Should've gone to bed hours ago. Curse you, Internet
I thought that my summer really started Tuesday at 11:30 when I handed in my final grading for Audition. Then I got an e-mail today telling me that ANOTHER student had taken a retake quiz. Never have you heard such language. This basically means she took the retake yesterday. When the deadline for submitting grades was yesterday. And the deadline (I thought) for taking the retakes was last Friday. I kind of want to e-mail back and ask "WTF?", but it's also kind of not my place at all. Though I submitted to Jennifer today my hours for the semester, and now I'm torn over whether or not to bill for another 15-30 minutes. Most likely I won't, because I already asked for above what she said it normally takes.
The trip to Boston was great, if brief. I rolled in Tuesday night basically at 9 on the dot, making the trip 6:15 long. The drive was exciting for about 30 minutes as I kept seeing cops along 490 and then 90: 3 sitting at traps, 1 cruising along merrily in the left lane mostly to nudge people over/slower, and the "wow" scene was 3 trooper cars within about a 200 feet stretch, each behind somebody pulled over. That slowed me down, but I didn't see any on the trip there after that. Shrug. Once I got in, I drove Jay on an errand across town, then was considering dinner but realized I just wasn't hungry, so I skipped thelate-night Indian food that would've been my only option. Spent the rest of the evening hanging out with him & his roommate Eric, trying to pick out an outfit for Jay's defense the next day. I slept decently that night, but not great, because I was on a futon, I was cold, and I was (and still am) fighting this weird cold/congestion thing.
My alarm went off at 9:30 AM and that is indeed when the day started. I drove Jay over to campus, then came home to shower & get myself ready, maybe do a little work. Got distressing e-mails and phone calls from Rochester (jisalynn deserves props), but I managed to not flip out too hard, though in retrospect, maybe I should've. After getting some other Oz-related stuff done and prettying myself sufficiently to present myself to Jay's lab group, I walked the half-hour to the Stata Center and was glad I had my iPod. Once there, I realized I'd have a bitch of a time finding Jay's office, let alone where the defense was to be held, so I stopped at the Forbes Family Cafe (aka Starbucks with sushi and sandwiches) to grab much-needed coffee and food.
We met up, then headed over to wherever his talk was -- it was probably a mile walk through buildings and so on. Fucking confusing campus, that. The first attendee to arrive other than us was Jim, Jay's fraternity house's cook for the past 19 years. Jim had never before been on MIT's campus, despite being a stalwart of an MIT-based organization, so he was really psyched to be there, especially at the culmination of the MIT career of someone (Jay) he's seen grow over the past 10 years. We shot the shit with him as Jay set up his presentation and I set up the refreshments table: mom-baked cookies, Oreos, Girl Scout cookies, and Starbucks. Other people filtered in, and what was hysterical was that half the room was filled with Jay's friends before his colleagues even got there! His buddy Andrew had driven up from NJ with his wife & their 2 kids (both under 2) just for the occasion. Whichever advisor introduced the talk (I can't keep them straight, not really having any need or occasion to) commented on how this was the most-populated thesis defense he'd ever seen, chalking it up to Jay's belonging to 2 very different lab groups. The talk went really well, and I understood things occasionally. The title is something like "Mathematical Methods in Modeling Complex Electrostatic Interactions Between Molecules and stuff". Lots of biology I'd forgotten, lots of math I'll never know, and so on. Highlights included the slide title "Obligatory Pretty Picture" and when he crossed over from actually writing out the matrices to just using blue rectangles of varying dimensions. After the talk, there was the usual Q&A, the private defense, then the closed-door deliberations. I'd failed to bring anything with me to do/read, which was foolish, as I could've taken the laptop along easily and gotten a few more minutes of Excel massaging in. Jay was sweating a bit after the private session, but Bruce came out a few minutes later and said "Congratulations, doctor." With that, my brother became Dr. Bardhan. I'll get there some day? We basically went from Jay's defense to another guy's, where I ran into a kid I recognized from Hopkins! He'd lived across the hall from Leah in '01-'02, and she'd known him from high school. It took us a few seconds to figure out the connection, but I was kind of shocked. Though it's been said that I know people everywhere, MIT just never strikes me as a place I'll have coincidental encounters. The other great one like that was summer after 2004, I ran into Witness playwright/my writing instructor Adam on the street by my brother's house. Anyhoo.
