Crouch... Touch... Pause... Engage!

Tiff and I saw a rugby match last weekend between Tucson and a couple of out-of-town teams. It was probably the first time I watched rugby where I had some semblance of an idea of what was going on.

We watched both the men and the women play, and I thought it was really cool that the women played under exactly the same rules as the men. It's not like softball vs. baseball, where they make the women play on a tiny field with completely different rules. They also seemed to have a good attitude about the game. It reminded me of ultimate frisbee, in fact.

Speaking of frisbee, spring league started up this week. My back has been a little spongy the past couple of weeks, but last night it held up pretty well. I've decided that I need to be more flexible or else my back pain will probably never go away.

Last night, tonight, and tomorrow night, I'm working the graveyard observing shift from midnight to 5am. It's probably the worst possible time to observe, because 2-4am is the hardest time to be awake (at least for me). I'm basically a zombie during those hours, so it's hard to accomplish anything while observing. Then I don't sleep well during the day, so I'm tired the rest of the day and so on and so on... After Friday night/saturday morning our huge observing project is over, at least for a month or two.

The next 12 hours are going to be especially tough, as I'm supposed to proctor a midterm exam for the class I'm TAing from 9-10am. I'm hoping the observing will go smoothly tonight and I can hit the sack a little earlier than 5am. Getting 3 or 3.5 hours of sleep would really really suck.

Lots of Observing

My schedule has been really messed up by long block of 24 hour observing remotely at the SMT over the past week. I'm splitting the graveyard shift, 9pm-5am, with one other person and I haven't been able to sleep in too much, even when I'm up till 5am observing. Also, the weather has been really bad for observing. Either it's snowing so they can't open up at all, there's high winds so they can't open up, or there's too much water moisture in the air and the atmospheric noise is too high. Not only that, but the sources are about 2 or 3 times fainter than I was expecting, so most of them haven't even been detected yet. Pretty frustrating.

The Falcon Flies Again

Nopey's room gains one more feature.

I Passed

That's all there is to it. Today was a great day!

100 Minutes Away

Oral Prelim Part 2 begins at 10am. I didn't sleep too well last night but I've got plenty of adrenaline going. I'm very nervous, but it would be positively ridiculous if I failed after all that studying. For the past few days I've had the mindset that I just want to get the damn thing over with.

"When I look in the mirror, I can't believe what I see / Tell me, who's that funky dude, staring back at me? / Broken, beaten down can't even get around / Without an old-man cane, I fall and hit the ground"

And then, after it's over, it'll finally be time to get back to the Good Life.

"...And I don't wanna be an old man anymore / It's been a year or two since I was out on the floor / Shakin' booty, makin' sweet love all the night / It's time I got back to the Good Life"

I Have Some Spare Time

So why not post on the old blog?

I'm now six days away from the prelim. I had my practice prelim yesterday and it went pretty well. I think I'm going to forgoer (what a crazy word!) the power point presentation and just let the committee ask their questions straight up. The problem with the ppt stuff is that I'll probably answer all the easy questions with the slides. So hopefully by skipping that bit, I can answer all the easy stuff off the top of my head and that'll be enough to pass. That's the idea anyway.

My back started hurting after league wednesday night, but I'm doing better now. I don't know if I'll play frisbee this afternoon. It would be good to get some exercise, but I also don't want to hurt my back.

Tiff and I are playing fantasy congress along with a few of our friends. It seems like it's going to be really fun! I've got Feinstein, Zoe Lofgren (rep from SJ!), and Barack Obama on my team, among others. I'm hoping to get Diane Watson, rep from CA, on my team too. I saw her on C-Span the other day saying "They're telling me I can't say Global Warming? They're telling me what to say?!? They don't KNOW me!" Yeah!