June 2003 Archives

what's a girl gotta do to catch up on some sleep? here's a list of what doesn't work:

• going to austin two weekends in a row (though seeing friends and doing a triathlon were immensely worthwhile)
• going to new york and boston in a whirlwind (though seeing lots of baseball was awesome)
• having low-level, non-motivation-inspiring tasks to do at work
• hosting a friend on his quick trip through town (though i love having friends sleeping on my couch)
• having two family members come to town (though it is always great to see family)
• trying to give my brother a good tour and being foiled by security guards with bad attitudes
• trying to buy a sailboat only to find that the seller is yanking our chains
• running a 5k in the heat with no water after two weeks without exercise (and realizing i'm going to die in the peachtree on friday)
• going to atlanta two days after they leave (though the peachtree will, well, an experience, and seeing friends should be relaxing)
• finding the perfect place to move, but realizing it will probably already be rented by the time we need it

it sounds like an old friend might be in town (atlanta) this weekend while i'm there, and i hope i get to see them. it's funny how friendships can pivot on a single brief period in time. next thing you know the relationship has changed, and you don't know how to go back, so you don't really try, and next thing you know you've lost touch and only know how a person is doing through heresay.

i'm just so tired. and i think i want to run away to new zealand. or somewhere else semi-exotic. and open up a little store and just live there.

anyway, i am really disenchanted with houston lately and am having trouble figuring out what to do about it. could you tell?

i got a rash of phone calls last night while on my way to get mom and david from the airport. at the end of it all, i had picked them up, given nick a phone number to put a nasa reference on his pizza hut employment application, and gotten a role in james and chrissy's wedding. hurrah!

i hate politics.

i found the perfect townhouse for debbie and nick and me, for rent. 4 bedrooms, 2200 square feet, hardwood floors, right across the street from my current apartment (good location)... but it's probably still to early. dang.

"I read all the blogs too. I read yours, Carter's and Christina's. I am a blog-aholic!! I can't stop reading the blogs!!! AHHH!!!
-Rae"

ahaha. they are addictive, aren't they? here's a new discovery, brought to my attention by carter: aaron's baseball blog. you won't find it interesting if you aren't really into baseball, but if you are, then you'll enjoy it.

anyway. becca is back, and by combining her with yesterday afternoon's conversions with cari and carter, i have now sufficiently expressed my distraughtness (or distrustness, if you spell distraught like becca does) over the ending of harry potter. i am still all concerned, to be sure, but at least i have been able to share it.

i got the "aida" soundtrack in the mail yesterday. i looked for it at best buy and wherehouse on sunday, with no luck, so i finally just ordered it from amazon on sunday. and it came on wednesday. talk about speedy delivery! i'm impressed, considering the photo chemicals i ordered last week with 3-day ups delivery are going to take until june 30. silly ups.

last night i vacuumed. and straightened. and did everything any good child would do when their mother is coming to visit, and you don't want her to know that you still use the "pile" method of organizing and the "only when it's visibly dirty" method of cleaning.

anyway. i'm tired.

my mom was telling me last night about a family friend who just graduated from wake forest and is moving to lake tahoe to begin his first job--writing sports for the lake tahoe newspaper. his mother is worried about him being so far away. i asked mom if he liked hiking, skiing, swimming, boating, mountain biking, and camping. "yes," mom said.

i laughed. "tell his mom that he'll love it there," i said. "he'll never come back."

i'm firmly convinced that there are people who, having once lived in california, will never really dream about living anywhere else. i'm convinced of this because, of course, it happened to me. i can't make it through a day without thinking of my year there, without trying to see the hills and the bay instead of some flat texas field.

it's been on my mind even more in recent days; last week marked one year since i left california. last night after another frustrating volleyball match (on a side note, i hate that i get so frustrated, it only makes me play even worse) i was on my way home when i suddenly u-turned and headed into nassau bay and went for a walk along the lake at sunset. god, i can't wait until becca and i buy this sailboat (which we should be doing next week). i walked along the water and listened to the waves and in the distance i could almost see hills.

it turns out that i have quite an active imagination when i need it.

it broke some part of my heart to leave california, and yet i could leave houston tomorrow and not feel a thing.

sigh.

so i think i'm looking pretty cute today, if i may say so myself. i have on a new skirt made out of dark blue jean material, but lighter-weight than jeans. and sandals, and a white tank top and light blue shirt. and my hair is actually manageable, and not poofing into its usual afro. woohoo.

i also finished the latest harry potter last night and am all sorts of distraught over the ending. it's common knowledge that a "major character" dies in the end (it's been all over the news), and i don't want to give anything more away to those of you who haven't read it yet, but oh! out of all the different characters in the entire 5-book story, there are only 3 that i'm extremely attached to...and one of them dies! i am so upset! rowling could have killed off just about any other character other than my favorite three and i would have been totally fine with it. but she killed off one of my favorites! oh i am so distraught. i have to admit that i sort of suspected it was coming, but i held out hope until the end that someone else would die. anybody else. just not my three. oh, oh. there better be a good reason why this one died, because i was about to cry.

(yes, i know it's just a book. but remember what i said about my imagination. it goes into overdrive when i really like a character. i had felt like i knew the darn person, and now they're dead. wah.)

edgar: "this diary i've heard so much about...is it by invitation only? can i read it?"
sarah: "sure, but you have to stand on your head and drink a cup of grape juice upside down while singing 'la marseillaise.'"
edgar: "what the hell is 'la marseillaise?'"

ah. the ol' diary's audience grows by leaps and bounds. who'd a thunk it? i guess i should let slip a teaser that the page will be changing in the near future. to what? oooooh, you'll just have to wait and see, won't you?

sigh. i am just not in the mood for work this week. i can't explain it. the fuzziness is still lingering, and affecting my mood. i have too many ideas spinning through my brain at the moment. maybe the solution is to take action on a few of them, but i don't know.

rich and i have started looking at possible trips to chicago that would allow us to see the cubs, white sox, and (with a short drive) brewers play at home. it's something we've been talking about ever since the beginning of the season. he has a friend in chicago, i have a friend in chicago. it could work. anyway, we seem to be thinking about it more seriously now, so maybe it will actually happen.

debbie: "i read that carter just recently broke down and bought an antenna for his tv! bingo and no cable is going to being the cool crowd of the next generation!"
sarah: "you read carter's blog? this craze is spreading. and yes, i told carter he was insane too [for the antenna thing]."
debbie: "you got something better for me to do?"
sarah: "hmm. no."

