Capricious Me » 2006 » January

Friday night I went to see Macbeth, which was a really good production. (Congrats to Emily!) The set was so awesome and so creatively done… and the witches = awesome… the woman (yes, woman) who played Macbeth was absolutely AMAAAAZING. I really liked it. yesterday was potluck/group problem set discussion… sigh.

Today, I spent most of my time in the lab trying to finalize and typeset my solutions. Went to dinner at Pluto’s (best sandwiches. EVER.) with Conny & Daniel and Anna. There, we were discussing the grad student panel we are going to see tomorrow. The convo goes something like this…

M: I don’t think I’m going… I can always talk to the older grad students anyway.
C: What if they aren’t CS grad students?
D: That would be even worse.
C: What if they’re electrical engineering students?
M: Why would they do that?
C: *smiles*
M: OH. oooooooooh!!!

Clearly, I’m a bit slow…

Yeah, that’s right… YOU. YOU! The (unknown, for now) booger who keeps taking down the Grad Cave sign. I spent time making the little cave picture and writing “Grad Cave: Do Not Remove This Sign” and taping it to the door. Other people spent time picking just the right font, printing it, and taping it to the door. The fact that the sign goes back up after you rip it off should indicate that we want the sign to stay. Stop ripping our sign away!

It’s our cave! Leave our sign alone!! We don’t come to YOUR door and rip off your door knocker or steal your welcome mat, do we? (Partially because we don’t know who you are, but also because we have the decency to respect your right to decorate your space as you see fit.)

And if this person is a first year/fellow grad student… oh man… Oh Man. I think we’d have a Godfather II moment here. (As in… I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart!)

So I went to Sacramento with Conny on a shoe shopping trip saturday. (we found no shoes… but there’s always next time!! :-)) On the bus home, we saw this couple with a baby carrier-thingy. The carrier was covered with a cloth or thin blanket so we couldn’t see the baby. To this, Conny said…
“Won’t the baby die if it gets no air? *pause* It can’t be so ugly that they would want to cover it!”

Later, we met up with Daniel, who suggested going to a bar or cafe or something. So I listed the ones that we’d been to before and liked, and said we should avoid one which had tons of undergrads all the time. A little later, while driving to our destination… Conny and I had the following conversation:

C: Why don’t we go to one of these bars with lots of undergrads?
M: Um… why would you want to do that?
C: *hmmmm*
M: *epiphany* oOOooohh!!!
C: *laughs*
(Daniel, who was focusing on being a safe driver, also enjoyed the joke.)

It makes a lot of sense if you understand references to Conny’s “treat” ;-)

Sooooo I finally started going to the gym. Not really for fitness though… hahaha. My friends and I play lots of badminton and we just got started on rock climbing. So. Much. Fun. yes. So enjoyable that we all bought a year-pass. ^____^ I thought my arms felt weak and tired yesterday after climbing? Ha… I could still move them without problems… Today… today I really tired myself out. Ah it’s so fuuuuun!!! ^_^ I wish I did it more in Idaho!

I stayed late in my cubicle, and of course ran into loud drunken undergrads on my way home. Stupid guys shouting, “aaah don’t hit me! aaaah!” Were it not for the lack of mobility in my arms…. I would have been sorely tempted to gesture my opinion of their inanity. So I suppose it was good for me that my arms were useless.

So… on my shopping trip a while back I treated myself to Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. *glomp* I can’t believe UCD library doesn’t have any of his books. Bah!

8am discussion sections totally suck. What sadistic morons would schedule an optional class at 8am?? Are they trying to discourage attendance? Have an empathetic thought for the poor grad students who have to lead those discussions! It totally ruins my Friday.

My uterus tried to kill me yesterday. Murder (attempt) most foul!!! Actually, I thought I may have given myself food poisoning at first, but once I figured out the betrayal I responded by boiling it into submission with lots of hot water. (I would apologize for the gross imagery and bad pun, but it was your choice to read this!)

“That’s MY leg!!!” that will have me bursting into giggles for a long, long time.

Right, so classes have begun… I actually have to lead discussion sections this quarter as part of my TA duties. So far it hasn’t been too bad. I guess it’s good practice. I got recognized by a student at Woodstock’s yesterday. Which reminded me of TA orientation when one of the people said, “Davis is a really small town, so it’s kinda awkward when you run into students in bars. They seem surprised that you have a life. All you want to do is finish your beer and they’re asking about when their papers are going to be corrected.”

Badminton at the ARC is uber-fun. It’s quite popular here… there was a huuuuge queue for the nets.

If I were back in MA, I could be enjoying wintersession by hanging out w/the Boston critters and going to Frog Pond and Penang… trudging through snow, decapitating snowmen :-P

Ah, at last! That song from Mars. I really like the Mars soundtrack in general; the instrumental versions of the main songs are particularly good. Listening to the OST also brings back memories of my two cousins and me watching the entire series in one day in Taiyuan. Oh, I want to go back to China!

( If sappy lyrics be the food of asian pop... play on! )

Men are from Google, Women are from Yahoo has got to be the most ridiculous article ever. So aside from looking at the sports stuff… (oh, actually… i looked at sports stuff during Olympics) I fit the profile of a male internet user, according to this article… It seems to be a thinly veiled way of saying that women don’t really know how to take advantage of all there is on the Internet, because women are primarily concerned with social aspects. ’cause everyone knows that the concept of doing anything beyond email, looking up directions, health tips or spiritual guidance should be SO foreign to the housewives.

WTF???