hi from SF!

I had a wonderful trip out to the bay area yesterday! We got in, went book shopping in Berkeley, met up with Eliza-Beth, Dan, and Jackie for dinner at this wonderful japanese vegan restaurant called Cha Ya. It's very highly recommended, although it's super small so plan to wait a little bit. It was so great to see them! They are all such wonderful people and I never get a chance to see them anymore.

Then we took a nice driving tour of San Francisco while we waited for our lab manager's flight to get in. I totally love it how I can still get around SF and Berkeley without a map. And I also can't believe it's been two years since I'be been out here. Crazy!!

Anyway, off to work!

laura's wedding....

The start to the weekend was filled with fun wedding activities. I was invited on my first "chalking" by Kelle. For those not familiar with the ritual, it involves writing in chalk on the driveway and sidewalk of someone's house. We wrote all sorts of well wishes to Laura and snuck away before anyone could see us :)

Today was the wedding which was fun!! But I realized I now have a dilemma. Lauraf is now Laurap which has a namespace conflict on this blog. So Lauraf will now just have to be Laura :)

Also at the wedding I ran into someone I went to high school with which is always fun. It's always amazing what a small world it is! Why do I always have all these odd small world stories. And why do they almost always have to do with Susan or her friends??

Now I should get to bed though since I'm heading off to CA in the morning. Speaking of small worlds, I'll be having dinner with Susan's old neighbor tomorrow night!!

Happy Wedding Day Laura and Dustin!!!!! Congrats!!!

cubs tickets

So my bracelet was about 15,000 people off from the starting number. Needless to say I've been parked in front of both my computers all morning trying to get tickets that way. I did manage to get through once for some cards bleacher tickets. But due to poor UI, I didn't get the game I wanted, though I still got Cards bleacher tickets. I had clicked on a Saturday Cards game in July, but when I got through it was showing me a whole weekend series I could pick from. Well, there was a saturday cards game, so I clicked on it. Bought four bleacher seats, all was good. I get the receipt at the end and it was like 4/8/06. Which is cool, but I really wanted tickets for the July game. Oh well.

I'm still trying for more tickets, but if you want to come to a cubs/cards game in april, let me know. I've got three tickets available right now!

EDIT: I now also have 4 bleacher tickets for 7/19 against the Astros! And two tickets for me and my dad to go to a night game in August. With all of this and the game in NYC it'll be a good summer of baseball!

reason 999 why I <3 my tivo....

They just added podcasting (as well as a bunch of other yahoo content (streaming radio, photos, weather, traffic, games)) to the tivo service (for no additional charge I might add)! Now I can listen to This American Life without leaving the couch :) Who said I ever needed to buy a stereo or be awake on saturday mornings!

Cubbies....

Connie and I went to go get Cubs wristbands today for the ticket lottery. Everyone should root for a number slightly before 05448 to be drawn on Friday morning so I can get some good tickets this year :)

And I totally love hanging out with MIT alums...with who else could you discuss physics/chemistry definitions while walking down Halsted St?? :)

quiet...

It's been a quiet few days here. Lots of odds and ends for work, but not a whole lot else going on. Tomorrow is bracelet night for Cubs tickets! I can't wait!! :) Spring is coming!!!

Not much else really going on. I want to try to restart Thursday nights out in Palatine...it's just sad that I can get more people together in Boston to go out on Tuesday nights than I can in Chicago. So if you're in, maybe next week we could start it up again! Let me know!! It shouldn't have to be so isolating out here in the suburbs!

bush and science...

I was catching up on my Colbert Report today and just loved his analysis of Bush on science. So yes, as a country we're pretty bad at science. And Bush says he wants to do something to fix it, yet he himself won't believe so many basic tenants of modern science...try being a biologist without believing in evolution, or an environmental scientist without global warming, or a geneticist who can't access stem cells, or a geologist or astronomer who has to believe the world is less than 5000 years old. If Bush really wants us to be a nation strong in science, he really has to put some effort into believing the results of modern science himself instead of pushing his super-conservative religious agenda.

bitterly cold!

The weather.com forcast says it will be "bitterly cold" today. Yeah, right now the windchill is -19F. I think I'll be staying in today :)

Last night was fun. I decided to head out in the very bitterly cold weather and go to see a friend's friend's photos on display at the Smart Museum and got some Indian food at Rajun Cajun while I was down there. A nice night, but s very cold walk back to the train!

"OK"

It was a long day at work today. Nothing seemed to be going right in like 5 different things I was trying to get done today, but magically around 10pm things started coming together after some pizza from Ginos. I now have SIM cards on the way for the students at MIT thanks to our awesome cingular rep who sent me an email at like 10:30pm! And I got some native code to work on the a780 which is always fun. Of course I spent about 10 hours on C code that is literally two lines of code in Java, but I got it to work in the end which was nice. I just totally love days when you stay at work until midnight and just want to get something done, and you do get it done, just before your self-imposed deadline of the next day :)

The title of the post is obscure, but it was the message I got back from my server that told me that my code worked. I saw "OK," then packed up and went home for the night!

teaching from the kitchen...

