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January 31st, 2005 10:28
I wish Robin Hobb would write more books. I haven’t been able to find a really good book to read in a long time.
I dreamed of Hawaii last night and woke up with an ache to be back there. All things are possible — we *could* go live there if we really wanted to — sometimes I feel like we should do it, if even for just a year ago, to test the rock fever theory and see how it all pans out. I look out the window here, at the sludge and the slush and the cold, and I look in the mirror, at my green-white face that never really gets over being green-white and pinched and I want the SUN. The sun, and warm, scented air, and hot sand, and clear blue-green ocean water.
I dreamed of Hawaii last night and consequently I awoke feeling mushy and discontented.
We aren’t healthy here. Season in, season out, we huddle indoors over our computers. There must be something more, something else, than all these computers, but how? I’m sure it’s all just a matter of priorities but I haven’t figured it out yet. It nags at me constantly, this feeling of unwellness — not really obvious unwellness, as in I don’t feel well, but unwellness as in I feel like my lifestyle is no good. I feel like, despite all my efforts to eat properly and so on and so forth, it isn’t enough. There’s something fundamental missing and I think maybe that fundamental thing is being outdoors.
RESTLESSNESS! I must sit here and code: I have only until tomorrow to finish fixing things before we put everything on code freeze. But I can’t concentrate. I want to be elsewhere.
January 25th, 2005 12:13
I realized I never did post our Hawaii photos. At least I don’t think I did. Anyway, here they are in full…
Here are a few teasers, and one video which doesn’t do the job of capturing the HUGENESS of some waves at a beach…
Hawaii is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
January 23rd, 2005 11:48
So we finished moving into our new place yesterday. Yesterday afternoon it began snowing — a veritable nor’easter. The blizzard has been going on all night and continues on. There are already 38 inches of snow and many more feet of drifts from the gale force winds. Crazy stuff. They claim it’s as bad as the blizzard of ‘78 but I’m not so sure I believe that. We were lucky to finish moving yesterday as the snow started really coming down at about 4PM — I can’t imagine how impossible it would have been if we’d delayed even an hour more.
My mother was unfortunately driving when the storm hit full force — she spun out ofcontrol on Rt. 1 and smashed into the guardrail. She is fine, thankfully; she was driving my brother’s Jeep and I’m sure he will be heartbroken over the damage.
I am desperately ill, just to make things worse. I never fully got over some cold thing that I had last week and now it is turning into full fledged something horrible. I can barely breathe, my trachea is so swollen. Last night I had a fever of over 101 which for me is highly unusual and very bas especially as my body generally runs about half a degree lower than other peoples’. I had horrid sweating dreams all night.
I want to go out and play in the snow! But it’s only about 10 degrees and horribly windy so Zaubi is making me stay in bed with a bottle of juice.
January 20th, 2005 21:00
Why does my mother insist on treating me as though I don’t have a job? She continually asks me to come out and stay at her house for a day or days and hmmphs at me when I tell her that I actually have to work. It’s like she doesn’t believe me but just thinks I’m making excuses.
It’s been a trying day. Too much work to do, too little time. Too many meetings that drag out for hours , caught by dwelling on tiny details that just AREN’T THAT IMPORTANT. I actually yelled in a meeting today. A. was saying something with regards to some details that we had been hashing out for far too long as I squirmed impatiently and I literally leaped out of my seat and lunged ungracefully at the whiteboard while yelling NO with passion and brandishing my marker. I just couldn’t take it anymore. Left work in a fine huff barely in time to make my bus — didn’t even check in my code, said code which becomes more frustrating every day. It seems that for every bug I fix, every tiny thing I implement, something new comes to mind that should/must be done or a new bug springs out of nowhere. Will we ever have a finished product?!
My house is pretty depressing right now, emptied of our belongings as it is. There is literally nothing to eat except cheese and soy milk and condiments and very old dates. It snowed half a foot yesterday and it’s bitterly cold and the dogs are super hairy and getting all over everything even though he had them groomed last week. Aren’t dogs supposed to shed in the SPRING, not the dead of winter when they need their fur coats?!
