Belated Tale of an Alarming Day

I should really just post what I'm thinking at the time rather composing full chapters or volumes.For example, I wrote this about ten days ago and then saved the draft. I should have just posted it.

I took this cool photo of the moon over Duke Chapel just before I went inside to work one morning.



I was vanless for almost two weeks while my van was in the body shop. This was fairly traumatic for me. I had to remember what I used to do before I could drive. I had to get rides to and from places. The horror. That is way more complicated.

It was way more complicated when NC and I were going to take my dad's car from the library over to the the American Tobaco Campus for a meeting. It was particularly complicated when we discovered that his car had a car alarm. Let me state, for the record, that it does. Neither of my parents nor I knew that the car has an alarm. It's very loud. My dad ran over from his building and figured out how to shut it off for us. We tried to recreate the problem in my garage that night and it seems as if you repeat the convoluted steps that we did that it goes off about 25% of the time. Note that it seems a lot louder in an enclosed space. In any case, that was a fairly hilarious (but loud) portion of the day.

A Beautiful March

A few weeks ago, at work, we had our annual/semi-annual retreat at the Dave Thomas Center. It was a lot of fun and I believe it was productive, too. The food at the Thomas Center was delicious. They had three kinds of quiche and fried cauliflower. Several people said beforehand that they had Ben & Jerry's bars, but they didn't this year, because it was a different type of room. This is actually a good thing, because they wouldn't have fit.

That week was spring break at Duke, so there were many fewer students around and fewer lunch options. Fortunately, Twinnie's was open and this provided many excellent views of the gorgeous daffodils that have been planted in the perennial garden at CIEMAS. The weather was lovely and very windy, too. You can see Bostock, the new part of Perkins Library, where I work, in that picture.

It was March, so that meant that it was time to set up a yahoo group and fill out my NCAA tournament bracket. I got 5 other people to participate in a group at work, so that's been fun. Unfortunately, the first game was very late, so I only ended up watching the first half.

Friday, I met AE, KD and JH at Chai's and then we went to Shade Tree Coffee. We played hearts for most of the evening. AE hadn't ever played before and JH did an excellent job of explaining it. Hearts is one of my favorite card games. Note that I am not saying that I am extraordinarily good at it, but I really enjoy it. JH introduced a new twist by getting us to play in teams. That adds an entirely new element and it' s fun.

Saturday, AE, JH and my dad came over to watch the 2nd round Duke basketball tournament game. I made macaroons and we played hearts again. I was going to go to JJ's and practice guitar, but the battery in my van was dead.

Sunday, we went to ACME, where I had lobster linguini and a strawberry shortcake. They donated a really generous gift certificate for the CIT Showcase, too.

Almost Forgotten Highlights

I would like to think that very little exciting happened last week, because I don't really remember it.

I did get to have lunch with NP at the Refectory and that was probably the highlight of the weekdays. We didn't get to eat outside on an exceedingly warm day for March, but it was still fun.

I'm also chair of the sponsors and door prizes committee for the annual CIT Showcase, so I've been collecting door prizes and I got my first gift certificate, which was donated by Taverna Nikos. That was extremely exciting. Maybe that was the highlight.

I also went to the Visualization Forum on Friday and saw an interesting presentation by Michael Nitsche, from Georgia Tech. The idea was to enhance educational content putting it the 3D world of a game. I would be interested to know whether or not it truly engages students and whether it is more or less effective than traditional methods. In any case, it certainly looks cool. That, too, was a highlight.

My weekend was certainly busy. Friday night, I had dinner with AE and GM at Chai's, followed by yet another pleasant evening at Shade Tree Coffee. They were incredibly busy, which was great. It was a little hard to hear, but I'm very happy that they are doing well. We talked about toilet paper and neutrinos. ..among other things, of course.

Saturday, I went to visit FIFO.


That night, AE and GM came over to watch Duke vs UNC game. It's the process that's important. It was sad that Duke lost, but I enjoyed watching it, at least most of it. I was playing my guitar during part of it and trying to provide a soundtrack. I need to learn more 7 chords to convey angst. I made tuna salad for dinner and that turned out well.