do you ever have those days where you just can't clear your head? when things seem to be happening in a fog, and time sort of slows down? this weekend, with the exception of the activity-filled friday night, was like that. i couldn't clear the fog, and the lingering effect (a dull throbbing headache) is still here this morning. my boss is out sick, which makes me want to go home as well. but i don't think a headache really counts as being sick.

in any case, i was thinking back on what i did this weekend, and realized that when i'm foggy and off-kilter, i do a lot of the same things in an attempt to clear the haze. call it "sarah's fuzzhead routine," if you will. it goes something like this:

• i wake up late, roll lethargically out of bed, walk to the refrigerator and immediately down a coke. (drinking the coke is done while sitting, or sometimes half-sitting-half-laying on the floor, as sitting on the couch would likely lead to immediately falling back asleep, which only worsens the fuzziness. past experience dictates this.)
• while i wait in vain for the caffeine to take effect, i scan the tv channels until i find a baseball game. (fortunately, the braves were on tbs yesterday, but if they hadn't been, any other team would have worked as well. obviously this diversionary tactic only works during baseball season. otherwise i scan the tv for either home decorating shows a la trading spaces or sitcom reruns.)
• after an hour or so of this, i will myself to get up off the floor and invent an errand or two to force myself to leave the apartment, as moving around usually helps. (on saturday, i decided i needed pampering and got a pedicure; on sunday, i somehow desperately needed printer paper, a plant, and a new cd, resulting in trips to office max, lowe's, and best buy.)
• if successful in dragging myself out of the apartment, my first stop is usually starbucks or a similar establishment. (this weekend = two days = two grande mocha coconut frappachinos.)
• i often consider driving much farther than necessary to do an errand, just because feeling foggy makes me feel like driving aimlessly. (i felt like driving to the beach to see the ocean. but it was saturday, and sunday, and i didn't want to deal with beach traffic. driving aimlessly is good, but being stuck in traffic has exactly the opposite effect.)
• when i get back home, i either 1) read or 2) clean. i don't know why it's one of these two options, but it always is. (this weekend i mostly read, thanks to getting the new harry potter book, but i did also do a little cleaning since my mom and brother are coming to visit this week.)
• i don't eat much, unless someone inspires me to go out for food. (saturday night after seeing "the italian job," becca and i went to jason's deli. but then yesterday i forgot to eat anything until like 9:30. well, except the coke and frappachino.)
• despite my best efforts, the weekend usually ends with some unforseen frustration. (last night, in our last game of the season, my soccer team was on the losing end of the worst soccer game i have ever been involved in. we were short 1 player, then 2, and by the second half we were no longer even attempting to play. it was absolutely pathetic.)
• i fall into bed tired, but unable to sleep. (last night i tossed and turned, and tossed and turned, finally falling asleep sometime around 1 a.m.)

anyway. monday is here, and off to a slow start. today i'm hoping for some quality email, and...yeah. blatant hint aimed at someone who doesn't even read this page. at least i don't think they do.

sarah: "i'm pretty anti-social these days."
carter: "you say that, but every time i call you you're never home. you're in new york watching a no-hitter, or doing a triathlon, or at a matchbox twenty concert."
sarah: "hmm. yeah."

i managed to cram an impressive amount of activity into about 8 hours last night. becca came over at 7 and we headed up to the compaq center for the matchbox twenty concert. we arrived in the middle of sugar ray's opening set. they were entertaining enough, but the real fun was when matchbox twenty took the stage. they were awesome. i wasn't all into him before, but after watching rob thomas perform last night i have a newfound appreciation for rock stars. whoa. he was great, the band was great, the songs were great, la la la. i think my favorites last night were "so sad so lonely" and "bright lights"...though a quiet two-person performance of "if you're gone" was pretty amazing as well.

i wanna be a rock and roll star.

after the concert, i'm embarassed to admit that becca and i went to barnes and noble to see if we could buy a copy of the new harry potter book. we arrived to find a huge crowd, and were quickly informed that if we hadn't preordered, they were sold out. hmm. at this point, despite my embarassment, i had talked myself into really wanting the book last night, and of course becca (the consummate adult harry potter fan) did as well. so we decided to hit the 24-hour walmart up the road, where we hopped in line at 11:45 and left half an hour later with our copies. hurrah.

from there we stopped by the bowling alley to say hi to a large group of people, and somehow ended up taking chris and jim home. on the way back, they all began to pointedly comment on how hungry they were, so we ended up at waffle house (where else??) at 1:30 in the morning. after coffee and hashbrowns and eggs and waffles, i finally got home to read a couple chapters of harry potter and finally fall into bed around 3:30.

i was awoken at 10:30 by a phone call, but for once i didn't mind being woken up. i felt pretty rested, considering. this afternoon i had a pedicure and now my toenails are bee-you-tee-full.

ah. this is my life. craziness interspersed with calm.

i feel restless. i'm having second thoughts about a few things. i'm not really a fan of either of these feelings.

carter wrote this morning about a coworker who has an engineering degree, worked on pda software for a while and is now moving to boston to go back to school to become a dentist. "wow. i don't know how people turn their live upside down like that," carter wonders. "wow. i wish i had the guts to do something like that," i wonder.

this morning i'm reacquainted with the feeling of having muddled thoughts to express, but not really feeling up to the challenge of publishing them for "the world."

i dunno. it's good that it's almost the weekend.

(10:24 a.m.)

"Writing is first of all a way of being in the world, a functioning nub of relatedness."
--Hayden Carruth

"Man is made by the places in which he lives...."
--Graham Greene

it's nice to wake up to find someone else in my apartment, even if it does throw off my whole morning routine.

i'm not feeling very wordy today, so voila. bask in the wit of others:

sarah: i'm tired.
debbie: me too, the WB sucked me in last night.
sarah: the WB?? what the heck was on?
debbie: I always get sucked into the sitcoms. They're addicting!
sarah: which sitcom?
debbie: well, it starts w/ Seinfeld (which I don't really like, but I always watch anyways), then Will and Grace, then Everybody loves Raymond, then Seinfeld again, then Spin City.
sarah: ah, despite the fact that the station's all fuzzy cause you have no cable.
debbie: actually, the WB is luckily one of the better ones. Not nearly as clear as the Holy Bible channels though, although they've got higher powers helping them out!

and:

After reading every word, I want to know why your camera is in Illinois, like your mantra, think your car key has a very deep cut in it so it fatigues quickly, like your friends (at least, sounds like they're pretty cool), wonder when you'll turn your stories into movies, and think you cry at plays like your Mom.

