Merry Christmas Chris!

We finally went out flying and I have to tell you, I just love these pictures.

I also recently posted cruise photos.

Finally, looks like I'll be going to the conference in Heidelburg. Woo hoo! I loved Germany. Now I just have to chop my paper down from 9 pages to 6... whew...

The Princess's New Socks

Here's me wearing the first thing that ever came out of my Stitch n Bitch book. Furthermore, it's the first thing I made for myself. They're just so cute and warm. Yarn though - whew. When you decide not to use acrylic you're in for some serious sticker shock - these were a $22 pair of socks just for materials! Anyway, I love them. They fit perfectly and were very fun to make - even if the knitting needles were like toothpicks. I went ahead and bought double the amount of yarn it called for because I thought I might run out. Turns out I ran out of colors in just the right way that I can make a whole nother pair of socks as long as I order the colors carefully.

In other news, I'm almost done the paper I'm writing for the conference. My advisor asked me the other day if maybe I shouldn't go to this other conference - so now I'm either going to Philly in August (may be hard to get my paper accepted there but it's the conference more closely aligned with my work) or Heidelberg in September (not quite as applicable conference, but almost certain to get the paper accepted - the conference is being organized by Professor Homeless Dude, and southern Germany right before Oktoberfest... can I really resist it? Chris's lab has this thing for pilgrimages to Munich for Oktoberfest... anyway...) We'll see what happens. One paper is due Jan 30, the other on Feb 1. So either way I'll be done soon and I'm still going to JPL next Thursday.

Our dance class this Thursday went pretty well - there's still some things we just can't figure out about nightclub two-step, pivots elude us completely, but we seemed to get Redowa ok - it's this crazy leaping waltz dance. The only problem with that one is we have such long legs that we fly around the ballroom and it's so crowded that it's a real effort to not slam into people. Next week we learn polka, including the Bohemian national polka. Polka is the dance that previously has made Chris say "No way. What is with the crazy jumping skipping flying? Never." But such is the genious of our instructor that I think we'll learn it and even like it.

Oh, and the best news of the week! We have a boat for Greece this summer! Me and 8 friends are renting a boat (a yacht - don't we sound rich?) out of Paros and sailing around in the islands. It's so awesome! This is one of those things that's been at the top of my life list for awhile and it's amazing that I was able to find people and a time to do it! And I didn't even have to arrange the yacht - Shannon took care of all that part. I've volunteered for arranging food. Eric is doing drinks (I expect lots of espresso and tequila). It's going to be so awesome! An interesting part is that it's not actually that expensive - $54 per person per night. I mean, you pay more than that in a typical hotel. Not a typical hotel in Greece though where I managed to live for a month on $600 for food, lodging, transportation, etc. Of course with them using the Euro now all the prices have gone up significantly. But heck, I don't care. I'm going to save a lot of money splitting rent with Josh and Chris and this is something I've always wanted to do!!!

A slip of the tongue

On Saturday afternoon Chris and I were walking around, not enjoying his Christmas present which I was supposed to be keeping secret from him because he likes surprises. I was telling him some story about earlier in the day: "... so at that point I was heading back from the store because I thought there was still a chance we might go flying..." Doh. Yeah, so we were supposed to go flying for his Christmas present but it keeps having to be cancelled because of the weather. I can't believe it. I kept it secret for 2 months and then just couldn't anymore.

On Saturday Chris cleaned out his closet and gave half of it over to me. On Sunday we moved my piano there along with some clothes and stuff - I'm starting to get used to the idea that soon we'll be living together. We both think it's going to be a lot of fun.

This morning I woke up and found out that my advisor wanted me to give a presentation later in the day. So I got to add that to the stress of giving demos for a company that came in and wanted to see what we're doing with some of their software and also making revisions to the paper I'm handing in Feb 1 for a conference. Tim is one of the coauthors and he has a lot of changes he thinks I should make. So with that and the fact that I'm flying to JPL Feb 2 to give a presentation there and talk with their engineers, I have some actual stress inducing deadlines coming up. It's weird after 2 years of nothing. Kinda good though. I don't mind hard work.

Rain?!

Everyone agrees that it's some of the worst weather reporting ever seen. At 10 last night all reports said "partly cloudy." This morning, I was outside in the rain talking on the phone to someone who was reading a weather report off the internet for today: 0% chance precipitation. So yeah - our events for today were cancelled.

Oh, and from my adventures last weekend I got poison oak on my butt. (Why do I confess to these things?) How did that happen you might wonder? Well, so do I. My rear was covered at all times except when using the little girls' room, and for that event I picked a location totally devoid of any plant life so I wouldn't accidentally back into some PO that had no leaves. So I just don't know. It sure is itchy.

