November 2006

Home for the holidays

I had a great Thanksgiving week. I stayed in the bay area until Tuesday night, since I had some meetings, but we left late Tuesday night for a great week at home in Los Angeles.

I took Julie and Beth in the car with us, and David caravaned with us. Unfortunately, his car did not make it, and we had to drive to the nearest gas station to get a phone number for a towing company. We promptly called and talked to the most confused indvidual who didn't seem to understand why someone would call him and ask him to tow a car. Ultimately he got there and David had it towed ALL the way down to LA (around 200 miles)!!!!

I spent time with my family and friends. It was by far the largest Thanksgiving I've had in awhile. My cousin decided she would like to contribute to the dinner, and made a coffee concotion but it as pretty strange. It was a giant bowl filled with Brandy and Triple Sec and oranges.

A new kinda cowboy's in town

Since I've been pretty busy, I haven't had the time to head up to San Francisco in awhile. On Thursday night I had the SGF welcome dinner, which was quite nice. Our speaker had some pretty hillarious things to say about what grad school was like. I think I can agree on most of it.

This Imposter Syndrome is coming up so frequently. I decided to let everyone read up on it (here's a link). I've decided to just stop worrying about it. It's a very circular thing. The truth is, if you have it, you won't believe that it even exists. So either it does and I have it, or it doesn't and what I think is real...so I can either go crazy thinking about it, or just not worry about it and concentrate on what really matters, classes and research!

Marc, David, Ryan and I went bowling after the banquet. I'm not very good but I broke 100 and actually won one round! We eventually all gave up and just rolled the balls in funny ways. David demonstrates the most effective method(right). Unfortunately, I didn't break my previous record using my new form. Vincy and Micah play in a league on Sunday. Maybe I should join? I want a Spongebob bowling ball!!!

On Friday night, Beth had really been wanting to go to the country bar she found in San Jose. We spent some time shopping for clothes, then looking online for where to go, Mrs Scoots sat in the box for the cowboy boots we bought for the occasion (right). We drove allllll the way there, and found out the cowboys are not the type we were expecting. A policeman explained to us that cowboys are not the John Wayne types Beth was expecting, so we wandered to the next closest thing, the Old Pro in Palo Alto (they have a mechanical bull).

We had been there before but hadn't had the greatest time. We had high hopes this time around. We always see people sharing these big tables with these giant graduated cylinder full of beer (I'm sure that's not what they're called). Maybe we can arrange some BMI event and get people to come share one. I can't imagine drinking that whole thing (I hate beer in the first place).

We ate dinner there. Everything was SO ridculoulsy large! Including the ketchup!

The burger I had was huge too! I still ate the whole thing!

Ryan made a dent in a massive plate of wings!

David joined us later for a little chat and a beer!

Since we couldn't convince Marc and David to ride the bull, we entertained ourselves with each others' phones!

My first college football game and graduate school exams

The last couple of weeks have been very busy! I had a quiz and a midterm on one day, and all along homework assignments and work on quizzes! I've been trying to move along in the research but it has been pretty difficult.

Everyone else seems to be in the same state. Our Monday sections for BMI210 have become increasingly less-well attended (I know that's horrible grammar but I swear grad school is making my brain mush). On Monday the only people in class were Noah, David, Alex and myself. Noah came in late, asked a question, and then left! I think he just likes using the mics that are like those police radio ones. I'm still waiting for him to complete his "look I'm on TV mom!" comment. It would be pretty hilarious. He has promised to do it by the end of the quarter. The A/V guy in that room looks like Fabio! It's pretty funny. I'll try my best to take a picture of him, but it's pretty hard to do without making it terrbily obvious.

Unfortunately I did not do well in my BMI midterm at all. I almost had a mental breakdown from it! I was trying my best to study, but somehow nothing was sticking. I was having trouble connecting everything. Noah, the BMI210 genius, was trying his best to help me out, but somehow I was still confused. I couldn't connect an Ontology, Knowledge Representation, and Knowledge Base. I asked Noah to explain them to me, especially in terms of each other, but I just could not grasp it. Reading the papers drove me even more crazy!!! They are all so esoteric. I think their goal is to just make it as confusing as possible to make sure that no one can understand it! It was driving me INSANE!

In the meantime I had a quiz in my stats class to worry about. I tried my best to just fgure out what was going on while making sure I didn't screw up my grade in the course I thought I was guaranteed to get a good grade. At one point when Noah was trying to explain things to me, David's amazing hearing identified Mark Musen's voice (my professor) while he walked by. I ran after him and he came by and told me I looked distraught! We were sitting there and I wrote down my three words on a piece of paper, and asked him to connect them, describe them, explain them. He laughed and said those were basically the most important words in the class (I'm SCREWED)! I think I get it all now, but still, I defnitely understand how Noah has been feeling while he is studying for stats, with his head down on the table. Maybe grabbing a beer and relaxing is a good solution for me too?

This weekend I went to my first college football game. UCSD does not have a football team, and it was pretty exciting. I really didn't care that USC obliterated us. I don't like them anyways. I have to say they are far more impressive as far as their cheerleaders go. Ours do some kind of interpretive dance, while the USC ones are just very athletic. Our band, though, is way more fun to watch, because they're crazy and disorganized.

I also ended up in the USC cheering section because we went for Beth's family friend's benefit. I still cheered on the Stanford team, I really didn't care. Beth and Julie dressed in Syracuse gear to be sufficiently neutral. USC is crazy! Alumni travel from Los Angeles to see their team beat another one they're guaranteed to beat. They're also pretty annoying. There were a group of gross middle-aged women wiht some ditzy wives behaving like the most stereotypical business/lawyer-types I'd ever seen. I was pretty grossed out!

During half-time, though, Stanford had this really weird ceremony about the impressive academics at Stanford. They gave footballs to Nobel Laureates and members of the National Academy of Sciences. I was pretty amused. It was almost like a "our sports may suck, but are academics leave you IN THE DUST" type of tribute!