Defense Weekend

Hooray for me!

After the defense

And then a quick trip to Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH, where great fun was to be had before quickly returning to Ann Arbor for my sister to catch her flight back to California.

Doctor, me???

A title that I'm feeling pretty weird about. Of course, not a whole lot of people are going to call me that since I'm not entering academia!

ALL DONE!! I DEFENDED LAST FRIDAY, JULY 27, 2007!!

It hasn't sunk in yet, but it's been such a wondeful experience, I love the people I work with, and all my friends are such supportive and fabulous people.

More to come with pictures...

:)

(I'm procrastinating right now. I have revisions to do :P )

Tornado Warning

No better time to catch up on my blog! I'm supposed to be at a meeting, but I've been sequestered in the libary. Drat. :P I think I've been led into the basement and to the center of the building. It's weird. They just left us in the hallway. Yet, I still have wireless access. Wonderful. Meanwhile, I'm thinking about my basil plants as they sit out on my porch exposed to the elements. I kind of want to see this so-called tornado that the midwest is supposed to have. I'VE never seen any! Pah! In my whole 5 years.

In other news... I turned in my written dissertation to my committee last Friday. !!! Eeps! I should feel more accomplished than I do right now, but I realize that it's only a rough draft, to be ripped apart during/after my defense. I did have this un-wipable grin on my face for the rest of the day though. :)

However, the impending doom of this defense is looming... I hate public embarrassment. My whole family is coming into town, and I think a bunch of my good friends and sort-of good friends are coming. Now, I'm okay with being embarrassed in front of my family, but people who know me and somehow think I'm smart?? Aah! I know one committee member is going to grill me, and I'm afraid. AFRAID!! The committee is filled with physicists, and I'm... not one.

Wish me luck!

Adventures at work

amayzlo:
omg.

r_45pete: what?

amayzlo:
my finger is stuck in my desk drawer

r_45pete:
no
still?

amayzlo:
yeah
left hand

r_45pete:
what the f***
how?
why?
how are you typing?

amayzlo:
can't get past the 3rd finger knuckle

r_45pete:
no f***ing way

amayzlo:
hahhaha
omg

r_45pete:
yeah I wanted to laugh but thought Id leave that for later
...

amayzlo:
hahaha
okay, i yanked it out

r_45pete:
is it later yet?...

amayzlo:
yup

r_45pete:
ok hahahaa
you OK?

amayzlo:
i mean, how the heck did that happen?

r_45pete:
yeah?
was there some candy in there ?

Seoul and Japan Trip

A few pics from my trip!

The gang on a night out in Seoul after a long day at the conference.

Palace... I don't remember the name...

High rises in the back of a historic treasure. Pretty common for Seoul.

Me in Shibuya!

Ah! Crazy number of people crossing.

Fun shopping!

Fish market

Engrish in Hakone. Read the fine print.

Golden Palace in Kyoto.

Encounters with Daily Strangers

Contact with Old Man Bus Rider! For the past few encounters, I've started smiling and saying good morning to him. Yesterday, I found out that he works at Nickel's Arcade for a few hours every morning. :) That makes me happy. It was weird because he has a hearing aid, which meant that I had to speak loudly, which was even more uncomfortable than I had imagined.... yelling in a quiet bus full of groggy people.

I also saw gimpy tumor squirrel again around the same place. Naturally... of course! Squirrels have homes too. Let's try to remember that.

Basil

I have 2 kids:
Say hello to Basil, Jr. (Basil died last year)

and Basil, III

They have grown a lot since I first got them! I'm the type of person who likes to watch the grass grow, so I'm quite proud of my Basils! Wish me luck on keeping them alive!

Congratulations, Counselor!

My sister graduated!