After Bambang's defense, we sat around the lab with Jay's labmates, drinking Scotch. When Bambang returned (also victorious), we had a champagne toast in the lab for the new PhD's, then headed over to Bukowski's for much-needed beer and grub. My brother and a few of his friends are regulars there, with club mugs. What a great role model he provides, eh? b0mberman showed up and hung out with us for a bit, which was much appreciated. We had a table of about 20 people and ended up with a $290 bill. Not bad work at all, especially given $4 burgers. The few of us who remained at the end went back to Jay's for more chilling, meeting up with Holland of Kite fame and a guy named Phil? and some other dude. This evolved into smoking cigars in the back parking lot of the house for hours. Quote of the night was "Hey, ladies, you've got tits? I've got ash." Class-ay. I called it a night around 12:30 for the second night in a row. We'd been partying at moderate levels since about 5, so I was just kind of done for, as was Dr. Jay. (Heehee, we can call him that now.)
The trip back on Thursday was nothing special except my EZPass wouldn't work when I got on the Masspike, and it gave me the "Call FastLane" signal instead of "Thank you", which was scary and confusing. I called FastLane, then EZPass, only to find out nothing was wrong other than that my tag hadn't been read when I entered. It was a pleasant surprise, but it took longer to resolve than it should've, and it just didn't make sense. Meh. When I got off 490 it was 6 PM, and I had clay class at 6:30, so I figured I should just keep driving and not even bother going home to drop anything off. My pottery's not going as well as I'd hoped it would be, mostly because I'm impatient, but also because I don't have the skills down yet. After class I went for drinks with glynis32, then LJed in a cranky mood.
I've been trying to rediscover some of my old music recently. Sunday I didn't really leave my room, but mostly spent time wasting time online and puttering about the room. I listened to some tapes, both mixes & shows, that I keep in a rad brown hard vinyl briefcase. Finally I popped in this 99-cent Salvo find that I'd thought was a mix, but turns out is more like an album that one guy wrote & recorded by himself, then dedicated it to a friend? It's kind of confusing, and obviously I don't know the history. When I next go on a scanning spree, I'll scan in the loose-leaf sheet that came with it. In a similar vein, I've had a bunch of lines in my head recently that'd be fun to base songs of off, but songwriting seems really difficult to me.
Also on the media front, I've started to really seriously consider a Netflix subscription. My list of movies to see is growing steadily, and maybe the time is right now. I tried the Blockbuster version when I first moved here, and it didn't work out so well, but maybe the $9.99, one at a time, setup would suit my needs now. Do people have thoughts on this?
Hot dogs. I've eaten a lot of them recently. More in the past week probably than in the 8 months prior, if not longer. Reckon them's summer food. Speaking of summer, my light sheets are on my bed and my softball glove was with them downstairs. Toot!
Soon (like, in the next week) I will buy myself a NEW COMPUTER. It will be amazing and distracting and loaded with memory and storage. For months I've been coming up with a list of things that it'll need ASAP: Praat, iTunes, and so forth. First order of business: install those. Second: move data over from old machines. Third: rip CDs like it's going out of style. My estimations of how much room I'll need for music have been on the conservative side but I expect shit to get out of control real fast. For this, I expect to obtain a 250-300GB HD that'll be external. My room has about 12 GB of magnetic storage in it right now. The new laptop will have 6-8 times that available when it arrives. Ohhh I cannot wait, but I should get work done first because the transition will take days upon days of my life.
This morning I headed down a slippery slope and donated $25 to the local NPR station. It's quite late, and I should be at the office by 10. Boo hiss. Also, my cooking/baking ambitions are getting out of control again. If you'd like to benefit from this (whether you're local or not), let me know. On the agenda: hush puppies, granola, scones, and onigiri (inspired by unrequitedthai).
