fanlain insisted that I have to do this.


1. Go to www.flickr.com
2. Type in your answer to each question in the "search" box
3. Choose one picture from the first page of results
4. Insert the image for the answer

( answers )

For extra credit, guess the answers without clicking on the picture links.

I found a package today on my doorstep. A little surprised, I went to try to figure out what and from whom it was. Inside, there were two model cars from the Franklin Mint. I checked the packing list, and there was no name listed other than mine. But it did show that the cars weren't cheap—about $150 each! Now, we'd gotten anonymous gift packages before, but this one made no sense: first, who would spend $300 dollars on such a surprise, and second, why model cars? I've never shown a particular interest in them or anything.

I discussed this more with fanlain when she got home. She pointed out that these were likely for me, because one of the cars was a model from 1977, so someone knew my birthday. But on the other hand, they must not know me very well, since otherwise they would have picked something more appropriate. We considered it coming from fanlain's family, but they would never spend that much money on me (fanlain and I both get $5 for our birthdays from them.)

Seeing as the "Bill To" address on the packing slip was myself, I decided to check my credit card statement. Lo and behold, there was a charge from the Franklin Mint for $300. This made even less sense. I certainly didn't remember ordering these cars, and though last week was tough and confusing, I seriously doubt I would have ordered model cars by mistake. I thought that maybe someone had stolen my card number, but then why use it to ship cars to me?

Finally, a dim recollection had entered my mind... my sister had asked to borrow my credit card number because she wanted to buy something for a friend but the site would only accept a US shipping address. She asked this the same day as fanlain's sister went into the ICU, so I didn't really pay attention or remember what she wanted to order, but the cars sounded plausible. I checked my email, and indeed, that was what she had done. I gave her a call and we both had a good laugh at my lack of memory. Mystery solved.

After a month-long absence, fanlain is finally home! I drove over to Bloomington airport to pick her up from her much-delayed flight. (In retrospect, it would in fact have been faster for her to take the shuttle from Chicago, but I didn't think that through when buying her tickets.) Then it was home for a reunion with Soba, who was excited to see her, and who still remembers her name, though "go to fanlain" doesn't work as well as it used to.

We celebrated by going out to Yellowfin Restaurant — a new Japanese place in town. One of their distinction is the presentation of their fancy rolls, so I decided to order the Champaign roll, which was baked spicy snapper around crab and cucumber. The roll was disappointing because it turns out they bake the whole thing, so you get something that tastes very little like sushi (rather than, say unagi, which is baked separately before being added to the roll). Plus the supposedly spicy sauce was more sweet than spicy. But everything else we had was quite good, so I think I might try going again sometime (when our budget allows) and try something more conventional.

It started snowing this morning and has been steadily increasing throughout the day. Driving back home after my final this afternoon was slow going, and driving home after a dinner party tonight was a veritable challenge. I literally could not see more than about 20 feet in front of me. Good thing it was only about 3 miles.

The dinner party was held by my colleague who works in the office next door. He's Indian, so we had a number of yummy dishes, including a very nice coriander lentil sauce. Now our stomachs are happy and we can enjoy a quiet evening at home for the rest of the night — perfect for a snowstorm.

I was planning to go grade exams tomorrow morning, but given the snow, I think I'm going to stay home. We're still planning to go to Chicago tomorrow afternoon to celebrate our 8th anniversary of dating at Japonais and then pick up my mother from O'Hare. But by that time the snow should have been cleared. I'm really glad she's not flying in tonight!

We've been spending our down time watching some movies. This weekend we saw Water and Murder on a Sunday Morning. The first movie documents the life of widows in India around 1930's, when they were sent to a convent after their husbands died, often very young and without having even met their husband, to lead a life of self-denial; to make matters worse, the convents supported themselves through prostitution. The second was a documentary about a teenage black kid who was arrested for a crime due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time, was beaten into signing a confession, and was put on trial without any physical evidence (or even any investigation thereof). Both the movies were interesting, but kind of depressing; even though "Water" was set 70 years ago, apparently this practice still continues to this day, and "Murder on a Sunday Morning" happened less than a decade ago.

