Hazletok.com

I obviously have some PacNW/Pac-10 biases

Google’s Home Page on March 20th, 2009:

oh tiny error bars…and…

Testing to see if I can upload my geeky iPhone pics

Joy is taking swing classes an I’m outside her class waiting for it to finish. It’s seems to have been quite the couple of days for the wedding planning. We’ve got a date and location now and have made early progress on music, photos, food and clothing. Additionally, I’m trying to get my brother’s bachelor party set up. A little rough being a continent away, but the free long distance calling is moving things along. It’s going to be a wild night of Blazers basketball!

But back to my wedding – it’s really shocking how expensive our attempt at a “cheap” wedding is ending up to be. At least paying Manhattan rent has be used to dropping absurd amounts of money on life.

Worse still is encountering the expectations people have for our wedding. Luckily, all of our parents (hi mom) have been incredibly hands off, but my less-than-traditional ideas have met some mild judgement. Shocking that the guy who rides his bike everywhere, practices the art of Neti and convinced his woman to house a worm bin in her apartment isn’t liking his foray into wedding planning. Eloping sounds better and better each day. It’s going to be a wonderful days with loved ones though and in spite of my gloom and doom, I am looking forward to it.

Anyway, be sure to check out http://www.keithandjoy.com for wedding updates.

Due to the wonders of automation and bacterial “outsourcing” I’ve got two experiments running as I type.  It’s in these times between that I really need to become more prolific.  Between Google Reader and Scrabble on Facebook, I’ve found efficient ways to while away the time between.  However, the stress of class and various presentations has made me realize I need to make use of the down time to make what little progress I can rather than feeding my news obsession.

In other news, Thanksgiving was a rousing success.  I was designated photographer for the 11-course extravaganza served up by the girlfriend’s brother – pics here.  I haven’t pared down the shots nor put them in any order, so have some patience while perusing.  The food was really amazing and the eating lasted from 5:30 until midnight.  Equal parts amazing and ridiculous.

Unfortunately, football this weekend was not quite so successful.  At least in losing to the Duck, my beloved Beavers made my decision about whether or not to go to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl for me.  Still, it was just painful to watch the complete defensive collapse that occured in Parker Stadium.  This was only matched by the Redskins offensive ineptitude against the New York Football Giants on Sunday.  At least I have the Blazers, whom I’ll be seeing tomorrow night at MSG.

Alright, automation is requiring some attention right now.

Funny thing, I’m in school and when people ask me, “How are things going?” my response of late has been “Pretty well, but this class I’m taking is killing me.”  Back in grades K through 18, school was class and little more.  Maybe a lab project on the side, but 90 to 95% of my time was focused on absorbing some body of knowledge and processing it so that I had a functional hold on that knowledge.

Since the 18th grade (2nd year of med school) class has become the thing on the side.  Unfortunately for me, I still have to actually pass my classes unlike those lab projects that could end in complete failure without reprecussions.  So yeah, class, however interesting it is, sucks.  I can’t wait to finish my final paper and be done with classes forever — I do understand that I’ll be learning forever, just no more semester long courses.

Besides class things are going pretty well.  My girlfriend and I just hit 10 months and we seems to be hurtling towards bigger things.  My experiments are finally moving forward in lab, no matter if the movement is glacial.  It’s much prefered to stagnation.  I guess I could complain about winter starting to set in — a few flakes were falling this AM on my way to work — but it’s really not as big of a deal as it has been in the past.

Gotta get back to work, but I’ll be home to Oregon the week of christmas if anyone will be in Oregon.

Something that doesn’t happen too often.

So, with Halloween coming up, that must mean that the Jewish holiday season has just wrapped up.  On the eve of the last of the holidays (Simchas Torah – hebrew for celebrating with the Torah) I was at my girlfriend’s place and heard a smoke/CO alarm going off somewhere nearby.  After trying to deal with the annoyance by turning up the TeeVee I decide to find the source of the alarm.  Not because I thought someone was in danger, no, just because I wanted to go to bed soon.

After running around the floor above and below us, I perched up on the windowsil to realize that alarm was coming from an apartment much further down from us on the 11th floor.  So, down the elevator I went to the first floor and started my way up.  I heard something on 5, it was louder on 6 and finally I found it on 7.  Hooray I thought to myself, one of my program-mates.  She wasn’t in, so I was headed back upstairs to send her an email when I ran into said student.  Upon informing her of the alarm I was asked, “Do you want to be useful?”

Translation, “I can’t take the battery out until tomorrow evening, would you do it for me, gentile?”

It’s the weirdest thing to me coming from very secular and very, very gentile Oregon.  But very fascinating (and mildly irritating when you want coffee during Passover) to be so submerged in a culture/religion.  It goes far beyond knowing what the rules of Kosher and Parve are.  I never could have imagined that I would long for the days of taking classes and getting all of the High Holidays off.  Maybe I’ll actually get myself to a Seder dinner this year.