snl

SNL just did a hilarious skit about Chicago and Cubs/Sox fans. I don't think anyone from anywhere in the country would have gotten any of the jokes, but it was so awesome! The two anchors were from Evanston and Wrigleyville and were pretending to be Sox fans. "We're South Side! We bought cars at Celozzi-Ettelson Chevrolet, where you always save more money!" :) "We're sox fans, we took the red line down to Comiskey Field" "I flew out of Midway once!" etc etc... So great! But the victory was for "all of Chicago" but "not for Schaumburg!" what? what's wrong with Schaumburg??

Palatine Turkey Trot??

Does anyone want to run 5 miles with me on Thanksgiving morning in Palatine? More info here.

palatine....

Sometimes this town makes me wonder...I went over to the grocery store this morning, and in the parking lot was this big meat truck, and they were blaring the twangiest country music you've ever heard and giving out free meat on a stick. Needless to say, I didn't partake :) Then I go inside, and it's saturday, so of course all the samples are out, and this lady asks if I want to try a granola bar. And so I ask her if it's vegan. She looks at me with this strange look like she didn't hear me, so I'm like, "is it vegan?" again...and she just puts her hand in the air and shoos me off!

weekend update...

It's been a good week! Last night was more of the same goodness :) Dinner at my favorite restaurant in all of Chicago with Katie. :) A huge plate of veggie lasagna, and a gigantic vegan chocolate milkshake. How could you go wrong with that?? :)

The weekend looks to be pretty quiet and laid back. Hopefully I can get some cleaning and reading done around here. And some running too! It's supposed to be in the 60s still this weekend. Such awesome weather to run in!!

I'm thinking of starting a Thursday night...or any other night for that matter if people have something against Thursdays...little get together at Emmett's or another local bar around here. Would anyone be interseted?? I was just thinking of how many people I know who live in Palatine/Schaumburg/Meadows/AH and this actually seems feasible...and fun!

a good night!

So I had a fun night last night! We had this MIT Volunteers reception up on top of the First National Bank/Bank One/Chase building. Awesome views of the North part of the city...wrigley, tribune, hancock, the lake. It was really nice!

After that a bunch of us decided to go get some food and watch part of the game over at Elephant and Castle, my favorite downtown pub! Yay for pubs with veggie burgers!

And today is off to a good start already, a quick scan of CNN shows that Miers withdrew her nomination!! It's about time :)

cafeteria...

So for some reason I decided to eat in the cafeteria at work today. And wow, at the deli counter they had a "Very Vegan" sandwich. I was impressed. But now I'm hungry and I just finished eating it...why do they think veggies and guac on bread will fill me up? I'll be very impressed the day they serve seitan or tofu on a sandwich down there :) Never gonna happen...

OK...back to work...

stanford on iTunes...

Stanford lectures on iTunes!! How cool! More to come soon they say, but they already have some Frances Moore Lappe and talks on sustainability. Yay!

Not much else new here. Looking forward to a very fun night tomorrow! MIT reception on the top of the First National Bank Building and then watching the game with Katie downtown! :)

another wonderful day!

Today was another wonderful day!! Even though it was raining outside I made the most of the day. Got a ton of laundry done, did some work, and cooked some excellent vegan chili and some banana bread. And then I had a wonderful run at the gym while watching West Wing! 6 miles!! I think that will have to be my new secret to getting through the long runs...I could have totally kept going too!

good /. thread on patents and medicine...

A super interesting /. thread on patents and medicine. Apparently Taiwan wants to make some extra of an anti-bird-flu drug to get their supplies back up, but doesn't want to pay the crazy-huge fees to get the drug legally from the original manufacturer. Seems reasonable to me...if it's a choice between upholding a patent and human lives, you gotta ingore the patent. I'm sure Stacie will have tons to say about this ;)

best date ever :)

Today was a very awesome day!! :) I mean how could you not go wrong when the day starts out with a trip to the art institute. Monet, Seurat, and a date with a professor :) Yes, it was wonderful!! :) And yes, for sure more dates coming!!

The day ended well too!! Yay for Laura and Dustin for coming to see Daredevils tonight! It was a really great show, despite the doubts we had coming in. Neofuturists doing a stunt show...very interesting idea, and totally fun! It's running one more week if you haven't seen it yet!!

Tomorrow will be a lazy day.

MIT fun!

Yay for MIT events! I had a great time in Lakeview last night...went to a Boston comedy thing. It ok..worth the $5 cover, but maybe not a whole lot more :) But fun with friends I hadn't seen for a while! Then dinner at Leonas...and how can you go wrong with that!? And I had another small-big city run in again and saw Anwar at Leonas. It's always so fun to run into people you know in random places!