I was just Googling for a picture of a nice fat bird I could flip as my disgruntled LJ icon of the day [before I realized that my account was demoted to free account because I forgot to renew it and I can't upload more pictures] and I came upon this. Don’t look unless you need to vomit.
I feel like crying right now. I really do. And I have no fucking good reason even.
January 20th, 2005 12:20
So I never mentioned what happened to my snowboard boots in Quebec.
They died. My ancient Burton Work Boots bit the dust at last. That is the end of an era, my friends.
So last night Zaubi and I went to Ski Market, which was having a 2 hour 20% off sale for MIT people. We bought not only new boots (and a pair of snowboarding pants that fits a lot better) for me, but we finally bought Zaubi his own snowboard! And thus bindings, and boots, and so forth. It’s a nice board. Has a slinky red dragon on it. Aims toward freeriding (maybe he’ll be able to keep up with me on my superboard now!).
I tried on so many boots in the store that I literally ripped open two fingers from tying so many laces. It was an endeavor well worth it, though. And next weekend we’re taking a 3 day trip to Smuggler’s Notch where we can test out all these new toys.
In other news, we are finishing our great move on Saturday! We’ve been moving in bits and pieces for two weeks now, and as soon as we bring over the final random boxed things today and tomorrow, we can rent a truck on Saturday to quickly move all the now emptied furniture and we’ll be all done! Oh, I’m so excited. The new place is so brilliant.
!!!Bounce!!!
January 18th, 2005 17:06
LJ doesn’t flash when my friends post anymore even though i have it set to notify me every 5 friend updates. What have I set wrong??
So we got back from Quebec yesterday very late. It was altogether an excellent trip, even though I was sick last week and still felt a bit crappy on the weekend. Our chalet was DA BOMB. I’ve never seen such a cool chalet, and it was only a 5 minute drive from Mont-Sainte Anne. it had a big ass fireplace, and a sauna, which I used obsessively.
Unfortunately, the snow was the worst snow I’ve ever experienced in my life. That is, it wasn’t snow at all: more like a millimeter of grainy crystals over several inches of solid rounded ice. The weather was beautiful though and it was only about 0 degrees F (I was expecting it to be about -10!). And there was no one on the mountain. Probably, of course, because the snow was so horrible that all the Quebecian residents were inside drinking cocoa and laughing at us sad Americans, but there wasn’t a line at the lift in any case.
We started off with a couple green runs that bored us stiff, but then we found T. and a bunch of others our level and went off to the blacks and the moguls. However, snowboards don’t mix well with moguls when there’s ice involved. T. dragged us *twice!* down a nightmarish run that epitomized the worst of the worst for a snowboarder (or indeed anyone): it was steep, under a lift line (I loathe being stared at by bored lift riders as I fall on my ass), only about 40 feet wide, and covered with thickly set, extremely pointy moguls which were mostly solid ice. To make matters worse, some madman had tried to climb up the slope at some point when the snow was still relatively soft and the tracks of his feet as he staggered and postholed unevenly along (or occasionally the mark of his entire body from when he collapsed in the snow for who knows what reason) added extra pointy hazards to the run. At one point I caught my edge on one of his obnoxious body prints and flew into the air, practically breaking my ankle as I bounced and slid down the lumpy ice field. I was sick with pain but after I squatted in place for a few minutes I recovered enough to continue on.
The second day we went to “Le Massif”, which is an oddly tall and skinny mountain. the snow was slightly better there, and the view was stunning. The frozen river at the base was covered with massive ice chunks that had pushed up and broken against each other like the plates of the earth forming jagged mountains. It looked like a moonscape.
The evenings were brilliant. Excellent food (Zaubi and I cooked for the group again like last year) and plenty of beer and fireplaces and music and good company. The MIT CSAIL folks are a good lot. More than once I find myself wishing that I was having the grad school experience with all of them. As it is I see them rarely, only at hockey, and occasional Chimp Simple or GSB, or trips like these.
Ahh! must run to catch bus!
January 13th, 2005 15:48
Amazing.
In 1738, Jacques de Vaucanson created the first robot ever. Later on he created a robotic duck that ‘had over 400 moving parts, and could flap its wings, drink water, digest grain,and defecate’.
