Some things to do

I recently injured my foot, and here are list of things I want to keep as reminders for myself:

Achilles Tendon
http://www.achillestendon.com/TreatingInjuries.html

Balance Ball
http://www.fitnessmagazine.com/workout/gear/equipment/best-stability-ball-exercises/

Iyengar book
http://amzn.com/0756633621

Abs:
http://www.self.com/flat-abs-guide/6-moves-for-pilates-abs-slideshow

Swimming and the non jogging/jumping portions of my usual daily DVDs

And now, a video of a turtle chasing two cats around the house:

Park day

I tested out the GPS device today...accuracy-wise it's about as good as my iPhone4s.  So, I think I shall be returning it.  But I will test it out some more before I decide for sure.  I found another cache today while I was in the park with some friends.  We played Nerf swords and frisbee.  I also read while lying down on the grass.  I miss that, reading while lying down on the grass and just spending time outside on the grass in the sun and the wind.  I think I'll do that more often, it's fun, relaxing, and free.

Geocaching

I bought a new GPS today, the Magellan eXplorist GC, 100% dedicated to geocaching.  I haven't really used it much yet.  But so far not exactly thrilled about:

• Yes, it preloads geocaches, but they are from everywhere and not just the ones near you.  So you need to download geocaches from geocaching.com and add them to the device.
• It also is not very Mac friendly.  Fortunately, I'm a Mac user with Virtual Box and Windows installed on my Virtual Box, but it's a pain to open Virtual Box and download from there.  On Mac you can only add one geocache at a time...meaning you have to disconnect the device from the computer then re-connect after each download...annoying.
• You can't manually add in coordinates, that coupled with having to download new caches takes the spontaneity out of geocaching.  I'm usually out and then spontaneously decide to try to find a cache.

But really, I'm not sure if any of the other handheld ones would allow me to do any of the things this device doesn't do... :-\

I'll test it's accuracy vs. my iPhone4s' accuracy tomorrow and then determine if I will return it or not.  I have 60days to decide.

The New Normal

I watched the new episode of The New Normal on Hulu today.  I've like the show from it's first airing, but I'm not too crazy about the lead actress.  I can't quite place my finger on it, but there's something about her acting, specifically when she looks surprised or sad.  She tries too hard to be a sugary sweet blonde, I'm not convinced.  I think she's too meek.  Hopefully her character will grow throughout the course of the show, she has already changed some, moving out to California, moving out of her grandmother's house, but she's changing too slowly in my opinion.  The two gay characters, on the other hand, are hilarious!  At first I didn't like the sillier one (it's a new show, so I don't remember names yet) much, but then he started to grow on me, I think his character is my favorite.  I like when the grandmother and the silly one play off of each other.

The Neighbors

Tonight was the premiere of The Neighbors.  It looks to be a promising show, and they really can do a lot with the whole alien-human aspect of it.  I'll look forward to this one!

Looooong week!

All I wanted to do after a long week (yes, I know it's only Tuesday) was to go home and watch the premieres of The New Girl and Ben & Kate.  Instead, I went to a classmates house warming party.  It was fun.  But there's something about just going home after a long day and just wearing comfy clothes and collapsing in front of the TV.  At least I'll be able to do that tomorrow.

When I was writing my masters thesis I went to cooking for stress relief and relaxation, with my dissertation it seems to be TV.  :-\  Funny how I actually hadn't watched TV in years before my PhD program...

Discovered! New species, called homo academicus

Oh boy, where to start!  I might need to re-visit my anthropological essay on the strange species, known as academics.  I observed so much today while I was amongst these strange creatures,  I need to add it all to my essay.  Most hysterical of the day, in an effort to save money on food costs, ASS #1 decided to buy food for 27 people from Trader Joe's and Farmers Market...even buying exotic fruits, like dragon fruit.  Breakfast, snacks, and lunch for two days could have cost only $31 per person for two days if ASS #1 had gone with a catering service instead, it's costing closer to $100 and dinner is an additional $48/person.  Not to mention all the time ASS #1 put into shopping for the food and preparing it as well as the another graduate student and I spent setting things up.  Oh, and since ASS #1 is a perfectionist they also had to micromanage everything that was being set-up, so that was also distracting and an inefficient use of time, money, and emotional and mental energy on their part.  Also, annoying as hell for the other graduate student and me.

Two Foscari

I got student tickets for Two Foscari, and was sitting in the founders balcony, fourth row for only $25!! Score!  I liked this one too even though it was dark for dramatic.  The female lead soprano was absolutely amazing.  I thought Placido Domingo would be more spectacular, but man, can he control his breathe!!  He didn't take a breath for a long time!  The production, scenery, costumes were much more elaborate for this one than for Don Giovanni.  I think having supertitles really helps with enjoying opera; sitting there for three hours without knowing what their saying would be rather tiresome.  I definitely want to try to get student tickets for other operas too. I'de never been to an opera until yesterday and now I've been to two in two days!