Louie Lives!

This is a composite photo of my robot, Louie, "climbing" in a chimney configuration. It's opposing "gravity" (a weight hung off the table) by pressing it's little robot hands outwards as hard as possible while also pushing up. This is a really hard thing for a robot to do.

Sick upon sick

I keep getting sick. I've lost track now of how many crudy who-knows-whats I've had just since the beginning of the year. Sunday I was finally feeling better from the last one, Monday and Tuesday I had a stomach bug, Wednesday I felt better, yesterday I felt like crap again - sore throat, nausea (?? what does it mean??) - today I feel better again but tired. Yesterday I stayed home all day (although I did work on my paper for a couple of hours in the morning) and took a couple hour nap in the afternoon. I then felt better in the evening - well enough to go to dance class anyway.

The class is good - we're learning so much! But I'm worried I might be torturing Chris. The two classes we're taking are dances neither of us have done before and I'm having pretty much as much trouble learning as he is. But he's not used to this - so when I make a frustrated face he's sure it's because he did something wrong, even when it's because I just screwed something up. Anyway, 3 more weeks of classes and then it's over and we'll be ready for the Viennese ball which will be awesome.

Oh, and for those in the know, it looks like Chris's Christmas is tomorrow. It's gonna be so fun!

PhD Genealogy

There's this idea, probably first put forth by mathematicians, that you can trace your PhD lineage, or genealogy. So you note who your advisor is, and your advisor's advisor, and so on. Some guy for example has traced his back to Leibniz (via Bernoulli, Euler, Lagrange, Poisson, etc - very impressive!!).

I didn't really expect anything like that to happen to me, but it has (to a lesser extent). My advisor is Steve Rock, who I already knew was advised by Dan Debra, who still happens to be a professor here at Stanford. I then found out that Debra was a PhD student at Stanford, so I was planning to look up his thesis. Then someone told me his advisor was actually Robert Cannon, who started my lab. I didn't believe though, but when Prof. Cannon wandered by lab today I asked him. He did in fact advise Debra, and his advisor at MIT was Den Hartog (I think this is Jacob Pieter Den Hartog, from a little Google investigation). Then, the best part of all, Den Hartog's advisor was Stephen Timoshenko! Exciting isn't it! Ha. I know no one else will recognize this name, but Timoshenko is known as the Father of Modern Engineering Mechanics and his name is famous enough that I recognized it when Cannon told me. Anyway, pretty cool. Timoshenko got his PhD in Russia, so it gets a little harder to trace after that, but he wrote an autobiography, so probably I can find out who his advisor was if I get my hands on the book.

Today, by the numbers

• 1 delicious chocolate croissant
  
• 21 geocaches found including a
  
• 45 stage multicache ;-) while on a
  
• 12.5 mile hike over
  
• 7 total geocaching hours.
  
• 500 feet bushwhacked/slid down to get to cache at the
  
• 40 foot deep abandoned mine shaft.
  
• 45 minutes late to book club because of abovesaid bushwhacking.
  
• 7th wedding of the year announced (Gün's) to we
  
• 6 gals at book club.
  
• 3 yummy cookies for dessert
  
• 1 happy day!
  

Yesterday was fun too. I hung out with Brandy and Amelia for awhile. We discussed Bran's job prospects for the coming year - I'm kinda hoping she's going to go back to teaching, at least part time because it'll keep her from going crazy. I'm pretty convinced she might sink irrevocably into baby world if she isn't reminded about how much she likes the rest of the world. She had another friend come over while I was there who has a baby almost the same age as Amelia. It was funny to watch how her eyes glazed over when we talked about anything not related to the baby. Such is babyworld. After that I went to a Korean restaurant I've been wanting to try for awhile - this was my first time that I remember eating at a sit down restaurant by myself. It was interesting. Chris has been working on a deadline this weekend so I've been on my own. In fact, I also went and saw a movie by myself for the first time - Pride and Prejudice. It was so good. I love it.

Friday night (I'm working backwords I guess) we had a really fun dinner with Steph and Bruno. They were very fixed on a discussion of how I want to get married. I think it was because of my flip announcement that I wanted to get married at the Church of Elvis* - because it would be so cheap and easy! Only $5! And for and extra $5! They'll give you a parade around the block! Anyway, we ate yummy crepes and talked about weddings and jobs and all kinds of things and it was really fun.

Yeah. Great weekend. Now tomorrow I'm going to go do experiments and write a paper. What? It's a holiday you say? Ah. But grad students never rest. Hrmph. Hahruh. Snort. Hahahahaha!