A very big fan,
Dad

went to my 5th ballgame in 7 days last night. decided that minute maid park, though more comfortable, is no fenway. got a no-hitter commemorative poster. put it up on my wall here at work. and the astros got back in the win column. yeah!

we now resume the book that my diary has become with an account of the last day and a half of the great baseball road trip. (for the sake of debbie and her boredom, and not for jason and his short attention span.)

saturday (6/14): chowda, beer, and baseball
highlight: free beer, what else?
amusing moment: the one-foot-balancing contest on the t

i awoke to what quickly became the dominant activity in the brief periods of time we were actually at matt's house and not out wandering boston--the boys crowded around the tv playing halo. what is it with boys and their video games? sheesh. anyway, we got our act together and drove over to the t stop to catch the train down to fanueil hall for some lunch. i had a sandwich and clam chowder. mmm, new england clam chowder. good stuff.

afterward, betsy and i did a little window shopping while the boys headed off to a bar. i was quite tempted to buy a lobster hat (antennae and claws and everything, how absurdly cool), but restrained myself with my new mantra: "must not buy more crap."

from fanueil hall we headed a few stops farther on the t to jamaican plain, the home of the boston brewing company (maker of the many varieties of sam adams beer). we got there in time for the 2:00 tour, and though the place was packed with people, we all still had a great time. the tour guide was a young guy, probably 27 or 28, with a faded red sox cap, and he did a great job. he even noticed our astros hats and asked if we'd come up for the game; after the tour, we had a brief conversation about baseball. thus i have ranked him as the second greatest tour guide ever. in fact, he came very close to being the greatest tour guide ever, but in the end he failed to top the guy at the tower of london; but that guy was awesome, so being ranked 2nd is still like winning, really. ;)

anyway, the best part of the tour of course was at the end, when we all filed into a room and took our seats at long tables to be given a small sam adams souvenir glass. we got to taste their lager, summer ale, and october fest, all for free just like any other brewery tour, since it's illegal for a brewery to sell directly to the customer. good times.

we hopped back on the t to find that matt and jason were either 1) crazy or 2) slighty happy from the beer, because they quickly created a contest to toss m&ms into each other's mouths from farther and farther apart. when that bored them, they decided to see who could balance on one foot for the longest while the t shook and banged down the tracks. (jason won. and the other passengers on the train were amused.)

we got off at the prudential center and walked like 10 miles through a mall ("must not buy more crap!") to get to legal sea foods for dinner, where i had salmon. geez. i love the food in boston. i know houston is on the water and all, and we have better sea food here than in, say, kansas...but nothing compared to new england. yum. dinner took a little too long though, and we had to really hurry the mile and a half or so from the prudential center to fenway for the evening ball game. we got there as the bottom of the 1st was just beginning, and were excited to see that the astros were already ahead 1-0.

betsy and i sat in two seats about halfway between third base and the green monster. they were pretty good--maybe 15-20 rows back, so the field felt really close. the only bad part is that fenway is such an old and small park that the seats are really close together, and divided into boxes. this wouldn't have been annoying if vendors had come through the stands selling beer in addition to hot dogs, pretzels, cokes, water, ice cream, etc. but no beer vendors came down the aisles! and since betsy and i were on the end of a row, we were constantly having to get up to let the college frat boys farther down the row get out to get their alcohol. ah well. minor distraction.

we ended up talking some to an older guy sitting next to us, and discussing the huge differences between an old park like fenway and a new park like minute maid. we agreed that fenway had a much more "traditional baseball" feel to it, and he gave us some good-natured ribbing later in the game when the red sox took the lead (and went on to win by a score of 8-4). overall though, i found that the fans in both new york and boston were actually pretty cool. we didn't get harassed or anything. i guess they save the hatred for each other. :)

after the game it was off to the bars again, and finally back to matt's.

(12:22 p.m.)

sunday (6/15): home sweet home
highlight: the gorgeous boston weather
amusing moment: navigating the red sox nation with a suitcase

we all slept in on sunday, to the tune of 11:00 for me. i finally woke up to the delicious smell of pancakes made by matt (at least i think they were made by matt, but then again, i was still sleeping). mmm. we lounged around for a while before heading out to the ballpark. edgar, chris, and betsy were going to another game while ron and i were flying home.

the weather in boston on sunday was absolutely fantastic, and i wished i'd decided to stay one more day (i didn't want to have to take monday off, ah me). it even turned out to be a good game, going 14 innings before the astros unfortunately lost, giving the red sox a sweep of the series. but alas, ron and i had a plane to catch, so we dragged our stuff through the mobs of fans heading to the stadium to the kenmore square t stop, and went to the airport. we knew we'd get to the airport too early, but we didn't really have enough time to go anywhere else. ah well. we sat in the food court for a while and both burned our mouths on a final bowl of clam chowder.

our plane was jam-packed and left an hour late, but other than that, the flight was uneventful. i just read the whole time. ron gave me a ride from intercontinental back to ellington instead of me taking the puddle-jumper, and i was home by 9:30 or so.

it was a good trip. :)

also, chris has just posted all the pictures (yes, all 218 of them, what can i say, i like to take pictures, and with my camera in illinois for repairs, i basically took control of chris's) from the trip. here they are, if you're interested.

nick: "so i just went online to read about your trip, but i don't have the three hours i'd need to read it."

sorry people with short attention spans, but i'm only through the first two days. there are still two and a half more days to cover! but first, a random story about how sometimes the most absurd things happen to me.

so i go to the grocery store last night, do all my shopping, walk out to the car, put all my groceries in the trunk, close the trunk, and go to open the driver's door. i look down and notice that my car key is bent. as i bring it closer to my face for further inspection, the key breaks in half. hmm. well, crap. i have no way to unlock my car door or start the engine, and half my groceries are thawing in the trunk. i call debbie. no answer. i call jason. no answer. i think about who else lives close to me, and finally call ron, who is about to sit down to dinner. sigh.

but ron and buzz were nice enough to hop in the car, drive to kroger, pick me up, drive me to my apartment complex (which is less than a mile away--i would have just walked if not for the thawing groceries) so i could get the spare car key, and drive me back to kroger so i could get into the car and drive home. crazy.

