Back "Angus"

I have been digging Very Demotivational (see the blog roll) ever since Justin told me about it. I need to point out this particular post. While most of the other posts are much funnier, I feel like I have to highlight this link for person reasons having to do with "colon cancer". If you haven't yet browsed through the Very Demotivational blog, I highly recommend it. It's often hilarious.

Tapas

My stomach is happy.

I don't usually blog about restaurants. Because dinner hasn't been available in Somerville's dining hall during spring break, I've been using this as an opportunity to try some more of the local restaurants. The tapas restaurant I tried tonight had been on my list for quite a while, and I just hadn't gotten around to it yet. Clearly, I should have.

I had an early dinner on my own (it's a bit weird for me to be blogging about dinner that I just ate when it's only 6:40 pm, isn't it?) and wanted to have something nice because I had leftovers last night, skipped lunch entirely today (though today's errands did include an impulse buy of a very cool stuffed Sonic the Hedgehog, so it wasn't a total loss), and had been getting a lot of fast food lately. It was clearly time for a good meal. I ordered three tapas (which I pronounced pretty much correctly): meatballs, garlic fried chicken, and a skewer consisting of steak and bacon-wrapped dates (with potatoes on the side). Yum! This place also has a meat sampler meal, but it's for a minimum of 2 people and I figured I'd wait until I went to this place with somebody instead of nuking half of it. (If it takes too long before I find someone to go there, then I probably will go ahead with the nuking plan.) After seeing the menu (and especially after trying the food), it occurs to me that this is one of the restaurants at which Lemming and I should eat when he visits me. [It also occurs to me that the term "bacon-wrapped dates" could be interpreted in an entirely different manner---though it, too, would probably be delicious. :P ]

The other thing of note from today was that I started a new calculation. I may eventually bring collaborators with me on this project, but the key thing this conveys is that I actually have some time now to not just to read papers, supervise students, revise drafts, and do various other research things [which I have to be creative to find time to accomplish for any reasonable length of time when classes are in session], but that I even have time to get my hands dirty and do actual calculations myself! Hooray! I actually have a decent idea of a neat thing I can do with this particular calculation, though it will obviously take a while to go through everything. Additionally, I do have numerous other projects that are far more immediate, so even during spring break, I do expect to experience long temporal gaps between my chances to work on this. That said, it is really nice to start a new project on which I intend to be the first author. It is natural to write fewer first-author papers as one ascends the academic hierarchy, but it's both important and very nice to continue to do those kinds of projects too.

Steaks on a plate! (Subtitled: What happens in Berkeley stays in Berkeley)

I am writing this entry from Gazebo's apartment in Berkeley, which I will be visiting until Monday.

Unlike most of my trips, this is a pleasure trip rather than a business trip. (Rahr!)

Gazebo and I went straight from the airport to Black Angus, where we had large steaks. Yum!

The other people I am planning to see this weekend are also big meat lovers, so I anticipate plenty of good food.

The plan is to play ping pong with Janet on Sunday, and there is a tentative plan for Gazebo and I to meet [or should I say "meat"] up with Veeeeeeeeeeeetoh Dai '98 for dinner on Sunday evening. I haven't seen Vito in 4.5 years, so I really hope that works out. As some of you know, he is part of my old gang, who I don't see even as close to as often as I'd like.

Happy birthday to Jing!

She turned 100000 today. I become prime (age 11111) again tomorrow.

The celebration is tomorrow. We'll be eating meat---lots of it.


Update: Apparently, Jing was born on the 8th rather than the 9th. I wonder if she corrected me last year too? I wonder if this misconception was caused by the fact that Ziyi Zhang was born on February 9th? Also, Jing came down with the flu and won't be making it, so I'll just have to eat extra meat to make up for her absence. (My standard way of dealing with disappointment is to eat extra meat.)

Rib quanta

Gazebo and I went to a smokehouse for (very good!) food. I ordered beef ribs, which were available in three sizes: full rack, half rack, and 1/3 rack. I wasn't sure how many ribs would be included, so I asked about the 1/3 rack and was told that this consisted of one rib. This made me very confused, but I thought I probably wanted more than one, so I ordered the half rack and contemplated whether I would be getting 1.5 ribs. However, I got the expected number of 2 ribs. Presumably, the full rack consists of 4 ribs (are there even any creatures that only have 3 ribs in one rack?), but this quantization is really rather odd.