches and this morning I took ibuprofen and then at Hobee's for breakfast I drank a lot of coffee and I think I kinda overdosed on it and it made my stomach feel sick. After breakfast Chris and Ab went to Berkeley for a chocolate tour and I stayed in and got some things done (sent old clothes to Goodwill, returned library books, filled in and mailed my absentee ballot...). I also started on these crochet string bags that I've been wanting to start on for awhile (I think they're going to be really cool and go quite fast). So that was fun. I made a salad and went to the dinner at Eric and Sarah's.

While there we figured out some logistics about the Greek trip - we're going near the beginning of July next year and sailing for a week around the Saronic Islands. Shannon is going to look into yacht rentals, we're all going to look at area ports that we want to see, and I'm going to start thinking about provisions. (I volunteered to plan meals - that's a good way to get lots of vegi food onboard.) While at this party I called Chris in Berkeley and found out that the Honda has ceased to hold radiator fluid and is overheating like crazy and he's going to have to have the car towed back to Palo Alto. It worries me but he seemed more concerned about how he was doing in the game they were playing (Seafarers of Catan?).

Enough whining. I think it's bedtime.

Halloween

Halloween was awesome. I invited a few folks over for chili and cornbread and then we walked over to the display in the professor's housing. There's a prof in the mechanical engineering design division who assigns his students to carve pumpkins every year and the things they come up with are totally amazing. One of the ones I liked a lot this year had a big pumpkin with metal bars stuck in (like a jail cell) and then a small pumpkin locked in the cell with a blinking LED inside and the cell itself had candles to light it up inside. Very weird and cool. There was also an awesome one that was carved so that the pumpkin face was meant to be seen from the inside and it was reading a book. There's no way I can describe it, but it was very neat.

Also in the past couple of days I've been working like crazy to finish a baby blanket for the friend who taught me to crochet and who is arriving here in about an hour! I'll post photos soon because it turned out really nice in spite of my initial concerns.

Also in the past couple of days I've had to threaten my robot with having its circuits fused to make it behave. I don't know what the deal was but I had some bug in my code that fixed itself by me going home for the night and coming back in the morning and trying again. I have no idea what was going wrong.

This weekend we're hanging out with Ab and I'm going to a dinner/meeting on Saturday night to plan our trip sailing in Greece next summer. There's 8 of us who want to do it and it seems like now's the time...

Halloween

Halloween was awesome. I invited a few folks over for chili and cornbread and then we walked over to the display in the professor's housing. There's a prof in the mechanical engineering design division who assigns his students to carve pumpkins every year and the things they come up with are totally amazing. One of the ones I liked a lot this year had a big pumpkin with metal bars stuck in (like a jail cell) and then a small pumpkin locked in the cell with a blinking LED inside and the cell itself had candles to light it up inside. Very weird and cool. There was also an awesome one that was carved so that the pumpkin face was meant to be seen from the inside and it was reading a book. There's no way I can describe it, but it was very neat.

Also in the past couple of days I've been working like crazy to finish a baby blanket for the friend who taught me to crochet and who is arriving here in about an hour! I'll post photos soon because it turned out really nice in spite of my initial concerns.

Also in the past couple of days I've had to threaten my robot with having its circuits fused to make it behave. I don't know what the deal was but I had some bug in my code that fixed itself by me going home for the night and coming back in the morning and trying again. I have no idea what was going wrong.

This weekend we're hanging out with Ab and I'm going to a dinner/meeting on Saturday night to plan our trip sailing in Greece next summer. There's 8 of us who want to do it and it seems like now's the time...