the strangest thing is that this has happened to me before! my key broke once while i was down at carter's house, resulting in a trip all the way up to tech and back in order to get into my car. obviously this particular nissan key design sucks, as it's broken in the same place (the thinnest spot) both times.

anyway.

friday (6/13): drive to boston, first visit to fenway, and blueberry beer
highlight(s): experiencing a rain delay; getting a bullpen ball;
talking to octavio dotel; trading witty remarks with a cool person
amusing moment: debating whether to drive through rhode island or not

we woke up to a lovely morning in new york, with cool weather thanks to the previous night's torrential rain. alas, it was time to leave. after a stop at starbucks and some choose-your-bagel place, we loaded all our stuff into the white minivan we rented for the drive to boston. chris and his chair took the back seat, jeremy and betsy settled into the middle, edgar drove, and i was the navigator. (for the record, i would like to just point out that no matter what the other four may say, i am an excellent navigator.)

it took us two freaking hours to get out of new york. not knowing the "back" ways meant that we were forced to simply go with what looked easiest, which meant driving up 8th avenue past central park and into harlem, crossing over into the bronx, and taking the cross-bronx expressway to eventually reach i-95. traffic was stop-and-go practically the whole way, even once we got onto 95. by the time we reached new haven, connecticut, it was time for a choice. betsy and i voted to stay on i-95 and come into boston from the south, if for no other reason than we wanted to say we'd been in rhode island. the boys, on the other hand, voted to take the 91-84-mass pike through hartford and into boston from the west. somehow the boys decided that their 3 votes outweighed our 2 (despite my argument that betsy and i should each count as 2 votes), and so i can't add rhode island to my list of states. i suppose i'm not missing much.

we reached boston and got back on 95 around the city and got to chris's friend matt's house (our "hotel" for the weekend, in the suburb of wakefield) around 5. in rapid succession, we dropped off our bags, picked up ron from the t-stop (he flew in just for the boston part of the trip), dropped ron's things off, and headed into the city. chris and i had tickets to the evening game, while the others were just going to hang out in the city. we successfully reached the stadium and met up with chris's friends rebecca, luis, and costa...but there was a problem. rain.

not hard rain, just constant drizzle. mist. nothing big, but enough to delay the game. it was cold, and wet, but it somehow turned out to be fun anyway. i've never been in a rain delay since the stadium here in houston has a roof, so it somehow felt appropriate to experience one. we sat in right field on the first row behind the astros bullpen, and drank beer, and laughed, and imagined what our intro song would be if we were coming up to bat. (happy birthday was luis's choice, "just to confuse people.")

after almost an hour, the grounds crew finally came out and started pulling up the tarp. there were cheers all around; we were going to see a ballgame! we watched the pitchers warmup in the bullpen, which was 4 feet away from our seats (more on that in a minute), and the game finally started around 8:30. the rain never stopped, in fact, it wasn't raining any less at 8:30 than it had been at 7:00. ah well. the minor delay just meant i got to spend more time at fenway, which was a really cool park. it felt so small inside--i don't know how they fit almost 35,000 people in there without a big upper deck like all the other parks in the league. the green monster was as imposing as i'd imagined (i wanted to go up to the top to take a peek out, but they wouldn't let you up there without a ticket), but seemed to shrink a little later in the game when morgan ensberg slammed a ball over it. ;)

the astros lost, but the didn't diminish the coolest part of being at the park on friday night, which was sitting by the bullpen. chris and i both got baseballs from the bullpen coach after talking to him and telling him we'd come from houston for the game (mine was the ball ricky stone was warming up with before he went in the game in the 4th inning). later, octavio dotel (an astros relief pitcher and one of the 6 that combined for the no-no on wednesday) apparently got bored sitting on the bench, because he came over and stood in the bullpen where we could see and talk to him. we congratulated him on his 4 strikeout inning and the no-hitter, and got him to sign our baseballs. later, chris even got him to take the ball over to billy wagner (the astros closer) for another autograph. i, on the other hand, am apparently not as cute or convincing as chris with his gimp advantage, as octavio wouldn't do the same thing for me later. of course, that could have been because wagner was about to warm up.

watching wagner (and his 100-mph fastball) warm up in the bullpen from 4 feet away was awesome. but then he made me angry. the astros didn't score in the top of the 9th and the game ended, and wagner came back to the bench to collect his things. he looked at the kid next to me, pointed at him, signed his ball, and then without so much as a glance at me or my baseball or anyone else, walked away. grr. billy, you dolt.

ah well. we left the game, met up with the others, and headed across the street to boston beer works, where they had blueberry beer. it actually had blueberries floating in it. i know, i know, it sounds really weird, but it was good. we had a grand old time there until the bar closed, at which point luis was nice enough to give us all a ride back to matt's in his tiny car. betsy and i squeezed into the front seat, and we're all probably lucky that i wasn't more in the way of the stick shift or luis wouldn't have been able to drive at all.

home again home again jiggity jog. i am back from the great baseball road trip, and it was great.

wednesday: arrival and evening game in new york
highlight: the NO-HITTER (duh)
amusing moment(s): betsy unwittingly becoming a pigeon pooping target;
getting the "insider's tour" of yankee stadium's smelly dumpsters

we arrived at laguardia around 12:30 and quickly found jeremy at the baggage claim (he'd flown in on a different flight that arrived at the same time). we caught a cab to our hotel, which was conveniently located at 8th avenue and 51st street--walking distance from central park, times square, all the broadway shows, etc. (and we paid only $25 each per night, what a steal!) edgar and betsy, who had flown up to the city on monday, returned to the room about 15 minutes after we'd arrived and we all headed out to get a late lunch, since we were starved. we ate at belly delly deli, this neat place where they sell their food by the pound. you just load up a container with whatever you want, they weigh it, and you pay. it was good, though to be truthful, anything would have tasted good after having gotten up at 5 a.m. and not eaten till 2:00. ;)

after lunch we took a quick spin around the area so that jeremy and chris (who'd never been to new york) could see times square, 5th avenue and central park. by 4:30, we were ready to catch the subway to the bronx for our first of 4 straight days of baseball! we soon discovered that the subway is horribly inaccessible to people in wheelchairs, so we had to come up with a makeshift solution we called "operation chris." it mainly involved edgar and jeremy carrying him up and down multiple sets of stairs. on one occasion, we were met with only a turnstile gate, at which point "operation chris" became even more imaginative with betsy carrying chris through, us taking the wheels off his chair, edgar carrying the chair through, and jeremy and i each carrying a wheel. (later that night after the baseball game, we added yet another tactic to the operation when one of the wheels on the chair locked up completely, resulting in aborted dinner plans, a cab ride back to midtown from greenwich village, a late-night search of the howard johnson for some sort of wrench, and a trip to the hardware store the next morning.)