We went to dinner at Boulevard in San Francisco and it was DELICIOUS! Because we waited 20 min for our reservation, they gave us complimentary appetizers. They served a thin slice of ahi on top of whipped avocado, and it was all topped off with caviar. Mmmm... Next, sweetbreads, which had the consistency of a clam and tasted like yummy bone marrow. Below are our entrees, which were goo-oood. Clockwise around the table: halibut, lamb x2 (prepared in 3 different ways, including lamb cheek shepherd's pie), and guinea hen with morel mushrooms.

I always forget what a small world it is. Audrey's good friend is good friends with my good friend!

Lunch time

I rarely go out to eat for lunch, but I just got back from California yesterday so I didn't have much in the refrigerator. I treated myself to two slices of organic pizza. It was a nice day, so I headed over to the Diag to sit on the lawn and have a lovely little picnic. Of course, I didn't want grass stains and was wearing a skirt, so I put down my notepad and sat on that. Mmm... one slice gone. I picked up my second slice and started to eat it when the sprinklers (facing away from me) started to go off. Uh oh! I got up, picked up my notepad and then felt water on my head and back. Think quick! I covered up my pizza with my notepad -- now my notes were wet and had pizza sauce on them. Great. Way to rain on my parade.

I went to sit on a concrete bench in a concrete plaza. But! When I sat down this odd little squirrel came out from underneath the bench. It ran funny. Like it had stiff hind legs. I think it may have had a tumor hanging from its abdomen. I watched it hobble away from me, and then watched a guy stop in his tracks to watch it for a couple minutes, and then take out his phone to take a picture of it.

Eventful lunch for Mayz!

Puppies and mirrors

What happened to dogs not being able to see 2D? Apparently that is just a myth.

GRADUATION 2007

I'm delayed in posting pictures, but still, most schools haven't even had graduation yet. Crazy, huh?

And the chocolate cake with graduation hat:

Thanks, sis, for sending me this song. Love the crackling voice!



In other news, my sister has also given me homework.

Watch Grey's Anatomy Seasons 1 & 2
Due Date: May 18

I'm going home May 18, and at that time, will receive Season 3 from her. Now, I've seen a few episodes and know the basic story line but have never become a religious watcher. My sister told me that I had to watch from the beginning to acquire character attachment. I've finished Season 1 Disc 1, and now am in love with McDreamy. Those sneaky twinkling eyes...

NEW HEROES EPISODE TONIGHT!! DON'T FORGET, EVERYBODY!!

CELEBRITY SIGHTINGS

I have to keep track. :)
I sat across the aisle from Dan Rather on my way over to New York this past weekend. I love free upgrades. Oh, hello, Dan Rather.

I contained myself through the entire 2 hours that I was sitting next to him, all the while wondering why the woman sitting on the other side of him hadn't said one word to him yet. I would have to yell across the wide aisle, and she was *right* next to him! I'm also chicken. I waited until we were deplaning and for him to tell me to "Go ahead" to talk to him. That means that I said "Thank you" back to him. :)

So here's the count (concerts don't count):
Freddie Prinze Jr.
Claire Forlani
Mandy Patinkin
Angie Everheart
Ziyi Zhang
Chris Kattan
Jennifer Aniston
Frances McDormand
Joan Cusack
Catherine Keener
Josh Harnett (x2)
Lucy Liu
Enrique Iglesias
Uchenna & Joyce (Amazing Race)
Laura Linney
Phillip Seymour Hoffman
Regina King
Mike White
Adam Brody
Molly Shannon
John C. Reilly
Tom Arnold
Kevin Bacon
Camryn Manheim
Terry Hatcher
Alan Alda
Kathryn Morris
Daniel Dae Kim
Roger Fan
Dan Rather

OLD MAN BUS RIDER IS BACK!!!

I saw him this morning. His hair is longer than normal, but otherwise, he looks pretty much the same. I wonder what he's been up to. Maybe he got a nose job. ;) Hahaha...