Don Giovanni

I went to my first opera, Don Giovanni, today!  I really liked it!  I loved the performers who played Zeralina and Loprello, they were hilarious!  I think it was a good pick for my first opera, it was light and entertaining story.  I got student discount tickets, so I was sitting in the fourth row for only $33!!!  I think I shall see if I can get student tickets for tomorrow's Two Foscari with Placido Domingo.

My baloney has a first name...

So I've been trying to have most of my meals be vegan but I do eat vegetarian or meat dishes on the weekends, 2-4 meals a week out of 21.  And what I've noticed is that I don't really care for meat, or animal products in general, anymore.  I eat them because I don't know what else to get, but they don't really taste as good as they used to.  I don't see how my tastes could have changed in such a short amount of time.

You don't win friends with fake meat

Vegan restaurants, stop it.  Just stop trying to make fake meats.  You will not be able to imitate the taste and texture of meat, so just stop trying.  Accept that fact, and move on, embrace your animal-product-less cuisine.  Explore a little.  Be adventurous.  Plenty of cultures have naturally vegan dishes without having to resort to fake meats.  One of the problems is that as Americans, we have lost touch with the way we used to eat, when people kept their own chickens and cows and keeping a cow or chicken alive for its milk or eggs, respectively, was your only choice.  Better to have milk and eggs everyday than to have one chicken dinner.  The other problem is that vegan places think they will be able to ease people into their diet by offering them something slightly familiar.  Give people more credit!  If an omnivore is willing to try a vegan place then they are open to having something they are not used to, something new, something exotic, so to speak.  So give them that!  Don't have a vegan chicken ranch burger or a bacon cheese burger (BTW, why the two fake meats??!).  Learn from other cultures and try to make vegan dishes American style, not American dishes vegan style.  I've learned my lesson at that place, stick to the gluten free vegan mac and cheese, soups, and salads, and steer clear of the fake meats!



And one of my favourite Homer moments, although there are so many it's really hard to choose:


Wow, three days of Simpsons clips.

Your Ebola comes with a free frogurt

I was listening to NPR on my way to work today, the news report was about a recent Ebola outbreak in DR Congo. The reporter said "some good news out of the outbreak, a pregnant Ebola patient gave birth. She died but the baby survived. The infant has Ebola." WTF!! How is that good news??

Here is how it all went down:

Radio: Some good news out of the outbreak, a pregnant Ebola patient gave birth

Me: aahhh J

Radio: She died

Me: ohh L

Radio: but the baby survived.

Me: aahhh J

Radio: The infant has Ebola.

Me: WTF??

I felt like I was in that Simpsons scene where Homer buys a cursed Krusty doll:

An Ebola patient gave birth today.  That’s good!  The woman died.  That’s bad.  Her baby survived. That's good!  The baby has Ebola. That's bad. But the Ebola comes with a free frogurt.  That’s good.  The frogurt has Ebola.  That’s bad.  But you get your choice of topping. That's good. The toppings contain potassium benzoate. 0_o That's bad. …Can I go now?

Event Planning

I would like to be an event planner, I think I would make a great one, I'm super organized and detail orientated and I've been doing just that for my advisor for the past four years.  I just don't know how to go about getting into event planning.

Christmas time is here!…I wish :-/

The semester has barely started and already I can't wait for Winter Break. I can't wait for all the Christmas lights and Christmas trees, everyone being in a better mood, eating popcorn by the fire.  I'm already thinking about what to get people. I'm usually done with all, or practically all, of my shopping by Black Friday weekend. I HATE going to the mall on Christmas Eve, it's madness, so I try to get everything done early; that way I don't forget anyone and I save time and money. I think I like Christmas so much because I've been in school my whole life so it's three weeks of not going to campus and not working…well as a PhD student you do work during Christmas break but it's on your own schedule and it's understood that you won't be as productive as summer because of all the holidays there's a lot of time spent with friends and family. And I don't hear from my advisor as much!! Joy to the world!

"Christmas is awesome. First of all you get to spend time with people you love. Secondly, you can get drunk and no one can say anything. Third, you give presents. What’s better than giving presents? And fourth, getting presents. So, four things. Not bad for one day. It’s really the greatest day of all time" ~Michael Scott, The Office

And a classic Simpsons moment:

Letterboxing stamp

I'm thinking of making this my letterboxing stamp.  No, I don't have much artistic skills.  I would definitely do away with some of the whitespace, but I don't know...I kinda like the squiggl-iness and unproportioned aspect of the sketch.

