Last night was a bit cliché.

We started our vacation of the year--a car trip through Oregon. We got to Dunnigan, on our way to Redding.

We get to a nice little diner. Sean sits next to Sarah, Harriet next to me. I start giving Harriet some milk (she can drink from a straw, now, if you hold the cup for her).

Next thing---BLORP. Harriet has obviously caught the stomach flu that's going around. I'm sitting in a lake of slighly cheesy toddler barf.

Fortunately, Sarah and I pretty much have this sort of situation down, by now--I race Harriet out to the car and get her changed; Sarah pays and gets our food in carry-out boxes, I quickly run back in and change my trousers.

Since we were closer to our hotel than to home at that point, we went on to Redding. Harriet seems much better this morning, with a breakfast of Saltines and Pedialyte. Hopefully she'll be better again with a bit of sleep in the car.

Tags: barf, harriet, yuck
Current Location: Redding, CA
Current Mood: worried
Current Music: PBS Kids

For the last year or so, I've been supported as a graduate student research assistant.

That's been really odd for me. In my basic self-image, I'm a teacher. Yes, I can do research—I'm even reasonably good at it. But doing it all the time, without teaching? It's been very strange.

All that ends tomorrow. Tomorrow I teach three sections of discrete math. It'll be nice to feel like myself again.

Tags: teaching
Current Location: The couch
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Silly Sisters

Tags: ooooooo, pretty
Current Location: Bay Fair BART station, san leandro, CA
Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Fridge goes Whirrrr, by the Fridge

Twelfth wedding anniversary today. Yay!

I met pussreboots back in the summer of 1991, when we were at UCSB's freshman orientation. After a few happy years of dating, I proposed over the holidays in 1993.

I planned to ask her to marry me at a Chinese seafood restaurant. Being slightly dimwitted, I ordered crab in black bean sauce. This comes as a cooked crab in black bean sauce. It's pretty messy (the meal comes with a hot towel for your hands). It also meshes rather badly with my natural klutziness.

Needless to say, I sprayed pussreboots with black beans, sauce, and little crab fragments while trying to crack open a particularly stubborn leg. Somehow, that didn't seem the opportune moment for a proposal.

I proposed later that night at a drugstore soda fountain, over a shared brownie sundae. Since that all happened a little under 14 years ago, I'd have to say it worked out for the best.

Tags: anniversary, black bean sauce, sarah
Current Location: The couch
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: keyboard clicks.

It's almost the fifth of July now (it probably will be by the time I post this message).

All around me I can still hear illegal fireworks going off.

Will everyone just cut that the hell out?!?

We live in the Hayward Hills, in California. We're in the middle of a serious drought. In the same range of hills as the Oakland hills, which went up in a spectacular fire 16 years ago. It's illegal to purchase, own, or detonate fireworks anywhere near here.

So why are all these morons setting off blasts every few seconds? Do they not really like their houses and want to burn them up???

Grrrrrrr....

Tags: fires, fireworks, grrrr
Current Location: The couch
Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: boom, boom

In an attempt to make the events of "Last of the Time Lords" make sense, I've devised a radical (and almost certainly wrong) theory to explain everything.

( Spoilers and madness )

Tags: ianto, the master
Current Location: The kitchen
Current Mood: silly
Current Music: Harriet eating crackers.

I've been trying to figure out why I was so underwhelmed with, "The Sound of Drums." There was nothing actually wrong with the episode, as such--it was a perfectly inoffensive middle to the story.
I think that part of the problem is that it followed an exceptionally strong run of episodes--the last four have been absolutely brilliant. It was partially that after Jacobi's brilliant Master, Simm's loony!Master grated on me a bit.
There was also the return of some of the new Doctor Who's absolutely worst technical effects--we got the ghastly flipping around person effect and the geriatric prosthetics in a single scene, the "oooh, look, an infinite army dropping from the sky" thing, and Yet Another Rift Opening.
This story neither correctly concluded the cliffhanger from last week nor set up its own properly at the end. The entire concluding Martha scene was so overdone as to kill its impact--and the dropping spheres were so much like the Dalek army from last year that I was picturing people looking out their windows and saying, "Oh, dear, looks like we're all being hunted to extinction again. Put the kettle on, won't you? Might as well have some breakfast first."

Tags: doctor who, eh
Current Location: The couch
Current Mood: blah
Current Music: Pokemon

It's now 3:20AM. I'm wide awake, for some reason.

This happens randomly, for some reason that I can't fathom. Why can't I sleep? No real reason--I lie down, and I'm not tired. I toss. I turn. Sarah (pussreboots) gets annoyed. I go upstairs. I get bored. I play with my computer. I fall asleep. 4-5 minutes pass. The sun comes up. I cry.

OK. Time to "crash" (not actually sleep, but try a bit harder).

Tags: sleepless
Current Location: The couch
Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Digby giving a speech

Wednesday I met with my advisor.

Sadly, I wasted a lot of time Monday being stupid. (I wrote some bad test code, which made it look as though my correct main code was failing. After several hours of "debugging," I finally debugged my test code.)

I decided to make up the time Tuesday night, so I stayed up to 4AM. No big deal, right? Part of grad school. We do this all the time.

Of course, the "we" there are generally in our early twenties, not 33. "We" generally also are childless, and so can sleep in a bit the next morning.

I still haven't recovered. Gack.

Tags: sleepy
Current Location: The couch
Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: tv news and a dishwasher.

Since Sarah (aka pussreboots has a lot of UK friends, here are some equivalent UK distances to some of our recent trips:

South Pasadena to Hayward: 361 miles. Near-equivalent UK trip: Milton Keynes to Edinburgh. (358 mi)

San Diego to Hayward: 477 miles. Near-equivalent UK trip: Gloucester to Aberdeen (469 mi)

Hayward to Gold Beach, Oregon: 486 miles (similar to last).

California itself is almost precisely the size of Britain. San Diego to Eureka (nearly the entire length of the state north-south): 765mi. Near-equivalent UK trip: Bodmin to Wick (764 mi.)

All distances are by road (Google maps), not as the crow flies.

Tags: google maps, sarah, trips
Current Location: The couch
Current Mood: nervous
Current Music: The news