Hey, current/former Rhode Island folk? I'm going to Providence in a few weeks. Suggestions on places to eat, neat things to check out? It'd be fun to meet up with you, painaporo or mkbscratch, but I don't know where we're staying yet, and my schedule could be unpredictable. Let me know if you're interested though in grabbing a bite to eat or somesuch.
The trip to Boston was great, if brief. I rolled in Tuesday night basically at 9 on the dot, making the trip 6:15 long. The drive was exciting for about 30 minutes as I kept seeing cops along 490 and then 90: 3 sitting at traps, 1 cruising along merrily in the left lane mostly to nudge people over/slower, and the "wow" scene was 3 trooper cars within about a 200 feet stretch, each behind somebody pulled over. That slowed me down, but I didn't see any on the trip there after that. Shrug. Once I got in, I drove Jay on an errand across town, then was considering dinner but realized I just wasn't hungry, so I skipped thelate-night Indian food that would've been my only option. Spent the rest of the evening hanging out with him & his roommate Eric, trying to pick out an outfit for Jay's defense the next day. I slept decently that night, but not great, because I was on a futon, I was cold, and I was (and still am) fighting this weird cold/congestion thing.
My alarm went off at 9:30 AM and that is indeed when the day started. I drove Jay over to campus, then came home to shower & get myself ready, maybe do a little work. Got distressing e-mails and phone calls from Rochester (jisalynn deserves props), but I managed to not flip out too hard, though in retrospect, maybe I should've. After getting some other Oz-related stuff done and prettying myself sufficiently to present myself to Jay's lab group, I walked the half-hour to the Stata Center and was glad I had my iPod. Once there, I realized I'd have a bitch of a time finding Jay's office, let alone where the defense was to be held, so I stopped at the Forbes Family Cafe (aka Starbucks with sushi and sandwiches) to grab much-needed coffee and food.
We met up, then headed over to wherever his talk was -- it was probably a mile walk through buildings and so on. Fucking confusing campus, that. The first attendee to arrive other than us was Jim, Jay's fraternity house's cook for the past 19 years. Jim had never before been on MIT's campus, despite being a stalwart of an MIT-based organization, so he was really psyched to be there, especially at the culmination of the MIT career of someone (Jay) he's seen grow over the past 10 years. We shot the shit with him as Jay set up his presentation and I set up the refreshments table: mom-baked cookies, Oreos, Girl Scout cookies, and Starbucks. Other people filtered in, and what was hysterical was that half the room was filled with Jay's friends before his colleagues even got there! His buddy Andrew had driven up from NJ with his wife & their 2 kids (both under 2) just for the occasion. Whichever advisor introduced the talk (I can't keep them straight, not really having any need or occasion to) commented on how this was the most-populated thesis defense he'd ever seen, chalking it up to Jay's belonging to 2 very different lab groups. The talk went really well, and I understood things occasionally. The title is something like "Mathematical Methods in Modeling Complex Electrostatic Interactions Between Molecules and stuff". Lots of biology I'd forgotten, lots of math I'll never know, and so on. Highlights included the slide title "Obligatory Pretty Picture" and when he crossed over from actually writing out the matrices to just using blue rectangles of varying dimensions. After the talk, there was the usual Q&A, the private defense, then the closed-door deliberations. I'd failed to bring anything with me to do/read, which was foolish, as I could've taken the laptop along easily and gotten a few more minutes of Excel massaging in. Jay was sweating a bit after the private session, but Bruce came out a few minutes later and said "Congratulations, doctor." With that, my brother became Dr. Bardhan. I'll get there some day? We basically went from Jay's defense to another guy's, where I ran into a kid I recognized from Hopkins! He'd lived across the hall from Leah in '01-'02, and she'd known him from high school. It took us a few seconds to figure out the connection, but I was kind of shocked. Though it's been said that I know people everywhere, MIT just never strikes me as a place I'll have coincidental encounters. The other great one like that was summer after 2004, I ran into Witness playwright/my writing instructor Adam on the street by my brother's house. Anyhoo.