I've been kind of in the mood for something more light and fluffy, like comedies or action flicks. Unfortunately, everything I can find in those genres seems like complete crap. My latest failed attempt was Firewall. From the preview it looked like a fun action movie with a silly premise. But the movie itself was so terrible, I seriously thought about turning it off in the middle. I can't tell whether the movie makers have simply gotten lazier, or whether my tolerance for bad writing, wooden acting, and cheesy plots has gone down with years, but I do yearn for the days when I could enjoy spending two hours watching something that's not at all serious. In hopes that it's not all just me, I'm asking you, my dear readers, for suggestions. Seen anything lately that has been shallow but fun to watch?

I felt better by the time fanlain woke up (or rather, by the time I delivered her Sobalarm clock upstairs), in part because I got a few things done, like totaling up our expenses for the last month (October was expensive, it turns out) and making some small progress to getting more of my group to use subversion. We went out for lunch at Paradiso with some CS profs, who go there most weekend, and then took Soba to the puppy park. She was good and happy but exhibited slightly aggressive tendencies a couple of times. It was sad to see; it wasn't out of line with what other dogs do, but she had been so sweet and happy up until now. But, as the training books told us, dogs are in fact dogs.

After the park we crashed out for a few hours, then went out to a Mediterranean restaurant where I had some manti. I had thought that it was just what I wanted, but turns out what I wanted was the manti we had had in a small place near Ephesus, and not the second-rate substitute we go here. Afterwards we watched "Pieces of April." I hadn't realized that cancer had a central theme in that movie, but it wasn't so bad. I liked it a bit better than Hedges' new movie "Dan in Real Life," though fanlain disagreed. Anyway, made for a pleasant evening.

My mother and sister are both on a big supplement kick and talked about preparing my body for tolerating chemo. I tried to look up some studies and found a few useful ones (Selenium, Magnesium, and Vitamin E), but there also seems to be debate about whether antioxidants help your body or interfere with chemo. More research is needed.

I managed to spill coffee on my laptop on Monday. I think this is the first time I had a serious spill since half a bottle of wine got poured into my Vaio in 2001. The Vaio recovered after a few days' hangover and some cleaning. The MacBook Pro wasn't quite so lucky. The good news is that the spill only affected the keyboard and it's relatively simple to fix. The bad news is that it's going to take the store here 3-5 business days to do it. I'm really hoping that they fix it by Monday before I head out on another conference trip.

Living without a computer at home has been really weird. I've been able to devote more time to things like laundry, stretching, reading, and video games. It's refreshing, but after a few days I felt too antsy and finally broke down and borrowed fanlain's laptop last night to catch up on three days of livejournal. I can't wait to get my own laptop back, but perhaps once I do, I'll make more of an effort to put it away into the office and use it only for an hour or two at night.

I've decided to succumb to a marketing impulse and create a brand for my research group. I decided to call it "HatSwitch," because we do research into both intrusion detection and privacy enhancing technologies, and we often use the same tools, just switching hats. Any brand, of course, deserves a logo as well, so fanlain and I spent some time this weekend working on one. Here are three versions:



Poll #1029847 Hat switch
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Which logo do you like?

We both have different favorites, but we're not going to say what they are to avoid influencing your votes!

I watched the Google Tech Talk given by Merlin Mann of 43 folders on "Inbox Zero". Inspired by the talk, I finally cleaned out my inbox. Actually, it was a bit easier because I've tried a couple of times this month to clear out everything that came in July, so there were only 30 or so messages to deal with, but this time I officially created a DMZ tag and moved everything prior to July there (1165 messages, including 162 unread — thank god for gmail's new "select all" feature). I almost didn't make it because I fell down the trap of starting to do something an email message reminded me off, but caught myself in the middle when I realized it was going to take at least half an hour and made myself a note to finish it later instead.

It's really weird to see Google tell me "No new mail!", since I don't remember seeing that message in a long time. But it makes it a lot easier to remind myself to actually deal with email rather than leaving it in my mailbox, since it's much more manageable to deal with 1-5 messages than to look at a huge big inbox. It also makes email checking a less rewarding distraction, since when I get no new mail (it happens sometimes!), I see an empty inbox, rather than 1100 messages that I could be doing something about. I've done this once before, though, and it devolved back to a full inbox, so I'll report back in a couple of weeks how it's going this time.

fanlain and I almost had to answer that philosophical question last night; we were starting to lose hope when it turned past 6 p.m. and no guests had arrived. But finally the two people who RSVP'ed held true to their word and arrived bearing ice cream and wine. We had a nice evening, mostly focused around Soba in both conversation and activities. They really liked the chicken (between brining and using the rotisserie, it ended up being super-moist!) and were surprised to learn that I, and not fanlain, had made it.