ST. PADDY'S DAY IN CHICAGO

I had a pretty Irish St. Patrick's weekend. Although, being a bit sickly throughout the whole weekend trip, I didn't drink a drop of alcohol. However, I still had a great time as I got spend the weekend with good friends and sorely missed friends. Three of us from Ann Arbor trekked over to Chicago Friday night, met up with Jessi (who flew from Denver) and Marwa (our "local" ;) ) at a bar near Marwa's 21st floor apartment. We closed the bar, and then set an alarm for the next morning so that we would have the potential of watching the parade the next day and the dying of the river. Yeah right. We could see the river from Marwa's apartment, and we gave up on the parade pretty quickly. But what was with the river? We waited and waited for the river to turn this bright radioactive-looking green, but it never happened. Only when we roamed the streets did we see some green. Why so skimpy this year, Chicago?


That night, we went to a place called The Abbey, paid the best ever spent $10 cover, and listened to a handful of Irish bands... and then bagpipers!

Next we watched about a half hour of Irish dance. Adults, teenagers, and kids came out and performed routines in front of their proud parents and friends, and a bunch of drunken party-goers. Hooray! Very cultural of us.



The next day we went to Millenium Park, where the famous shiny bean is. Look, we're like cartoons. Torsos the same length as our legs. :)

MORNING BUS RIDER

For the past year, I've reliably seen an old man (~70 years old) on the same bus everyday. The 8:57 AM bus. He's usually on by the time the bus reaches my stop, and then he gets off at State Street. He wears a maize and blue jacket and maize gloves. In the summer he wears jeans and often a fashionable white button-down. Recently I have not been keeping a regular schedule, but I don't remember seeing him for a month. I took note this morning to check for him (as I am often caught up taking care of my bumbling self in the morning) and didn't see him. I'm a little worried. :|

BUTTER 'N THINGS

There's been a lot happening with my friends here. And with my new interest in making and decorating cakes, I made cakes for their big events. Here's cake #1 for Nadder's birthday, a chocolate cake with coffee butter cream frosting.

And there was an engagement and a graduation. You can see the red velvet cake in progress. I still have to work on my piping. :) Maybe I should move on from the ziploc bag.













And then I made a chocolate cake with ganache for Pete for Valentine's Day, but I didn't manage to get a pic before I left with it... maybe because the butter started to separate from the chocolate. :( I have to work on my chocolate. However, he sent me some lovely lovely flowers. Orange lilies, orange gerber daisies, brandy roses!

NEWFOUND PROWESS

I have lived on my own before. I've done a lot of things by myself for my place. But ever since I started living with my male housemate, I've sorted just left some things for him to do. Like, for instance, hooking up cable, modems, changing light bulbs... Well he had been gone since last Friday, and on the first day, the light bulbs went out in the ceiling fixtures in the kitchen. Crap! It took me 2 days (as was also busy) to replace it because (1) had to figure out how to get to the light bulbs in the fixtures (2) had to go buy light bulbs (3) had to replace light bulbs. This is ordinarily a task I just let my housemate take care of. I dunno, silly, especially since I'm taller. I was pretty proud of myself for having done this task.

Another empowering event involved the tremendous snowfall we got over the past few day. Now, this might be just something a Californian had yet to experience, but it snowed about half a foot overnight. Normally, my neighborhood is really good about shoveling snow (even before I'm out the door), but I had to make first tracks yesterday morning! When I got home after a day of working, I had to take my car to go to the gym, so I got all dressed to do some dirty shoveling. I shoveled the steps to our house and shoveled around my car! Very satisfying. Got in my car, burned a little rubber, but got out of the snow!

Thank you, thank you.

CONGRATULATIONS, DR. TSE!!!

A nice stamp of the 3 letters Ph.D. to commemorate a tremendous body of work packaged together in a nice neat bow. Great job!

Much delayed pictures that I took of the crazy freezing rain a few weeks ago. I thought that "freezing rain" sounded pretty treacherous, but really, it was quite beautiful.


Crazy sideways ice: