= Such Stupid Things =

Well this has shaped up to be a lousy Halloween indeed. I set a very modest goal for myself. I knew that I would have to drive Marie to the airport at 5:00am the morning after Halloween Observed (last saturday), so I was forced to shy away from the multiple parties to which I was invited. And that's fine - I didn't really want to think up a costume anyway. And I knew I would have to work late tonight, so I wasn't really planning on doing anything for Halloween proper. So my only real planned means of celebrating the holiday was to wear the pair of stupidly-bright orange socks I own for some reason. But there, I was a failure. I forgot completely.

And it gets worse! I figured by staying at work till 8:00 I would be able to sidestep this whole trick-or-treat deal, but no. So, when the cute little kids arrived at my door at 8:20, boy was my face red. Imagine having to tell someone that you don't have any candy on Halloween... these were my first ever real trick-or-treaters, and I totally blew it.

So how to while away the rest of the evening? The current plan is to sit here and eat my dinner with all the lights turned off, pretending no one's home. I think I'm in the clear at this point, but if one of those little buggers interupts Veronica Mars, we're going to have problems.

Posted by Jeff at 08:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Can you believe this?

"In a city famous for its love of specialty gourmet food, irate neighbors are fighting a new Trader Joe's slated for University Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, . . . Residents are concerned about traffic, parking, the building blending in with the neighborhood, and the large volume of low-cost alcohol for sale just a few blocks from the UC campus, Berkeley High School and a number of homeless service agencies."

So... is your argument that the vacant Petco parking lot "blends into the neighborhood" better than a functioning grocery store?

Posted by Jeff at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was walking through the Elephant Pharmacy this afternoon to return a DVD when I saw a table with two women giving out free samples of... something. I couldn't tell what, exactly, but useful or not, I've never been one to turn down free trinkets, so over I went. The young woman in front of the table sees me and asks, "would you like to give one to someone you know?" At this point I'm a little closer, and I swear to the stars I thought they were handing out little mini-bars of handsoap. "Marie likes soap", I thought, so I said, "sure." That's when the woman hands me a little plastic box and says, quite loudly and enthusiastically, "They're cholorine-free, organic cotton tampons! Enjoy!"

Umm... thanks?

Posted by Jeff at 06:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

... Marie and I fixed our DVD player somehow! In a highly misguided fit of "engineers should be able to do this"-confidence, we opened up the machine and took the whole thing apart. Turns out, the motor that spins the disk wasn't spinning. But a double shot from the air duster and kiss of WD40, and voila! It works once more.

I have zero confidence that this is a long term solution, but what was I expecting from the cheapest DVD player CostCo had to offer? The mere fact that we didn't break it further makes it a big win in my book.

Posted by Jeff at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When I was a wee lad I vaguely recall reading a picturebook about a fictinal group of archeologists from the year 4000 (or something) sorting through the decaying remains of America. If memory serves, it followed the team of scientists and their various "wtf?" moments as they came upon some of the oddities of the late Twentieth, such as artificial plants and the wreckage of the St. Louis Arch.

Following that theme, I really enjoyed this piece in the New Scientist from a few weeks ago, playing out a big "what if humans just... disappeared" scenario. I wish the author explained more of the chemistry when claiming phosphates and nitrates, etc. would be "cleared away" by the environment, but the conclusions are interesting nonetheless. Turns out, the Earth is pretty resilient, which is I suppose a testament to the success of our species that we've been able to screw it up so effectively.

Posted by Jeff at 01:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Decemberists put on a great show at the Warfield last night. There are a few musical instruments for which I'm a huge sucker: accordion, banjo, xylophone and viola are a few. So when they're all incorporated into a single rock concert I'm pretty much on cloud nine. (In fact, there were two accordians. "Quite a find".) Anyhow, if you haven't heard the Crane Wife, you should really do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. Make sure you find one with the two bonus tracks, "After the Bombs" and "Culling of the Fold". They played both at the show, and they were both top-notch - "Culling..." in particular, largely due to its subject matter. It's a rare gem that can be this violent and remain infectiously catchy. This guy has the mp3s, if (like me) you naively purchased the standard, ten-track copy.

Though the evening's downside was that never have I felt older at a concert than I did last night. To be fair, I was older at this particular concert than I had ever been before, but still. The crowd was filled with an unnerving number of what could only be area high school students. After the show, as these kids piled back into the BART, no-doubt bound for Walnut Creek, I felt a strong urge to go get drunk, just so that my evening would be a little different than theirs had been. Happily, this modest goal was achieved.

Posted by Jeff at 04:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

What the heck is going on around here? Why is everything in my apartment breaking? In the past two weeks the DVD player, wireless router and Marie's CD burner have all gone out for no recognizable reason. Jiggling wires and hitting "reset", "reset", "reset" isn't resolving the situation, so I'm pretty much clueless. Worse yet, I can't think of anyone or thing reasonable to blame. Sunspots? Immigrants?

UPDATE: Literally within an hour of writing this post, I somehow broke the blender while making dinner. What's wrong with me?