I guess the other side effect of holding a party, whether anyone comes or not, is that we got to clean the house. Our kitchen is finally uncluttered (though some of the clutter moved to the office) and the floors are cleaner than they have been in months. The hard part about cleaning our house is that Soba relentlessly tries to attack the mop, broom, or vacuum, and will throw a huge tantrum if we lock her in her crate or outside while we clean. We're seriously considering throwing technology at the problem and getting the Scooba, not as much to save us the work (though that's certainly a welcome bonus), but to be able to run it while we take Soba to the dog park or the farmer's market.

I've been really enjoying how trips to the farmer's market have become our Saturday morning routine. Soba gets to enjoy a nice long walk and lots of attention, and we get to enjoy some tasty treats from Mirabelle's and some fresh stuff from the market. Our trip Saturday was prolonged by delayed baguettes: apparently, Mirabelle's had a power outage in the morning and were behind schedule. They kept promising that the baguettes would come first at 11, then at 11:30, and they finally put two baguettes (still hot!) into my hands just before noon. But we got sit outside, have a leisurly lunch, and talk with an ECE prof and his family, and even say hello to our dean (who didn't remember who I was). I guess that's one of the advantages of living in a small town.

Only three days late! I spent yesterday fixing a leak on the faucet, which involved trying to shop for a replacement part, failing, then putting the original part back together and stopping the leak. But then I discovered that the instant hot water dispenser used a 1/4" pipe and I had a 3/8" fitting, and it took all of today, including 4 trips to 2 hardware stores, to get a fitting that would let me convert things. (Well, not all of today — I also went to the gym, did some work, saw a doctor, had dinner at a new Japanese restaurant, and watched "Sicko"...) But it's finally working and I'm off to enjoy instant hot tea.

Well, as I predicted, the sink ended up eating up way too much time. I finally got it mounted, after a trip to the hardware store to pick up a jigsaw (which included a 10 minute wait while they tried to find it for me!). I wasn't smart enough to move all of our kitchen stuffs out of the way while enlarging the sink opening, so everything got covered in sawdust, but it was only a minor setback. I was able to get half of the sink working, plus the dishwasher, so we can have our kitchen back. The garbage disposal and our new instant hot water dispenser will have to wait until another day.

We made a todo list for the weekend and have made remarkable progress on it. I think usually we're over-optimistic and end up less than halfway through our list by the time our weekend is over, but perhaps we've started to learn. Our list for yesterday:

• Farmer's market with Soba
• Give Soba flea & tick meds
• Lunch at J's
• Install sink (N) (halfway done)
• Put together filing cabinet (N)
• Put together IKEA desk
• Buy salmon
• Buy letter files & Soba food (L)
• Plank-grill Salmon (L)
• Water front lawn (N)
• Make travel plans for August
• File (L) (halfway done)

Our list for today was less ambitious, with lots of time allocated for work on my proposal. Unfortunately, the unfinished sink installation is likely to eat up a good chunk of that time, but it will be nice to have running water in the kitchen again. Plus I managed to sneak in an hour of work yesterday, so that's progress.

We spent the day walking around San Francisco, from Bernal Heights to Crissy Field, with a stop for brunch in the Castro. Watched a game of wink (and took over 300 photos!), walked back to Van Ness, and took the bus back to Bernal Heights, with entertainment provided by cute kids, using the bus as monkey bars and showing us their sand dollars. Finished off the evening with a dinner at Firefly, a repeat anniversary spot but a favorite. As the Turtles say, happy together.

During the semester I kept to a pretty good schedule, waking up around 6 most mornings, sleeping in until perhaps 7:30 when I was really tired. And it was nice, especially on weekends, because you could have a lazy morning, slowly going through the motions of making coffee, feeding Soba, catching up on LJ, and showering, and once you're done all that it's still only 9 or 10.

For the summer, my initial thought was to go to a later schedule, not having classes or other things to wake up for. But then again, it should be even easier to wake up at 6 in the summer, since it's light out by then, and since we don't have a social life to speak of, why wake up any later and miss the sunshine? So my plan was to stick with the earlier schedule... but the best laid summer plans always go awry, and between spending a week on the west coast and getting sick, I'm now very time-shifted. We're finally ready to get out of the house and get stuff done, and it's 1pm already! Ugh.