we climbed out of the 161st street subway and were met with the sight of yankee stadium rising above us. cool! as much as i hate the yankees, i have to admit that it was awesome to be in a place that has seen so much baseball history. if it were any place other than yankee stadium, i'd probably say it was a dump (narrow aisles, dingy concrete, etc)...but wow, i mean... the house that ruth built. mickey mantle, joe dimaggio, roger maris, yogi berra. it's yankee stadium. cool.

we met chris's friend sarah and headed into the park. we first stopped by monument park out in center field to see the monuments to all the yankee greats, and to things like two visits from the pope and to the new york firefighters and policemen of september 11. a stadium usher took us to an elevator that would take us (and chris) down to monument park while avoiding the stairs, but when we arrived, the elevator was broken. hmm. instead, the usher escorted us down a back ramp that went directly through the massive dumpsters that store all of yankee stadium's trash. this was highly amusing, and we immediately dubbed it our "insider's tour of yankee trash." phew. it smelled.

from monument park we took a return trip through the dumpsters and finally headed to our seats. we were on the first row out in right field, within shouting distance of raul mondesi and richard hidalgo (the right fielders for the yankees and astros). the game started but looked like it might go downhill fast when roy oswalt left the game with a strained groin after throwing only 2 pitches in the second inning. yikes. little did we know we were about to see history.

pete munro came on to pitch and did well, loading the bases at one point but not giving up any runs. runs, you see, was what we were concentrating on at this point. when a team has already managed to load the bases (as the yankees had done), you don't really think about whether any of the runners actually got a hit. it just doesn't cross your mind. there were people in the stadium, edgar and jeff kent (astros second baseman) included, that didn't even realize they'd seen a no-hitter until the game was over! it was just that kind of thing--with so many pitchers, and with walks and a hit batter that made it far from perfect, a no-hitter seemed crazy.

kirk saarloos came on next, and did a fantastic job shutting down the yankees lineup in the 4th anf 5th. at this point, i was still only looking forward to an astros win that had seemed improbable with oswalt leaving so early. it wasn't until brad lidge came on in the 6th that i happened to glance at the scoreboard and saw the big "0" in the yankees hit column. "whoa," i thought to myself, "they're no-hitting the yankees through 5-and-some innings." but i didn't say anything out loud. no jinxing it!!

lidge came back in the 7th, and i started getting nervous. some guy a few rows behind me was calling people on his cell phone and telling them he was watching a no-hitter through 6.1...then 6.2...then 7 innings, and i was silently praying for the guy to shut up about it. doesn't he know it's better not to mention it?!? i mean, i'm not really a superstitious person, but geez man! ;)

when octavio dotel came on in the 8th, the butterflies in my stomach were really getting going. he struck out the first batter, and then struck out alfonso soriano...but it was a wild pitch and soriano made it to first base! eeps! i was about to die. i could just picture jeter and giambi coming up and knocking soriano in with a bloop hit, or a walk, or some bomb home run, or pretty much anything else. but dotel struck them both out!! amazing!! four strikeouts in one inning, three of them against the best three hitters in the yankees lineup! the astros were through 8 innings with no hits, with billy wagner and his 100-mph fastball still waiting in the bullpen!!

i was going crazy inside and had trouble sitting still as the astros scored 2 more runs in the top of the 9th to make it 8-0. when billy wagner ran in from the bullpen to pitch the 9th, i almost jumped for joy. i was pretty sure the astros had it made...but at the same time, i'd seen wagner blow one too many saves to be completely comfortable. but he struck out two and got hideki matsui to ground to first base. when jeff bagwell fielded the ball and touched first base, i jumped out of my seat cheering. NO-HITTER! NO-HITTER! NO-HITTER!

we were all going crazy out in right field as the astros ran out onto the field to congratulate wagner for closing it out. i called the biggest baseball fan i know and woke him up to tell him i'd just seen a no-hitter. "by who?" he asked. "by six different guys!" i said. crazy. i had a smile on my face for the rest of the night, and whenever i stopped to think, i'd end up saying to no one in particular "we just saw a no-hitter." i never in a million years expected to see a no-hitter. it may not have been perfect, it may not have even been pretty, but it was history. it was one of the coolest things i've ever seen.

(3:52 p.m.)

thursday: ground zero, yankee stadium take 2, and the great white way
highlight: front row seats for the evening show of "aida"
amusing moment(s): fording the 49th street river in the pouring rain

the day dawned cloudy and humid. though i'd checked the weather beforehand, new york turned out to be much warmer than weather.com had told me it would be. we hopped on the subway and went down to the world trade center site. i'd seen most of the big new york attractions before, and visiting the wtc site was the one thing on my list besides baseball. (when our cab from the airport crossed into manhattan, i pointed out the chrysler and empire state buildings to chris and jeremy, and it felt weird to not see the towers, as i had during my first two trips to new york. i hadn't expected that. but it felt weird. new york somehow felt smaller.) we got off the subway to see, well, nothing more than a big hole in the ground. if a person were simply plunked down on the street with no prior knowledge of history, they'd only see a busy, bustling construction zone. there is hardly a sign of the flowers, posters, flags, etc that covered the site for a while afterward.

it's only when you start to look closer that you see the remnants of september 11. a building directly across the street from the site is covered in semi-transparent black netting, and through that you can see that the building's facade is damaged, and there's no glass in any of the windows. the city has put up a heavy-duty chain link fence that runs the length of the block on two sides of the site, so that people can see what's happening inside. on a pedestal near the fence is a large cross fashioned out of twisted steel beams. there are a few display boards explaining the history and construction of the towers, and boards listing the names of the people who lost their lives.

but there are also signs of rebuilding. down at the bottom of the hole are shiny new subway tracks, and most of the surrounding buildings showed no sign of damage, having been repaired by now i guess.

it was sobering. it was interesting. i suppose there is something inherent in human nature that makes us want to visit the scene of infamous events, whether to pay respects or simply to enforce the reality of what happened. i'm glad we paid a visit.