What a man!
January 10th, 2005 11:04
Szplug! Why am I so disgruntled this fine morning?
Perhaps it’s because I seem to be coming down with some horrible disease. I must fight it off so Quebec is all happy this weekend. Or perhaps it’s because tomorrow is the big meeting with Ms. Corporate America about beta, which we are supposed to be rolling out for the Rodent Core in two weeks time, and we don’t even have a production server yet!
Or perhaps it’s because credit card companies are the suck.
Or perhaps it’s because the e key on this keyboard STILL DOESN’T WORK.
Fuck. I’m so annoyed.
January 8th, 2005 22:52
It’s been a good day!
So I’ve been assigned as one of the cooks for our Saturday dinner in Quebec. Last year Zaubi and I made a terrific pilaf and herb crusted salmon. This year people’s food restrictions are as follows: no chicken, no seafood, no tofu, and one person prefers vegetarian.
Anyone have any recipes they want to give me? I’m thinking along the lines of another kind of pilaf and a tasty vegetable dish. Maybe also a beef dish for the carnivores like myself. Saturday is a week from now so give me input quickly!
Just came back from the Harvard-Cornell hockey game at Harvard. Cornell lost! Harvard’s pep band was extremely annoying. Every time Harvard got a penatly they would moan loudly and solidly (it was reminiscent of Gregorian chant, Frodofied) for the 2 minutes until the penalty was over. My sister was horribly chagrined. She fully expected Cornell to win. We had no tickets and the game was sold out so we had to walk up to random people and smile prettily and beg them for tickets as they were walking in. Zaubi and I were too pansy to do so but my sister snaked us all tickets in 5 minutes flat.
So (and I know some of you won’t approve of this but more of you will) Zaubi and I just signed the lease on the super sexy apartment we viewed yesterday morning. Call us crazy. We discussed moving last week, viewed one place on Friday, take it on Saturday. And even though our lease begins Feb 1, we have the keys to it now and can move in at any moment! We just went over there and danced around and planned out what each lovely room would be. The place is so big even the dogs get their own bedroom!
I now feel even more fully qualified to answer a certain way on those personality tests when they ask “Would you consider yourself more of a planned or spontaneous person?”. Heh.
And we finished the hardest part of the Betrayal. I know that means nothing to most all of you.
January 7th, 2005 12:26
Zaubi and I looked at a place this morning. It was brilliant. A stunning place. It costs essentially exactly the same as the place we currently have, which is bad, because we were hoping to find something a little cheaper, but it’s a *4BR* instead of a two, and has an extra enclosed sun porch thing as well. It’s absolutely huge, and clean, and brilliantly sunny. It has all sorts of random charming touches like french doors, and built-in drawers, and a fireplace mantle thing with a mirror above it, and a window in the front door. Ok, now I’m getting all girlie.
The location is pretty good — it’s farther from work for me (but a bit closer for Zaubi) — it would make a 25 minute walk a 45 minute walk instead. There’s a bus, however, that goes from two blocks away right to where I work. And the green line is just a block up the street (though granted it’s one of the slower green lines). And laundry is in the building and cheaper than currently, and it’s quite close to two really nice parks, and Whole Foods is only .15 miles away.
The landlord seemed quite chill. He’s putting in new cabinets and a dishwasher and he told us that we only had to pay half month security and we could do it in installments (always nice). The initial lease only goes through Aug 31, which is perfect, since we hadn’t planned to move out of state (if we do) before summer anyway, and given that the place is currently vacant, he told us that if we took it for February we could move in any time before that which would alleviate the horrible rush to be out of one place and into a new place all in one day.
There’s just two things, or three, rather — parking, while included, is not indoor; it doesn’t cost less than our current place (though mrtee made the argument that given it is 170% the size of our current place, it actually is cheaper — but that feels a bit like shady justification to me), and there isn’t any cute little town center 
But maybe I’m just being lame about the town center thing. It isn’t like I currently spend much of any time in said cute little town center. Except perhaps for my occasional visit to Barnes & Noble. But… it’s so cute!
Ah, decisions, decisions.
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