Life remains hectic for your truly, so this won't be a real post. I have a boatload of stuff to say though, so rest assured the avalanche is coming. It'll just have to wait until I take my make-up midterm tomorrow morning.
I'm now at the part of the conference where the talks are less pertinent to my research, so I'm taking more time to check out posters and waste time by making very uninteresting posts on my blog. Aren't you lucky. I have about 25 minutes to kill before the next break when they bring out the $4 cookies that were paid for by the outrageous $400 conference registration fee. You can bet that I get my money's worth with those cookies. Anyway, I think I'm going to walk around and take some pictures of the hotel resort.
I'm posting from the big island of Hawaii, where I'm at a conference on protostars and planets. Currently, I'm poaching off someone else's internet connection to make this post, since our condo doesn't have internet officially. However, it does have a sweet balcony from which poaching is possible, so who cares about official status.
Trent is also staying at this condo, although he's not paying a dime for it. Fortunately, it's a large condo and I owe him one, so the freeloading is fine in this case.
The conference has been good so far, although we've found a great many ways to bitch about the $400 registration fee. I'm anticipating one more good day followed by three days of hit-or-miss talks. That's not too bad though.
Each year, Steward Observatory has an internal symposium over the course of two days, during which various people give 10-20 minute talks on their research. As a second year grad student, I was required to give one of these talks. I was nervous about it, as I am nervous about all such public speaking endeavours, but it turned out well in the end. During the presentation before mine, however, all I could think about was "I can't wait until my talk is over!" During the question and answer period (or, in my case, the question and question period), I successfully answered two questions/comments with questions/comments of my own, such as, 'Well, that's definitely something I'll be working on in the future" or "Gosh, you're right, those number densities I derived are fairly large. I wonder why..."
Ultimate tonight, then I spend most of tomorrow making my poster for Protostars and Planets V, a conference next week in Hawaii. Then after that, it's midterms in two classes. Then finally after that I should have some free time.
Apparently I woke up this morning with pink eye. I noticed something was wrong immediately because I couldn't really open my eye right when I woke up due to all the mucous covering my right eye. Actually, I may have been getting it last night, since Tiffany tells me that my eye was looking red last night too. Ah yes, btw, Tiffany is in town since yesterday and will be here until Friday. This week is the fall break for Boalt.
I tried to dream about quidditch again last night and was again unsuccessful. However, I guess you could say I got closer though, because I remember that I dreamt that I was Harry Potter and was in a duel with Voldemort. It was weird though, because there were a lot of people around and they didn't seem to care that we were fighting. Also, there was some evil monster next to Voldemort, but he didn't do anything. Voldemort didn't really do anything either, but that was because I kept doing the "expelliarmus" spell anytime he got near his wand. But then after disarming him, I couldn't do anything else. It was exciting at least. Not quite flying-in-the-air-on-a-broomstick exciting, but you take what you get when it comes to dreams.
Truly, this is an historic post of epic proportions. Indeed, it is for naught but that reason alone that I have delayed posting over the past few days. What has happened recently? Before I get into that, item A was cookies, item B was ice cream (yes, in that instance refrigerated and frozen were the same thing; apologies for any confusion), item C was yogurt. Item D was bananas. Congratulations to all who participated in this amazing extravaganza of a contest.
My softball team lost 14-7 to the best team in the league last night. That makes us 2-3 on the season, but we've played the best team twice and the next best team once. I'm still hoping we can finish 4-4 in the regular season. Fortunately, everybody makes the playoffs.
I won the poker tournament Saturday night by getting lucky on the river. Other than that one hand I played well, however. Sadly, while I was doing that, Cal lost a close game to UCLA in LA. My confidence in Joe Ayoob has never been high, and this game didn't do much to change that.
I tried to dream of playing quidditch last night. According to Tiffany, it's possible to increase the chance of dreaming about something if you think about it for awhile before you go to bed. So, I decided it'd be a lot of fun to dream about flying around on a broomstick and play quidditch. Sadly, it didn't work out for me. Since I ended up spending the last half hour before I went to bed reading a recipe book, all I remember dreaming about is recipes from that book, especially one that I was planning to cook tonight until I became so enraged at the lack of food at Albertson's as well as the outrageous prices for fruits/vegetables that I decided to delay cooking until Thursday night, when I can shop at Trader Joe's and Sunflower.
Since I was at Albertson's anyway, I decided to buy a few things. Five separate things, to be exact.
Kudo's to Trent for at least attempting some answers. Maybe I should clarify a bit. Item A does not need to be refrigerated. It will probably take me a couple of weeks to finish both items. Item B does need to be refrigerated. It will also probably take me a couple of weeks to finish. Item C does need to be refrigerated, but is not a vegetable or a fruit. Item D is a fruit that does not need to be refrigerated.
