= October 2006 = Main = December 2006 =
It's cold, rainy afternoon in Berkeley, so I figured this is a good time to post some pictures.
Here are a few from Thanksgiving. This is the fifth year Marie (and now me, too) has hosted a big potluck dinner for some fellow East cost expats. We had twelve people over, and were happily able to fit everyone into one big table for food, wine, merriment, pie, and then more wine. The new stove performed like a champ:
This is the most exciting blog content I've had in weeks.
UPDATE: Well... I 've made some changes, and the RSS links don't give goofy error messages when you click on them anymore. And the feed seems to work in bloglines and google reader, so if you're the one (1) user who was complaining about RSS problems, please let me know. I have no idea why things stopped working, but pointing fingers won't get us anywhere.
Also in website-related news, I finally go around to fixing the "search" link. Now you can actually read the text that pops up if you use it! I'm unclear as to why the search template isn't able to communicate with the same style sheet as the rest of the site, but that'll be for the historians to sort out. Next on the agenda... updating the blogroll.
And now for the most difficult question of every Thanksgiving morning: do I pretend I'm going to do something with the turkey heart/neck/live, and store them away in the freezer? Or do I stop deluding myself and just throw them away?
Anyone else having rss problems with my clunkly old website?
UPDATE: I guess the hilarious thing is that people who *are* having RSS problems won't notice that I posted this message. What tangled webs, etc. etc.
I bought a 23 pound turkey at CostCo today. So it begins.
Yeah - I discovered yesterday that my lab bench is infested with hundreds of tiny bugs. I can't quite make out where they're coming from... is it through the window? Out of the rotting molding around the wall? Or just spontaneous generation?
Either way, I'm a little annoyed. I like to pretend that I run a pretty clean operation, chemically speaking. I use fresh, sterile buffer solutions, chemical hazards are clearly labeled, I know the pH of everything I deal with, etc. etc. But it's hard to maintain this illusion when my vial labeled "deionized water" also contains a few dozen floating insects.
Cancun! We're back. And here are some pictures. Sorry to disappoint, but you won't find much along the lines of spring break craziness. Things in town were pretty subdued, actually... it seemed like most of our co-vacationers were actually from Mexico. Maybe November is the time of year when the locals know they can best avoid the throngs of American teenagers. But Marie and I had fun, regardless. There were some rain issues, but we still got in some quality beach time. And if, like me, you loved the Second Voyage of the Mimi, our day trip to Chichen Itza should hold your attention for a few minutes.
P.S. Was C.T. Granville really played by Ben Affleck? How sweet is that?
Frankly, I'm pretty surprised at California's election results from yesterday. The only two ballot measures that I thought were genuinely good ideas - taxing the eff out of tobacco and petroleum companies - both failed. But apparently we have no problem taking out even more bonds to fix our decaying infrastructure. Take that, future taxpayers! I hope you enjoy your new, much-more-affordable lives in Phoenix.
But on a positive note, it looks like I'll be getting Schwarzenegger's John Hancock on my diploma after all.
Did I mention I'm going to Cancun tomorrow?
Well, I am. Marie's currently in the middle of a conference down there with some of the finest electrochemists on Earth - and heck if I'm not going to piggyback on that trip. Now that I'm well out of college, I figure going to Cancun becomes exponentionally lamer with each passing year. So I've got to strike while the iron's hot! Belated spring break, here I come. My last real spring break was spent in Lake Placid, New York watching the Cornell hockey team lose, so I've got plenty of debauching to catch up on.
I am feeling a tinge of guilt for missing so much work these past few months. I'm also feeling a tinge of broke-as-hell-ness, but I can work through that. The family won't mind getting surplus lab chemicals for christmas, will they? Potassium phosphate has a thousand uses!
Well, my evening was a downer, but it's good to see that the rest of the Bay had fun last night...
Shootings in the Castro
Explosions at PayPal
Arson in Reno
And who says this holiday is about the occult?