When we got back from Texas in late March, the weather was so lovely that we decided that we should get a BBQ and start grilling in our backyard. The project quickly acquired scope creep, as I started shopping around more grills, searched all over town for the elusive Weber model that seemed likely, and finally decided we should go for natural gas. This, of course, required running a gas line to the outside, which precipitated a string of calling contractors and never getting called back. Well, Thursday I finally got a hold of someone who was actually willing to talk to me and come and install the line, and Sunday we dropped by the new ACE and they just happened to have exactly the model we were looking for.

So I spent last night putting together the grill, and today the gas guy came and drilled lots of holes and put a fitting outside. Finally, everything was set... just in time for the first rain of the month. I didn't give up hope, and there was a clearing just as I was heading home, so I decided to be ambitious and picked up a couple of grass-fed steaks. It started pouring as I got home and I tried to convince fanlain that it was still worthwhile to grill, but I got soaked just taking Soba for a quick potty run. She thought I looked funny with my hooded raincoat, looking like a griller from South Park.

Fortunately, the radar showed a promising lack of clouds to the west of us, so I stalled for another 30 minutes and the rain passed. (That's one thing I like about midwest weather: don't feel like getting wet? just wait 20 minutes.) I fired up the grill and cooked the steaks in record time; actually, I ended up overcooking them, but the middle was quite tasty. I also had some asparagus fresh from the farmer's market with my dinner, fried with olive oil and garlic. A yummy way to finish off the day. And yet another small step in the transition to suburbia...

We're pretty much finished our gardening redesign for this year. We got more plants to fill out the flower bed and some more veggies and herbs to put in the garden bed. We ended up re-buying the bee balms that we had ripped out from the old garden bed, but they were getting unruly, and at least we know they will grow well in that area. I also discovered that not only do they attract hummingbirds, but they're also a relative of bergamot, so I can make home-made Earl Grey tea!

It's hard to believe that less than 3 weeks ago, both the flower bed and the veggie garden were a mass of overgrown weeds! Our next task is maintenance of the rest of the landscaping, including weeding, mulching, watering, and maybe pruning. As a first step, I ended up pulling out the two trees (!) that grew at the corner of our house. It's amazing; I think they weren't there when we moved in and now they had deep roots and were over 7 feet tall. I'm not sure what kind they were — perhaps oak? — but they sure are fast-growing.

I took Soba for a jog today. It actually worked better than I thought. She's normally not that great about walking on lead and pulls a lot, mostly because we haven't spent very much time walking her since we got the electronic fence. But things are a lot easier when you're moving quickly "at her speed." She gets distracted by things (puppy? distracted? quelle surprise!), but usually a quick pull on the leash gets her back on track. There were only 3 or 4 times when she got really excited by something or just got tired of following and would stop and hold her ground. But it wouldn't last long, since after a while of looking at me, she'd realize "I don't actually want to be just sitting here — I want to run!" and we'd be back at it. Anyway, the stops were good for me since I'm not in great shape for jogging. And she's good and tired now — mission accomplished!

This weekend's project was turning our weed garden into a vegetable garden. After a day and a half of back-breaking labour, we seem to be done. Yesterday we started the day¹ by going shopping at a nursery, where we bought some flowers, veggies, and herbs. The flowers are going to go into our landscaping in front of the living room, but turns out that there was no way we could have time to plant them. We also picked up some fencing at Lowe's to put around the garden; it's labeled as decorative, but I have some hope that it will keep bunnies away from our garden. We spent the rest of the afternoon digging up the weeds and the grass that had taken over our garden plots.

This morning I woke up around 7 and after some breakfast went back outside to work. I turned over the soil, added some "garden tone" and turned it over once more. Unfortunately, the soil was kind of wet and clumped to our tiller, so I ended up doing this all by hand with a trowel. Then it was back to Lowe's to pick up some mulch. After lunch, we decided that today would be a good day to get patio furniture, so we stopped by World Market to pick up a set we'd had our eye on. They only had one chair in stock, and they sold us a table that ended up being cracked, but at least we have a bench and a chair to sit on outside, and more stuff is on order.

After putting those together, it was time to turn back to the garden. I laid out all the veggies and herbs. It turns out we still have a fair bit of room for stuff, but there's a herb fest at the nursery next week, so I'm sure we'll find some way to fill it up. Then I layered on the mulch (and appreciated why some people use plastic sheeting as mulch: it took nearly a full Prius of mulch to cover our 100 sq. ft. of garden) and finally turned to the fencing. That turned out to be a daunting job and I finished only after sunset. The fence looks reasonably OK; it's crooked in places (esp. around the gate), in part due to our uneven ground and in part due to my inability to nail the stakes in completely straight. But it looks significantly nicer than Homer's spice rack, and much nicer than chicken wire, which was our other alternative. Of course, it remains to be seen if it in fact accomplishes its main goal, which is keeping bunnies away.