Sunday, I headed over to GM's to watch live-action Tick episodes and a Pink Panther episode with GM and AE. JH came over and we went to Cracker Barrel. JH told us about TiddlyWiki, which I think has enormous potential. It's a wiki contained within a file, which uses things like javascript to provide the functionality. It was apparently written up in Make. I need to see if I can borrow that magazine from my dad occasionally.

Some of you may be wondering about the welfare of my injured van. Well, I took it in for an estimate last week, but it can't be worked on until the end of this month. Meanwhile, my dad's temporary fix using epoxy and coathangers seems to be doing the trick.

Ok, so maybe I do remember last week.

Nightmare of the Wilted Plant and Flying Salad Greens

On Monday of last week, I had a nightmare that one of my houseplants was wilting. I laughed at the thought of that as a nightmare, which woke me up, only to discover that I'd overslept by an hour.

That morning I went to an interesting workshop by Dr. James Zull, from Case Western Reserve University, on deeper learning. That night, my parents, LA and I went to Thai Cafe, in Durham. This time I had the Massaman Shrimp, which was quite wonderful.

Thursday, I had lunch with AE outside the Refectory. I discovered what happens when you eat salad greens without dressing on a very windy day. It's very important to note the wind direction unlesss one wants the leaves plastered to oneself.

Last Friday, I went to a talk on modeling transparent fish liver bile ducts using Amira at the Friday Visualization Forum.

That afternoon, LA and I microwaved a valentine peep. They deflate about as quickly as they expand. Yes, I'm afraid that a peep was harmed during the production of the content for this blog. If you are concerned, be sure to check out peepresearch.org.

That night I had dinner with AE, JH and GM at Chai's, followed by coffee at Shade Tree Coffee. The coffee artist has a new foam design, which is rather pretty.


JH decided to mask his identity with a book, borrowed from AE, titled, "Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis" while GM successfully disguised himself with a mere drinking straw.

Sunday night, NP came over for dinner. I made my shrimp and bacon over pasta dish, which I thought turned out well. He built this cool looking bridge out of geomag after dinner. I'd also made brownies for dessert. At my mom's suggestion, on four of the brownies, I put Necco thin mints just after I took them out of the oven. They melted in a nice odd sort of way and were pretty good. I like topping them with my standard drizzled semi-sweet chocolate blobs better, though.

Later that night, I watched part of the closing ceremonies of the Olympics. They had this cool fan generating 125mph sustained winds with people floating over it as if they were in the free fall that sky divers do before opening their parachutes. It was a wild thing to see in a stadium, especially when they started wearing fake snowboards and other accessories.

It's a Bargain!

There's been a lot of talk today on various blogs about Apple's announcements for new products, including the $99 leather iPod case. They say that it's waay too expensive for what you get. Well, they've got it at all wrong. You see, for $99 you get this somewhat unexciting piece of leather. For just a little bit more, you get an iPod! Is that a deal or what?

Bad Timing

It's time to interrupt the regularly scheduled program of month old events and tell you all about what happened yesterday.

Yesterday started out to be very good. At lunchtime, I went to the Visualization Forum in the Levine Science Research Center, for a talk on combining Macromedia Flash with XML. That was combined with a free lunch of chicken gyros and a lemon. I was worried that I was going to be late, because I got lost in the Hudson Engineering building. They've added a ramp to the front of the building, so I went in a different door from the one I used when I was a student. That was the building in which I took Algorithms and Operating Systems.

Later that afternoon, I went to a tutorial on the ViewsFlash surveying tool. It seems pretty cool, actually, and DF did a great job teaching us.

After work, I went over to practice guitar with JJ and EB. At first my chording hand seemed to not be cooperating at all and later it was clear that my timing was way off, particularly on John Denver's Country Roads. Playing faster and faster doesn't help if you're playing with other people. After carefully analyzing my playing and the songs, they suggested that I try practicing just downstrokes rather than a more complicated strumming patterns. Also it does seem like I need to learn the words of the songs well enough to get a better sense of the melody. Fortunately, Brown Eyed Girl is just four beats per chords. In any case, I had a really good time and I think JJ and Biscuit, did, too.

Afterwards, JJ, JA, EB, MP and I went to the new restaurant across from Nana's, Thai Cafe. LA had recommended it to me earlier in the day, so I suggested that we try it out. I tried their Pad Thai with shrimp and I was very pleased.

After dropping JJ and EB off at JJ and JA's house, I headed home. I was on 147 and about to merge with I-85 when a deer jumped out right in front of me. I braked and then I saw that there was another jumping between me and the first deer. It was so close that there was nothing I could do. It was horrible. The good thing is that I was ok. It made me thankful that I was in a full-sized van, because I'm betting it would have gone through the windshield of a sedan.

I immediately went into shock and was shaking uncontrollably. It is so sad and traumatic to hurt an animal involuntarily. It makes me wonder even more how anyone could do it intentionally.

My van was making odd noises and I pulled off to the side of the road. Fortunately, there is a really wide shoulder where 147 merges with 85. I put on my blinkers, called home and my parents headed for me. My mom suggested that I might want to call 911 and let them know. When I called, I didn't know how bad it was, so I said they didn't need to come by to write a report. It was about 10 minutes from our houses, but they had to go past me, exit and get back on in the other direction. Once they arrived and saw the damage, I called the police back and asked them to come after all. My van was a mess. That took quite a while.


As you can see, the grille is completely broken, the turn signal light is broken, my ham radio antenna is gone. The air conditioner condenser is pushed in, but it's hard to tell how bad that is inside. The driver's side door makes a noise when you open it, so the fender may need replacing. My dad has been working on trying to get it driveable so we can take it places to get estimates.

Evacuation on a Warm Summer 's Day in January

Tonight I'm babysitting FIFO to distract him from his desire to tear something up while my parents are out for the evening. This is a perfect opportunity to write more about my not so recent adventures in between bouts of petting and general adoration.

Perhaps the most exciting event of January was the fire in the library. We were nearing the end of the lunch portion of an interview with a candidate for one of the open positions within CIT when the fire alarm started going off. Fortunately, it was in the new Bostock part of the building, so we heard the polite request to leave and not use the elevator instead of the excruciatingly loud buzz in Perkins. I actually haven't heard the Perkins one, but if it's anything like what we had in my building at IBM, it's awful.

We were on the second floor, so my boss headed for the stairwell. They are rated for four hours in Bostock and it's a fully sprinklered building, so it's safe. Besides, what are the chances that it could be a real emergency in a brand new building? Then we noticed that the fire safety people were running upstairs. We smelled smoke. During a drill, you don't tend to observe either of those things.

They didn't seemed to know where the problem was, but we somehow came to the conclusion that I should leave the building. Fortunately, PW and MG suggested that we go through the old part of Perkins to leave. It's sort of a windy path through special collections to get out, particulary since the first floor of Perkins is closed for construction. By the time we got out and back around to the outside of Bostock, the alarm had stopped so we could go back in.

Our offices, which are in the basement, smelled horrible and it was hard to breathe in there. We thought we would grab our laptops and go work somewhere else. As we were leaving, the alarms started going off again. The elevators weren't working again yet, so we had to go around again. Note that I said that we would grab our laptops. I did not say anything about grabbing my purse, keys or anything useful like that. In fact, my boss had gone in to get my laptop, but in my infinite wisdom, I decided I needed to go in to turn off my lava lamp, in case I wouldn't be back for a while. Unbeknownst to me, I ended up locking my keys in my cubical in the process.
I didn't realize any of this until I'd gone back outside to the main quad.

So, I had to wait outside the building for the alarm to go off again. You can see in the picture what it looked like at the time, with the firetruck between Bostock Library and the Old Chemistry building, but you'll have to imagine the flashing lights. After I got back into my cube, got my stuff and started heading home to work from there, I was interviewed by a reporter from Duke's student newspaper, the Chronicle. You can read the article. I also made the quote of the day on their masthead page, saying "At least it's nice out," she added. "Better being evacuated when it's 70 degrees outside."

It turned out that this all resulted from a malfunctioning air handler on the fourth floor and all the smoke got to the basement via an elevator shaft.

New Toy

I'm still a month behind, but I will catch up soon, I promise. This was one problem that I used to have when writing hardcopy journals, when I was a kid. I would get behind. It was easier back then, because I never had anything terribly interesting to write about except for food. Wait..

When I got back to work after my brother's visit, I traded in my 4th generation "photo" iPod for a new 5th generation video iPod. Watching video on it is just incredibly cool, although I, to this day, have not found anything that I would want to watch on a regular basis. I barely even watch television as it is. I almost hesitate to say that I am looking forward to more content's being available for it, but I already have enough to do. The screen is just so nice and I am looking forward to the audio recorder's becoming available for the new model, so I could try recording some guitar playing with which I could play along on my own. I know I'm not the only one looking forward to their availability.

I'm hoping to get some software that will allow me to convert my AVI files produced by my Canon SD500 camera to iPod video, but I haven't gotten around to finding something good and free yet. From what I've heard at work, some of the software is a lot better than others.

The Arrival

I'm still behind in blogging, but there are still some things that I want to write about from early January (yes, 2006) before I start grossly glossing over details to catch up to the present.

On Tuesday, January 10th, I got to enjoy one last day of vacation, even though my brother headed back home to Boston earlier in the day. It was gloomy, of course. It really seems as if 80% of my days off are gloomy. It's gloomy now. I guess if there's a chance of rain, I'd rather not have to go anywhere, so this isn't necessarily a complaint.

The most exciting thing of the day was that my new guitar arrived! I decided to get a 3/4 size Martin LX1 "Little Martin". Fed Ex brought it late in the afternoon and I was very excited. This was dampened somewhat by the notice on the box saying that it should adjust to the temperature of the house for a few hours before opening the box. That was fairly agonizing.

Fortunately, I had to go play "Madame Secertary" at the Durham FM Association meeting anyway. I need to write up those minutes today, too. JH was there and we scheduled a time that evening for his first transmission on his handheld ham radio. I rushed home after the meeting and was relieved to see that the guitar already had strings on it. That was one less thing I had to figure out immediately. I was and am *extremely* pleased with the guitar. It's just the right size and sounds great, too. I did take a brief break from looking at it to talk to JH on the radio. Since then, I've been practicing playing the guitar almost every day, and that's been cutting down on my blogging time just a bit. What, you didn't notice??

Two Nights of Culinary Heaven

The night after the juggling party, we made my dad's crepe style pancakes filled with cranberry sauce. I tried adding the melted semi-sweet chocolate but the cranberries pretty much overwhelmed it.

That night, we went to ACME Food & Beverage Company. I had a wonderful blue crab and goat cheese ravioli appetizer with a Northern Spy apple salad with gorgonzola, spicy greens and a minted vinaigrette. Strangely enough, I didn't feel like having dessert afterwards, so I had a decaf cafe mocha instead. The ravioli, in particular, was just superb.

The next afternoon, we went to A&M Grill. Their barbecue is kind of sour and I wasn't in a sour mood, so I tried their fried chicken tenders. They were ok. I probably won't get them again, because I'll probably be sour.

That night, we went to ACME for the second night in a row. Sunday night, I'd had a hard time decided whether I wanted the duck or what I got, so I knew exactly what I wanted. The duck, with tangerine sauce, was wonderful. My parents and I had an apple cobbler to finish it (us) off.

You really can't beat going to ACME two nights in a row.

The Juggling Party

Now that I've spent too much time updating my picture for this blog and my website today, I'll continue writing about last weekend.

Last Saturday, I spent most of the day cleaning up my house making rolls and coconut macaroons, in preparation for The Juggling Party. Once AE, KD, GM, JH and IS arrived, we started out by playing with my Geomag sets. Given that I failed miserably at protecting the identity of JH last time, I'll quit worrying about it and post an unobscured photos of JH and GM. AE gave each of us guns that blow bubbles, which turn into vapor when they burst. We played with those and JH's fog ring blaster. I was nervous about having so much vapor flying everywhere in the house, but those things are very cool.

Since my brother was visiting, my mom made a wonderful dinner. She made three turkey breasts, dressing, cranberry sauce, and broccoli. This time when I made rolls, the dough actually rose. At my mom's suggestion, this time I left out the 1/4 cup of water and then I didn't have to add much extra flour. We wonder if this might be necessary since the recipe was written for a higher altitude.

After dinner, we got back to playing with Geomags. My brother, Karl, was the first to finish a buckyball, starting with an unstable base that my dad had started earlier. JH and IS actually ran out of pieces for their buckyball and had to incorporate some pieces from a Magnetix set.
Finally, GM posed some Acrobots from ThinkGeek on top of the two balls.

We watched a silent cowboys and Indians movie, made in the early 50's, starring AE's, uncle, mother and grandmother. We also saw the Wallace and Gromit shorts again, because JH hadn't seen them.

Finally, we juggled! Even my dad gave it a try. We watched the contact juggling DVDs, too.

Fierce Bad Rabbit and Sushi Theft

Here's one picture of FIFO that I took on New Year's Day. He transforms into a fierce bad rabbit when he's upside-down.

The Thursday before last, my brother flew down from Boston to visit us. After work, I met my parents and him for dinner at Bullock's Barbecue. That was the start of my vacation while he was there. They now have deviled eggs as a side dish, which was very exciting. I had two whole eggs with two chicken legs and their wonderful cole slaw. I was extremely disappointed in their chocolate pie. I've been eating there for almost thirty years now and they've always had a deliciously smooth chocolate pie with meringue. The filling has always been similar to chocolate pudding, but slightly thicker. This time it had a weird consistency and wasn't very chocolatey at all. It was very sad.

That Friday, I went over to my parents' to visit with the dog and everyone. We had ham sandwiches with Leerdammer cheese. I also took some good pictures of FIFO. That evening, we went to Mt. Fuji for dinner. It's funny, one review says that they "kind of wanted to take a picture of my plate". As you all know, that's what I like to do. We had a bit of a fiasco that night, because our favorite waiter didn't use his reading glasses and didn't see about half our order on our sheet. Since we didn't know what the rolls were supposed to look like, we ended up eating one of the rolls that my mom had ordered, the red NY roll in the picture. We forgot to ask for a replacement when we were getting it straightened out. Fortunately, she liked the couple of pieces of my wasabi roll that she had.

Crispy is Challenging

I forgot to mention in my previous post that I also ordered three more Geomag sets on New Year's Eve Eve (the 30th). I found that the cheapest price for them was on eBay, from Taylor's Toys and Collectibles. I actually made my first bids on eBay for that purchase. Since no one bid against me, I got them for $40 each. It was all very exciting.

On New Year's Day, I met JJ and H at Fowler's for brunch. We had a great time talking about various non-serious things. I tried their Huevos Rancheros again and it wasn't as good as last time, but it was still quite good. I don't think the avocados were ripe enough, but otherwise it was the same.

That night, we tried frying chicken in my new electric frying pan. I ended up being alone with a dead (a good thing) frying chicken and I was supposed to turn it. This appears to be something that requires guidance, experience or common sense, because I didn't do it right. I didn't scrape up the skin that was stuck to the bottom of the pan, so the crust didn't turn out right and crispy at all. It was still good, but just not what we were hoping for. Next time.

The next day, Monday, was extremely gloomy. We were supposed to have severe weather, but we didn't have that either. After that, it was back to work. Things were really starting to pick up before the start of the semester. One wouldn't think that professors would be preparing for their spring classes on the 2nd of January, but they are. This is particularly surprising to the daughter of a faculty member. I thought these things were always done at the last minute.

Between Holidays

The week after Christmas we ate lots of leftover turkey and I was on pager duty for three days. I only had to work for a few hours and I didn't mind at all. My pager didn't actually go off, but I had other Blackboard support duties. That Tuesday night, we watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which DC gave me for my birthday. I enjoyed watching it a second time and my mom didn't even fall asleep once.

On Wednesday night, that week, my dad and I went to the Melting Pot, to use the gift certificate that E&ES gave us for taking care of the turtles in fall of 2004. It was pouring rain the whole way and it's in North Raleigh, so it wasn't the most pleasant drive. The food more than made up for it. We had Traditional Swiss cheese fondue for four people, one sirloin and shrimp entree (substituting more shrimp for the sirloin, since we don't eat beef) and solid dark chocolate fondue for dessert. The best part was that our waiter also allowed us to subtitute in the dessert, so we only dipped pineapple, strawberries and marshmallows! I think fruit dipped in chocolate is just heavenly.

Throughout the week, we had fun with the Geomag set that JH gave me. If I recall correctly, I made the pooched out dodecahedron on the left and my dad made the small icosohedron on the right. Basically, the supporting pentagon pieces had to pooch out in order for the shape to stay stable enough. They couldn't be depressed inside, because they hit each other.

On Friday, my parents and I visited JJ and JA. My parents hadn't seen their new Old House before, so that was a treat for them. Their garage is so awesome and their house is really beautiful. It was fun visiting with all of them, including their beagles.

That night, my dad and I went to Vinnie's, so I could do something about my tomtato sauce withdrawl symptoms by eating a plate of four cheese ravioli with red sauce.

On New Year's Eve, my dad and I watched the first half of the PBS Bob Dylan documentary, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Mom consoled FIFO during potential fireworks. We happily shared a bottle of sparkling apple cider. Happy New Year everyone!

Christmas 2005

The night before our Christmas festivities, we had a glorious takeout dinner from Kurama. That was a great way to kick off the holiday.


More important than any other significance of Christmas Eve was that it was the second anniversary of this blog. It was also time to set up the tree. As many of you will remember, my family sets up the tree and celebrates all on the same day. This year, AE joined us, which was fun and she helped a lot with hanging the ornaments. When the tree was lit and the Bach Christmas Oratorio was playing, I took a 3 minute movie with my Canon SD500. It worked very well, but some people might get sick while watching it, given my inexperience and apparent lack of concern for steadiness. I gave my parents a hard time about the tree's having a gap because we got it so close to Christmas and there wasn't much left to choose from, but it really doesn't show from most angles, or at least this one.


I got a nice selection of gifts this year, because my parents finally started getting things from my Amazon wishlist. That way I got lots of little things like CDs, chocolate covered lemon peel, an electric frying pan, a quesadilla maker and the Herbfarm Cookbook. The CDs were the complete works of Cat Stevens, 50th anniversary two album set of Jim Croce, the Clay Aiken Christmas Album and the Joan Baez album of Bob Dylan's songs. The lemon peel is not quite as good as chocolate covered orange peel, but it is excellent. I seem to eat it at about the same rate.

We had an eclectic dinner that night. It included shrimp with cocktail sauce, AE's shropshire blue cheese, whole wheat French bread, guacamole and corn chips. I may have left something out, because we had a lot of food on the table. Oh yes, we had spinach and gorgonzola salad from WholeFoods.

After my parents left for the night, AE and I watched a movie, the Young Visiters. Note, that is not a misspelling. It was a kind of odd British comedy that was a little sad in a way. One of the recognizable actors was Hugh Laurie, who played Wooster in Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster, Black Adder and is currently the star of House, which I haven't seen.

It was pretty obvious that I'm not used to having house guests. I had been talking to AE in the hall and then I started shutting off lights in the great room. Just a couple of minutes later, she popped her head around the corner and said something. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I got used to it after a couple of days, but it was pretty funny.

Christmas Day is just a day of recovery and food for my family. Dad and I made his crepe style pancakes. This time we put big chunks of fresh pineapple drizzled with semi-sweet chocolate in them. It was very good.

In the afternoon, AE and I watched the three original Wallace and Gromit movies and I made rolls. They didn't rise for some reason. I don't know if I added too much flour, killed the yeast or both. They ended up being delicious anyway. I also made a Constant Comment spice cake, which was on the back of the Constant Comment box. Basically, you cook five tea bags in a half cup of milk and add it to the rest of the cake batter. I used decaf, because I didn't want to worry about when I ate it. It's good, with a subtle spiced flavor, but it's not spectacular. We still haven't finished it, so I'll be surprised if I make it again. I'm tempted to make it with Red Zinger instead, but that could be very strange. I did think it was very pretty, as you can see.


Dinner was very good, because my mom made a turkey breast, dressing, gravy and asparagus.
The dressing was some of the best she's made in years. She had been concerned, because WholeFoods only had the whole wheat French bread, but it was perfect.

The next day, AE and I spent most of the day washing dishes. She did the drying and I did all the washing, which seemed ideal and very efficient. Then we watched new version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I wasn't sure how excited I was about seeing it again, but it was definitely a good movie. I really do like the scene with the squirrels. It was especially good, because I could see squirrels out of windows on either side while I was watching it.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like

On the Tuesday before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, because I went to Champa with CL, JL, GA, EB and MP. We had a very good time and I got to have my pad thai with shrimp fix. It was too late at night for Thai iced tea, unfortunately. We were concerned, because Champa has started having a live jazz band play every Tuesday night and we though it might inhibit conversation, but it turned out that it wasn't that bad and we sat in the back. Afterwards, we headed over to Barnes and Noble. Given how crowded the one at Southpoint one was the previous weekend, I was surprised to see that there weren't many people at the Brier Creek one. That was good for us. I had a decaf cafe mocha with skim. Shocking.

I had been planning to make macaroons or brownies for the Duke University Library Staff Association (DULSA) Christmas party, but I got back much too late. I had to take purchased stollen instead. The party was fun. AJ helped me get through to the Gothic Reading Room, which I'd never seen before. There was catered barbecue and chicken and people brought desserts. It was all very good. There were karaoke Christmas carols and everything was very festive. No, I didn't sing.

One night when I got home, either Wednesday or Thursday, there were flowers from CL and JL waiting for me at my front door. It was 27F out, so the alstrloemarias were frozen and according to my answering machine message it had been outside for 2 hours, but it perked up amazingly well. It's a very pretty arrangement and I've enjoyed it all week.

Thursday morning I had to get up to test the Blackboard system at 6am. Old courses were moved to a different file system during the middle of the night so I needed to verify that everything was all right. It was. Around lunchtime NP and I tried out Cafe Zen at the American Tobacco Campus. While my dragon roll wasn't nearly as good as a Kurama wizard roll, it was still very good and had lots of avacado. They passed my mackerel test quite well. The service was horribly slow, but that might have been because they were short staffed so close to Christmas. NP told me all about his recent trip to South Africa, which was very interesting and entertaining.

Movies, Magnets and Macaroons

Last Saturday, I went to AC's house for a holiday party. Several people from CIT and SISS were there, so it was a lot of fun. It was also neat to see AC's beautiful new house. It has neat half-circular, circular and trapezoidal shaped windows, beautiful maple hardwood floors and a well thought out floorplan. The party was potluck, so there was a lot of great food. All of the coconut macaroons that I took got eaten, except for one.

Sunday, I went over to GM's. He, AE and I watched Gosford Park. That was a really good movie. It was a little hard to follow at the beginning, because there are so many characters and they look similar or at least have similar hairstyles. We were watching it on a 19" television, which may have made it more challenging. This is definitely a good and complicated a move that I would like to see again, just to see what I missed.

We had a minor ice storm and a lot of rain during the week, so I ended up going into work an hour late a couple of times. That turned out to be fortuitous on Friday, because I got a high priority page and would have ordinarily been driving when I received it.

Yesterday, I met GM and AE at Southpoint to see the new Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire. Southpoint is not a good place to go this time of year, because there were more people and cars there than could physically buy their merchandise. In fact, just getting in the parking lot at all was difficult. It turned out that they had removed the Harry Potter showing time that we had planned to go to, so we ended up seeing The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe instead. I'd been wanting to see that, too, so that was okay with me. We went to Barnes and Noble, but we didn't want anything there badly enough to wait in line to pay for it. We stopped by the Toll House Cookie Store beforehand, because that was less crowded than most places and ran into LA and some of her friends. We talked to her for a bit before AE noticed that we were going to be late for the movie, if we didn't get going. In fact, we were very lucky to get seats where we could all sit together.


Afterwards, JH met all of us at Rockfish. I got my oyster fix and we had a great time. GM gave sterling silver earrings to AE and me. Mine are interesting because the earwire is effectively part of the design of the earring, because it swirls around it. Those of you who wear earrings can probably guess they they are tricky to put on. I may have to allow some extra time in the morning to put them on, but they are very pretty. JH gave me a cool belated birthday present, a Geomag set. Basically, it's 64 steel balls and 120 small pole magnets, which you can use to build geometric shapes. I've already built some structurally unsound blobs and the the design in the photos. If I don't blog much in the next few weeks, it would be safe to assume that I'm still working on a buckyball.

Must Have Been Having Fun

I forgot to mention that on November 30th, I actually escaped work briefly and went to the final DBM networking lunch at the IBM site. As you may or may not recall, because I may or may not have spelled this out, DBM was the career couseling center with which all laid off IBM employees in RTP (and possibly other sites) had the option of working. Well, Wednesday of last week was their last day, because they were outbid by another company. It was a fun, because I got to catch up with many of the members of our "job club" and see the DBM staff once again. They had a lovely spread for us to eat, too.

This week I've been taking a couple of short courses on Mercury Quality Center Test Director and Mercury QuickTest Professional. We've had a very good, enthusiastic and knowledgeable instuctor, so it's been a good class. The tools seem potentially useful, but I don't know how long it will take to incorporate them into our own processes and systems. On Sunday and Monday, the weather was rainy and cold, so travel was very unpleasant. Since then, that's been ok, too, although a little chilly.

Yesterday was my actual birthday. It felt like a big deal the whole day, even though it was quite anticlimactic after Saturday's party. 30 years just seems like a long time and the last 15 years or so have gone by incredibly fast. I haven't thought about it much today, though, so that's good. Last night, my parents and I went to Kurama where we had sushi. I enjoy having the warm wizard rolls and eel, so it's nice to get it in the actual restaurant occasionally rather than always getting takeout.

Later last night, I got a call from an old friend, RA, who used to be a babysitter (or "kid"sitter as I used to say). It was very nice to hear from her. She said she hadn't seen me in 17 years and to me it just seems like just the other day. How did that happen?

Maturity is on the Way

Tonight is the last night that I will be in my 20s. Tomorrow, I will be magically transformed and feel like an adult.

Nah.

30th Birthday Party

Last night, I hosted my 30th birthday party, which was a load of fun and quite exhausting. My mom got me the the beautiful roses in the photos.

Friday night, after I got home from work and the Duke Computer Science Christmas party, I immediately started baking chocolate chip cookies. The next morning I started making two batches of coconut macaroons and two batches of brownies in between frenzied bouts of cleaning. My parents helped me out a tremendous amount with cleaning and preparing food that my mom picked up at Sam's, CostCo, Around the World Market and Wellspring.

I think approximately 32 people came to the party, including lots of friends from both Duke and IBM. I even got to see CL and JL's new Mini. We had a nice round of juggling, but don't think JH was pleased with my progress since I believe my juggling skills have actually regressed since we had our last juggling get together. Of course, I suspect that was also the last time I practiced. Several people brought great gifts, even though my invitation clearly said that they only needed to bring their date and a return receipt.

I just watched one of the most incredible endings to a Duke basketball game in non-tournament play that I've ever seen. I was sure Duke was going to lose to Virginia Tech, but Dockery pulled it off!