After Bambang's defense, we sat around the lab with Jay's labmates, drinking Scotch. When Bambang returned (also victorious), we had a champagne toast in the lab for the new PhD's, then headed over to Bukowski's for much-needed beer and grub. My brother and a few of his friends are regulars there, with club mugs. What a great role model he provides, eh? b0mberman showed up and hung out with us for a bit, which was much appreciated. We had a table of about 20 people and ended up with a $290 bill. Not bad work at all, especially given $4 burgers. The few of us who remained at the end went back to Jay's for more chilling, meeting up with Holland of Kite fame and a guy named Phil? and some other dude. This evolved into smoking cigars in the back parking lot of the house for hours. Quote of the night was "Hey, ladies, you've got tits? I've got ash." Class-ay. I called it a night around 12:30 for the second night in a row. We'd been partying at moderate levels since about 5, so I was just kind of done for, as was Dr. Jay. (Heehee, we can call him that now.)
The trip back on Thursday was nothing special except my EZPass wouldn't work when I got on the Masspike, and it gave me the "Call FastLane" signal instead of "Thank you", which was scary and confusing. I called FastLane, then EZPass, only to find out nothing was wrong other than that my tag hadn't been read when I entered. It was a pleasant surprise, but it took longer to resolve than it should've, and it just didn't make sense. Meh. When I got off 490 it was 6 PM, and I had clay class at 6:30, so I figured I should just keep driving and not even bother going home to drop anything off. My pottery's not going as well as I'd hoped it would be, mostly because I'm impatient, but also because I don't have the skills down yet. After class I went for drinks with glynis32, then LJed in a cranky mood.
I've been trying to rediscover some of my old music recently. Sunday I didn't really leave my room, but mostly spent time wasting time online and puttering about the room. I listened to some tapes, both mixes & shows, that I keep in a rad brown hard vinyl briefcase. Finally I popped in this 99-cent Salvo find that I'd thought was a mix, but turns out is more like an album that one guy wrote & recorded by himself, then dedicated it to a friend? It's kind of confusing, and obviously I don't know the history. When I next go on a scanning spree, I'll scan in the loose-leaf sheet that came with it. In a similar vein, I've had a bunch of lines in my head recently that'd be fun to base songs of off, but songwriting seems really difficult to me.
Also on the media front, I've started to really seriously consider a Netflix subscription. My list of movies to see is growing steadily, and maybe the time is right now. I tried the Blockbuster version when I first moved here, and it didn't work out so well, but maybe the $9.99, one at a time, setup would suit my needs now. Do people have thoughts on this?
Hot dogs. I've eaten a lot of them recently. More in the past week probably than in the 8 months prior, if not longer. Reckon them's summer food. Speaking of summer, my light sheets are on my bed and my softball glove was with them downstairs. Toot!
Soon (like, in the next week) I will buy myself a NEW COMPUTER. It will be amazing and distracting and loaded with memory and storage. For months I've been coming up with a list of things that it'll need ASAP: Praat, iTunes, and so forth. First order of business: install those. Second: move data over from old machines. Third: rip CDs like it's going out of style. My estimations of how much room I'll need for music have been on the conservative side but I expect shit to get out of control real fast. For this, I expect to obtain a 250-300GB HD that'll be external. My room has about 12 GB of magnetic storage in it right now. The new laptop will have 6-8 times that available when it arrives. Ohhh I cannot wait, but I should get work done first because the transition will take days upon days of my life.
This morning I headed down a slippery slope and donated $25 to the local NPR station. It's quite late, and I should be at the office by 10. Boo hiss. Also, my cooking/baking ambitions are getting out of control again. If you'd like to benefit from this (whether you're local or not), let me know. On the agenda: hush puppies, granola, scones, and onigiri (inspired by unrequitedthai).
Hey, current/former Rhode Island folk? I'm going to Providence in a few weeks. Suggestions on places to eat, neat things to check out? It'd be fun to meet up with you, painaporo or mkbscratch, but I don't know where we're staying yet, and my schedule could be unpredictable. Let me know if you're interested though in grabbing a bite to eat or somesuch.