As I was lying exhausted on the couch after working basically sunrise to sundown, I turned to fanlain and said that we better get some kick-ass veggies from the garden this year. But I have high hopes: our weed garden thrived pretty well with minimal attention from us, so with a little bit more work, perhaps veggies can grow as well. And I think this weekend was the hardest part...

¹ Well, actually, I started the day by going to work out at the Mettler Center, which turned out to be completely superfluos given the rest of the weekend activities, but I hadn't been to the gym in about 2 weeks and was feeling guilty...

Our scheduled departure time of 2pm ended up turning into something more like 5, which was not entirely unexpected. Fortunately, we made good time on the drive, arriving at Memphis by 11:30 including a couple of pit stops. Soba did quite well on the drive, sitting calmly in the space that was left on the backseat after we packed everything but the kitchen sink into the Prius, and she didn't even bark at the Wendy's drive-through people. She was excited to get out of the car, though, and she was positively thrilled at all the new smells and sights inside our hotel room. She especially likes the low mirror that sits at her eye level; she spent some time checking out the puppy on the other side, so we think our suspicions are correct and she would like another puppy around.

Tomorrow's drive will be longer, but we're starting earlier and we're going to take her on a hike first, so hopefully it will go about as well.

Soba turned 9 months old today; she's been with us for a little over two thirds of her life now. We didn't give her a toy to celebrate this time — I gave her a couple of new toys earlier in the week, both of which are well on their way to destruction. We took her to the dog park instead. It's funny; when we first took her, she was one of the littler dogs in the park, getting put in her place by all the other dogs. But these days, she's among the bigger ones and she's not as scared anymore. She had a great time, chasing dogs, meeting people, and her favorite — taking a bath in a muddy puddle. We hosed her off before returning to the car, but I think she'll need a real bath later today.

fanlain had her wisdom teeth pulled today. I expected to only miss a couple hours of work, but her recovery is slower than mine was 9 years ago, so I ended up staying home for the whole day. We're still trying to stop the bleeding so she looks like a little chipmunk stuffed with gauze, and sometimes it's hard not to laugh when she looks all sad and plaintive. But I try not to! I surprised myself by nearly fainting in the recovery room after seeing all the drugged out and bleeding patients. I guess being that kind of doctor is really out of the picture for me.

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I'm dreading the switch to Daylight Saving time. It's funny, because when I first heard it announced, it sounded like a great idea, and it brings us closer to my oft-stated ideal of year-round DST. But times have changed, and these days I am up before sunrise. It is just getting to the point when it starts getting light around the time of my alarm, and of course, by Sunday, that will all be screwed up again. "Stupid farmers."

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fanlain and I are trying to make plans for Spring break. Seeing as there aren't any eclipses this year, we figured we'd stay in the country and take a road trip with Soba. I thought it might be nice to go somewhere warmer and with a beach so that she can learn how to swim. However, we're faced with several difficulties. First of all, the places within a (long) drive that might be plausible beaches are within Texas and Florida, both of which give us pause. Then there's the concern that many nice beaches aren't as dog friendly as one might hope (at least if one were, say, a dog owner), so this definitely merits more research. And the last problem is that, although I'm a bit removed from the undergraduate culture here, I heard some rumors that heading to the beach for Spring break is not an entirely original idea and some college kids might have similar plans. I guess we'll figure something out.

I went jogging in the morning today and yesterday. Generally, I can't keep my heart rate in my target zone when jogging, and so it gets very frustrating — jog for a minute, have heart rate get too high, walk for 45 seconds, have the heart rate go too low, and so on. So I decided to bring my HRM, but ignore it and just keep jogging. My heart rate was indeed too high — between 158 and 168 — but my endurance levels held out for a 40 minute jog yesterday, and most of a 40-minute jog today. (Towards the end this morning my calf muscles started getting too tight and cutting off blood flow to my feet, so I had to stop and walk for a bit.)