Today should be fun! Art Institute and hopefully Daredevils if they're not sold out!

getting it...

You know when you just get something...like it just starts to make sense? That's totally how it felt today in Chinese class. I think that just in general I'm feeling more at peace this afternoon after doing a lot of thinking about a certain topic today. And things are just clicking now and I feel much better, which is making me happy.

It'll be a busy rest of the week for me, so I'm not sure how much I'll be blogging. Workout tomorrow, dinner with Jen on Thursday, and a Boston Comedy thing with the MIT Club of Chicago on Friday!! Yay! And this weekend is going to be fun too!! Art Institute, Neofuturists, and more fun!!

a jiffy...

Did you know that a "jiffy" is a real amount of time, 10ms. And apparently according to my soy milk carton, it's used in computer engineering. You learn something new everyday. Yay Silk Soy Milk :)

I <3 MIT!! :) And running outdoors...

I went to an MIT admissions session today up at Stevenson to be the rah rah MIT young alum! :) It was awesome as always. Listening to the main presentation really made me miss the environment of MIT. And to realize how totally lucky I am to be where I am in life right now. They were talking about the totally collaborative environments of MIT...how anyone can work with anyone else, how knowledge is all open, and if you want to do something, you can. :) And it made me think back on my own experiences at MIT, and the wonderful opportunities I had to do research from my freshman year, to work with amazing professors, write some published papers, and really be prepared for an awesome job in research. And being able to go back and help out with a class at MIT this spring is just totally incredible. I got to talk to a bunch of great students after the presentation which was wonderful! And the MIT staff asked if I could come to the one they're doing tomorrow downtown, so I get to go into the city tomorrow!! Yay!! :)

On my way back, I decided to go running at Lake Arlington for the first time since some summer of college. It was perfect running weather, like 61 and sunny, and so nice to be running on familiar ground again. Not to mention running outside in the middle of October!!

So yes, it was just the happy day that I needed!! :)

Oh, and the "I can't believe it" of today, from the MIT Admissions Office Speaker...he was talking about how MIT opened in 1861 but didn't actually have classes until 1865 because of the civil war. And he was down in Virginia a few weeks ago, and he said someone yelled out "We should have won!" The guy from the admissions office is African-American. Ouch. Damn Southerners.

math/science/research...

Interesting quote from this press release from the National Academies..."in 2001 U.S. industry spent more on tort litigation than on research and development" Yeah, and we wonder why we're losing :)

Might have something to do with that whole education thing too ;) "U.S. 12th-graders recently performed below the international average for 21 countries on a test of general knowledge in mathematics and science." and " In 1999 only 41 percent of U.S. eighth-graders had a math teacher who had majored in mathematics at the undergraduate or graduate level or studied the subject for teacher certification -- a figure that was considerably lower than the international average of 71 percent."

mail and good food

I think I'm going to write more letters. Getting mail from people is very cool in this age of email and IM and blog comments. There's just something about coming home and seeing a nice letter from someone in your mailbox. The whole delay is cool as well. And it still amazes me how the post office sorts all that mail :)

I drove down to Evanston for a nice dinner at Blind Faith tonight. Man, I miss that place. I had some excellent Seitan Fajitas and a smoothie and it just totally hit the spot. Driving home, I felt like driving fast, so I took the tollway. Deciding to go east or west, I was almost tempted to go drive someplace else...get out of chicago for a little bit and say hi to a random friend in another city. But decided it was getting late and I should just go home. If it were a long weekend or something, maybe I would have gone to NYC or Boston or Madison or who knows where. Susan, if you were still in Milwaukee I totally would have called and made it a night at Wolski's. It's been a long week!

smiling...

Smiley Cookie! :)
Originally uploaded by bentley79.

Sometimes we all just need a smile :) Too bad I ate mine the other day...but I have this photo to look at and smile today!

It's been a good day. Had a good workout tonight and think I just might stay in and finish off that anti-Bush book my dad bought me. Yes, my dad. The man amazes me sometimes!! I am really proud of him...from thinking about buying a hybrid car, to eating much healthier, to accepting my veganism, to reading books against Bush. Yay! What a change! Go dad!! :)

Blue Marble!

This is so cool!! Check out the latest cloud-free satellite pics of the Earth from the Blue Marble project!!

It's been a nice evening of cooking cashew tofu and eating it while watching a James Taylor DVD. Nice and relaxing and a happy end to the day...

two years...

