fly away

oddity

2007-07-23T10:32:00.000-04:00

so we were walking down the street this weekend in stockholm and there was a car with a virginia license plate.... is that not odd?

blogger

2007-07-09T02:07:00.000-04:00

so i went to comment on my sister's blog but couldn't remember my password. normally this is no big deal but blogger decided that since i'm in sweden, i understand swedish so all of the words were swedish. anyway i went through the normal forgot password stuff and put in the blog i am subscribed to (yours, stacey) and nothing happened that i saw. so then i went and put in my email. when i checked my email i had not one but two emails from blogger about how i was going to have to sign up to gmail just to get my password. so i signed up for yet another email address and finally got access to blogger again. yay me! anyway i'm sorry about the using the blog name to see if that would give me my password because andy said he also got an email in swedish about how to get his password so i figure both of you have one as well. who knew?

by the way, this blog has been a little sad... i wonder how long it will take for people to notice i blogged...

today

2007-03-26T19:54:00.000-04:00

so i alluded the dreaded committee flub. somehow the person on my committee was never swapped out for the person whose signature i had gotten earlier in the year. with a few emails, that was straightened out.

i've about gotten a mex function written which will take care of so many things. especially runtime. i also realized that i have to write a presentation for my oral prelim. oh well.

work work work

2007-03-14T10:24:00.000-04:00

i'm heading out to san diego on sunday and as such am trying to get all kinds of work done. i've got a few more things on my plate that would be great to get rid of and have finished.

i don't have a lot to post about, i just wanted to post. :-)

baby daniel?

2007-02-21T11:12:00.000-05:00

so my sister was induced this morning - so maybe today we'll have a little nephew!

obsession

2007-02-02T11:28:00.000-05:00

so i have recently become completely obsessed with the office. completely. i've seen all the episodes, and all the deleted scenes available. in the morning when i wake up and am still in bed i think about settings when jim and pam can get together. i have a problem. i should go seek therapy or something.

but man, what a good show.

christmas in july

2006-12-18T08:03:00.000-05:00

in a mimic to an old statler bros. song, i say now "whatever happened to a cold christmas?" i remember when we had feet of snow in the winter! it's not been that long ago. i remember when december made us get out jackets. whatever happened with that?

i get out of the shower and grab a nice warm sweatshirt. i was quite excited of the prospect of wearing it. then i checked weather.com today. the high is?....anybody...anybody....75 DEGREES! look at the date of this blog. it's december 18th, 2006! now in more of a seinfeldian mimic, i say "what's up with that?" i mean seriously. have we globally warmed ourselves that much? i thought when global warming was supposed to have gotten this far, florida would be underwater totally and california was supposed to float away or something.

i hope we have a cold winter sometime! i guess those days really are done.

jon

baby on board

2006-11-26T10:05:00.000-05:00

i've announced it everywhere else already - ha. you'd think i would have thought to post something here first. oh well. of course you three know already, but yeah...i'm pregnant! woohoo! the baby is due may 31, so everyone mark your calendars!

countdown

2006-11-09T21:43:00.000-05:00

... 4 days until camp ...
... 9 days until i come home from camp ...
... 13 days until thanksgiving ...
... 43 days until christmas break ...
... 45 days until christmas ...
... 130 days until my work's spring break ...
... 202 days until the last day of work for the school year ...
... 243 days until my last day of class in my graduate program ...
... 277 days until i graduate with my graduate degree ...

while i'm at it...

2006-10-24T20:39:00.000-04:00

if we're gonna talk about other early 1980's cartoons, we can't forget to mention the shirt tales! these lovable characters had a short-lived life in comparisons to icons like the smurfs, the flintstones, and scooby-doo (my favorite). the into is found here.

here are some other favorites:

transformers

gummi bears (to which i could almost sing the theme song

and the completely mental misadventures of ed grimley.

but if you want a good list of all come and gone 80's cartoons here's the place to go: 80scartoons.net.

i am not crazy! it existed!

2006-10-24T15:39:00.000-04:00

i've asked around and no one remembers a video called kid video. well i was wrong. with some minor googling, the phrase "kidd video cartoon 1980's" returned these results. further, there's a link for a video of this cartoon here. this is the theme song. if you listen to this real media file, you'll hear the phrase that helped me make sure, "*sinister laugh*, i'm taking you to the flip-side!" if you do a search on youtube it also shows up.

fantastic. i'm so glad to know that i'm not insane.

i said, "hey! what's going on?"

2006-10-19T09:23:00.000-04:00

those lyrics from a song are what describes this post best....it's been a long time since i've posted. there is a whole lot to catch up on. :-)

1. stacey's mom came out here on the 10th and her dad arrived on the 12th. they just left about 45 minutes ago. it was really great to have them out here. one of the things that i've missed is having family out here. i was pretty sad when they left, but i know we'll see them again. plus, i get to see my family in november.

2. we remodeled two bathrooms. i'll try to put pictures somewhere. they look sharp. but i'm shot. i think that i'm going to take a few days break from them.

3. i may have found a lecturer's position here at nc state so i don't have to go looking for jobs elsewhere. woot!

i'm tired. i'm gonna wind this up.

2006-10-17T11:18:00.000-04:00

so we took a mini-vacation to charleston, sc this past weekend. my mom, her sister, and their friend were going to charleston, so we decided to take the day off friday and head out there as well. we got in late thursday night, just in time to go to sleep. the next day, we headed downtown and toured the edmonston-alston house. afterwards, we had lunch at jestine's and then walked down market st. and bought pralines at market street sweets. we were tired of walking, so we headed back to the hotel, but eventually got back out that night to hit the mall. on saturday, we spent just about the whole day at boone hall plantation. while searching for restaurants online in mt. pleasant, i ran across gullah cuisine, which turned out to be wonderful. we visited the boone hall farms market and then spent a while at the beach at isle of plams. of course, we couldn't visit charleston without a stop at sticky fingers. the little brochures they have at the hotel are always good for a free peach cobbler there.

decaffeinated coffee

2006-09-26T12:18:00.000-04:00

i have all but given up caffeine. my two primary sources of caffeine were

coffee, and

sweet tea.

i just scaled back on the sweet tea in order to all but eliminate it from my intake. i don't drink much of it now. the coffee was the tough one. i went cold turkey from regular (sometimes excellent freshly ground) coffees to decaffeinated only. who would've thought i could even do it!

the first three days (saturday, sunday, and monday) were fine. it was the following tuesday when the headaches set in. they only lasted at that strength for the day and lessened the next. by thursday, the headaches disappeared....until monday. since then i don't believe i've had a coffee headache. i guess that means that i'm sufficiently off my strong addiction to coffee with probably some minor (not detectable) effects. i still drink just as much coffee, it's just all decaf.

what does this mean as far as how i behave or my body reacts?

when i've been up for 16 hours, the body starts getting sleepy. i mean a 'my eyelids could have rocks strapped to them holding them down' type of sleepy! when i go to sleep, i'm out.

i've started remembering more components of my dreams whereas before i didn't remember any of them.

i'm probably a little less focused. who can do math or work without stimulants?

getting up is easier.

i had some coffee last thursday and stacey observed that i was pretty..."shakey" with energy. so apparently, now my body doesn't cope with too much caffeine quite so well. which is what i want.

happy birthday, carrie!

2006-09-24T23:22:00.000-04:00

hey girlie! happy birthday! i hope your day has been awesome - it sounds like your weekend certainly has been! :-)

jon has long gone to bed, but he asked me to include birthday wishes from him in this post as well - haha. i'm sure he'll leave a comment tomorrow. sleepy boy.

just because i always do it...

happy birthday to you!
happy birthday to you!
happy birthday dear carrie!
happy birthday to you!

:-) i love and miss you babe!

2006-09-24T12:37:00.000-04:00

so we went to see caedmon's call at lee university in cleveland on friday night. it was a good show even though three of the band members weren't there. mandy mann opened and filled in for danielle. oddly enough, when the band said goodbye and left the stage, the audience left! andrew osenga came back out and sang one of his songs to the few people remaining. this was our fifth time to see them, and they have always come back to play a couple songs. but it was a good time, and the university was awesome.

it was raining here pretty hard yesterday, but we went out shopping yesterday morning anyway. there was some flooding near the target and there was at least one car stalled out after driving through the water. when we got home, the creek in front of our apartments was flooded. after seeing the suv sitting in the water up to its floorboards, we decided it wouldn't be a good idea to drive through it to get to the apartments. we parked at the apartments next door, up on the hill and walked down (through the creek water) to get to home. we passed a guy carrying a kayak.

this week/weekend

2006-09-20T13:43:00.000-04:00

stacey and i are hosting visitors for the youth rally at church. we've said we could hold as many as five which means that's how many we'll get. hopefully. that's friday night so we really have to clean up the house.

we're going to redo the bathrooms and spent some time last night in teh lowe's looking around at it all. we got paint samples and looked at some flooring. i think this is all going to happen well.

i had been planning to go fishing again out on the ocean next weekend but am not sure if i'll be able to. work seems to keep piling up. it'd sure be fun to get to go, but i'm going to be going to ky in november, so who knows what i'll do.

i know what i need to be doing, but can't think of a smart way to do it. this is so frustrating. it's "supposed to take about an hour". right.