As I was jogging around Mission Bay, enjoying the freah air and the sunrise, I passed local residents jogging, walking their dog, or just out for a walk, and thought to myself "man, what I wouldn't give to live in California again!" And then about five minutes later I realized what — my current job. As stressed out as my life gets sometimes, I can't imagine doing anything that I'd enjoy more. I just wish every once in a while that it wasn't in central Illinois, but you can't have it all.

The big snow storm was well under way when I got up Tuesday morning. I saw a bunch of school and business closings, but the university was still listed as open, and I had to go back to my PC meeting anyway. I called the gym and they said they were open, so after some coffee, I jumped into the Subaru and headed out. Driving was kind of fun, between the lack of traction and the high winds, you kind of floated from side to side. When I got to the gym at 7:05, I found a notice saying "we're closed as of 7am." I went back home to grab a shower before heading in and finally decided to cancel my midterm later in the afternoon, with encouragement from fanlain.

I arrived into the office to find everything dead — no cars in the parking lot, no people inside. But my meeting was on, since it was mostly attended by outside guests who were staying in the hotel across the street. (Most of them ended up being stuck for another night, since leaving CU just wasn't going to happen.) At 8:50, I got the email that classes for the whole campus were canceled. This seemed like really poor timing, seeing as some classes started earlier than that. (In further display of administrative genius, it was explained that people who called in before the cancellation would have to take the day as a personal day, whereas everyone else got the day off.)

I went home after lunchtime and made it almost all the way home, but got stuck on a small side street. The people who lived there pushed me back out and I tried to drive home a different way, taking care to drive slowly enough to maintain control but quickly enough to not get stuck again. I actually missed the turn onto our street, since it was hard to see, so I turned around and powered through the snow to about halfway up our driveway. Then it was time to get out the shovel to clear a path to the garage.


In the evening, we got another message from the chancellor, canceling classes for Wednesday as well, even though the snow had stopped Tuesday night. When I woke up Wednesday morning, I saw that the plows had already been down our street, but there was a huge snowdrift in front of our garage. I spent about two hours in the morning digging a path wide enough for one car through our driveway. Since the Subaru got damaged when it got stuck in the snow and started leaking antifreeze, we ended up taking the Prius to work this morning, which required making an n-point turn inside our garage so that it could go out the clear part. I finally decided to clear up another chunk of the driveway so that we could actually access both cars. Tomorrow's project will be clearing a path to the front door.

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Tonight we had a power outage so we got to curl up on the couch by the fireplace while Soba ran around looking all agitated. It's funny how little of our house works when the power is out. We thought about taking a bath, since the water heater still works, but the forced air heater does not, so it would have been really cold getting out.

Well, that didn't work. I did manage to wake up by 6 (I actually woke up a short while before the alarm), but it nevertheless took me until 6:45 to start my workout at the gym. Part of the problem was that I forgot my water bottle and decided to go back for it (in retrospect, I should have just bought one at the gym), and I also took 10 minutes or so to have coffee before starting the workout, since I find otherwise I don't have the energy to make it through. Anyway, I got back home a little before 8, but with shower, more coffee, and breakfast, I didn't leave until just after 9, so it was actually 3.5 hours from waking to arriving at the office.

So I think I'll take everyone's advice and stick with having breakfast before going to work out. I'm still not convinced it's completely necessary: I made it through my workout fine this morning without food, and unless I have a really big breakfast, it's unlikely that I can get enough energy to get me through my workout anyway (at least if you believe the calorie meter on the elliptical that read out 600 for this morning), but I think the timing will probably be better.

Morning time line:
6am - alarm goes off
6:10am - alarm goes off again, gets turned off
6:55am - finally drag myself out of bed, feed Soba, make coffee, have breakfast
8:05am - arrive at gym
9:15am - back from gym, shower
9:40am - leave for the office
10:05am - arrive at work (took a bit longer than usual due to snow)

So the good news is that, had I actually gotten up by 6, I could have made it to the office by about 9. The bad news is that it takes me over 3 hours from waking up to being in the office, which seems like way too long. Certainly the 6:55-8:05 period could have been compressed quite a bit. I wonder if things would be faster if I went straight to the gym and had a coffee there, and then had breakfast upon coming back. Maybe I'll try that tomorrow. Of course, actually getting up at 6 would help, too.

I was reading something on the computer and noticed that I couldn't see Soba and the house was all quiet. I went to investigate, went all around the main floor and couldn't find her. "Soba?" Immediately, I hear a big crashing noise as Soba barrels down the stairs and pounces on me. She was playing hide and seek!

fanlain is thinking she should start spending more time in Iowa, if you catch my drift. What do y'all think?