*Research for this blog post has lead me to the disappointing discovery that not only is the Church of Elvis out of business, but also it's weddings weren't legally binding. Oh well. Guess I'll have to settle for Gatlinburg.

At last!

At last I'm feeling better! I was almost better yesterday except I was feeling sick to my stomach (?!) which probably wasn't helped by an experiment involving lactose enzyme and a mocha. It also wasn't helped by going to a waltz class where we spin and spin. The good news is that my waltzing (and Chris's) is getting much better. It's feeling easy and we're no longer wondering how everyone can move around so much without running into each other or really getting stressed about it.

Tomorrow I think I'll start packing for my move (!).

Oh, and I'm going to be going down to JPL soon to talk to the people there about controlling their robot (a business trip!) and I'm going to be submitting a paper to a conference in February. Yay!

Orange Juice

Since I've been sick (and I'm finally recovering - it's just a virus, the doc said) I've been drinking a lot of orange juice. It's given me a flashback too - in junior high (I think it was) I found the sounds of my sister eating her breakfast unbearable for 7am. So I took to getting up the instant the alarm went off and going straight to the kitchen for breakfast so I'd be done by the time she got dressed and came in for her breakfast. I'm not sure if it was then or later (high school maybe?) that I felt breakfast was mostly about that great big glass of orange juice. I needed it like some people need coffee.

Anyway, Chris wasn't even aware that I liked orange juice because I never drink it anymore because it's got so many calories. Might as well drink coke. Of course Coke doesn't have all the vitamin C and (these days) calcium that orange juice has. Maybe I should go back to drinking it....

Casting call

For awhile now I've been contemplating the cast for when they make a movie about my life. I used to say I was going to be played by Sandra Bullock, but I have a new theory... suggestions are welcome:

Me - Jennifer Garner
Chris - Tom Everett Scott
Steph Marie - Renee Zellweger
Brandy - Janeane Garofalo (they don't look much alike, but they're both hillarious)
Yasha - Mark Ruffalo
Steph G - Uma Thurman
Steph S - the actress who plays Miranda on Sex in the City

Moping

I've spent this whole weekend being sick and cancelling things and moping. I cancelled hanging out with Amelia and Brandy on Friday because I had a little sore throat and I didn't want to infect the baby. Good thing too because whatever I caught is really unpleasant. I slept most of Saturday and I'm still just hanging out today. I had to cancel geocaching because walking around my room made me feel exhausted. I'm feeling a little better this afternoon though, fortunately.

My roommate announced a couple of days ago that she was moving in with her boyfriend. And since my boyfriend invited me to move in with him, I'm gonna do it. That's a pretty exciting development. His roommate's going to be in Germany until March and I'll move in at the end of February. So for a short while it'll be just the two of us - which'll be fun. Josh is thinking of graduating soon too, so then it'll really be just Chris and I. How fun! Until then we'll store a bunch of our stuff - I managed to aquire actual furniture since my last move so I'm not as compact anymore as I once was.

Finally, we came back from vacation to discover that the left rear wheel of the honda wouldn't spin. Chris jacked up the car, took off the wheel, whacked the brake drum a bunch with a tire iron, and voila. Amazing how much money a little ingenuity can save.

Continued

Dec 26 - Got off the boat and wander around Nassau some more, looking at the straw market, and the closed doors of all the shops that still weren't open. Got some braids put in my hair (just a few) and got back on the boat. Leave Nassau at 1pm (the weather is beautiful by this point) and spend the afternoon goofing off some more. Weather got rough on this evening and really tossed us around, but I luckily didn't have any trouble with sea sickness. I still had that nasty cold though so I packed and went to bed early so that I could get up early the next morning.

Dec 27 - Arrived at Port Canaveral at 5am or something ridiculous. Got up and out of our room early so that the could start cleaning up for the next cruise. Spent the next couple of hours eating breakfast and waiting for them to call us so we could go through customs. Got shuttled back to Rich & Eileen's house. Steph and Troy left almost immediately, Chris and I and Ben went walking around the beach (and found a geocache) and looked for shells and eventually went to the airport to fly to Boise via SLC. Arrived late in the evening, met at the airport by Chris's whole family. In fact, this might have been the only time everyone was together - in the airport.

Dec 28 - Don't really remember. This day was a haze of napping and cold medicine and trips to the airport to see off Carrie, Matt, and Andy.

Dec 29 - Uh... more cold medicine and napping. And taking Jen to the airport. I think.

