Oh, and on an unrelated note...
Homemade challah, my culinary adventure of the evening. This is entirely gratuitous, but I was so happy they came out all pretty and fluffy and warm and just a little bit crusty.
« September 2002 | Main | November 2002 »
October 30, 2002
Ah, Wednesdays
Andrea: "Omigod, what is that?"
Me: "It's an egg beater."
Andrea: "Oh. From this angle it looked like a penis enlarger."
October 28, 2002
Another sunset
October 27, 2002
Wow.
Lothlorien food orgy.
If you don't know, I probably shouldn't get myself in trouble explaining.
My feet have never been so disgusting.
Quote from some random guy: "My armpit hair is all chocolated."
Also, I ran into a girl I hadn't seen since jr high there. She recognized me first.
Must shower now.
October 24, 2002
EECS Pumpkins
October 23, 2002
The Chronicle, a little less sad
Yesterday while reading the paper, I saw the name of a friend of mine from high school in big letters where Jon Carroll usually resides. How amazing. I knew Jose worked for the paper, but not that he replaced columnists. Here are yesterday's and last July's.
Jon is pleased as well.
Winter is here.
It will be lasting for another week or two until Berkeley tries for a last-gasp indian summer in the middle of November.
But for now, cold weather has come upon us, and with it those calf-length sweater things that were in fashion a winter or two ago. At least 80% of young women around here must own one. It's weird. I don't remember seeing a single one the entire time I was in France. Either they were never "in" there (the Gap's hold must be less strong), or French women know better than to wear clothes that obviously belong to a single trend.
The other neat thing about cold weather is the excuse to have a fire. Monday night, we had a lovely one that crackled all during house council, and then we all sat around it pretending to do homework and making s'mores until late that night. Fires are also fun to poke and blow at, and burn pieces of furniture and old junk mail in.
Other things...
The sinks in the basement were overflowing with sewage again last night, and our maintenance manager taped over all the toilets in the house in an effort to stem the flow. This was sometime after midnight. So a few of us intrepid Ridgelings unwilling to hold it in 'till morning made an expedition to CZ to use their bathrooms. Who ever knew that having CZ next door would *ever* come in handy?
October 22, 2002
Precious things
"La préciosité a des racines lointaines, pour la raison que gorriers, mignons, affetés, précieux, incroyables, dandys, gens selects, etc. se tendent la main à travers les siècles, que leurs tendances générales se ressemblent, si leurs goûts passagers diffèrent, et que leur niveau d'esprit est en somme à peu près constant."
-- Ferdinand Brunot, Histoire de la langue française
Gosh.
Amusing until I see my picture posted there: "Annoying People in Classes" (parts 1 2 3 4). I already recognize too many of these poor people.
In other news, my lectures today managed to incarnate Gödel, Turing, Schrödinger, and Heisenberg all in three hours. (Yay umlauts.) It is nice to have finally reached the 20th century in my education, even if we are being given the rushed baby-math version.
October 19, 2002
Tema con variazioni, molto liberamente, quasi una improvisazione
Last night around midnight in the kitchen, licking chocolate mousse off my fingers. Special dessert is tonight.
Thème et variations, avec beaucoup de liberté, comme une improvisation
Last night a handful of us got last-minute tickets to a modern dance performance at Zellerbach. I wish I could have appreciated it, but I kept getting the impression that I was witnessing the latest reply in a long discussion that I haven't been following.
At one point in the conversation, my companions were debating the merits of dancing "to" music. In the performance last night, the dancers seemed to barely acknowledge that the music was there. They danced around the live musicians (who were on stage at times), but often they danced to silence, or had fast complicated moves to slow musical passages, or didn't react at all to energetic or tense portions of the music. Why? I have no idea.
Theme and variations, very free, like an improvisation.
"Or qant ao' voyęlles je treuue qe la lange Frãçoęz' en a juques au nombre de sęt, si diuęrses ęntr' ęlles, qe l'une ne peut ętre prononçée pour l'aotre, sans manifęst' offęnse de l'oręlle:: qoę qe lęs aucunes ayet ęntr' ęlles vne grand' affinité. Nous auons donc, a, ę, ouuert, e clós, i, ou, clós (aotremęnt ne l'oze je noter) o ouuęrt, u. ... Ie vou' lęss' a pęnser qęlle graç' aora l'e clós, ęn sę' vocables męs, tęs, sęs, si nou' l'y pronõçons, come nou' fezons ęn pere, mere: ę come font je ne sey qels effeminez miɳons auęq vn pręqe clós resęrremęnt de bouçhe: creɳans a mon auís qe la voęs virille de l'home ne soęt point tant harmonieuze, ny aggreabl' ao' dames, q'une laçhe, foębl', ę femenine."
-- Louis Meigret, Le Trętté de la grammęre françoęze (1550)
Sheesh, 16th century attempted spelling reforms in French. This character: ɳ is in the place of what looks like an eta with a tilde over it (the eta being 'ng', the tilde meaning that there should be an 'n' coming after the letter). Even the book I got this out of couldn't set the character properly.
Thema und Variationen, sehr frei, vie eine Improvisation.
More CS 70 quotes:
"Omigod, the big dog? The new big dog."
-- Rao, on his cell phone after taking a call in the middle of class
Tema y Variaciones, muy libremente, casi una improvisacion.
