solipsist2

Hello everyone! Another of my decadely updates, and wouldn't you know it, it's about travel. Given that this is a rather big trip, I set up another lj for the purpose: antarctic_sh. Go there for the occasional update and picture.

Hooray! I'm home! I got back to LA late last night - my connecting flight from Chicago was delayed by an hour, so I got into LA at 12:30 AM. Lydia was there to meet me, which was the best part of the trip. :) Staying home today, to relax and get settled back in. I'm going shopping later today, as my cupboards are largely empty. Some milk would be nice, for one.

My birthday went okay. It was the day after the conference ended, so I didn't have to work, which was nice. I went to see the Durham cathedral. It's an impressive building. It has the shrine of St. Cuthbert, and the tomb of the venerable Bede as well, for those who like dead people. They let you climb to the top of a tower, and there's a great view over the town.

... but having to deal with people not similarly phase-shifted is annoying. Drove home yesterday, arriving about 20 hours after I'd woken up. I'm almost surprised I did okay driving. Now at home to regroup before departing tomorrow. This trip won't be nearly as long, at least.

I don't update often, but this deserves a mention. I'm currently at SLAC, and will be until the 24th. My group's experiment is doing a calibration using an electron beam. We're going to fire the beam into a big block of ice, and look for the radio Cherenkov coming out. It should look pretty neat - a balloon payload, dangling on a hook in front of a big block of ice, in front of a beam of ~28 GeV electrons.

This time, asked by sylly . ... A long time ago.  Sorry, P.  Got kind of busy and stressed with my qual coming up.

So, I passed my qualifier. Yay! Now I go from being busy getting ready for that to being busy getting our instrument ready. (And I get a pay raise, which is nice.) Spent all day yesterday at Irvine, and I'll be doing that again a few more times in the next week or two.

I spent a busy weekend avoiding what I should be doing.
Friday: Cuddle party.
Saturday: Dinner with friends of Lydia's, and watching a documentary that she worked on.
Sunday: All day at the Ren Faire with Lydia and other friends. (A great time!)

And of course, the thing I should have been doing is studying for my qualifying oral. Tomorrow morning I take it. My presentation is looking pretty good by now, but I'm really worried about being able to answer questions that the committee members might ask.

LJ meme time:

Rules: Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me." I will respond by asking you five questions of a very intimate and creepily personal nature. Or not so creepy/personal. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

These questions asked by nephandi

Okay, so I don't update too often. Anyway, last week I was bitten by Akasha. No sign of vampirism yet, though.

Newer news - seems that the gas company didn't get the order to stop service I put in last month. Annoying. Everything seems to be cleared up now, though.

So, I haven't updated for awhile. I've been very happy with my new apartment - it's great having my own place. And just as an apartment, there's many things better than my old one. I preferred my old gas stove to this new electric one, though.

Last Saturday, I finally turned in the keys for my old apartment. Now I wait for them to send my what's left of my security deposit (and the extra rent for February that they had me overpay), and I can be free of the old place.

Finally, I had a wonderful dinner last night with my girlfriend. Yay!

I now have everything moved to my new apartment. (Well, everything except for the vacuum cleaner.) I'm still sore from carrying everything. It's a nice place, though. Feels a bit strange to have all that space to myself, but I like it. I'm starting to get things put away, but there's still boxes of stuff on the floor. It'll take me a while to have everything the way I want it, I think. Oh - and I'm really liking the dishwasher.

Anyone with no plans for this Saturday is invited to join in a fun afternoon of furniture moving, starting around 2pm! (For those it may concern - being deathly ill can count as plans.)

So, on my flight from LA to Denver, I sit down in my seat, 17D. I get the feeling that the number is familiar, and I pull out the copy of "American Gods" (by Neil Gaiman) that I've been reading.

"The plane seemed pretty full, as he made his way down toward the back. Actually, Shadow found, it was completely full, and there was a middle-aged woman sitting in seat 17D. Shadow showed her his boarding card stub, and she showed him hers: they matched."

My flight was completely full, and I was waiting for "a middle-aged woman" or a tall ex-con to try claiming my seat, but my flight seems to have only had one person assigned each seat.

My favourite passage from the book (the first speaker here is Anubis):

"Back in my day, we had it all set up. You lined up when you died, and you'd answer for your evil deeds and for your good deeds, and if your evil deeds outweighed a feather, we'd feed your soul and your heart to Ammet, the Eater of Souls."

"He must have eaten a lot of people." [This is Shadow, of 17D fame.]

"Not as many as you'd think. It was a really heavy feather. We had it made special. You had to be pretty damn evil to tip the scales on that baby."

Submit your own plea to Cthulhu!

Name some friends or leave them blank and let me look them up myself:

Sunday: Sick with Wimpiest Cold Known To Man (tm). Bad. Did laundry. Good! Ascended my KoL character. Yippee!

Monday: Getting better. Still skipped dance practice. Even recovering sick, would be height of rudeness to show up. Very sad. :(

Tuesday: Nearly better. Dinner and Harry Potter tonight, yay! Pretty good night.

... A war of good versus evil, right versus wrong... a struggle of life and death... ugh. I hate being sick.

So begins a voicemail I got on my mobile this morning. The amusing thing is, they aren't. I have "Verizon" printed on my phone, and they're the ones who get my money every month. After a short and very confused call to the number they left (made more confusing by the construction noise in the background), the operator ventured that perhaps someone else gave my number as a contact number. I must say, this is the first wrong number call I've gotten from a phone company. I'd expect them to know who their own subscribers are.

A good day today. Dance class was fun once again. I have new(-ish) shoes today. My regular shoes aren't so good for dancing, as the soles have too much traction. This weekend, I found a pair of shoes at Goodwill that suit better. They don't fit exactly right, so I might end up buying a pair of dance shoes off the net. I'll give this pair another session or two.

Afterward, there was peace and brotherhood night at Enigma. Which of course means nuclear war! I came in a bit late, so I wasn't in either of the two giant games going on. Instead, I ended up playing a couple of games of Guillotine. Very fun. The first game, one of the players managed to get what would have been -14 points in grey cards. But he had an action card that instead made them worth +6. I was poised to get rid of his action card, thereby giving him -20 points with a single card. (I've never seen anything like that in a Guillotine game before.) But he ended the game just before I could. A very dramatic game.

Yoinked fromthelastmehina</span></b></a> :

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</span>You can ask me 1-7 questions.

No matter how random, revealing, rude, naughty or pointless, I promise to answer them 100% truthfully. There's a decent chance I might tell you to fuck off, or that it's none of your business, because I'm sweet like that. Or I might answer privately. Who knows?

Repost this to see what others ask you

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I'll even go one better. I'll skip thelastmehina</span></b></a>'s "might tell you to fuck off", and promise to answer any question that I can.