So you're all my friends so you all know this. But it's been exactly two years now since the now infamous vegas trip and break up. And it's really been a tough two years for me. The transition from living with someone and loving them with everything I had to living alone was not a smooth one, nor is the process of trying to find someone I can love that much again. There have definitely been a lot of good times in the past two years though (many visits to boston, cubs games, evenings at sheffields, work trips to fun places like vegas or china, etc etc) but I still just feel this really big hole in my life.

I miss the days of student house and always having people around to go over to roads for a drink or watch The Daily Show or Dawson's Creek or Law and Order with. Way out in Palatine, it's just really hard to have that sense of community. That's why I love visiting Boston so much. I can run into Robyn walking down Mass Ave, or see Katie at Grasshopper or Lauren at CBC or Kailas walking down the infinite or call Susan from Grasshopper and walk by and say hi and drop off leftovers. I just feel like I don't have that sort of community here in Chicago.

But I've come a long way in these two years and grown up a lot. For the first time in a long time I feel confident about dating again given the right one in a million person and not pushing them away. Things at work are wonderful as well. It's great to have earned the trust of my coworkers and manager and have the chance to do some amazing research in my field.

So it's been a long two years, and what a roller coaster things have been. Thanks to everyone who has supported me in the tough times and cheered me on when things were going well. And to all of you in Chicago, let's hang out more, ok? And to all of you in Boston, San Francisco, or the UK I miss you all a ton and can't wait for my next trip out!

Princess Bride Musical???

Is this really true!!?? If so it will be so awesome! Totally a reason to go to NYC!!

"Composer Adam Guettel and screenwriter William Goldman will collaborate on a musical version or the hit fairy tale film "The Princess Bride," the New York Post reported.

The 1987 Rob Reiner-directed, Goldman-penned movie fits the teasing description Guettel gave for his next project, while speaking backstage at the 2005 Tony Awards. While hesitant to specifically name his next musical due to "legal reasons," he did say it would have a "fairy tale" nature and would involve "a lot of swordfighting." From /.

are we surprised?

This made me smile :) Which I needed today! (Link stolen from SusanT)

Pure Nerd 100 % Nerd, 17% Geek, 13% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd. The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful. Congratulations!

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on nerdiness You scored higher than 12% on geekosity You scored higher than 9% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos

no boston...

So things didn't turn out quite as I had expected. But thanks to everyone who talked to me yesterday!! You all totally rock!! It's going to be a long day...

running blog

So I'm back to running again after a short break of crazy weeks. And as a kickoff to a year where I'll be running a marathon, I thought it appropriate to start with a 2.62 mile run :) All the details will be tracked here. And how the heck did I get frankruns.blogspot.com? Do people named Frank not like to run or something??? :)

Also, if any of you want to run any of the following events with me, please let me know!!
Shamrock Shuffle 8K - March 2006
Indy 1/2 Marathon - May 2006
Race to the Taste 5K - June 2006
Chicago 1/2 Marathon - September 2006
Chicago Marathon - October 2006

eghs

Elk Grove still weirds me out every Tuesday night. It's just weird to be in a school that's like 99% like WHS. I walk through the science hallway and can picture where Richard's locker was, or Elizabeth's. I can see where we'd sit on the floor and talk before class, or the classrooms I had calc in, or walk around and see what should have been where I took AP Euro all those years ago. But it's all different. The colors are wrong, small things are misplaced. It's just a very odd feeling.

tea for two...

I had a wonderful evening talking with Robyn over some tea! Yay for awesome people doing awesome things (like running marathons) :) As always happens with WHS people, we got to talking about all the "where are they nows" and I really realized all the awesome things people are doing...phd's at caltech, archiitecture grad school in nyc, law school, rocket scientists :) Who ever said wheeling was the ghetto school?

Anyway, a very wonderful evening with a very wonderful person! :)

chicago marathon!!

The top five reasons that the Chicago Marathon is better than Boston:
1) It doubles back on itself, so you can see runners multiple times
2) Each neighborhood has a special show (dragon in Chinatown, mariachi band in Pilsen, etc.)
3) You get SMS messages every 10K for all your friends who are running!
4) It's all in the city, no suburban running in this race!
5) All my friends can actually run officially!

So I went to go see everyone run today and it was so awesome!! The day started with a James Taylor song on my iPod, so I knew it would be a good day :)

I saw Robyn three times during the race and got to go a few tenths of a mile with her while I was holding my "Go Robyn!" sign!! :) I also got to cheer for LauraP (not as awkward as I had expected) and Richard and Mark! Such a fun fun day!!! Congrats to all of you that ran!!! You all rock!!