October 16, 2002
Is life even or odd?
Two decades ago, I was learning to speak.
Two years ago, I had no idea that imaginary exponents of e might be at all useful.
Two months ago, I was boogie boarding in the Atlantic off the coast of France.
Two days ago, I had a lovely candlelit dinner in San Francisco.
Two hours ago, I thought I might like to go to bed soon.
Gosh things change fast.
October 15, 2002
Feels like autumn
A fire in the fireplace, mugs of hot cider, my room is chilly, and I have a cold.
Yup, winter's coming.
October 13, 2002
I should be doing homework
This full-weekend thing is kind of putting my schoolwork rhythm off. I have to say, though, I kind of enjoy it. It's like this personal space within a week of heavy schoolwork that gives my life this kind of limp. Or I guess you could call it circular time.
Some highlights of the week:
- Satish Rao (my CS 70 prof) quotes, from 170 and 270, found (directed to) while studying. A few quotes I've picked up:
"If Gertie is a dragon, and he has ponds in front of him, right?" (This ended up being a question on our midterm.)
"You see my handwriting? It's a lot neater than last week, my hair is a lot neater than last week, my gear is a lot neater than last week, my shirt is tucked in. I'm cleaning up."
"Back when I was in high school... no, not high school. What do you do after high school? College."
He also said "okay" 127 times during an hour and a half of lecture.
- Class registration soon. And I even get to register on the third day. This is so exciting. Of course, planning a schedule is much more fun than doing homework, which is bad. I think I've got mine worked out already, including totally random class that I saw in the schedule and decided to take. These people spammed all the class newsgroups, but I have to say their tool is, in fact, really helpful for planning one's schedule.
- Weekend bits and pieces: Tonight Hunter took me to the Liberty Cafe in San Francisco, a very nice (and small) restaurant with a killer ambiance that all the reviews pasted out front raved about. It was very good. His friend the old chef from Deep Springs works there now, and he even put extra mushrooms into our veggie pot pie to apologize for the lack of chicken. The trip involved riding across the bay bridge on the motorcycle, but I survived. Soon I'll be blasé about such things.
This is after watching snapshots of one of the most beautiful sunsets in a long time while racing home across campus from Moe's Books. This morning, Thai brunch again, and Rm. 31 now has a replacement for the red couch *and* a new chair complete with alarming stains, courtesy of the Convent (stains and furniture, I mean). That makes no sense to someone who doesn't live with us. Sorry.
Last night we went to a midnight showing of Disco Dolls in Hot Skin, a 3D (yes, with glasses) porno from 1977. The 3D part seemed not to work very well for most of the people I talked to, but, well, the actual moviegoing experience comes secondary to the kitsch value. The introduction by the guys running the show was quite amusing - they came out in clear plastic rain gear, gave out copies of Plumpers and other such magazines as door prizes, and very strongly insisted "Do NOT masturbate in the theater!" while launching bananas and moist towlettes across the audience. At least, I thought it was amusing. I hope the members of my family who read this will agree. :) As for the movie itself, I thought it was cool to see porn stars with unshaven armpits, although some guy behind me was loudly disturbed by female body hair. At one point, some guy in the theater shouted out, "That's my mom!" She probably could be.
They're showing Clerks next week, for those interested.
Friday we went to see "The Full Monty" (the musical) and have dinner with my parents in San Francisco. That was neat too. Musicals are a funny art - you never know what people will break into song over. I liked it.
- As for random thoughts, I realized last week after watching Amélie (Le destin fabuleux de...) that the film seemed to love Paris the way that I love Berkeley sometimes. Obviously the same metaphors don't work for the two places, but I don't think I've ever attached so much happiness to a specific location, or felt the rhythm of my existence centering so much around the kind of strange chaos flow of urban life that just brings things to happen here.
I'm becoming incoherent. Heck, I've already failed to explain this once.
It does have something to do with the way San Francisco looks from across the bay, and the steady rotation of people I see sitting at the tables at Nefeli as I walk to class, and the high probability of running into someone I know and love almost anywhere I choose to wander. There's also just a glow sometimes, like the way people inexplicably become beautiful when you love them.
Sometimes I wonder about the people who hate it here.
October 08, 2002
A man, a plan, a weekend
I suck.
My weekend involved amazing amounts of fun, even more than the preceding week provided stress.
The problem with fun is, of course, that it certainly beats writing about it.
Hence the scattered narrative of this thing as of late.
Here is a gratuitous picture of Saturday's sunset as seen from the roof of our house:
Among the things I neglected to write about: daisies, riding on a motorcycle for reals-reals, visiting Scott's restaurant (New World Vegetarian in Oakland, if I remember correctly), ren faire and seeing people I haven't seen since high school, sunsets from the roof, S&M as an interior decorating theme, large EECS majors throwing each other at the floor, homemade beignets, sunlight and rainbows, and, last but not least, dreams about workshifts (what a nice large kitchen Wilde House had).
October 04, 2002
Speaking of low bitrates
"So Geoff and Alex were talking to each other in finger-binary..."
Random tidbit of conversation in the HKN office today. Finger-binary is, yep you guessed it, holding up fingers in binary for each letter's ascii code. I can't believe I know these people.
"... about the other people on the bus near them who were reading their bibles and discussing them together." To paraphrase.
It's been a long week. A very long week. I'd write more, but I think I'll just nap.