from there were headed all the way back up to the bronx for an afternoon game. the astros weren't so lucky on thursday, and ended up losing the game by one run, 6-5. as a consolation, chris and i did have great seats, directly right behind home plate about 20 rows back.

after the game edgar and betsy headed off to visit some of his family in queens, and chris, jeremy and i headed to times square in search of tickets to any broadway show. about halfway down 42nd street (we were coming from grand central station), chris wheelchair locked up again, which resulted in a pit stop on the sidewalk with lots of stares from bored new yorkers. ah well. we fixed the wheel with the wrench we had smartly bought that morning, and were soon on our way.

the tkts booth was an absolute madhouse. "urinetown" (yes, urinetown) was jeremy and chris's choice of musical, but it was sold out (thank god), so we got to go see my choice, which was "aida," the elton john/tim rice tragic romance that was actually in houston last week. i'd wanted to see it here but didn't get a chance, and as it turned out, seeing it in new york was infinitely better. we paid $25 for two handicap seats somewhere down front and $45 for a seat up in the mezzanine. i sat up in the mezzanine first, with the intention of switching places with jeremy halfway through the show. the musical started off slow, but by the end of intermission i was completely engrossed in the story.

when i found the boys during intermission, they mentioned that there was an empty seat next to them! hurrah. so the three of us headed back down to their seats, at which point i discovered that chris had received crazy mad gimp hookups and the $25 handicap seats, though all the way on the left side of the theater, were on the front row. amazing. i could actually see each and every facial expression; in fact, we were actually so close that we could see the enormous amounts of makeup each singer was wearing, which was almost comical.

the second half was wonderful, and i almost cried at the end. i tend to do that in tragic romances. ;) but it was really great. one interesting factoid is that the main male character (ramades) in the current broadway cast of "aida" is the guy that originated the role of roger in "rent." even if i hadn't read it in the program ahead of time, i'd have known it from the moment he started singing. every time he opened his mouth i could almost hear "one song...glory..." in the back of my head. sort of neat, to see someone whose voice i know doing a different role. and in the end, jeremy and chris ended up really liking the musical. score one for sarah.

we came out of the theater to discover that rain had starting falling, no, pouring from the sky. hmm. we went through our options. subway? no, the connections from where we were to where we needed to be were annoying, not to mention the subway stations didn't have elevators. cab? we tried for 10 minutes, but no luck. finally jeremy bought an umbrella from a guy on the corner, i rolled up my pants legs, and off we went.

we were quite a sight, chris holding his umbrella, me pushing chris, jeremy following right behind me holding his newly purchased umbrella over both himself and me. all was going reasonably well (we were wet, but not soaked) until we reached 49th street, a mere two short blocks from the hotel. 49th street was a freaking river, with water up to the curb on both sides and about 3 inches deep all the way across the street. my poor tennis shoes stood no chance. they were soaked as soon as i stepped into the street, and only got worse when i had to step into an enormous puddle to pull chris onto the curb (the ramp was invisible under the water) before he got swept away to who-knows-where. the other side of manhattan, probably. ;) i have never been so glad that i'd brought two pairs of shoes, as my gray sneakers were damp for the rest of the trip.

i'm tired.

so i go to new york tomorrow! i've been so busy lately with work and going to austin two weekends in a row that i'd sort of forgotten about the "great baseball road trip" until now. anyway, edgar and betsy are already up there, and jeremy, chris and i fly out tomorrow morning. we'll see the astros play the yankees tomorrow night and thursday afternoon, and see some new york sights. on friday we've rented a van to drive up to boston. ron's meeting us there and we'll see the astros play the red sox on friday and saturday evenings. i fly back to houston on sunday afternoon.

should be a fun trip, i hope.

cari sent me the triathlon pictures that were on her camera, and i'll post them later today or tonight.

last night i just laid around at home, tired and sore. i don't have much food, but i don't want to go to the store since i'm leaving town for five days. as a result, i had a really weird dinner last night and will probably repeat it tonight. that's a nice thing about living by myself--no one can see the weird things i do when i'm alone. :)

(9:45 p.m.)

as i was driving home from volleyball tonight (we won a game! we're now 1 and 62!) i happened to look up to see the space station floating past. on any given night, i can look up and watch the space station cross the sky. and there are two men up there! pretty amazing.

i just finished throwing together a short webpage about my triathlon. you can read the whole story here. can you tell i'm just a tad excited about the whole experience? ;)

i doubt i'll be able to update until i get back to work on monday. till then...

when i walked outside my apartment this morning, the air smelled like spoiled milk. weird.

anyway. in other news, i am now officially a triathlete!! woohoo! the race yesterday went great, and i am so excited that i did it. i finished in 1:56:56, under two hours(!), number 1214 out of 2374. i'm especially proud of my performance in the swim, where i totally kicked butt, finishing in 18:40 to rank 439th out of all 2374 women. if you're interested, my complete time breakdown (swim, transition 1, bike, transition 2, and run) is here. as you can see from my run time, my legs were pretty much dead after the bike. ;)

so we all got up really early yesterday morning to head to the race site. the traffic was bad, and i was afraid we would miss the start, but we got to the starting area about 5 minutes before the gun, and as it turned out, we had to wait for a while for our wave anyway. with the exception of the "elite" women who were placed in the first group, everyone else was organized by age, from oldest to youngest. this meant that cari and i were way back in waves 20 and 21 (out of 24 total), and with 5 minutes between wave starts, we ended up sitting around for a while. here's what we looked like before starting:

the oh-so-stylin' swim caps were to distinguish between waves, and also to make everyone more visible in the water. everyone had to wear one. note that we even got our numbers written on our arms and legs--how hip and cool are we?!?

anyway, cari started, and then 5 minutes later i started, as you can see in the picture below. i've heard that some people get freaked out in the swim, especially if they've never been in open water with a lot of other people. becca was volunteering as a "swim angel" and can confirm this (her job was to be in the water with a foam noodle and help/encourage/swim with anyone having trouble).

i didn't freak out, as i've swum in lakes and in pools with lots of other people before, but i was surprised to see how surreal the whole swim portion seemed. i mean, picture this: you're in this lake, the water is really cloudy and you can't see more than a couple feet in front of you, you can't see the bottom, you have no idea how deep the water is. what you can see is just this ugly shade of green fading to black, and an occasional arm or leg or bubbles from someone kicking in front of you. and you're often getting bumped or kicked or elbowed by the other swimmers, and the current is pushing you off course. so it was pretty weird, but not scary. i just kept swimming. i'd been planning to do mostly freestyle interspersed with some breakstroke resting breaks, but i quickly found that it was easier to steer clear of other people and stay on course if i just swam breaststoke, so i did that almost the whole way.