Tonight's class went super-well again, and it was fun to teach from my kitchen over videoconference :) The students had a ton of great ideas! This is definitely going to be a fun semester!!

Not much else new. Just super busy at work this week!! Happy Valentines Day everyone!

bombing...

A Child's History of Bombing was really good!! Not exactly what I was expecting...it was more a documentary film style than a neofuturist play, but still really interesting and thought provoking as always!!

Not much else new. I've been really tired today for no specific reason. Oh well, that's what the weekend is for :)

time to relax!

It's been a good week. Super busy so it was nice to sleep in a bit today and relax. Tonight, I'm heading to the Neofuturarium to see A Child's History of Bombing!! Super excited to get to see it! I've been looking forward to it ever since their schedule was released for the year! It's two weeks of neo-fun in a row :)

I was playing some of Laura's old CDs this morning, and they made me think back to those years and that time. I really can't believe it's been so long! Watching an episode of Sex and the City this morning made me realize that it's been almost 3 1/2 years since I have told anyone that I loved them. And two years since the Valentine's day with the person not to be named.

"commuting from chicago" :)

The class went awesomely today. I don't think we could ask for a better group of students! Some with programming experience, lots with a ton of interest, all willing to do really cool things! :) The class was actually bigger than we had expected, so we didn't have phones for everyone which was sort of sad, but we'll see what we can do about that! I'm so excited to see what everyone comes up with!!

I'm heading home tomorrow, which will be nice. It's been a fun trip, but it will be nice to get some sleep and relax in my own bed tomorrow night.

friday and saturday....in stereo...

I love LSC (even if it is $3 now)! I just got back from seeing Rent! It was just as good as the first time I saw it, and fun because I was two blocks away from 11th and A for dinner the other night :) And the audience was moo-ing along with Maureen...fun times!

I did find out that the night I'm leaving Chomsky is doing a lecture. Damn! If I would have known before I totally would have tried to find a place to crash that night and would have stayed an extra day!

happy reg day :)

So I'm at MIT on reg day. I sort of feel like I should register for something :) It's amazing how easy it is to fall into old routines. W20 athena. Lobdell. They actually have good indian food in Lobdell now!

Anyway, I had a fabulous weekend in nyc! I followed my usual strategy when in big cities of walk towards increasing lights and found Times Square on Friday night. Had a wonderful breakfast with Deborah on Saturday, found some vegan shoes at Moo Shoes, had some Chicago-style vegan pizza at Cafe Viva, saw the Pixar exhibit at MoMA (which was so awesome! They had all the origial sketches, clay models, etc that they used for Monsters Inc and all their other movies), made it down to WTC for the first time since 2000, and then met up with Jessie for a wonderful vegan dinner and the NYC version of TMLMTBGB (which was also awesome - it's also right under the KGB bar which makes it even more convenient than going around the corner for beer at Hopleaf in Chicago) :) All in all a very wonderful weekend trip!

Yesterday I made it back up to Boston for Superbowl fun with Susan and some of her friends. We made some flat bread and a dish to bring which was fun.

Tomorrow is the first class! I'm so excited!!!

"it's your dream!"

I can't tell you how much I missed Boston. It is just so wonderful to be back here, to be able to go to all the old places and see all my good friends that I don't get to hang out with regularly. I just love that Boston is the perfectly sized city and no matter where someone is, they are never far away.

So I've been having fun out here! Met up with Susan on Wednesday night for some Grasshopper and Big City. (can't come here and not go to grasshopper!) We met with Ed, the prof on the class we're teaching for lunch and had some great conversation and planning. We're all set for the class which is so much fun!! I'm so excited about it!

And last night I went up to La Famiglia where the owner still remembers me and my order. We had a nice chat which was nice and I had some gnocci that was every bit as amazing as I remembered. And of course Thursday nights at Pour House, which turned into Roads because some Tiki Party thing was going on and all the bar staff was wearing bikinis and handing out tubs of punch. That's not exactly the pub experience we were looking for. But Roads was awesome as usual and Nancy and Hayden came out which made it so much fun!! :)

I'm headed down to nyc today. Should be a nice break!

Oh, so the title of the post. I ran into a friend of mine on Mass Ave who was like, "you're back in Boston and teaching at MIT, it's your dream!" :) It is, and it's wonderful!! :)

The picture...

MIT Hotel
Originally uploaded by bentley79.

As promised. I kid you not, this is the bedspread on the bed at the MIT hotel! I *love* this place!!

worlds collide!

Yesterday was MIT Media Lab day at Motorola. It was so odd to see media lab people I knew walking around the halls of Motorola Labs. But very cool. And I got lots of invitations to come visit labs while I'm out in Boston this week, so that was cool!

I made it out to Cambridge this morning on a super early flight and am writing this from the MIT hotel. There will be a photo forthcoming, but the comforters have physics equations on them and there's a cartoon in the bathroom about plate tectonics. Ah...it's awesome to be back at MIT :) I'm so excited about this class this semester!

If you're in Boston, call me! We should do something fun while I'm here!