2006-09-05T08:29:00.000-04:00

we went in to visit my family for the labor day weekend. so if you've been on i-40 east of nashville lately, you might notice the craziness that is the exit(s) to briley. so anyways, we ended up headed the wrong way but decided to go ahead and go around and see the sights anyway.

on saturday, we met carrie's family in paducah, where we did lots of shopping and had lunch at the pasta house. went to asian buffet later that night. and as if we had not had enough chinese food, my mom and i made 160 egg rolls the next day.

since we have a lot of hispanic immigrants and migrant workers in my home town, they own a lot of shops that sell food, etc. turns out that there is a place that makes tortillas. you get like 50 warm, fresh tortillas for just over $1.

slow cooking chili

2006-08-31T20:21:00.000-04:00

so the chili is on....

i'd been talking about making chili for weeks. after some ribbing from stacey about not making it, i got on it. after browning teh beef i added tomato soup and sauce, kidney beens, some beef broth, minced onion and tons of chili powerder. i'm stoked.

i put the crock pot (slow cooker) on low and intend to leave it until the morning. i know it's not "chili weather". but isn't really always chili weather?

brrr

2006-08-31T10:48:00.000-04:00

oh my goodness - it is freezing in here! i wish i had houseshoes here at work. maybe i'll get new ones at home and downgrade my current ones to office slippers.

mmm. i wish i had warm feet right now.

never saying anything

2006-08-30T10:23:00.000-04:00

i hate never having anything to say. i just say...nothing.

and you kiddos know that's not like me!

i need to say more things. so...we went to go see counting crows and the goo goo dolls the other night. the counting crows were awesome (of course), and so were the goo goo dolls! we didn't know what to expect of them, but they really rocked - they sang every single song that made it to the charts. so nice. counting crows were fabulous because i love them! and hence i knew all the songs.... the thing is that they have so many hits that its not really practical to expect them to play all the songs that everyone knows. as a result, my favorites weren't played. boo. maybe next time.

we should all go see the cranberries sometime. let's call them and ask them to come and play a show out here. andy, i nominate you for the phone call. let us know how it goes!

good paul erdos quotes

2006-08-21T11:26:00.000-04:00

"a mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems."

"God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers."

week comes to a close

2006-08-18T08:53:00.000-04:00

i am so happy that this week is coming to a close. we've had some huge problems with computers in the crsc this week. some of our machines were attempting to update and couldn't fully do that. they pretty much toasted out after that. i think that nathan (the other guy who does this but is leaving for his real job soon) is going to finish his machine later today.

since computer has happened all this week, research has not. i was up until 1ish this morning working on code. i'm pretty sure it's right. now.

top 5 things jon is going to do this weekend (for him or for fun...)

1. sleep
2. going canoeing with stacey and nathan and vrushali
3. perhaps go to the barnes and noble
4 chill out sunday afternoon
5 not do linux if i can avoid it.

2006-08-13T15:24:00.000-04:00

happy birthday stacey!!!! hope you are having a wonderful day!

a week in tx

2006-07-19T22:40:00.000-04:00

we've been having lots of fun in tx. it's been lots of work, but it's been enjoyable. stacey has been helping her mom unpack a bunch of boxes. i've been helping her dad do all kinds of woodwork. we've built shelves and put trim up around rooms.

we've been having all kinds of fun with fam. we eat pretty frequently with stacey's mema and papa. there's typically so much food, that i'm pretty sure i've become.....healthier. i think i ate 7 eggs yesterday for breakfast.

we saw the new pirates flick on sunday. it was entertaining, but i wasn't blown away. (i won't ruin it for everyone reading who hasn't seen the flick.)

so stacey's parents live just off a rural highway (standard two-lane found everywhere). it has a 70 mph speed limit. if that's not crazy enough, people pass you on the right. so, if you're waiting to turn left, people might pass you on the right. at one point, we got passed on the right and left. freaky texan drivers. (those were comments spawned by andy's blog.)

2006-07-18T20:39:00.000-04:00

so we went on a week-and-a-half long tour of the midwest as a summer vacation/visiting family trip. we stopped in and left the cat with my family, then headed up to springfield, il where we visited the abraham lincoln presidential library and museum. the highlight of this first leg of the trip was definitely the tour of the frank lloyd wright-designed dana-thomas house.

from there, we headed up to chicago where we first stopped in at the brookfield zoo. definitely a good zoo. large--and the first time i've ever seen whales or dolphins! went out to cub foods to pick up the snacky foods we'd need for the rest of the trip and got our first taste of true chicago driving. from observing other drivers, i've formulated theories about driving in chicago--i'll share them sometime. they include staying as close as possible to the person in front of you, blocking intersections, and liberal use of the horn and middle finger.

the next day we took the el downtown to the field museum for the king tut exhibit, which would have been much better if they hadn't tried to cram so many people into the exhibit at once. it was very difficult to read anything or see the items. afterwards, we waited in line (in the pouring rain) for about two hours to get into the shedd aquarium, which we thought was definitely not one of the best aquariums. it might have been good if you're not a big aquarium fan like we are (we've seen tons) or if you really like fish. i like the more unusual things, though--sea turtles, sea horses, jellyfish, etc--and these were in short supply.

we started the next day by waiting an hour at the bus stop for the #10 science and industry to make its first run of the day. the train we were on the previous day had some issues so i guess we overestimated the time it would take to get downtown. once the bus arrived, we headed off to the museum of science and industry. there was a leonardo davinci exhibit that was awesome--they made models of some of his inventions and you got to play with some of them! then we took the el to lou malnati's pizza in old town via merchandise mart, then to the art institute of chicago. i didn't realize they had so many famous paitings there! we only managed to see about half of the museum (contemporary, american, and asian) before we were too tired to make it any further. later that night, we made a trip to superdawg (only 7 miles from where we were staying, but 1.5 hours after we made a wrong turn).

overall a fun trip--no one got shot or robbed, so we'll call it a victory. chicago was a bit stressful with the traffic and trying to navigate the el and buses. definitely nice to be able to get around without driving, though. we might head back eventually...there are a few things we didn't have time to do...seeing the rest of the art institute, doing some shopping, etc.

road trip

2006-07-17T23:46:00.000-04:00

on friday we drove from raleigh, nc to temple, tx. it went really well and i'm about to tell you how well...

we left raleigh around 11:00 a.m. which was about 2 hours later than intended. we headed south on i-85 through charlotte and down to atlanta. the traffic was thick, but once we got to atlanta, it came to a standstill. we sat for about an hour (moving only very little) in downtown traffic. we hadn't had much to drink and so didn't need to make pitstops. stacey drove for about 7.5 hours.

we changed out about 35 minutes before the alabama border and stopped at a taco bell/kfc. i thought ky was interesting. this place was a find. straight out of a country music (gone awry) video.

we drove off and on, takinng shifts of sleep/driving for the rest of the night. around 8:30 we drove up to stacey's mom and dad's house.

i then proceeded to sleep for about 7 hours in the middle of the day and another 7 later on at night. it was good to rest.

what i found....

2006-07-12T15:40:00.000-04:00

i found the best shoutcast ever. after you do a search by "country", it's star104. so i had thought they were playing good country. but when they started playing george jones' "he stopped loving her today" the notion was cemented. they followed by "redneck yacht club" and i was elated. the only problem is that they're so high-traffic, the stream gets buffered for me occasionally. what a shame.

camping/biking trip

2006-07-12T15:12:00.000-04:00

nathan gibson and i went out biking and camping last night and came back today mid-day. we went to the beaver dam bike trails. (those of you who have grown up in ky and know that another beaver dam is the nexus of all intra-kentucky travel may also find humor in that.) we then stayed at the holly point campgrounds (which can be seen on this map). they were really clean and the spot that we picked was really secluded and we could walk to the water.

here are some subtle joys of camping listed in no particular order:

sausage and eggs on an iron skillet over an open fire,

open fire,

hearing the animals (crickets, frogs, owls, etc.) at night,

seeing the stars at night, and

chillin' out talking about anything and everything.

the amazing thing is that after a while, the heat doesn't bother you. i guess i'm so acclimated to the air conditioning that i had actually dreaded the nighttime. but our tent (an ozark trail, which is apparently made for walmart) was awesome. we opened up the "windows" and let the air circulate. i slept so well. it was wonderful to hear the lake again while sleeping.

i screwed up

2006-07-10T12:16:00.000-04:00

i totally screwed up and missed kevin's birthday this year (june 19!) ... so

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KEV!!!

past and up-and-coming events

2006-07-09T15:56:00.000-04:00

last week was a hectic one. work was pressing, but stuff got done (arguably) and now the other things on the list are mounting up. so those things keep piling on.

friday night we had a grill-out for our school friends. we had about 12 people from the office over and it was tons of fun. we cooked probably 18-20 pounds of meat and 10 pounds of veggies (or more!). guests brought wonderful desserts and with a little home-made ice cream, the night was set. t had rained hard on thursday and so the friday night air was so nice.

we pulled off two more ripe tomatoes from our vines. it seems a shame that we plan on taking our big road-trip when they'll probably all turn ripe on us. but our friends can have them as payment for watching the fish.

carrie fay (stacey's sister) comes into town tuesday morning about 1ish. it'll be good to see her. but i won't be seeing much of her since i'm going out camping with a friend on tuesday night for a friend/pre-his-wedding campout. we'll leave tuesday after work and get some biking in. we'll hang out overnight before coming back on wednesday around lunchtime. then work is done (dilligently) until we leave for tx. we haven't decided if we're gonna stay in a hotel, but probably will. the drive is so long. the ky trip is gonna be easy comparably, so we can do it in a day.

birthday boy

2006-07-04T12:26:00.000-04:00

happy birthday andy! hope today is awesome for you - i mean it should be, seeing as the nation decided to make your birthday a national holiday and all. please excuse the capitals on this post, but here's a list of today in history - just in case you wondered what else happened on your birthday. (i figured you already knew who all was born on your day in history, so i went for a different approach!)