Dec 30 - The cold begins to dissipate, and we get some wonderful oranges from a stand in Boise and take off for McCall. The weather is kind of rainy or snowy. It can't really decide. Not great for driving, but we made it to McCall just fine.

Dec 31 - Wake up to go skiing but find that it's 36 deg and raining like crazy. Spend the day inside knitting and reading. Except for a walk to Moxie Java for Espresso Borgia. In the slush. Yummy dinner at home as the rain turns to snow and 2005 turns to 2006.

Jan 1 - Lovely snow and we ski Brundage. Chris and his dad call it "Ego Snow." As in, the snow's so good you feel really good about your ski abilities. It was pretty cloudy all day though. But beautiful and fun. Dinner at The Pub.

Jan 2 - More skiing - this day earlier so that we can leave the hill at 2 to get down to Boise before it's dark. In the evening I slip on the last 2 stairs and bounce down on my back. Had dinner at yummy Asiago's.

Jan 3 - Had planned on more skiing at Bogus Basin this time, but my back hurts too much. We geocache instead, and eat chili and have dinner at fondue place. Yummy...

Jan 4 - Breakfast with Chris's grandparents, a flight back to San Fran, picked up by Anne and taken to a party going on at Chris's house.

I think that's everything! It was a very fun vacation and now I'm taking a moment to collect my wits and I'll go back to lab tomorrow. Nothing was stolen from my apartment while I was gone, but something happened to the Honda and now the back right wheel won't rotate. I bet one of the guys in Chris's lab can make it go though....

Home again home again

It feels like it's been about a million years since I was in California. I still haven't made it back to my place - we've been spending time at Chris's in a little Rose Bowl/going away party for Chris's roommate (who is going to be in Germany for the next 3 months). Here's the beginning of a summary of what I did for winter break.

Dec 21 - run about a million errands in the rain. Pack. Play with the piano Chris got me for Christmas. Okay, it's really a keyboard, but it's one of those really nice ones with lifelike key action and beautiful sound and a big stand and nice bench. Went to a soltice party at Brandy and Yasha's, played with Amelia, ate really yummy food in the half life, ran out before dessert so we could get to the airport in time to wait around for our Song flight to red-eye us to Orlando. Played the trivia game onboard and got the 2nd best score of the whole flight. Didn't sleep hardly at all.

Dec 22 - arrive Orlando and was picked up by Steph, daddy, and Eileen, who I haven't seen in ages. Drove to Rich & Eileen's place and slept for like 3-4 hours. Checked in for our cruise, unpacked our stuff into our room and slept some more. I have some incredibly groggy photos of me from boarding the boat and from dinner that night. You just can't expect me to be civil after so little sleep...

Dec 23 - arrive Miami midday and go shopping in the mall near the waterfront. (It's too far to walk! They told us. Apparently about a mile and a half is too far to walk.) Miami was pretty nice. Or the mall was anyway.

Dec 24 - at sea. I don't remember what we did this day - played Settlers? played speed Scrabble? played Celebrity? oh - I knitted. I finished my second pair of socks on this trip. It was fun hanging out with the whole family and also with Rich, Eileen, Ben and Ryan. Ben has turned into a regular nerd-o-rama, so he got on smashingly with Chris. Ryan is very cool also - he loved Settlers, so of course we got along great. I think this was the night we had the formal dinner - it was fun to get dressed up and get photos taken and all that. Also we sang Christmas carols really loudly to the awful band in the atrium.

Dec 25 - on Coco Cay. I got up early to make sure and get snorkeling in, Chris agreed to meet me later. Daddy and I take the tender over to the cay and got suited up - I never got my mask to fit quite right and it leaked like crazy and I inhaled a lot of sea water. While we were out I saw this totally giant ray thing - probably as long as I am - and also touched a lot of fish because there was so many swimming so close. Steph says she saw an octopus too. While out snorkelling a storm came in and it rained like crazy. (Probably the loud singing from the 24th, the inhaling of sea water, and the standing around cold in the rain combined to give me the kickin' cold/sore throat I didn't get rid of until about the 28th.) Chris was supposed to meet me at noon - I was sending him "don't come out here! don't come out here!" messages telepathicly, but he must have been blocking. Good thing they wouldn't let him on the tender anyway because of the big storm. We spent the afternoon listening to these major whiners in the lobby complaining while we played games. We arrived in Nassau early in the evening to find Junkanoo has been cancelled and the only thing to do is walk over to Atlantis with Ben & Ryan and see the awesome architecture and extremely cool aquarium. Oh, and then come back to the boat for the midnight chocolate buffet which involves all you can eat pastries, cookies, donuts, and fruit with chocolate laddled over top. We ate so much on this trip...

To be continued....