Tuesday, July 26, 2005

A couple of days ago I got official notification that one of the papers I was working on back in May got accepted! The best part is that the conference is in Barcelona, Spain. So I get to go to Europe again this fall. Woo! Or should I say, ¡Ole!

In doing some cursory research, I learned that the primary language in Barcelona is not Spanish but Catalan. So all those years of high school Spanish are still going to be doing me no good. Oh well.

I bought my tennis racquet today. It's one of the Prince Powerline models, and I'm planning to break it in on Thursday. It's kind of a step back from the racquet I was borrowing from Bill because it's a little bit heavier and shorter, but I didn't want to spend more than $40 on it. I figured I'm not good enough yet to tell the difference anyway.

Out of curiosity I did word counts on my entries to see if the last one was the longest. Turns out it had 947 words, a distant second to the Feb. 12 entry which had 1230 words.

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Hey! I think I should post because otherwise there will be no posts in July. I've almost gone three years without missing a month... better keep the streak going.

Well, first of all, since I last posted I spent 2 weeks visiting family and friends in LA. So obviously, that was fun. The weather was also nice and cool, relative to here. I packed two pairs of shorts and never used them since it was in the 60s and 70s the whole time. Whereas here it's in the 80s and 90s with high humidity, and not-infrequent thunderstorms.

What'd I do in LA... took Amtrak for the first time... went to a freeway series game in Anaheim... went to the beach a couple of times and 3rd Street Promenade a couple of times... had July 4 barbeque, went to my cousin's wedding and saw the daughter of one of my cousins (i.e. my cousin-once-removed) for the first time. Had my dose of In-n-Out Burger and Jamba Juice. Drove my Mom's new car. Went to San Diego with Jenny to help her look for apartments. (Interesting experience, especially with the girl who didn't tell her roommate that she was going to kick her out... and then the roommate came home and we had to pretend like we weren't there to look at the apartment.) Had lots of dinners with friends... and I think that's about it. Like I said, lots of fun.

Anyway, as soon as I came back we worked on a paper for a workshop in September. We finished that and submitted it at the beginning of last week, so that's over with. If it gets in, I'll get to go to New York.

Last week Bill moved out. He moved into our apartment a little before I did, and stayed longer than the other roommates who were here the first two years, so he is the roommate I've lived with longest here in Michigan. He graduated and got a position in Chicago, so hopefully I'll get to visit him there some time.

Bill owns a kazillion pint glasses, which he took with him when he moved. When I first came here 3 years ago, I brought a box of cups and glasses (most of which originally belonged to Kirecci) which I never unpacked since Bill had so many pint glasses. So I had to unpack them last week so I could drink stuff. So, basically it took me 3 years to finally finish unpacking.

Recently I started playing tennis. I actually took a couple of lessons when I was little, but I never really learned how to play, since at the time I didn't want to be taking those lessons (my parents made me and I just went through the motions, never really learning anything). Anyway, it's kinda fun... I've only played a total of three times, so I suck. But I'm improving. I think I'll actually buy a racket instead of continuing to borrow Bill's.

Jenny and I saw March of the Penguins a couple of days ago. It's pretty cool. It's a documentary about penguins, with really good penguin footage in the Antarctic and narration by Morgan Freeman. Of course, it is a documentary so take that into account if you're deciding whether or not to see it. It's cool, though, and not boring.

I know I promised Toronto pics, but I haven't gotten around to putting up an album for them yet. You can see them on Jenny's Imagestation in the mean time, but they aren't captioned and you have to be a member.

The other day I noticed that there's this intersection in Ann Arbor (State and Packard) where there is a flashing WALK sign. Not a flashing DON'T WALK sign like you're used to, but a flashing WALK. So I looked in the official Michigan drivers handbook, and it's not in there! And it's not like the signal was set up wrong (with the walk/don't walk circuits switched or something) because it was indicating WALK at the right time. A google search turned up that, at least in Louisiana, "a flashing WALK signal is sometimes used to indicate that there is a possible conflict between pedestrians and vehicles". (Although isn't there always a "possible conflict", i.e. traffic turning right on red?)

Speaking of traffic signals, here's another difference between Ann Arbor and LA. You know how in California, it goes, flashing DON'T WALK, solid DON'T WALK, yellow light, red light? Well here, it's flashing DON'T WALK, yellow light (while DON'T WALK is still flashing), and then red light at the same time as solid DON'T WALK. So as a pedestrian, you get fooled the first time because you think you have more time than you actually do. And then in the future you give a little more respect to the flashing DON'T WALK. Like here when you see it flashing, you don't start to cross... while in LA you're not supposed to start either, but you know you have a lot of time so you just cross anyway.

Also the other day, Jenny and I had sushi at Godaiko, and they had mouthwash in the men's bathroom. It was a tray sitting on the counter containing a bottle of Scope and some small plastic cups. I'd never seen that before, but according to Jenny, women's bathrooms often have things like mouthwash, hair spray, and perfume... weird.

BTW, you may not have noticed, but I made the message board a little smaller. I noticed that with lower resolutions or smaller browser windows it takes up a big chunk of space. Never really noticed before since I'm always using 1600x1200. =)