Picture Removed.

Weeds series finale

Finally!  Weeds is over!  The series finale was rather disappointing.  I didn't like the whole skipping forward 7 years aspect of it.  I mean it did tie everything together, so that was good.  But it was so anti-climactic!  I'm glad Nancy didn't end up messing up everyone's lives (except Shane...but really the boy was gone after he killed Pilar).  The show started going downhill after third season or so anyway; the only reason I watched this season was because I knew it was going to be last and just felt I should stick through one more season since I had watched all the others.  So, I guess it's not surprising that the last episode was barely mediocre.  I felt that they introduced too many new story lines in the last season, especially in the last two episodes leading up to the finale.  The writers should have really taken that time to brings things to an end instead of skipping ahead 7 years and not dealing with resolving anything on camera.

LOBSTER FEST!!!!!!!

I went to lobster fest today!!!!!  I had a whole lobster, so delicious!  It's funny, I don't like a lot of fish because I don't like having to pick out the bones, but I love lobster even with all the work that I have to put into eating it.  The tail is so tasty, especially with lemon juice and butter *drool*.  The lobster fest reminded me of the Lobsterfest episode of Bob's Burger:






Unfortunately I was not able to find a clip of Bob falling into a huge vat of butter and Hugo, the health inspector, inspecting it and saying, "Yes, there are traces of Bob's hair and skin cells which means the butter is grade D, but it is still suitable for human consumption, except by those with compromised immune systems, the elderly, pregnant women, and children."

Why is Louise the only female character voiced by an actual women???  It does go along with Tina's personality to be voiced by a man, it adds to her awkwardness, but why the others??

In other news: I found three geocaches today!  And two of them had prizes!

School friends outside of school

Tonight I went to see a play with a schoolmate and her friend.  I've found that since I've started working on revisions of my dissertation and since the students a year ahead of me have graduated and moved on, I've been a lot more open to hanging out with schoolmates outside of school.  I'm a really private person and generally don't like mixing my two worlds, but now I feel a lot more at ease mixing my two worlds.  I don't know what triggered any of this but for some reason I'm just more relaxed.  I had a great time at the play and last week I went watched Robot & Frank (go see the movie!) with schoolmates too and really enjoyed myself.  I think I'm also just happier in general, I guess it's not having to worry about writing a dissertation from scratch that has taken a load off my shoulders.

Committee etched in stone

I finally have the committee I want!!!  No more ASS #2!!!!!  It's official!!  To celebrate, I went geocaching with a couple friends, we didn't find the cache :( but we had fun anyway, then we went for drinks and had more fun ;)

Geocaching, letterboxing, and waymarking

Yesterday I tried geocaching for the first time.  It was so fun!  Geocaching is like a treasure hunt using GPS or a GPS enabled device, there is even an app for that on the iPhone app store (the lite version is free and works fine).  People hide the geocache, which can be as simple as just a log book or larger like a Tupperware container with a log book and prize inside, and post the coordinates of the cache online.  You then can download the coordinates to your GPS and start hunting for the cache.  Click here for more details and for the rules of the game.  After finding the cache you record your information (handle, date, a comment about the search) into the log book and replace the cache exactly where you found it.  You then go online and record your find on the cache’s page.  I used to love making pirate maps and "searching for buried treasure" when I was a kid, now I can actually do it without having to pretend I don’t know where I hid something around the house!  Can’t wait to find my next one!  Another nice thing about geocaching is that it’s a cheap (free!!) way to have fun and gives you and your friends/partners something to do when you can’t think of anything else.

After looking into the geocaching community I stumbled upon the letterboxing world.  That’s even more like following a pirate map!  Letterboxing differs from geocaching in that you don’t necessarily need a GPS for letterboxing but you do for geocaching.  Also, in letterboxing you create your own rubber stamp.  When you find a letterbox cache you stamp your stamp into the log book and record the date, your handle, and any comments about the experience, then you take the stamp from the letterbox and stamp it in your own personal log book.  Then you go online and record your find.  I need to make my own rubber stamp so I can get started letterboxing!  Here is a link to letterboxing.

There is a third treasure hunt activity called waymarking.  From what I gather about waymarking it doesn’t sound as much fun as the others.   People select locations/buildings/etc. and post their location online along with any rules, like must take an original picture or something, you then go to that location and follow the rules then post your find online.  There are different categories and each category has it’s own rules.  Here is a link to waymarking, the website is not as well organized as the other two.

Whichever of these three activities you pick, you will have a great time at a great rate (can’t beat free)!