As I was listening to some music while cleaning up a bit, I realized I hadn't gone dancing in forever. So, on a lark, I did a web search for chambana "80's music". Turns out my LJ profile is the third hit. I think I'm in trouble.

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Went out this afternoon to try to catch Comet McNaught. Managed to see it, but most of the photos turned out not so great. As with everything in photography, I think I need better equipment: a longer lens and a better tripod (my flimsy one kept being blown around by the strong winds.) But it was a fun, if cold, outing. As I was packing up, another guy pulled up alongside; turns out he took some shots a few miles down.

I was trying to figure out whether my 29th year was more eventful than the 28th. The 28th was a year of change and adventure. I got engaged, finished my PhD, moved to Illinois and started a new job. I also went on a crazy weekend trip to Paris and a 5-week holiday in Europe. The 29th turned out to be a year of new responsibilities: new students, new house, new wife, new puppy. And it was an interesting discovery — responsibilities are hard, even overwhelming at times, but they bring with them great rewards. There was some adventure as well: another eclipse trip, this time to Turkey, a bicycling honeymoon in Norway, and some crazy flying schedules throughout the year.

Looking forward to my 30th year, it promises to be quite boring in comparison. I'm not planning to acquire any new responsibilities and there aren't even any planned adventures. (As a matter of fact, I have not a single overseas trip planned for 2007, though perhaps that will change.) Some way to finish off my twenties, eh? But perhaps it's good to take year to breathe, catch up, and get used to my new life, new circumstances, new responsibilities, before introducing any new disruptive changes (which, if all goes according to plan, should happen during my 31st year.)

I hope you all are enjoying your holidays, and looking forward to seeing some of you on Sunday!

As I was driving to the airport, NPR had a segment talking about Tony Bennett re-recording his classic at age 80, and I was thinking of the smile that was plastered on my face as I left the office. The other segments talked about the effects of the snow storm, with roads being closed, backed up, or iced over, and flights being canceled or delayed up to 4 hours. I was a little nervous on the drive, but things turned out about as well as they possibly could: the roads were clear and uncongested, my flight left on time and arrived 10 minutes early, and I managed to score the best seat on the plane! (12F, with no seat in front of me, so I could literally stretch my legs out!) The only thing that was at all bad that my contraband tube of toothpaste was confiscated. It had barely any toothpaste left, but as the guard explained, it's the size of the container — apparently, they're worried about me mixing up explosives inside a toothpaste tube. Ah well, at least my contraband deodorant gel made it through.

Wednesday night, as we were having coffee on the patio of Café Kopi, my colleague remarked that this literally the last few hours of pleasant weather we were going to have this winter. Indeed, at midnight it turned to rain, which became freezing rain by yesterday afternoon, and now we're in a full-blown snow-storm. Soba had been mostly cooped up at the house, driving us a little nuts with all the extra puppy energy, but today she's finally decided to brave the snow and has been running around in it... for brief stints.

Anyway, there's only one way to respond to weather like that — go to California! I'm spending the weekend plus Monday in the Bay area. That is, assuming I make my flight. Fortunately, I'm avoiding connections and flying straight out of O'Hare (this meant that we had to fix our second car so that fanlain could use it over the weekend.) United canceled the morning flight to Oakland, but mine is still on the schedule. Of course, that all could change, and I could even get stuck in the snow on my way to Chicago. Well, my plan is to leave right after my class and see if I'll make it. Unless all my students decide to skip class today...

Well, after a lot of number wrangling I think I have a mostly workable plan. It's a little hard to make the numbers work out. I'm currently aiming for saving¹ 20% of our income (on top of the 8% that gets put into the university mandatory retirement plan), which seems workable. But if you add children into the picture (which we want to do in the near future), it all goes to hell, since my best estimates are that 10-15% of our income will go towards child care. That only leaves 5-10% free for savings; combined with the university plan, we can manage retirement on that, but I'm not sure what we're going to do about having a second child, or paying for school or university tuition. My current plan is to ignore this issue for now and get back to it in my next round of planning, which is due in February once I get to work out our taxes and see how big an adjustment to our figures I need to make.

¹ By "saving" I mean putting money towards increasing our net worth; in the near term, this will really be paying off some loans.

Poll #875629 financial planning
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What's in your financial plan?

How much do you save? Include any retirement plan at work, but exclude employer contributions.

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