Vegas, baby, Vegas!

last weekend I drove to Las Vegas and met Marla (one of my roommates from college) there, along with a couple of her friends (Clare and Monica). we stayed at the Luxor, which was pretty nice. Saturday night, we headed out to the Wynn. unfortunately, it took *one hour* to get there because there was so much traffic. in fact Las Vegas Blvd was more like a parking lot than a street. it sucked. but, we finally got there and it was so nice, we forgot about the drive. Clare and Monica wanted to go to the club Tryst, so we left them in the line for that and headed down to Parasol Down, which is a fancy little bar there. we had to wait a while to get seated on the patio, but it was worth it. the bar overlooks this lake and they have a "show" every 15 minutes. they're usually a little weird/absurd which was totally amusing, but the best one is when this giant frog comes up and sings a song. Marla had hoped we could hear it do Low Rider, but we got What a Wonderful World instead, which was still pretty great. after that, Marla and I walked over to the Venetian to check that out. I should mention that the last time I was in Vegas was sometime in high school. so it's been a while and much has changed since then. the Venetian was really cool, but as it was 2am a lot of things were closed.
Sunday we slept in and then hung out at the pool for a while. it was nice to be outside in the sun during the day with it not being ridiculously hot (like, today, for example when it hit 111 degrees. ick). later in the afternoon Marla and I went exploring to the Paris hotel and the Bellagio. both were very impressive, especially the famed water show at the latter. that night, the two of us had tickets for the Cirque du Soleil show, LOVE, which features music from the Beatles. Marla and I both love the Beatles and Marla is also a huge Cirque fan. I would say we both had pretty high expectations for the show, but it was even more amazing than I could have hoped for. I don't even know how to describe it, except to say that it amazing. you really have to see it.
after the show, Marla and I got some yummy gelato at the Venetian (good, but not as good as the gelato I had in Venice, of course) and met up with Clare and Monica where they were hanging out at Caesar's Palace. they had initially gone to Pure, but apparently it sucked, so they left early (like 1:30am). so they were stationed at some random lounge area (the Seahorse lounge, I believe), near some poker tables. they were most of the way through a pitcher of cocktails (just to mention how crap this lounge was is that they couldn't get individual drinks, only a pitcher) when Marla and I showed up. Marla and I were tired and planning on leaving soon, but we got into an interesting conversation about our random celebrity sightings and how they mostly sucked. I related the time Jonathan Taylor Thomas came to our high school dance and seeing Luke Perry in his car on my way to soccer practice once (this happens occasionally in LA). Monica, who was more celebrity-inclined than the rest of us, had tried many times to go to places in LA where there were supposed to be celebrities, but she never saw any there. anyway, shortly after this conversation, the bartender came over to our table and informed us that someone at the bar just announced that they were going to buy everyone there a drink. since we were planning on leaving soon (it was around 3am by this time and I had to drive us back to the hotel), Marla and I declined, but Clare and Monica got a drink. about five minutes later, Marla and Clare both looked over at the bar and remarked that there was a guy there that looked really familiar. kind of like...well, no, it couldn't be him. so we all looked over and sure enough, it was Vince Vaughn. he was there with a little posse of some friends. he was actually pretty tall and looked good. we purposely left him alone, but I think Clare managed to get a blurry picture. he stayed for almost an hour, until some skanky drunk girls showed up and made a big deal. one of the security guards came over, and his bodyguard escorted him somewhere else. as he left, he walked by our table and smiled at us. it was exciting.
after that, we stayed around talking, no longer tired, and met some more interesting people who were still awake. and made friends with one of the security guards who told us they were shooting a movie out in front of the hotel. it's some comic book thing, called Iron Man. they mostly had a bunch of extras around. we saw one actress, but none of us could remember who she was. eventually we got back to the hotel and collapsed. Monday was spent sleeping in, at the pool again, and then a long drive back for me. I'm still trying to catch up on the sleep. but it was a great trip. :)

I posted some pictures up on Picasa. click on the picture for the album:

Vegas!

anthony's graduation!

so, today, I woke up super early and drove 400 miles to surprise my brother, Anthony, for his graduation from college. he thought I was only coming for the party on Saturday, but I figured that I should come for the actual ceremony as well. I knew the day was going to go well because I was listening to NPR in the morning, the Diane Rehm show was talking about the book Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, which is my most favorite book. so that was nice. there wasn't too much traffic so I made pretty good time, and got here just minutes before my brother showed up. he was definitely surprised. the graduation itself was fairly boring (of course), but I'm glad I was there. :)

Anthony's Graduation

earlier in the week (and last weekend), I was puppy-sitting Steve and Keely's new puppy Bella and their dog Jasmine. it was a lot of work (that mostly involved cleaning up "accidents" and entertaining the hyper puppy) but Bella is so cute it didn't really matter.