I really loved the race....I very much have to run next year!!! And believe it or not, I went to Chinatown for the first time ever in Chicago which was a lot of fun! Although the el took *so* long to get there I didn't think I'd get there in time...I ended up walking back!

shoes!

So I went on a shoe hunting safari tonight looking for a new pair of running shoes! Before leaving work I decided to go check online and find all the vegan shoes New Balance sells, and finding that there were 15 different stlyes of running shoe that were both vegan and produced in the US/UK in non-sweatshop conditions, I decided it should be no problem to find them! Well, four stores later all I could find were shoes with leather or animal glues or shoes made in china. Finally I ended up at Sports Authority. There were none of the 15 styles I was looking for on the shelves, but I noticed the clearance section on the way out, and what do you know? They had three choices to pick from!! I ended up with a nice pair of 765's for $40 (originally $85!). Sweet!

(For those wondering, the following are the vegan/USA or UK shoes from New Balance - m641, m717, m725, m731, m753, m765, m815, m833, m900, m1023, m1041, m1122, m2001, rx240, rx800)

sox...

So the red sox lost again today. Ugh...and I totally thought they had it after that brilliant start. Oh well...not like they've never come back before!! :)

In other news, I'm starting to set up a real web site where I can more clearly post research papers and keep track of books (now with ratings!). Check it out!

chinese class...

Chinese class was fun tonight! We did multiplication tables! :) Yes yes the math nerd is getting all excited about doing math in a foreign language! But it was a ton of fun...although I think I will always laugh from now on every time I hear the number two since I was told that it's pronounced "Arr" like a pirate!

London?

Why do they make prices so cheap....so so so tempting! Does anyone really want to go?

new table!

new table!
Originally uploaded by bentley79.

My table came today!! I'm so excited! It's fun and it's tall, so I can finally see over the counter and into the living room! Now I can give my parents my last piece of borrowed furniture back, their super old card table!!

And sadly I also just realized today that the (red) sox are playing in Chicago tomorrow. Yes, I'm a bad fan to my second team! :( I just ignored everything white sox and didn't even realize. Anyway, Clement is pitching tomorrow. Tickets on stub hub were too expensive or I totally would have gone! I may just have to leave work a bit early and catch some of it at Prairie Rock :) Why a 3:00 game???

Kite Runner!

On a great recommendation from Robyn, I picked up The Kite Runner on my way back to the train station last night. And I wasn't able to put it down at all. Got through the whole book by 3 this afternoon :) I haven't done that in a long time! The book was one of the best fiction books I've read in years. Excellent characters and a wonderful story of life...how litle life decisions can change the course of a life and the ties of families and friends. You should all read it!!!

chicago...

I like when Chicago feels like a small city. I mean as much as I love all the variety and the millions of great restaurants and theaters and people and everything there is to do, it's just nice when you can go out and see people you know randomly on the street. It still happens to me all the time in Boston, but still is pretty rare in Chicago. But tonight after dinner I ran into Kelle standing in front of the Oriental Theater waiting to see Wicked (which I still desperately want to see - either in chicago or nyc!). In any case, it's just really nice to run into people like that and it makes Chicago feel so much more like home :)

joy...

I was tagged by LauraF...

Name 10 Things that Bring You a Moment of Joy

1) No Name at Grasshopper in Boston
2) Making my friends smile
3) Finishing a good book
4) A long run along the lake or the Charles
5) Walking out into the bleachers at Wrigley
6) Waking up in a tent to the sounds of the outdoors
7) Saturday (or now Thursday) nights at Pour House
8) The hustle of a big city
9) Hugs
10) Cooking fun new things

I'm not going to explicitly tag anyone, but if you haven't done it already, feel free to! :)

outstanding day...

Do you ever have one of those days where at several points you want to pinch yourself and make sure you're not dreaming? Yeah, that was today :) I had a great review with my lab manager over some tea. I think tea should be involved in all discussions...it just makes things so much more relaxed :) In any case, he used the trait "curious" to describe me, which I thought was pretty cool. I like being curious :)

Later in the afternoon, I enjoyed one of the last warm days of the year outside at prairie rock with some coworkers. Sitting there in the 70+ degree weather it was like, is this really October tomorrow?? Good conversations which made me glad to work with such awesome people!!

And the evening ended with Andies and TMLMTBGB...so really all in all a perfect day! Now I'm about to go sleep in for one of the first times all month...I'm super excited!!!