I'm playing in a freeroll poker tournament online right now. After an hour we're on break and I'm sitting nicely in 17th place out of 127. The tournament started with about 1600 players but with rapidly increasing blinds players were dropping like flies. I managed to survive with some well timed all-in moves (nothing like first-in vigorish to pull off a bluf) and surviving some races. I might be able to "make the money" and get a $1 reward by posting and folding, but probably not. Anyway, there's no fun in that strategy, is there? Maybe I'll post again when I'm eliminated from the tournament.
Just survived an all-in with Q10 vs 910. Up to 18th out of 95. Before that I lost with JJ against A3 to someone who was all-in preflop with a lot less than me. I think I can just coast at this point... Actually, I think I'll be right on the bubble with 30k, which is where I'm at now. If I could get up to 40k then I'd be fine. Just got a bit lucky: K9o vs. AJs and I caught a K on the flop. The other guy was all-in with 6k preflop. I called on the button. I really should just coast now... Just flopped a monster... Pocket fives and the flop is 665. On the button I bet 6000 into a 18000 pot after all three check in front of me. One caller. It goes check-check on the turn when a queen comes. Then the river is another blank (to me anyway, hehe), my opponent checks, I bet 12k and get called. He mucks. I take down a BIG pot and have 60k now. I'm 10th out of 43. Really need to tighten up to avoid busting out on the bubble. Oops, only 28 places paid. I thought 35 were. Good thing I should make it to the top 28 pretty easily. So naturally I get tangled with the chip leader!! I got pocket kings and raised to 24k. The chip leader calls from the big blind and I'm saying shit shit shit to myself. But then the flop comes K56 with two hearts. He bets 6k and I move all-in over the top for 30k total. I'm hoping he will call, but he folds. I'm at 90k now. 5th out of 35. Ugh, the people with short stacks are taking forever to play... Made the money, but my stack is dropping quick. My M is about 2, if that means anything to you. And I'm out. Up against 77 preflop with A8. Hit an Ace on the flop but he rivered a 7. I finished 14th out of 1693 players. And got $1 for my efforts.
Ultimate League has finally started! I'm really happy with my team so far and I'm really looking forward to playing each week. Yeah!
Ok, I should really expand on that. My first season playing league, I was on a really great team, both in terms of talent and spirit. The funny thing was that I didn't realize how fortunate I was to be on such a fun, awesome team. Then, last season, I was on a team that didn't have such great spirit. Our first few games we played well and it appeared that we had a very good team talent-wise, but by the end of the season we had lost all our momentum. There was even some bickering between players on our team, something that should never happen. Despite all that, I did have fun playing ultimate that season. There were three people in particular that I am glad to have met and befriended. Unfortunately, two of them will be leaving Tucson in the next couple of months. But the third one, who has a wife who will be having a kid in the near future, is playing league this season, so hopefully I'll get to say hello to him at some point. But anyway, this team is looking like it will be a lot of fun, and for that I am very happy.
I went to Albertson's on the way home and bought two quantities of item A, two quantities of item B, four quantities of item C, and 2.34 lbs of item D. The total cost of this purchase was $13.16. My total savings was $10.55, or close to a 50% discount on all items purchased. Item A, normally priced at $3.69, was marked down to 3 for $5; item B, normally priced at $5.99, was marked down to 3 for $10; item C, normally priced at $0.80, was marked down to $0.50. Item D was not marked down at all from it's normal pricing of $0.49 per lb. What did I buy? Hints coming tmorrow...
Being as I live in a desert, and being that I have my own bathroom to do with as I please, I have decided to enact a two component solution to the problem of water conservation. First, I will use the water in the shower only for rinsing. I figure this will cut my water usage practicallly in half right there. Second, I will not flush the toilet after urinating. This means that only after " voiding feces from the bowels" or "regurgitation" will I be flushing the toilet.
Quite the pleasant post, eh?
I finished the last three or four hundred pages of the fifth Harry Potter book over the past couple days. It was very intense but very good. I need a cooling off period before I start the sixth one, though. I think I might be getting a little too attached to the characters, especially Harry. On the other hand, that's all part of the enjoyment of reading the book.
I have a fantasy football team, but I really don't give a fig about it. At all.
I got 3 or 4 hours of sleep Friday night, but over 9 hours last night. I guess that evens out. Besides an inpromptu poker night tonight, I don't have anything planned. Hopefully, the tournament won't last too long and I can go to sleep early tonight too.