Bella, the puppy

puppy!

I started my new research with my new advisor in the college of education this week. I have another office, this time on the other end of campus, complete with a door and an actual window! (for those keeping count, I officially have three offices right now, but starting in the fall, I am giving two of them up so I just have this one.) the work is really interesting and it's a good project to be working on. also, my new advisor is great. I've been working a lot, he expects a lot, but that's good; I will get a lot out of it.
this weekend I am puppy-sitting! steve and keely got a new puppy yesterday so jasmine would have someone to take care of, so I will be at their house for the next few days making sure little bella is doing well. she's sooo cute. just about all the astronomy people are going to a conference in hawaii so I'm really jealous, but at least I have a puppy to play with instead. :)

end of the semester

so, after taking my final this morning (for the easy stats class I was taking), I am officially done with the semester. I really can't believe I've been here for almost three years. that feels like a long time. and parts of it have dragged on, but some days it feels like I was just at UCSD last week. anyway, the semester being over means that the summer is here, which means it's going to be ridiculously hot again soon. like next weekend. yesterday was probably the last day it will be under 90 degrees until October. yuck.

as for my masters, it was officially when I turned in my thesis to get bound at the bookstore on thursday. they handed me my receipt, and said, this is your temporary diploma. hilarious. I swear, graduating is a form of extortion. I had to pay so much money just to get it. really annoying. but, yay, I finished! my phd program is starting basically now. I am meeting with my advisor on wednesday. it never stops.

passed my master's defense!

yay! so today was my master's thesis defense. and it went swimmingly. a bunch of people showed up and asked some good questions, and it was great. my committee talked for a couple minutes and then it was official. now all I have to do is make a few small changes to my actual thesis and then submit that next week. and then I'll have my M.S. in physics. woo hoo!
the phd stuff will continue in the fall, only in the college of education. it will be a good change and I'm really looking forward to it.

So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. died yesterday. He was my favorite author and a huge inspiration to me. Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five are probably two of the most interesting books I have ever read. His humanist perspective on life and sharp wit made him truly unique and unforgettable. He will be sorely missed.

"Listen: The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at the stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes'." (from Slaughterhouse-Five)

As Jon Stewart said about him, "He made my life bearable." I hope that everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

So it goes.

Al Gore LIVE

yesterday I went to see Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth presentation here at ASU. I saw the movie in the theater last summer and was definitely touched by it then. but that was not even close to the same impact that seeing him give the presentation in person was. most of it was the same, but he actually added quite a bit of new slides and data and had taken out some stuff as well. it seemed more focused and his passion about the subject translated much better in the huge auditorium than it had across the movie screen. I'm really glad we had the opportunity to see that. :)

oh, and thesis status: I am submitting it tomorrow (!) for format review (ridiculous) and my defense is scheduled for april 18th. let's hope all the paperwork gets through ok so I don't have to worry about it much longer.

Grand Canyon

so it's spring break. finally. I was doing work all the way up until when we left on Sunday. so here was the plan: me, Katie, Hwi, Angel, Michael, and Michael's brother who was visiting were going to drive up to Sedona on Sunday, have some lunch, then head over to Michael's boss's cabin near Flagstaff, then on Monday head up to the Grand Canyon for the day. there was also talk of going skiing instead, but the ski place was closed because it's ridiculously warm right now. (today, for instance, it is supposed to be 96 which is TWENTY degrees warmer than average. that is insane.) anyway, no skiing for us. we also talked about going to Meteor Crater, but we ran out of time so we're going to have to go some other day.

so we had lots of fun. some of the highlights were me kicking everyone's ass at ping pong at the cabin, playing rummikub, taking pictures of the stars with my newly restored old school SLR (I'm still waiting to see if those came out), the sweet potato fries in Sedona, 7000 bananas, and hiking along the rim of the Canyon.

