I went Saturday night to see the Decemberists playing a concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. For reasons unknown to me, my mother called me a few months ago and asked if we wanted to go, and we said "sure!". (While I'm not sure how much I like the huge venue thing, being allowed to eat and drink and bring all your own ( Read more... )

Copied from ekoos:

I have these two coke cans. One completely empty and the other about 1/4 full. Unremarkable except for the fact that I never opened them.

kilroi and I went to the beach and I brought a six pack of coke with us. They were in a little cooler with a plastic coated ice block and (I think) a little more loose ice. We didn't tip it, but I'm ( Read more... )

On the plane on the way home, I was reading through the SkyMall "please buy expensive things?" magazine, and I noted with great bafflement/amusement something that professed to be made up of "100% olefin".

Weekend was exceedingly pleasant.

Schadenfreude, indeed, but there's not much funnier than seeing a Mercedes-Benz in a parking lot with its rear bumper held on with bungee cords.

Life generally proceeds apace. Yesterday we took our group secretary out to lunch, and as we were sitting at the table with her, she was asking us all about our siblings, and what they do. Today we get mail that one of the guys sitting at the table, New Kid, found out that his younger brother died suddenly. Stuff like that is just creepy ( Read more... )

w00t. paid off my car this morning. I can rejoin the ownership society now, I guess.


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I had the opportunity tonight to go to a dinner with the Caltech trustees. Apparently, they have an annual little tradition where they guess what the Dow-Jones industrial average will be at the following year. You are "encouraged" to submit a donation with this guess. The following year, the person who came the closest "gets" the money, but then ( Read more... )

I came home after Rosh Hashanah services tonight, and I went and took a look at metafilter, and the top thing stopped me. 'RIP Peter Geiberger, 1979-2006'. I went to high school with this guy. About three years ago, I did a quick google search on his name, for no real reason, and it came up with the LA cacophony site about his supposed death in ( Read more... )

We had a group beach day, yesterday, which was awesome. (We went to Bolsa Chica State Beach, which I had never been to before, and is right near the newly connected to the sea Bolsa Chica Wetlands, which is kind of cool in and of itself). Volleyball, body boarding on my part, though most people tried surfing. All fun ( Read more... )

So, I work in this building called the Beckman Institute (named after Arnold Beckman, inventor of the pH meter, amongst many other things). Now, Caltech isn't lacking in things named after this man. We also have the Beckman Auditorium, the Beckman Behavioral Biology building, Beckman Mall, and not to forget that along with the Auditorium, inside ( Read more... )