Posted by Jeff at 05:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After a long weekend of travel, catching up on blogs is a daunting task. It takes at minimum a good four hours of undivided attention. Good thing, then, that my boss is in Switzerland for a week and a half -- not having to cautiously look over my shoulder everytime someone walks in the room definitely speeds things along.

Ithaca photos later. Number one thing I miss about being Back East which I had totally forgotten about: those little whirlygig propellers from Maple trees that helicopter themselves all over lawns and sidewalks in the fall. Most definitely the coolest inedible seed-delivery system out there.

Posted by Jeff at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

In a few short hours I'll be flying to Ithaca for Elizabeth's wedding. The weekend should be a living, breathing Central NY cliche: wedding ceremony at the Cornell Plantations, rehersal dinner at a winery on Lake Cayuga, post-party at Rulloff's, and there's an off-chance it might snow. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited.

Posted by Jeff at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We had some time to waste in lab yesterday, so we took a tour around the world via google maps. It wasn't too long ago that the entirety of non-US land was completely blank. Things have been changing, though. Brazil, Europe and Australia are all on board, but the level of detail on the maps of Japan is simply amazing. They've got each and every building outlined if you zoom in far enough, complete with little icons for all the 7-11s in Tokyo.

Second place on the impressive map list was, surprisingly, Moscow. Though my search was hardly complete, so maybe I missed something good. Sydney looks pretty hot too.

Why can't we put together some 'merican maps like this, I wonder. Why does Tommy have to do all the work?

Posted by Jeff at 08:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was scouring the internet for information on an old sciency book for a little research-related pet project of mine. It's from 1984, and I stumbled onto a lukewarm book review from the Quarterly Review of Biology (60, 3, 1985) which closes with this gem of a paragraph:

"Finally, it must be said that this book is very poorly edited, bound, and illustrated, and also excessively expensive. Spelling and grammatical errors abound, and Garth Nicolson's name is mispelled with an almost religious zeal."

Maybe finding this book isn't such a good idea afterall.

Posted by Jeff at 05:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And while I'm rambling about food, I'll mention that at the Farmer's Market this morning I saw my first hachiya persimmons of the season... the sexiest, most delicious fruit of all.

This time of year gets a big thumbs-up.

Posted by Jeff at 05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Egads! Yesterday was Marie and my fourth anniversary. We celebrated by playing hookie and spent the day putzing around San Francisco. We went to the de Young to see the Quilts of Gee's Bend, which Marie's quilting buddies have been talking up for some time. From there we wandered around Golden Gate Park and saw the Blue Angels flying all over the place, practicing for their Fleet Week performance this weekend. We finsihed off the day with a monster of a dinner at Jardiniere. Devotees will recall the head chef, Tracy des Jardins beating Mario Batali on Iron Chef America. Needless to say, that got my attention. I had the six-course tasting menu, Marie had a few dishes here and there. The meal took three hours from start to finish, featured meats from nine different animals, and had the gourmet triumverate of fois gras, truffles and caviar. The only thing missing, perhaps, was shark fin soup. Or something endangered. We may have broke the bank a tad, but it was worth it - the food was fantastic, service and atmosphere were top-notch, and Marie assures me that our waiter was "super hot". Afterwards, we went home and watched a couple episodes of Arrested Development. It was pretty much a perfect day.

Posted by Jeff at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

We were discussing this in lab, and does anyone else agree that the medicine and chemistry Nobels should have been switched this year? I mean, Kornberg's work is important and all, but I don't really see what's so new and exciting about it from a chemistry perspective. He crystallized some large, difficult proteins, but didn't they just give out an award three years ago to Rod McKinnon for crystallizing a large, difficult protein? What gives? RNAi, however, is just plain cool however you look at it.

Anyhow, there's a whole mess of jaded actual chemists out there waiting for their day in the sun. So why not just set up a biology Nobel and get it over with?

Also of note, Kornberg got his PhD from the same thesis advisor as my boss, thus making him my academic uncle. Or something like that.

Posted by Jeff at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Half-way done, and the Nobel score stands at Berkeley 1, Stanford 2. Stanford traditionally wins this battle, and I'm not liking our odds this year either... Of the remaining awards, we stand a chance at Economics, but Peace has never been Berkeley's strong suit.

Posted by Jeff at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Looks like my little brother has made things official: he's moving to Atlanta at the end of October. It might have something to do with wanting to be close to his girlfriend. Or maybe he wants to be closer to Chris. Who knows?

Posted by Jeff at 02:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Marie and I took a little walk this morning, and stumbled upon one, two, three yard sales. Having watched an episode of Antiques Roadshow, treasure hunting was on the brain, so we dove right in. We found nothing too jaw-dropping, but there were some good pick-ups, mostly kitchen-related: a big rolling pin, one of those collapsible steamer inserts that look like a flying saucer, and a copy of Julia Child's "The French Chef Cookbook", copyright 1968. We're better prepared for the onset of pie-making season than ever before.

Posted by Jeff at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)