I posted pictures in a bunch of places: flickr, picasa, and facebook so you are welcome to check them out at any of those places (the same ones are in all three though). here's a couple of my favorites:









since we've gotten back I've done a whole lot of nothing. it's been great. so far, I have watched the entire first season of Lost (I'm trying to catch up) and started a new book. Oh, I finished Special Topics in Calamity Physics last week. it was really great. one of the most interesting books I've read in a while (it's a novel and has nothing to do with physics, by the way). so you should all check that out.

I'm a statistical rock star!

so, coming to grad school (especially in physics) meant that I would be subjecting myself to hours upon hours of painful studying, reading, thinking, and a general unableness to partake in the normal activities that a typical mid-twenties person would be privy to. (not that I am unhappy about my decision, just the contrary: I love the challenge and I am getting a lot out of everything.) it meant that those good-old days in high school where I would show up to an exam, not having studied (or even remembered there was a test), and not only finish earlier than everyone else, but also get one of the highest scores. (geometry class comes to mind. and of course, physics class.) and I sort of miss that.
well, today I got a bit of the old feeling back when I left my intro to stats midterm super early and then it was amplified when I found out that I got 100% on it. woo hoo! I am smart again! lol. (I also got 100% on my take-home exam we had last week. yay!) but seriously, this class is really easy and I can't believe that I am getting graduate credit for it. and that some people are finding it really difficult. a bit scary, really.

oh, so last weekend I hung out with math nerds at a mathematics education research conference in sunny San Diego. it was really nice. I learned a lot. my half hour talk went really well and I will be really happy when the accompanying paper is finished (this will be next friday). and then it will be spring break!

coffee coffee coffee

so my lovely friends got me a coffee and espresso machine for my birthday. which is perfect timing because the next week is going to be crazy (maybe worse than this week) and I'm going to need lots of caffeine. like tonight. coffee. yay coffee. trying to work on my presentation for the conference. it's going well. especially now that I have my second wind. from the coffee.

I love engineering paper. you know, the greenish-tinted graph paper? oh it's so nice. makes me feel smarter than I am.

happy birthday to me...

...a celebration in two parts

so Friday night I invited a bunch of people out to go roller skating. at a rink. the sort of thing you'd do for a 10 year old's birthday. only, it was "cosmic skating" so we got free glow necklaces. we were basically the oldest ones there (except for a few others like us). it was pretty hilarious. most of us hadn't skated in a decade or more, so some had some issues staying vertical for a while. (also, some people ran over or into a few of the younger skaters. heh.) but by the end, everyone seemed to remember how to skate in a circle so it was great. afterwards, we headed back to my apartment for some drinks and pie.

enjoy the pictures:

my birthday 07

Saturday I basically slept all day because I was exhausted from the long week of school and the roller skating madness.

ditto on Sunday.

yesterday, Monday, was my actual birthday, so I went out to dinner with a few friends at Oregano's (this amazing pizza/Italian place). it was a really nice dinner and a good way to end my birthday. thanks everybody for a great weekend!

oh, and I'm on facebook now. thanks Cogan for the final inspirational push to be on another social site. I think I might get rid of myspace. I hate that thing.

poor polar bears

read today's article from the New York Times on the global warming report issued yesterday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

everybody has the right...

I had an interesting weekend. Friday night, I saw Pan's Labyrinth with a few friends. I liked it, but I thought Children of Men was better (see this post).
Saturday I mostly slept in and cleaned up the apartment. later that night, I went to see a student production of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins on campus. it was great! I had been wanting to see it for a long time (ever since I heard Into the Woods probably (one of his other musicals)). and it didn't disappoint. it's a dark comedy about the people who have tried to kill U.S. presidents. it was an interesting take on events, some of which greatly changed the landscape of our country. never underestimate truly crazy people. they can convince themselves of anything. but, as the opening number says, it's a free country - "everybody has a right to be happy...no one can be put in jail for their dreams." we'll see. a couple of the songs have been stuck in my head since I saw it and I doubt they will subside anytime soon.
we lost our opening soccer game on Sunday, but we fought hard and I think once our team becomes a bit more cohesive as the season progresses, we'll continue to improve. go Brilliant! FC!


in other news, the new Shins CD is good, I got a free poster, and it's raining (even though it was a blissful 74 yesterday).