so i got to the end of the 0.5 mile swim and got out of the water and we all had to go up a hill into the transition area. i sat down on my towel, put on my shoes, then shorts and shirt, grabbed my helmet and sunglasses and headed out on the bike course. even though i'd driven the course last weekend with leila and alex, the hills felt much steeper than i'd imagined, made worse by the fact that the gears on my bike somehow got knocked out of alignment (probably from being on the back of cari's truck the whole way from houston to austin), and i couldn't used my 6 or 7 lowest gears, first because using the lowest gear on the back while on the middle cog in the front made the chain fall off (this happened twice before i resigned myself to just not using that gear), and second because the front derailleur wouldn't knock the chain up to the biggest cog (lowest gear). grr!! as a result, i had to get off the bike and walk up the last portion of the two biggest hills. if my stupid gears had worked, i probably could have finished 3 or 4 minutes faster, but c'est la vie.

anyway, the uphills sucked but the downhills were awesome. i got going as fast as 30.9 miles per hour at one point! cool. anyway, i finished the 12-mile bike ride and went back into the transition area. i spotted chris watching from the fence at the end of the bike course, and then becca was standing on the other side of the fence near my bike rack, so we chatted briefly as i racked my bike and took off my helmet, and then i headed out on the run course. my legs were completely jelly after going up and down all the hills on the bike course, and so i walked almost the whole first mile. but as i walked i started to feel a bit better, and by the third mile i was jogging most of the way except for a big hill at about mile 2.5. but finally we came around a bend and i could see the finish line about 3 tenths of a mile ahead. i jogged down the road through a long tunnel of people cheering, and saw becca cheering for me, and even was able to put on a burst of speed at the end to overtake a couple people. it was so cool to run past all these cheering people! and then i was done! chris was right at the finish line taking pictures, but i was so elated to be done that i totally didn't see him at all. oops. :) here's me crossing the finish line (the clock time is from the start of the first wave, that's why it says 3:14 even though i finished in under 2 hours and cari finished in 2:12:20):

and here's cari:

and here's cari and me after the race with our finisher's medals:

so that is the story of the triathlon! i'm so pumped that i did it, and i definitely want to do it again next year. there are some more pictures of us going through the transition area, but cari hasn't downloaded them off her camera yet, so i'll post them when she does.

woohoo!

well, i'm off to austin again this weekend to do the danskin triathlon tomorrow morning. half mile swim, 12 mile bike, 5k run. wish me luck!!

in may, i thought summer was starting, and felt like it was getting hot outside.

how could i have been so wrong??

may was nothing. may was only putting forth a half-hearted effort. may was merely lukewarm.

june, on the other hand, is trying to kill me. i walked outside this morning at 9:30 to go get debbie from her physical therapy appointment and was almost crushed by the humidity. it's like a freaking sauna. i'm not sure, but i think my head almost spontaneously combusted. i made it to my car and it's ice-cold air conditioning just in time.

why did anyone ever think this was a good place to live anyway? geez.

(3:40 p.m.)

after nine months of waiting, sometimes patiently, sometimes not, i finally have a new, 21-inch, flat screen monitor here at work. wahoo!!

i came to three conclusions yesterday.

you know how you feel when you accomplish something great, or make some discovery, or just have something really fantastic happen, and you're alone but you're just so excited that you have to call someone right that minute to share the feeling or else you'll burst? yeah? well, i think there is no feeling in the world quite as good as being the person that receives that phone call.

(that's the first thing.onward.)

last night as i was straightening up, i was also watching espn's "outside the lines," since it comes on right after sportscenter and all. during the 10-15 minute segment about the sammy sosa/corked bat issue, i came to the following two conclusions (neither of which has anything to do with sammy himself):

1) rick reilly is an idiot. carter's been saying this for years, and last night i finally realized exactly why it was bad enough to make him to cancel his sports illustrated subscription (reilly writes the last-page column in every issue). he was on the show to discuss sammy sosa, and instead just sat there for five minutes talking about how boring baseball is and how it's so slow and how no one wants to play it or watch it anymore. he annoyed me.

plus, he looks a lot older and uglier in person than he does in his presumably airbrushed magazine headshot. heh.

2) jose canseco is also an idiot. he was on the show a little later, also to discuss the corking issue, and when the host asked him the lead-off question of basically "does sammy's story hold water," canseco went on a tirade about how the media and baseball powers-that-be are conspiring against minority players, and that if it were a "protected" white player like cal ripken jr. or mark mcgwire, no one would make a big deal out of a corked bat. he said the coverage of sammy's corked bat was an attack on minorities, and then followed by saying he had tons of evidence about how minorities are discriminated against in baseball, and how the bad actions of white players are overlooked. and yet he refused to give any specifics, simply saying that it would all be explained in his forthcoming book.

first of all, i disagree that minorities are treated differently than white guys, as many of the best players currently in the game are minorities--sosa, griffey, guerrero, soriano, pedro, bonds, sheffield, pujols, ichiro, etc. not to mention that there has been plenty of controversy surrounding white guys, even mcgwire and the whole andro debate. no one is out to get sammy. fact is, there was cork in his bat! now, i agree that it could have been an honest mistake, but fact remains that there was cork. it's not some vast conspiracy.

second of all, jose, making sweeping claims without evidence to back them up, and saying "it will all become clear when i publish my book," just makes you look dumb.

i hate it when people go off half-cocked. he wouldn't even let the host get in a word edgewise. he just went on a rant on national tv. great.

anyway.

people who have online diaries or so-called daily pages but never update them in a timely manner frustrate me. yes, this is a pointed comment. ;)

the sky attempted to make up for two months without rain by dumping a virtual niagara falls on us this morning right during rush hour. thunder and lightning too. when i left my apartment to get debbie and take her to physical therapy, it wasn't raining. in the time it took her to gather her things, it started to pour, and didn't stop even while i sat in the car for 10 minutes in the parking lot waiting for a break. finally i just sucked it up and walked in through the downpour. i'm now soaked from my knees down. lovely.

but i guess it's about time for a storm. my power even flickered off for a moment this morning as i was getting ready. in any case, it's definitely summer. yesterday it felt like a furnace outside, and today a huge thunderstorm. definitely houston.

anyway. last night i didn't feel very good but wanted to get in a last big workout before the triathlon on sunday. since exercise usually makes me feel better, i decided to try what's called a "brick" workout. that means you do two different things, like swimming and biking, one right after the other. so last night i came home, rode my bike over to the lap pool, and got underway. i swam half a mile, then immediately jumped out of the pool, threw on clothes and shoes, and headed out on a bike ride. i was only planning on riding a little way, just to get the feeling of it, but i started to feel good so i ended up going a full 12 miles, coming home, jumping off the bike and immediately jogging a half mile around my apartment complex. so the whole workout--everything but the last 2.5 miles of the jogging portion of the triathlon--took me about an hour and 25 minutes. not bad. i think i'll finish the triathlon right around the two hour mark.

the swimming and biking felt normal. swimming uses mostly arms, and biking is all legs, so the two are fairly exclusive in terms of how much and/or what part of my body they exhaust. but going from biking to jogging was rough. my legs felt like lead during the half mile i jogged last night. there's no way i'll be able to run the triathlon's 5k portion at the pace i usually run a 5k, because i think i'll have to take a few brief walking breaks. maybe a minute to a minute and a half slower per mile than i would otherwise do. but still.

so i'm pretty excited about the whole thing. i think i'll do pretty dang well for a slightly out-of-shape first-timer.

i've tried to post like 5 times today and i keep getting distracted by important things like, i dunno, work. ha.

so i didn't win a fabulous vacation. a bit disappointing, but i've been consoling myself by saying that i really didn't have time for another vacation anyway, since i already have so much planned for the summer. that works, sort of. but really, who doesn't have time for another vacation?!? anyway. the cop picture won. i guess now that person can pay their speeding ticket. jerk. ;)

i'm tired. i've been tired for like three weeks now. i don't understand. maybe i'm dying.

every time i don't feel hot, i like to say that i'm dying. i don't know why, because i don't really think i have a death wish or anything. it just amuses me to say it.

anyway, i'm tired.

ah. back in town, with a lot to write about. i guess i'll just go in chronological order.

thursday: work was sucky, but gavin my hero volunteered to finish up the last couple hours of mapping work on friday, allowing me to leave town for austin on thursday night after our softball game. and speaking of our softball game, i had the most spectacular catch ever!! so spectacular, in fact, that i just have to brag about it. so spectacular, in fact, that i heard the sportscenter theme song in my head. so spectacular, in fact, that when i chose to go ahead and bat in the next inning even thought i could have just taken a walk (because the guy ahead of me walked...weird coed softball rules), the ump said "you better bat, after that catch!! did you even have your eyes open??" well of course i did! instead of describing it myself, i'll just post this excerpt from betsy's weekly game recap email:

The defense was so good, that one single web gem can't be picked out, so this week we have a freaking Web Jewelry Store: Katie played a great 1st base all night...Brian must have magnets sewn into his glove...

The most spectacular of all goes to Sarah "Willie Mays" Graybeal. Her catch in left center field of a hard hit lined shot was nothing less then a thing of beauty. As I watched the ball fly, I thought it was going to be at least a double in the gap. Then, out of nowhere comes Sarah in full stride, arm stretched as far as it would stretch, and snags the bullet out of mid air. She looked like Andruw Jones ranging around Turner Field out there! Way to go, Sarah!!

it was awesome. i have never been so excited about my own play in a softball game as i was on thursday. anyway, after the game i headed home, grabbed my bag, and drove up to austin, arriving at leila and brian's house a little after 10:30.

well, it's lunchtime, so the weekend update will have to wait till this afternoon.

(12:37 p.m.)

we continue.

friday: i slept in until i heard alex get into the shower, at which point i got up, walked into the living room, and was accosted by mackenzie the mutt dog. leila and brian have had her for a couple months now, and she's very well behaved except she likes to lick toes. a lot. that, and she goes absolutely beserk when she sees a squirrel out the back window. but she's a cute dog.

anyway, brian had to work on friday but leila, alex and i headed out in leila's new car (a fancy schmancy audi a4) to grab some lunch, check out the course for the triathlon i'm doing this weekend, and tour the capital. we watched both the house and senate conduct their business for a while and discovered that my digital camera is broken (a fact which does not please me one bit, but it's under warranty thank goodness). when brian got off work we had dinner at an italian place and came home to watch a so-bad-it's-funny movie called dark star.

saturday: we all got up and hung out for a few hours, making sure not to eat anything in order to be ready for a late lunch at the salt lick, an all-you-can-eat bbq place outside of austin. ohhhhh, it was so good. we ate, then came home and laid around groaning happily for the rest of the afternoon. that night, we went to a minor league baseball game! the round rock express play just north of austin, and are the triple-a team for the astros. it had been years since i'd been to a minor league game, and it was quite fun. at one point, the mascot stole the glove from the other team's third baseman and threw it into the stands, forcing the third baseman to call for another glove from the dugout. later, another mascot that was basically a big inflated baseball rolled right over one of the other team's coaches. it was really funny, but also makes me conclude that getting picked on must just be part of being a minor league baseball player. yet another reason they're all trying to get to the majors. ;) one other funny moment was when the mascot and the home place umpire broke out in a coordinated dance. hilarious.

sunday: yesterday was a relaxed day of lunch at the best hamburger joint in austin and driving around town with a stop at the university of texas to see if we could climb the clock tower. no luck, as apparently it's closed on sunday. ah well. i left austin a little after 3 and was back in my apartment by 6:30...just enough time to change clothes and head to my soccer game.

my soccer team continues to amuse me by acting like a soap opera. half the team is still composed of immature just-out-of-high-school girls who constantly complain about the $25 cost of t-shirts and ref fees. there is still one girl who shows up every game but acts like she hates to play and refuses to play the positions that she's best at and that help the team most. and just to make the situation more absurd, one girl who can't be more than 19 or 20 annouced yesterday that she can't play anymore because she's 3 months pregnant. by a guy she hates. and she doesn't want the baby, but doesn't believe in abortion or adoption.

good lord.

anyway. today i'm really tired and really sore. and that, dear readers, is the story of my weekend.

(2:57 p.m.)

so christina has this friend who runs ultramarathons and hiked the appalachian trail. she linked to his webpage today and i decided to check it out. amazing.

meeting people from all over who have done all sorts of wild and amazing things is perhaps what i miss most about grad school.