1054 - Brightest known super-nova (Crab Nebula) starts shining (23 days)
1187 - Battle of Hittin (Tiberias): Saladin defeats Reinoud of Chƒtillon
1301 - Battle at Breukelen: Holland vs Lichtenberg
1415 - Angelo Correr becomes Pope Gregory XII
1453 - 41 Jewish martyrs burned at stake at Breslau
1610 - Battle at Klushino: King Sigismund II beats Russian and Sweden
1636 - City of Providence, Rhode Island form
1652 - Prince of Cond‚ starts blood bath in Paris
1653 - British Barebones Parliament goes into session
1672 - States of Holland declares "Eternal Edict" void
1693 - Battle at Boussu-lez-Walcourt: French-English vs Dutch army
1708 - Swedish King Karel XII beats Russians
1754 - George Washington gives Ft Necessity to France
1776 - Declaration of Independence-US gains independence from Britain
1779 - French fleet occupies Grenada
1789 - 1st US tariff act
1796 - 1st Independence Day celebration is held
1802 - US Military Academy officially opens (West Point, NY)
1810 - French troops occupy Amsterdam
1817 - Construction on Erie Canal begins
1819 - William Herschel makes last telescopic observation of 1819 comet
1827 - Slavery abolished in NY
1828 - Construction begins on B and O (Baltimore-Ohio) 1st US passenger RR
1829 - Cornerstone laid for 1st US mint (Chestnut and Juniper St, Phila)
1831 - "America (My Country 'Tis of Thee)" is 1st sung in Boston
1832 - "America" 1st sung publicly
1836 - Wisconsin Territory forms
1845 - Henry David Thoreau moves into his shack on Walden Pond
1845 - Texas Congress votes for annexation to US
1861 - In a special session of 27th Congress Lincoln requests 400,000 troops
1861 - Skirmish at Harper's Ferry, WV
1862 - R Morgan's: Tomkinsville, KY to Somerset, KY [->JUL 28]
1862 - Battle of Port Royal, SC (Port Royal Ferry)
1862 - Lewis Carroll creates Alice in Wonderland for Alice P Liddell
1862 - Battle at Green River Ky (Morgan's Ohio Raid)
1863 - Boise, Idaho founded (now capital of Idaho)
1863 - Failed Confederate assault on Helena Arkansas (640 casualties)
1863 - General Lee's army withdraws from Gettysburg
1863 - Skirmish at Smithburg, TN
1863 - Vicksburg, Mississippi surrenders to Union forces
1864 - -9] Battle at Chattahoochee River, Georgia
1865 - 1st edition of "Alice in Wonderland" is published
1866 - Firecracker thrown in wood starts fire destroying « of Portland, Me
1868 - Battle at Ueno: last Tokugawa armies defeated
1873 - Aquarium opens in Woodward Gardens
1874 - Social Democratic Workmen's Party of North America formed
1875 - White Democrats kill several blacks in terrorist attacks in Vicksburg
1876 - Batholdi visits Bedloe Island, future home of his Statue of Liberty
1876 - 1st public exhibition of electric light in SF
1879 - Africaner Union forms by Rev SJ du Toit at Cape colony
1879 - Battle at Rorkes Drift: Britain ends attack on Zulus
1881 - Booker T Washington establishes Tuskegee Institute (Alabama)
1882 - Telegraph Hill Observatory opens in SF
1883 - Buffalo Bill Cody presents 1st wild west show, North Platte, Nebr
1884 - 1st US bullfight held (Dodge City Ks)
1884 - Statue of Liberty presented to US in Paris
1886 - 1st scheduled transcontinental passenger train reaches Pt Moody, BC
1888 - 1st organized rodeo competition held, Prescott, Ariz
1889 - Washington state constitutional convention holds 1st meeting
1892 - James Keir Hardie chosen 1st socialist in British Lower house
1894 - Republic of Hawaii proclaimed, Sanford B Dole as president
1894 - Elwood Haynes successfully tests one of 1st US autos at 6 MPH
1895 - Katherine Lee Bates publishes "America the Beautiful"
1898 - French liner "La Bourgogne" collides with bark Cromartyshire, 560 die
1898 - US flag hoisted over Wake Island (Spanish-American War)
1903 - Pacific Cable (SF, Hawaii, Guam, Phil) opens, Pres TR sends message
1905 - Phila A's beat Boston Red Sox 4-2 in 20 inning game
1906 - Gr Brit, France and Italy grant Independence to Ethiopia
1907 - Tommy Burns KOs Bill Squires in 1 for heavyweight boxing title
1908 - NY Giant George "Hooks" Witse no-hits Phila Phillies, 1-0 in 10 inn
1910 - Jack Johnson KOs James J Jeffries in 15 for heavyweight boxing title
1911 - White Sox Ed Walsh stops Ty Cobb's 40-game hitting streak
1911 - Ty Cobb goes 0 for 4 and ends a 40 game hit streak
1911 - 106øF (41øC) at Nashua, New Hampshire (state record)
1911 - 105øF (41øC) at Vernon, Vermont (state record)
1912 - Detroit Tiger George Mullen no-hits St Louis Browns, 7-0
1912 - Jack Johnson TKOs Jim Flynn in 9 for heavyweight boxing title
1913 - 37th Wimbledon Mens Tennis: A F Wilding beats McLoughlin (86 63 10-8)
1914 - 1st US motorcycle race (300 miles, Dodge City Ks)
1918 - Altar dedicated at full-scale replica of Stonehenge at Maryhill, Wa
1919 - Jack Dempsey KOs Jess Willard in Cuba for heavyweight championship
1919 - Cincinnati Reds are 10« games back in NL, and win World Series
1919 - ADGB (Allgemeine Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund) party forms
1923 - Jack Dempsey beats Tommy Gibbon in 15 for heavyweight boxing title
1925 - 44 die when Dreyfus Hotel in Boston collapses
1925 - 45th Wimbledon Mens Tennis: Rene Lacoste beats J Borotra (63 63 46 86)
1925 - Yanks Lefty Grove beats A's Herb Pennock 1-0 in 15 innings
1926 - NSDAP-party forms in Weimar
1926 - Baronie soccer team forms in Breda Neth
1927 - Ir Sukarno forms PNI (Perserikatan Nasional Indonesia) in Batavia
1929 - AM radio station WOWO, Indiana's transmitter burns down
1930 - 43rd Wimbledon Womens Tennis: Helen Moody beats Elizabeth Ryan (62 62)
1931 - 1st fireworks are held at Cleveland Stadium
1931 - 1st trailside museum opens in Cleveland Metroparks
1932 - Bradman scores 260, a North American record, v Western Ontario
1933 - Work begins on Oakland Bay Bridge
1934 - Jordanians revolt in Amsterdam after reduction in employment
1936 - 49th Wimbledon Womens Tennis: Hull Jacobs beats H Sperling (62 46 75)
1936 - League of Nations starts sanctions against Italy
1938 - France-Turkish friendship treaty
1938 - 1st game at Shribe Park, Phila; Braves beat Phillies 10-5
1939 - Red Sox Jim Tabor hits 2 grand slams in 1 game
1939 - Yankees retire 1st uniform (Lou Gehrig #4), 1st Old Timers Day
1940 - British destroys French battle fleet at Oran, Algeria, 1267 die
1940 - German occupiers forbids anti-nazis speeches
1941 - Howard Florey and Norman Heatley meet for 1st time, 11 days later they successfully recreate penicillin
1941 - Politburo of Yugoslav communist party reorganizes
1941 - Latvia partisans shoot 416 Jews dead
1942 - 1st American bombing mission over enemy-occupied Europe (WW II)
1942 - US air offensive against nazi-Germany begins
1944 - Gestapo arrests German Social Democrat Julius Leber
1944 - Allied assault on Carpiquet airport at Caen
1944 - 1st Japanese kamikaze attack, US fleet near Iwo Jima
1944 - 1,100 US guns fire 4th of July salute at German lines in Normandy
1946 - Anti Jewish riots in Kielce Poland, 42 die
1946 - Philippines gains independence from US
1947 - 61st Wimbledon Mens Tennis: Jack Kramer beats Tom P Brown (61 63 62)
1950 - Braves Sid Gordon ties season grand slam record with 4
1950 - Truman signs public law 600 (Puerto Ricans write own constitution)
1952 - Canadain Currency, Mint and Exchange Fund Act allows gold coins of $5, $10, and $20 to be minted
1952 - 66th Wimbledon Mens Tennis: Frank Sedgman beats J Drobny (46 62 63 62)
1953 - 60th Wimbledon Womens Tennis: Maureen Connolly beats D Hart (86 75)
1953 - Imre Nagy succeeds Matyas R kosi as premier of Hungary
1954 - WMSL (WYUR, now WAFF) TV channel 48 in Huntsville, AL (ABC) begins
1954 - West Germany beats Hungary 3-2 for soccer's 5th World Cup in Bern
1956 - US most intense rain fall (1.23" in 1 minute) at Unionville Maryland
1956 - Independence National Historical Park forms in Philadelphia
1957 - Dutch 2nd Chamber accepts temporary tax increase
1958 - 72nd Wimbledon Mens Tennis: A Cooper beats N Fraser (36 63 64 13-11)
1959 - 66th Wimbledon Womens Tennis: Maria Fraser beats Darlene Hard (64 63)
1959 - America's new 49-star flag honoring Alaska statehood unfurled
1959 - Cayman Islands separated from Jamaica, made a crown colony
1960 - Mickey Mantle is 18th to hit 300 HRs
1960 - America's new 50-star flag honoring Hawaiian statehood unfurled
1960 - 6th LPGA Championship won by Mickey Wright
1962 - Island Records begins
1962 - KIKU (now KHNL) TV channel 13 in Honolulu, HI (IND) 1st broadcast
1964 - 71st Wimbledon Womens Tennis: Maria Fraser beats M Court (64 79 63)
1964 - Beachboy's "I Get Around" reaches #1
1965 - 20th US Women's Open Golf Championship won by Carol Mann
1966 - LBJ signs Freedom of Information Act
1966 - Beatles attacked in Philippines after insulting Imelda Marcos
1967 - Opening ceremony of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center
1967 - Phillies Clay Dairymple ties NL record of 6 walks in doubleheader
1968 - Arthur Kopit's "Indians," premieres in London
1968 - Radio astronomy satellite Explorer 38 launched (í 450 m)
1969 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1969 - Italian Rumor govt resigns
1969 - 76th Wimbledon Womens Tennis: Ann Jones beats Billie J King (36 63 62)
1969 - 140,000 attend Atlanta Pop Festival featuring Led Zep and Janis Joplin
1969 - "Give Peace a Chance" by Plastic Ono Band is released in UK
1970 - 100 injured in race rioting in Asbury Park NJ
1970 - 84th Wimbledon Mens Tennis: Newcombe beats K Rosewall (57 63 62 36 61)
1970 - Casey Kasem's "American Top 40" debuts on LA radio
1970 - Chartered Dan-Air Comet crashes into mountains north of Barcelona, Spain killing 112 vacationing Britons
1971 - France performs nuclear test at Muruora Island
1973 - Alan Ayckbourne's "Absurd Person Singular," premieres in London
1973 - CARICOM - Caribbean Community and Common Market, forms
1973 - In audience with Italian cyclists, Pope Paul VI praises athletes who "offer the magnificent show of a healthy, strong, generous youth"
1974 - Mike Marshall goes 9-0 with 3 saves in 20 appearances in 30 days
1975 - Fictional wedding date of Coneheads
1975 - Bundy victim (?) Nancy Baird disappears from Layton, Utah
1975 - 82nd Wimbledon Womens Tennis: Billie Jean King beats Goolagong (60 61)
1976 - Opening ceremony of the Dai Bosatsu monastery Catskill Mt NY
1976 - Raid on Entebbe-Israel rescues 229 Air France passengers
1976 - Sandra Palmer wins LPGA Bloomington Golf Classic Bicentennial
1977 - Cubs use fielder Larry Bittner as a pitcher
1977 - Nigel Harrison replaces Gary Valentine as bassist of Blondie
1977 - Red Sox wallop a major league-record 8 HRs beating Toronto 9-6
1978 - Memphis fire fighters halt 3-day strike under a court order
1979 - Algerian ex-president Ben Bella freed
1980 - Nolan Ryan is 4th to strikeout 3,000
1981 - 95th Wimbledon Mens Tennis: John McEnroe beats B B”rg (46 76 76 64)
1981 - Clive Rice 105* out of 143 all out, Notts v Hants at Bournemouth
1982 - Yankees bat out of order against Indians in 1st inning
1982 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1982 - Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado elected president of Mexico
1982 - 96th Wimbledon Mens Tennis: J Connors beats J McEnroe (36 63 67 76 64)
1982 - 4th Space Shuttle Mission-Columbia 4 lands at Edwards AFB
1982 - 10th du Maurier Golf Classic (Peter Jackson Classic): Sandra Haynie
1983 - NY Yankee Dave Righetti no-hits the Red Sox
1984 - Yuri Sedykh of USSR throws hammer a record 86.33 m
1984 - NY Yankee Phil Niekro is 9th to strikeout 3,000
1984 - Kallicharran gets 206 and 6-32 in a NatWest Trophy game
1984 - Funeral for S Nakagawa and burial half his ashes next to N Senzaki
1985 - Tinker Bell's nightly flight begins
1987 - Nazi Klaus Barbie, "Butcher of Lyon" sentenced to life in France
1987 - Imran Khan takes 300th Test Cricket wicket, only Pakistani to do so
1987 - Discovery moves to Launch Pad 39B for STS-26 mission
1987 - 94th Wimbledon Womens Tennis: M Navratilova beats Steffi Graf (75 63)
1988 - 102nd Wimbledon Mens Tennis: Stefan Edberg beats Becker (46 76 64 62)
1988 - KC releases pitcher Dan Quisenberry, whose 238 saves are the 4th most
1988 - US navy shoots down Iranian civilian jetliner over Gulf, kills 290
1989 - Red's Tom Browning is 3 outs away from his 2nd career perfect game when Phillie Dickie Thon doubles
1989 - Unmanned Russian Mig-23 crashes in Bellegem-Kooigem, Belgium (1 dies)
1989 - 14 year old actress Drew Barrymore, attempts suicide
1990 - 400 New Kids on the Block fans treated for heat exhaustion in Minn
1990 - France performs nuclear test at Muruora Island
1990 - Wrestler Brutus Beefcake injured during para-sailing
1990 - 2 Live Crew release "Banned in the USA" the lyrics quote Star Spangled Banner and Gettysburg Address
1992 - US actress Bobbie Eakes marries author David Stone
1992 - John Phillips, rocker (Mamas and Papas), undergoes a liver transplant
1992 - 99th Wimbledon Womens Tennis: Steffi Graf beats Monica Seles (62 61)
1993 - 107th Wimbledon Mens Tennis: Pete Sampras beats Courier (76 76 36 63)
1993 - Brandie Burton wins LPGA Jamie Farr Toledo Golf Classic
1993 - Dave Winfield hits 442nd HR to move into 19th place
1993 - Pilar Fort, crowned 25th Miss Black America
1993 - Pizza Hut blimp deflates and lands safely on W 56th street in NYC
1994 - US loses to Brazil 1-0 in 1994 World Cup quarter finals
1994 - Rwandese Patriot Front occupies Kigali
1994 - Russian manned space craft TM-18, lands
1995 - Birmingham Barracudas play 1st CFL game (vs Winnipeg)
1996 - Hot Mail, a free internet E-mail service begins
1997 - US space probe Pathfinder lands on Ares Vallis Mars

blister in the sun

2006-07-03T16:14:00.000-04:00

that's what i do! i blister in the sun! augh!

in other news, i hate work. i think i would be much much better as a rich girl, who gets manicures and pedicures and gets to exercise all day and go shopping.

doesn't that sound fun?

hectic times

2006-07-02T11:16:00.000-04:00

last week was so hectic. i can't believe as much of it got done as was finished. i've still got more to go.

stacey and i sat down and planned our remaining weeks out to the letter until we leave. but there are still a few more things I need to reserve. bet's hope I can get those done.

we have broadband through earthlink and they promise 1 gb of online storage. while i don't know what that means, i'm going to do my darnedest to get that space.

i talk about absolutely nothing.

i don't blog so frequently...

2006-06-26T08:11:00.000-04:00

i don't blog so frequently. that's a shame. this means that a lot of stuff goes unmentioned. then my blog entries get big. here's what happening in the wide world of ernstberger:

we planted four tomato vines early on (perhaps mid-march). we ate our first ripe tomato on saturday. the next one appears to be a while away. but with all this rain, these vines are going to bear like crazy!

we went shoe-shopping for stacey yesterday. she has brand new new balance 507s. they're sharp.

our plans to see cars has now been thwarted thrice. we were going to go see it friday and saturday at the drive-in in durham, but it kept raining us out. so we resolved to go last night. but i had a migraine coming on (lack of sleep?) and so i hit the sack at around 9 to sleep it off.

we made 40 chocolate chip cookies yesterday!

work is rocking!

i'm sure there's other stuff i left out. but i'll fill you in on it later!

35,000 rpm=lots of fun

2006-06-20T15:33:00.000-04:00

tonight my plan is simple. the girls (mathy girls that is) are having a gno. a friend and his father-in-law are working on the house that the father-in-law is trying to sell. so i'm going to go over and help. it involves the use of the dremel power tool. :-) who knew 35,000 rpm could be so fun? me.

so busy

2006-06-16T14:57:00.000-04:00

i'm officially two-fifths of the way done with summer school. i am taking a history of math and neutral geometry class. it has not been fun! i have already had a test and paper handed in and i have five more tests, one more paper and a presentation to go. plus i'm having to go back and remember all of this stuff from calculus (which i haven't used in other than it's simplest form in about three or four years). this is even scarier if you realize that i have to take an analysis class in the fall. on the bright side, if i don't fail anything, i'll most likely have a masters in math degree by august of next year.

many things....

2006-06-15T00:08:00.000-04:00

stacey left yesterday afternoon and i got busy.....

last night i vac'd the house, cleaned the kitchen, and ran a bunch of laundry. i even backed up my desktop (every possible partition). but when i started the install, i ran into the "disk boot failure" warning. the mobo sees the hard disk and boots from the cd-rom drive. so not everything is messed up. i'm hoping it was just something silly with the boot partition (or mbr).

today started off like every other day. i made coffee...etc. but i got what seems like it will be my final project. so that's good.

tonight went well at church. after tropical storm alberto gave us a lot of rain, there were lots of places without electricity. afterwards i headed on over to nathan and vrushali's house for some good cookin'. it was excellent.

i'm back tonight trying to make my computer better. good luck to me....

revival

2006-06-09T09:30:00.000-04:00

so yesterday was about the last straw. i decided i wanted to go fishin. (that's right...no 'g'.) so i left and went to the bank and started driving out to where i wanted to go fishin. shearon-harris reservoir. it took awhile to get out there because of traffic, etc. by the time i got nearly there i was so tired of living in a city, i was about to scream.

it was starting to drizzle a little bit by the time i got out to the pier to fish and i wasn't about to let that stop me. i pulled out my emergency poncho and started fishing in the rain. it was great. i ended up talking to a kayaker (one who kayaks?) while the lightning was scaring me away from using my 5.5 foot graphite lightning rod to cast. then the clouds cleared away and the rain stopped. it was great. i fished for about another hour on my own before some people showed up to start fishin. but before they got there, there was this great rainbow. i could actually see one end of it on the lake (the trees at the water level had all the shadess and tints passing over them).

when i felt that the pier was too crowded i started driving around on some roads that i'd seen for about 2 or 3 years, but had never driven down. one of which led to the boat ramp i'd seen from the fishin pier. but just a little further down one of these roads, the pavement stopped. there are still gravel roads left in wake county! i cannot tell you how happy this makes me. so off i went down it. needless to say, i exercised 4x4 twice (admittedly probably unnecessarily) and the blazer is muddy. i needed it. i saw two deer (one still had spots), a snake (common black racer variety), a gull, and a heron. yesterday afternoon was great.

then on the way back to civilization, i drove back a different way. there had always been rural highway to where i was going. but this road (nicely paved) led by the place that gives my house electricity and a house with sheep. it turns out this road actually has an exit off the main highway i use to get to that same place. i think it probably shaved 10 minutes off my ttf (travel to fishin') time.

later, we went to see v for vendetta again. what a great movie. i caught so many things in it that i had not caught before. it is totally worth going to see.

yesterday was a great revival.

dreams

2006-06-07T12:00:00.000-04:00

so we were in my car near my parent's house. they were in the back seat, and carrie was driving. the "check engine" light comes on, but i think nothing of it, since that's not unusual in my car.... but then another light comes on. this one looks like a yellow fish. then i hear a clicking sound and the temperature gauge shoots up quickly, so i tell carrie to pull over.

we get the car to the ford dealership, which is evidently a pretty nice ford dealership. there is even a tour you can go on. so my dad wants to go on the tour, but we've already been on the tour, so i thought it would be kinda boring. he goes on the tour while the rest of us get the car checked out. the technician checks out the car and quickly spots the problem...jellyfish. there are jellyfish in the coolant. a small shark, too.

about this time, my dad comes up. he talked to another tech who is sure about what the problem is.... pork chops. the car needs new pork chops. but they won't be in for a few days. i'm not too concerned, because the lady at the sandwich counter tells me the pork chop guy is crazy and i shouldn't listen to anything he says.

the up side is that it's relatively inexpensive to get rid of the jellyfish, while the pork chop replacement would have been very expensive.

time killers

2006-06-06T13:26:00.000-04:00

want to waste some time? go visit the bloggies. this is a website dedicated to recognizing the best blogs of 2006 depending on categories, locations, and design (among other distinctions as well). this will kill your time. some of them are downright mean while others are tear-jerkers or just plain mooshy. have fun!

consequently, i've revamped linux.realsuddenlike.com because i realized how crappy it looked. not that it looks any better now, but it's a work in progress.

what all this post implies is that i've done exactly jack-squat today.

long vacation blog

2006-06-01T21:53:00.000-04:00

so we went on vacation and what a vacation it was. after the samsi 2006 undergraduate workshop was over, we headed out on our road trip. thus, it began.

we first stayed at kristen's family's house in maryland just outside of washington d.c. we had good food and times. that was friday. saturday rolled around and we hit the d.c. trails. we saw the world war two memorial, the washington monument, the lincoln memorial, the vietnam memorial, the korean war veterans memorial, the fdr memorial and several others. it was an awesome trip.

we traveled sunday afternoon and were in ohio that night. we had dinner at muccio's (mike fixed). we then caught x3. monday was sarah's birthday and fun was had by all. esp. mike and i who were busy engineering a 802.11g blaster from the grove household to sarah's grandparents. we wound out the day with a nice bonfire in the country.

tuesday was all about cedar point. i rode rides such as the magnum xl200, the mean streak, the raptor, and the wicked twister. the best roller coaster was absolutely the top thrill dragster!. it was rockin! we finished off the awesome day with a trip to the steak and shake and i drank my coke for the month. unfortunately this resulted in a bad full bladder and my running across a road looking for a bathroom in apparently a rough ohio neighborhood.

we drove back yesterday and made it safe and sound later on. we would up our day with taco bell (we had no food!) and stacey's cherry-limeade. it was sure good to be home!

road trip

2006-05-26T10:31:00.000-04:00

lolly lolly lolly get your adverbs here!

we're off on a road trip! woohoo! i won't come home until i've been back to the lincoln memorial, ridden a rollercoaster, and have gotten tired of every song on the ipod!

end of the workshop

2006-05-25T16:57:00.000-04:00

i can't wait for this workshop to end. it's been too stressful on everyone involved. but soon we'll be enjoying the roller coasters at http://www.cedarpoint.com/index.cfm! a vacation well earned.....

2006-05-22T07:16:00.000-04:00

so i got back from copenhagen late saturday night. pictures are here. it was a lot of work...we didn't have time to go out and do anything until friday afternoon, but luckily the rain held off for a couple hours so we could get some pictures. the food was pretty much awful. we went to le pave, which is supposed to be a good french restaurant, but i just don't like french food. we did find an excellent chinese place called jin cheng's, though.

graduation (my students not mine)

2006-05-18T22:03:00.000-04:00

so at 7:00 we walked into the church and we did not leave until 9:30... you know you never notice just how hard those church pews are until you sit on them for 2.5 hours.

hiccups

2006-05-15T17:47:00.000-04:00

i don't think anything could be worse then having the hiccups. and i can never get rid of them! i've been sitting here hiccuping for about 5 minutes and i'm going insane!

razor comparison

2006-05-13T16:08:00.000-04:00

so i went back to the mach 3 yesterday. i have been (since about a week before I got married) using the schick quattro (complete with flash intro). it's been a good razor. the first shave is always super sharp. everything after that was pretty good. i could never shave back up my neck though.

my dad has been a mach 3 user for quite a while. i used one before he did, and convinced him to use it. i found my handle for it the other day and when i started running low on blades for the quattro decided to give it a swap.

wow. what a nice smooth shave. the first shave on the new blade never hurts and it stays nice. thanks gillette. you truly are the best a man can get.

tmbg

2006-05-12T19:15:00.000-04:00

so we went to sundown in the city last night to see they might be giants. normally they don't have such popular bands (just check out the remainder of the schedule!) so we had never been before. there were lots of people there. tmbg was great. they played the good old stuff like birdhouse, new york city, particle man, why does the sun shine, cyclops rock, etc. they also played some new stuff, including some of their new venue songs, which weren't that great.

yesterday....

2006-05-11T11:15:00.000-04:00

so yesterday was a little stressful. but nothing too horrendous. the morning was a little frantic but it all got done. i didn't get much of my work done, but so it goes. the rest of the day went well.

i hit the gym early this morning with a buddy. that was fun. the place was empty and i had an interesting discussion that was semi-religious with some of the people that work there. those are always nice to have.

today i have the samsi 2006 undergraduate workshop meeting from 1:00 until 5:00. i'm hoping that food will be there. i like to eat.

it's nice to be back in the office in harrelson. for 3 years i've spent my time there. it seems weird that i'm probably in the 2nd to last time i'll be here as an office.

the mission, should i choose to accept, is to get research done today. (we just saw mi:3). i accept.

no desire for tha coffee

2006-05-08T09:38:00.000-04:00

i've done it. i've had so much coffee that i have no desire for it today. coupled with a good night's rest, i don't need it. for now.

i've had so little sleep here lately that i've felt like i needed it. with guests and all the desire to stay up and have fun has also prompted us to get up early and have fun. coffee was obvioiusly a must. yesterday seems to have changed that.

after the early service stacey and i came home where i brewed a fresh pot of coffee. it was wonderful. i was supposed to meet someone at the church building before services last night and so needed more coffee to retain my level of alertness. i stopped at the local gas station and bought some coffee.

by the time we made it through services, took a trip to walmart, and then got home, i thought i would die. i was miserable. but a good meal made me feel so much better. yet i had no desire for coffee.

this morning i awoke (after about 8 hours of sleep) ready to attack the day. i didn't need (nay i did not want!) the coffee and have hence not brewed anymore. what has further prompted this lack of desire for the coffee was that i had been feeling thirsty throughout the day. so i'm going to drown myself (internally, of course) in water. the bottle of water sets next to the keyboard. although this is a disaster waiting to happen, my dehydrated muscles will thank me.

cinco de mayo!

2006-05-05T11:32:00.000-04:00

happy cinco de mayo! do i know what happened? no! but i know that there is def. mexican food somewhere in sight.....

a whole lot of nothing

2006-05-05T09:52:00.000-04:00

i've had a couple of busy days here lately. i'm just doing math and stuff around the house. trying to stay caught up. it never works out like i think it should.

i've picked up playing with the java. if everything associated with java could speed up, the innate knowledge that java carries with it could help make it a good math language. really. (hi, i'm java. i know the size of an array that you give a method.) this all really makes me wish that as an undergraduate i had paid a little more attention to my education. i've had to relearn so many things instead of refreshing myself. (like java, for instance.)

speaking of java, i love it's non-programming namesake: coffee. my coffee consumption should probably be a little lower. but it's hard to truly argue this when time is at a premium and i feel like i need to get things done.

the tomatoes look good. they're growing. unfortunately so is everything else around them. it's like someone randomly set out four tomato vines in the middle of a fern forest.

i watched ferris bueller's day off just a few days ago. what an icon of a movie. how could i ever forget how truly great that movie is? i implore you not to make the same mistake (says jon with finger pointing at you!)

those are my babblings for a while.

dhs

2006-05-01T21:36:00.000-04:00

i got renewed! yay! one more year with mo' money!

good weekend

2006-05-01T10:13:00.000-04:00

how was everyone's weekend. i feel like ours went well. we got some stuff done around the place and had some fun just chilling.

got to do some cleaning for this weekend. it'll get done. i guess i should get some schoolwork done too.

today we plan to go biking! woohoo!

administrative professionals

2006-04-26T14:22:00.000-04:00

in other news, jon's advisor and i just sang

happy administrative professionals day to you
happy administrative professionals day to you
happy administrative professionals day dear charlene
happy administrative professionals day to you

to one of the secretaries down the hall. i don't recommend it - quite a tongue twister!

how i feel

2006-04-26T14:14:00.000-04:00

i went to imood today to change my mood from chipper to contemplative, and when i was done, i read at the top:

you currently feel contemplative.
you normally feel unmotivated.

so sad, but so true. imood knows me better than i think. i guess next time i can click "transparent" and see if imood can figure it out.

another fun shirt

2006-04-25T20:08:00.000-04:00

shirt

one of my student's wore this shirt today and i thought it was a lot of fun.

penguins

2006-04-25T20:00:00.000-04:00

it is commonly accepted that the shaker with fewer holes is reserved for pepper while the shaker with the greater number of holes should contain salt. the rationale here is that most people would use more salt than pepper. while it is certainly true that a salt shaker with three holes (for example), would dispense more salt per unit time than a shaker with two holes, should the salt necessarily be placed in the shaker which maximizes flow? do the natural properties of pepper suggest the need for a greater number of holes?

to address the question, i propose the following experiment:

we have obtained two ceramic penguin shakers: one with two holes, and one with three holes, which we will label p and s, respectively. shaker p has been determined to have a liquid volume of 90 ml while the volume of shaker s is 85ml. masking tape will cover the holes and shaker s will be filled completely with mccormick's ground black pepper and shaker p with morton's iodized table salt. the penguins will be individually suspended by their feet from a 4ft length of #38 nyton twine above a 4.5ft diameter wooden surface. the tape will be removed and the flow of substance will be measured. i hypothesize that the p penguin will empty completely while the s penguin will spill only a few flakes of pepper.

since the penguins are still wet from measuring volume, this experiment will be conducted at a later date.

cool math quote

2006-04-17T14:47:00.000-04:00

excellent math quote represented on one of our professor's shirts:

"math is hard."

stuff

2006-04-17T13:12:00.000-04:00

so this is a catch up blog. i've been busy!

we got the blazer back. it runs like a champ. it has good a/c and the transmission actually works! and to think it only cost us my left kidney and stacey's appendix. totally worth it.

i went fishing on the ocean with a buddy from church. we caught a bunch of fish that i don't know the names of, but i also caught a shark. i got home friday night and slept till 11ish saturday.

saturday was easter dinner at stacey's advisor's house. good times were had by all. then we got to babysit for our friends' baby while they went out. it was awesome. i love kids. he slept on my shoulder almost the entire time.

sunday was a busy day. i totally freaked out for no reason about how much work i thought there was to get done. but a little coffee and cobbler softened all that up.

today is a work day. what a blast. i'm almost done with a project that is due. then i can hit teh research with a vengeance.

layout

2006-04-14T21:29:00.000-04:00

ooh! new layout! what do you guys think?

myspace

2006-04-14T17:41:00.000-04:00

so i've become totally addicted to myspace. it's so wrong and so cheap because it's all premade layouts and all... and yet, that's perfect for me! i just don't want to take the time to perfect anything online! (like this site....) first it was facebook, and now it's myspace. my goodness. what will it be next?

in other news, jon comes home today! he left a couple days ago to go fishing on the ocean, at apparently he caught a small shark! fun times. while he's been gone, i've watched a lot of crap on tv, eaten a lot of chocolate, and spent half of the time in my pajamas. oh wait - i also held a crying baby for an hour, can't forget that - man, kids are sure heavy.

movie

2006-04-07T20:51:00.000-04:00

so we went to see "v for vendetta". good flick. we recommend it.

the inlaws

2006-04-01T09:47:00.000-05:00

hey guys! so guess who is coming to town? jon's parents! jon's mom flies in today, and jon's dad will arrive in a couple days. oh my goodness, the cleaning (and cooking) that must be done! so far we've cleaned the bathrooms, prepared some food (chocolate pie, and a variety of other smaller things), dusted about half the house, picked up clutter, laundry, cleaned out the fishtank, caulked cracks, painted blemishes on the wall, and done a bit of yardwork.

what's left, you say? more cooking, (spinach & artichoke dip, cherry dump cake, sausage balls, and more!), more yardwork, the other half of the house needs to be dusted, more decluttering, a toilet seat needs replacing, cleaning and vacuuming of the care, and of course vacuuming and sweeping.

augh! :-) wait...i should probably be doing that instead of this.

spring break

2006-03-28T09:48:00.000-05:00

so we had a pretty exciting spring break. we spent a few days in the st. louis area where we went to see rent at the fox. some of the highlights were the usher arguing with the people two rows up about who had the correct tickets and who did not during the first couple scenes as well as the girls behind us who were either singing or crying throughout the entire show. not to mention that the ushers continued seating people after the show began. if you can't get there on time, you should be seated at intermission.

we then drove to surf city, nc (about 30 minutes north of wilmington) where some of my family had rented a beach house. we toured poplar grove plantation, the burgwin-wright house, the uss north carolina, airlie gardens, and the nc aquarium at ft. fisher. i think we're planning to head back to the gardens in june when everything is in bloom.

talk

2006-03-27T15:45:00.000-05:00

in 30 minutes i commence my presentation. diss2.pdf is where to find it. it takes about 45 minutes. people will start pouring into this room in about 15 minutes to wait for the presentation.

i don't have enough time to go back over the talk, but i don't have enough time to leave and go back to the office. i'd only do there what i'm doing right here...and that's surf/blog/chill. plus, i don't want to get to that point where i know the talk too well. i've had that happen for sermons and it's mildly disastrous.

my .pdf file for the slideshow weighs in at just 1090 kb, but that's enough. most 10 and 15 page journal articles i find online are only around 500 kb. what a weird situation. i went through and made some last minute corrections.....i hope this goes well.

the truth is that this seminar has actually gotten brutal in the past and i'm mildly (where mildly==terribly) nervous about such. i was always told by my old math professors that saying "i don't know" is way better than pulling something from my bum.

when this guy rounds up (i've put in an estimated 25-30 hours since thursday night), we're going to start our taxes. i know, i know, they should've been done months ago. but with school and travel, that has been easier said than done.

mom comes into town this weekend and dad follows two days later. i'm really looking forward to them coming, but that also means we have even more to do this week. lots of cleaning must be done. but we've got an all-star lineup for her (their, but her in particular) visit to nc. we still plan to take time and have a date-time.

2006-03-27T10:06:00.000-05:00

http://www.avoision.com/experiments/pi10k/pi10k.html

"what's the sitch, wade?"

2006-03-21T15:26:00.000-05:00

i enjoy kim possible (the cartoon) and hence titled this post accordingly.

i'm studying today for my finite element exam on thursday. i'll be working late tonight on my presentation for next thursday. i've got my personal evangelism class which i refuse to skip. today is so busy. what a rat race.

i'm keeping up a few of my committments and i'm proud of that (most personal). we're behind on our gardening goal. but i've got an appointment to get the blazer fixed for the week that mom's out here. with any good luck, it won't be too expensive. my hope of hopes is that it's something stupidly electronic and the darn thing works like a champ otherwise. but my guess is that it's actually something wrong with the tranny. the good part is that to replace the tranny isn't much more expensive than rebuilding it and it carries a 3 year/100,000 mile warranty. so we'll probably end up going that route (pronounced rout (rhymes with out) not root like the plant part).

i purchased a journal and feel like the guy in dracula (the dr.) except without all the supernatural (and quite scarey) activity to write about. at least for now.

home from teh vacation

2006-03-14T14:22:00.000-05:00

top 5 things about being home from vacation:

1. sleeping in my bed
2. having all my stuff
3. the computers at our house have linux
4. two words: broadband internet
5. way less people

worst 5 things about being home from vacation:

1. the fun stops here.
2. no more fun pictures and family.
3. lots of work. really.
4. the post-vacation cleanup from the pre-vacation hysteria.
5. have to cope that the real world still exists and have to fix the blazer.

nashville, etc

2006-03-12T21:26:00.000-05:00

the seventh grade took a field trip to nashville on tuesday. we went to the hermitage, the parthenon, and the state capitol. it was a lot of fun though i got tired of telling the students to stop touching the original wallpaper in the hermitage. the students seemed to learn a lot. after all they asked questions like "why do you talk so fast?" to one of the tour guides at the hermitage.

so i have had a cold for about two weeks now. i was almost over it until i woke up this morning with a 101 degree fever. not much fun.

one more week until spring break!

2006-03-05T09:27:00.000-05:00

so right now we are at the grand canyon! happy day! we flew into los angeles on friday, rented a car, and drove out to surprise, az (near phoenix). i hadn't seen my sister in two years, and so we stayed with her that night and got to catch up. they have such a beautiful house! anyway, we left early on saturday morning (we = me, jon, carrie) and drove to the grand canyon, stopping in sedona to see the red rocks. jon had never seen the grand canyon, and i hadn't seen it since heather and i took a roadtrip the summer after we graduated from high school. so we've taken a ton of pictures, and will take a few more this morning. later on today we'll head back to surprise by way of sedona, and will get to have dinner with fernando (carrie's husband - he was working this weekend so he couldn't come). and then on monday morning we are driving out to los angeles to spend a week with my grandparents.

fun fun!!!

what happened yesterday

2006-03-02T12:15:00.000-05:00

so yesterday was an interesting day all in all. i awoke with the intent of accomplishing amazing things. alas, that was not to be.

i started running errands around noon. i made it to the bank and took care of my business there. when i got in the blazer (see earlier posts about new vehicles in sept.-oct. '05), and put the transmission in reverse, there was a little bit of a squeaking noise and no backward motion. so i pop the hood check the tranny fluid. i've seen the situation where the fluid was low and the tranny wouldn't "catch" (for lack of a better word). so i push it out of the spot and go to the walmart. i get tranny fluid and dump almost the whole quart in. no nothin'.

so i get it home. get it pushed into the spot. at this point, forward has worked, but is acting a little flakier. drive/overdrive is getting slower. so i start making calls. transmissions repairs were discussed. the prices range on the order of 1e3 to 2e3. i.e., way too much.

well i go upstairs to grab the laptop which i have checked out from ncsu. it's an older laptop but i got it for free as long as i want it. it was beautiful yesterday, about 80, so i decide i'm going to go outside to work. the battery light now blinks in a 4-short-red then a 1-long-green pattern. apparently this means the battery is dead. unplugging the laptop results in a certain death. so now i have two options. everytime i want to go somewhere, i can enjoy the smallness of the lappy, but not it's portability. i can still plug it up and use it on the deck or anywhere else there is a receptacle. i can turn it back in and just use my desktop. or...i had a better idea (this is the one you should endorse). since the wireless nic is so much more stable than the one on my desktop, i considered making it a wireless gateway to my old wireless router. then turning off the wireless on the old router and running a cat5 cable to my desktop might alleviate some of the frustration of ndiswrapper in linux. :-)

today i work.

renaming of coffee

2006-03-02T11:04:00.000-05:00

ala harry potter, i think we should rename coffee the "elixir of life."

2006-02-28T12:16:00.000-05:00

so i just ordered a new collar tag for abby. it's one of those flat ones that slide onto the collar so it doesn't dangle down and get in the way. you can check them out at boomerang tags. the thing about it is that this isn't the first one of these tags that we have ordered. we got her one probably about three months ago.

a couple weeks ago, we came in and noticed that abby wasn't wearing her collar. i had just loosened it because it was getting too tight, so we figure she just managed to slip out of it...or maybe it came unbuckled while she was scratching or something, since it was on the very last notch anyway. we thought nothing of it and figured we'd find it lying around somewhere.

two weeks later, the collar is still missing. we've looked absolutely everywhere. every room, every closet, under every piece of furniture, appliance, rug, pillow, cushion. in every little nook and cranny, and in every air conditioner vent or air intake. no collar. although we did find some mail belonging to the previous resident shoved into the air intake upstairs.

at this point, there's really nowhere left to look. i've come to the conclusion that either someone came in and took the collar off the cat, or abby took the collar off, put it in the trash can, and it got taken out with the trash.

update

2006-02-27T14:22:00.000-05:00

wow. we have a lot of catching up to do.

for starters, we went to chattanooga earlier this month. we visited the tennessee aquarium (best aquarium yet!), went to sticky fingers for lunch, and then to the mall. chattanooga is a nice town. we'll be going back.

we went in to visit my family on president's day weekend and managed to get stuck inside the house for about two days because of the snow. at the height of it all, there might have been three inches on the ground, but the driveway at my parents' house is on a hill, so we would have never made it back up. we did manage to get out and go to asian buffet (best chinese ever!) for lunch one day.

in other news, i was involved in a minor accident on the way home from the lab a couple weeks ago...totally not my fault. no one was hurt, but the car is in the shop for the next two weeks getting fixed. in all, it has about $2500 in damage.

2006-02-20T14:18:00.000-05:00

i've decided that this website is detrimental to my linux connectivity (when wireless with ndiswrapper). no itsstaceyl.blogspot.com and connectivity remains. when i hit this page, i had to remove the module and reload it to get connectivity. how odd.

it actually sleeted a little today. but it stopped which is good, i guess. if it's not going to cause adverse driving conditions, i don't want it.

new photos

2006-02-19T07:35:00.000-05:00

hi everybody! (hi dr. nick!).....

after a long delay, there are tons (literally) of new photos up on ourphoto site. these include christmas 2005 photos, my baking explorations, stacey's 2006 texas trip, and of course pictures of our clean house!

enjoy!

link!

2006-02-16T20:00:00.000-05:00

http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html

2006-02-13T09:52:00.000-05:00

hey kiddos! it's been an awfully long time since i've posted, and i have finally remembered that this website exists! wowzers! since i've posted last, i think christmas has occurred...and maybe thanksgiving. and i passed my quals! yay for that!

anything new happen with you guys?

snow day?

2006-02-08T19:17:00.000-05:00

the students are wishing everytime they predict that there may be flurries for a snow day...
and the teachers are wishing everytime they predict that there may be flurries for a snow day...
the other week, i heard my assistant principal say "i prayed that it would be nice if He would grant us a snow day"...
the students and teachers have been doing their "scientifically proven" snow day makers... the snow dance... the wearing of the pjs inside out and backwards.... etc...
so far... there's been no snow days...
they are predicting 1-2 inches tonight... so please everyone wear your pjs inside out and backwards and do your snow dances so maybe we can all have a lovely snow day...

funny quote

2006-02-03T13:26:00.000-05:00

"Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy."
- George Carlin

p.s. i hope this violates no copyright info.

brilliance in wardrobe

2006-02-03T13:09:00.000-05:00

so today i decided to dress nicely. khakis, sweater, the whole bit. what did i forget to do? that's right, check the weather.

it's about eight-billion degrees kelvin (hotter than liquid-hot mag-ma, ala. dr. evil). couple that with five heater-computers and this office is a 250 sq. ft. oven. oh wait, lest i forget, i require coffee now more than ever. so it's hot, i'm dressed like an eskimo (no offense, to our alaskan friends), and i require hot beverages. i am brilliant.

remind me to get a brain. the ernstberger curse survives.

zoo

2006-01-29T13:31:00.000-05:00

so we went to the knoxville zoo yesterday. we've been planning to go for a while, but it costs like $14.95 for admission, which is pretty insane when you consider that the st. louis zoo is free. anyway, they have half-priced admission during january and february...and this month, it was buy one, get one free admission if you bring an old phonebook to be recycled. i didn't expect the zoo to be very good, but it was actually lots of fun. the giraffes were chasing gazelles around their pen. it was awesome.

i do power blogger (and the matrix)!!!! (we're going to use roman numerals in this post)

2006-01-28T17:56:00.000-05:00

what's the story today? not much. i went to sleep. seriously. stacey left at ix o'clock to do some work. she left, i closed my eyes, and that was the last i knew until (get this) xi:vl. way too late. i guess i needed the sleep.

friday, the raleigh city water folk came out and examined our water situation. we'd been having some freakishly nasty tasting water. so we got in touch and they agreed to come out. their recommendation: flush the hot water heater. why, you ask? upon letting i cupful of water out of the hot water heater, it was obvious. so today i flushed about xl gallons of hot water out of the heater. they went from cappucino to mississippi river to mirky to pretty clear. hopefully the water will start to taste better soon. the water-lady said that if it didn't clear up in about iii days, to give her a call.

what are we up to tonight? at about vi o'clock, we're going to go get sushi. then we're going to play a fun game called "settlers of catan". it'll be fun.

tomorrow is services at viii:xv, educational committee meeting at xiii:xxx (military time), and then services again at xvii hours. then what else will we do? work, work, work.

what's going on?

2006-01-27T00:12:00.000-05:00

so stacey and i had a pseudo-datenight tonight. at 6:30 i pressured stacey into seeing a movie. so we went to the "dollar-fitty" theater to see the producers starring matthew broderick and nathan lane. good times were to be had. it was a fun flick.

since i've gotten a new computer in our office, i have been far more productive. but my productivity suffers at night, because i want to do work around here too. sooner or later we had to clean up.

it looks like mom might be paying us a visit over her spring break. that'll be fun for us and relaxing for her. but before that, we're talking about doing some traveling on our own. we'll probably be taking our spring break to either go visit stacey's folks or to go visit the grand canyon. since i led a sheltered youth, i'm trying to throw off those surly bonds and enjoy life.

i'm having lunch with a friend tomorrow. we're going to hit the "danny's bbq". excellent food will be eaten. i'm looking forward to it.

we've had some water issues. all the sudden, the water started tasting funny. we also noticed that somehow we had killed off a bamboo stalk. that's too bad. so we're getting it tested out (supposedly) sometime tomorrow. they didn't call today, so we'll just have to see.

i'm preaching on 2/5. i can't figure out what to preach on. should it namby-pamby or hell-fire and brimstone? just kidding. but however the lesson turns out, whenever some asks me how it went, i'll always respond (ala ray stevens) "well, we all got rebaptized whether we needed it or not and had 300 volunteer for a mission in the congo on the spot."

2006-01-25T19:28:00.000-05:00

so i haven't posted anything in quite a while now, so i thought i should.

you might remember my may 18, 2005 post concerning the quilt rack carrie and i built. well, the thing wouldn't fit into the car to get it from my parents' house back to knoxville, so we had to take it apart. i finally got around to putting it back together this past weekend.

so i'm not taking any classes this semester...just dissertation research. we also got a couple new people on the team, so hopefully my workload will decrease a bit and i will actually be able to work on my dissertation research. i doubt it, but i can hope.

just some randomness.... like i mentioned before, we're going to see rent in st. louis in march. later that week, we're vacationing in surf city, nc with my mom and aunt. they rented a beach house for the week, so we're heading down there to hang out for a few days. i want to go to the national cornbread festival in south pittsburg, tn, so i think we'll be doing that in april. in june, we will be back in the chattanooga area for jfest. so i think this will be the fifth time we've seen caedmon's call. insane, huh?

good day so far

2006-01-24T10:00:00.000-05:00

it's 10:01 in the a.m. i just got done talking to my buddy cory who is currently in iraq on his second tour there. it is fantastic to talk to old friends, esp. ones you don't see often. speaking of old friends, i spoke to tim this week too. apparently he and his wife emily are having a baby. congrats to them. :-)

today has been tough to get going, but appears promising. a good long day in the office, with a fresh pot of coffee can't be a bad start. we got some serious cleaning done on the house last night. but i think that serious cleaning has stirred up dust and so today i've got some allergy problems. clean is always better than dirty.

mexican was the entree of the night and so today i feel like i've got a ton of bricks sitting in me. was it worth it? you bet! burritos mexicanos at the fiesta mexicana (meh-hee-cah-na) are always an excellent choice. with salvador as our server and now available gift cards, it's always tough to beat.

what does today hold? who knows. the future is not in my hands.

what's the sitch, jon?

2006-01-20T14:13:00.000-05:00

well, i went back on my ra (research assistantship) this semester and consequently got moved back into my old office. another computer (good linux box, not a sucky sun workstation) will be moved back in here. i probably won't lug this laptop around with me everywhere i go from here on out even though it's not so heavy anyways.

tonight we're going out to supper (or dinner as some would say, regardless the 3rd meal of the day) with some friends at the chili's. i haven't been there in forever. i'm looking forward to it. it's always good to hang out with friends.

we started cleaning up some of our upstairs rooms that have kinda gotten pushed down the list of things to clean. the closet in the "office" got cleaned out last night and books were placed on the bookshelf. how nice.

i started a (get this) personal evangelism class at church. it's really nice and has been helping me to study and ask some questions again which i probably would have glossed over. i think i mentioned several posts ago that my goal is to read the Bible through this year. the link i'm following for a schedule is http://www.backtothebible.org/devotions/journey/readme.htm?level=together. so far i'm about to knock out Gensis and am working on Matthew.

tomorrow i'm going to the rbc center to watch nc state play the wake forest demon deacons. after the duke loss wed. night i'm sure they'll play well. go pack!

as part of gift money, etc. i purchased the star trek: voyager season 7 dvd set. i'm going to get some trek on! i'll probably get just a little more trek on today while stacey is walking with another friend of ours. i'm getting all trekked out.

bread

2006-01-16T15:02:00.000-05:00

so last night was good. after church we just kinda lounged around. i made sourdough bread. i had long ago made a sourdough starter, but had not yet used it. last night i made two sourdough loaves using the recipe in the better homes and garden cookbook. they weigh a ton. probably several pounds each. i used one of the loaves today in making my sandwich for lunch. turkey/ham, cheese, mayo on sourdough. that's a good sandwich. pictures of the loaves can be sent based upon request.

so why am i posting right now? i'm trying to read papers and am about to fall asleep. so i'm trying to wake myself up

calendar

2006-01-07T19:44:00.000-05:00

stacey got me a calendar for christmas. it's in spanish. the goal is to help stacey and myself learn spanish better. i've been delinquent in my posting of their sayings. they follow in order starting on january 1st:

Feliz Ano Nuevo!

Cuantos meses hay en un ano?

Hay doce meses en un ano.

La semana tiene siete dias.

El dia tiene veinticuatro horas.

El tren sale en cinco minutos.

Hay sesante minutos en un hora.

i'll leave their translation up to you, the reader.

what i want to do

2006-01-04T16:51:00.000-05:00

so there are some crazy thoughts going on. the semester is going to start and so we're going to have a little free time. what are we going to do?

clean this house!

clean the cars

fix things that are wrong on the house

arrange office and craft room!

make good website on realsuddenlike.com

lots of research

so there's alot to do, but it all seems doable. now stacey would add a few more things to the list such as crafts, etc. i just want to chill out and get some basic stuff done around here. except that i want my upstairs desktop running linux....stably. we'll see. i think i've got some wireless routing stuff that i'm going to make happen.

2006-01-01T23:46:00.000-05:00

judging from all the blogs i read, the end-of-the-year recap thing seems to be the thing to do. i suppose this year hasn't been quite as exciting as last year. but regardless, here we go...in no particular order...random happenings of 2005.

went to savannah, charleston, asheville, and lexington
saw chicago, cabaret, and oklahoma
saw randall goodgame and caedmon's call (at different concerts...as well as some other random guys that opened for them)
passed quals, started research, had first paper accepted for publication
got a cat

all but number 4 also apply for carrie. :)

happy new year!

2006-01-01T01:30:00.000-05:00

happy 2006 everyone! it's hard to believe that 2005 has come and gone. but...it has. here are some ernstberger family highlights:

1. 1 year-anniversary
2. went to visit family in ca,ky,tn and tx. got to visit disneyland too. also saw josh herndon get hitched in fla.
3. moved into "the oaks"
4. stacey spent the summer in oak ridge. not sure it was a "highlight" but definitely something memorable of the year.
5. passed my quals!
6. got dakota and gave him back up.
7. bought a house!
8. sold the mighty-whitey. i call that a big deal.
9. first christmas in new house.
10. stacey studies for her quals.

i'm up so late writing this cuz i just can't sleep. i've got to get up in 5.5 hours and i can't bat an eyelash. stacey is zonked out and i'm wide-eyed and bushy-tailed.

i finished the Bible tonight too. literally. i've read it cover to cover. i'm proud of that. what a good way to bring in the new year!

sup

2005-12-29T23:02:00.000-05:00

so the final countdown has begun. stacey takes her exams on the 4th, 5th, and 6th of january. she studies all the time and i do my best to help/help her out while this is going on. i remember how sucky this stuff was. i want her to not have to do it again.

i'm using teh fedora core 4. i updated the kernel and it's running great. what a wonderful laptop-y world.

we're up in harrelson hall studying. the janitors come through late at night and are like, "what are they doing here?" we just keep on working.

christmas in ky was good. lots of family (esp. baby london) and lots of friends. lots of gifts never hurt either. we came back and had our first christmas present-opening in our new house too. what a good way to keep bringing in a new house.

petersen baby blog

2005-12-28T12:19:00.000-05:00

this is so we can all keep up with the petersens and their baby!

www.closeknitfamily.net

edit: didn't actually make the link....

we're back!

2005-12-28T00:13:00.000-05:00

we've returned from christmas in ky. i was there for a long time and stacey was there for about 3 days (not counting drive time). we had lots of family fun, good food, and have been blessed with excellent gifts. thanks fam!

we came back tonight and opened the gifts that we had remaining for each other, from stacey's parents, and stacey's grandparents. once again we were all blessed with our gifts. :-) thank you fam!

now the (excitement, frenzy, panic) sets in. stacey has a few days left before her qualifying exams and will without doubt study at a breakneck pace. my goal is to try to just take work off of her for these purposes. in the meanwhile, i'm going to get some of my own work done. i've got plenty of it to do.

rick and shaina petersen had their little girl. i don't have their website on hand, but will post it soon. i got to have some lunch with wyatt and richard. unfortunately andy was sick. (hope you're feeling better, btw.)

it's bedtime. i'm out.

mouse nest

2005-12-15T13:41:00.000-05:00

so in raleigh, it's freezing. literally. it's cold and has had freezing rain. what a great day to get things done. i've been studying with stacey for her qualifiers in january. but today a few things had to get done before i fly to nashville for a few days.

first thing i do is go and get the oil in the blazer changed so in a few days, when stacey drives down (she needed more study time), she doesn't have to do this. when they examine the air filter box, they find a rodent nest. no rodents, just the nest. literally the box is filled with something like 5 inches of mom's dog's food and a ball of what looks like it could've been part of a sheet. this ball is something about the size of a softball when pressed together very tightly. i then remember finding a little container of mouse poison under the hood very shortly after getting the blazer. upon this line of thought i had (at the time of discovery a few months ago) asked what the mouse posion was for and the rents had replied that dad had spotted a rodent crawling under the hood of the car. so we know why now.

so now all that's left is to get things ready for the trip. packing is left and whatever other little things i need to take. what a boring story.

2005-12-15T09:06:00.000-05:00

so what's the best dessert on earth? that's right...cheesecake. so imagine my excitement when i saw cheesecake flavored pudding at the grocery. now imagine my disappointment when i realized that it tasted much the same way that new cars smell. did i still eat the entire bowl for breakfast? you betcha.

2005-12-12T09:16:00.000-05:00

so let's see what's going on, since it's been a while since my last post.

we went to see oklahoma on saturday, as part of broadway in knoxville. it was lots of fun, except it appears that lots of the folks in knoxville aren't quite theater-savvy. about 10 minutes into the first act, realizing there were lots of empty seats in the orchestra center section (and realizing their seats in the orchestra right section weren't so great), about 30 people moved. get a clue! either get the seats when you come in and play the "oh, i'm sorry, i must have the wrong seat" card, or wait until intermission!
we got tickets to see rent at the fox in march. i found a presale code on the rent website, so we were able to get excellent seats.
class is officially over, but the work continues. i guess that's the funny thing about research...breaks don't mean much since there is still work to be done.
i baked lots of cookies this past weekend for carrie to take to school. citrus squares, finnish christmas cookies, strawberry almond shortbread thumbprints, chocolate oatmeal cookies. they were all very good. last week i made oatmeal raisin cookies and chess cake.

i suppose that's it for now. i think i'll take an hour or two off and play some x-box for a change.