RENT OBC!

omg. I found the best thing ever online yesterday. someone has posted a video (of arguable quality) of a performance of the original broadway cast of RENT. this is something that I just figured I would never get to see. ever. (and no, even though the movie has six of the eight original cast members it's totally not the same thing.) so even though the video isn't great, it is still amazing to me.

(oh, and I'm going to go see it in a couple weeks! the weekend after my birthday. hooray!)

new look, new stuff

ok, so you might have noticed that I have changed the template. with the move to the new version of blogger, I have been able to update and move things around easier. you will notice that I have also updated my travelogue (which is almost finished, all but the last few days are done). another thing I have added is a widget with a feed from my google reader account of things that I think are cool. so check that out. any comments on the new look?

so a new semester has also started. I'm only taking one class, so hopefully I will be able to focus on finishing up my thesis and making some progress with my writing.

it's raining and our first soccer game of the season has been canceled. I am sad because there's no soccer (especially since last night, Jody and I rented the movie Goal! and it got us all pumped for today) but I also really like rain, so it's hard to be too upset. c'est la vie.

half-marathon!

so this past Sunday I ran the PF Chang's Rock 'n' Roll Arizona Half Marathon. yep, that's 13.1 miles. I had done one before, about four and a half years ago, but that was so long ago I had kind of forgotten how long that really is. but here's the good news: it went really well! with one caveat: I pulled a muscle around mile 6. so that made the rest of the race a bit slower and more painful than it should have been. when I finished, I felt really good (except for my leg) and not hating life (as I had during and after the previous one).
my mom, step-dad, and uncle also ran the race (and I found out later that my friend Todd ran it also) so that was kind of nice. I ran the first two miles with my uncle because I luckily ran into him before the race started. the rest of the race I was on my own, with my lovely little iPod shuffle to provide some inspiration [at one point, Ok Go came on just as I needed a bit of a boost and the image of that hilarious treadmill routine really helped]. towards the end, Jody, Hwi, Katie, Angel, and Michael were waiting for me to cheer me on to the end. :) it was great to see them and give me a final push for a strong finish.



afterwards, everyone came back to my apartment for some lunch. later, some of us headed over to Jody's and spent the rest of the day in the hot tub and watched some movies. I spent most of yesterday on the couch being really sore. today it is much better and I think I'll be able to play soccer on Thursday. so that's great! thanks everyone for your encouragement!

children of men

on Saturday Jody and I went to see the new movie "Children of Men", directed by Alfonso Cuaron. first of all, it was amazing. second of all, it was hard to watch. but not necessarily in a bad way. the movie was so intense, engrossing, and realistic that you really believed what was happening. however, this futuristic society that is imagined in the film is extremely disturbing and violent. one of the most disturbing things is that if the world was faced with this premise, that we could no longer conceive children, it would most certainly descend into some kind of chaotic world, where hope no longer seems possible.
the cinematography was absolutely amazing. there were two long shots in particular that were chilling. the lack of editing on these sequences makes you feel uncomfortable, which adds to the drama of what's happening on screen.
it was an excellent film. you should go see it (unless, of course, you're one of those people who prefer only happy fuzzy warm movies. this is not for you.)

oh, and that cover of "ruby tuesday" fits perfectly. well done on the soundtrack.

happy new year!

wow 2007 is here already. that is totally crazy. the years are just whizzing by. and we still don't have rocket packs or those cars from the Jetsons (best cartoon ever). and I guess Ray Bradbury was a bit off too since we're nowhere near being on Mars.

so yeah. I guess I'm not making any resolutions this year. I'm still working on the ones from last year and those were good, so I don't see any reason on changing them. my immediate concern is really with getting ready for the half-marathon which is in a week and a half (the 14th). I procrastinate waaayy too much and it's creeping up on me. so we'll see what happens. I am confident that I can finish it, I just don't know how painful or difficult it is going to be to do it. I think I will be able to feel good if it's easier than it was last time (both in terms of during the race and recovering afterward), which was about four and a half years ago.

the perfect christmas gift

oh, if only I had received this for Christmas instead... (hehe)

btw, I'm back in Phoenix and already back to work. *sigh* lots to do. big big meeting on the 10th that we need to prepare for. also, training for the half-marathon which is in two weeks (yikes!). oh, and I need to work on my thesis. right.

nerdy math crafts

hehe. wow this is super nerdy. I love it. I want to knit a hyperbolic plane!