Sunday, August 8, 2010

WTF

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Chicago - Backstage



So my aunt's boyfriend works for the stage crew of the band Chicago, and every year when they come to Boston he gets us in for free. Above is a video of one of their most famous songs, of course from when they were a LOT younger.

He gave us all-access stickers and showed us around backstage, what the bus for the crew was like, and we got to meet some of the band. We talked mostly to the saxophone player, and he was really nice.



During the show we got to sit in the booth/space where they controlled sound and lighting. It was pretty interesting to see the sound and lighting guys sit there really nonchalantly flicking a switch or two every so often. It kind of boggled me how they could do that since the sound and especially the light board had thousands of switches, most of which looked exactly alike.



The band was touring with another 70's rock group called the Doubie Brothers. DB played their songs, then Chicago came on, and after they a while the Doubie Brothers came back on and played with Chicago in one awesome megaband.



I'm not really the biggest fan of 70s rock, and I was definitely among the youngest people there, but the music was really good and overall it was pretty cool to see.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Switches that gross you out

swi ora from Katrin Baumgarten on Vimeo.



If you guys don't make faces while watching this, YOU AREN'T HUMAN.

X_x

Monday, July 5, 2010

HOT

It's so hot. And we have no AC. ;_;

And it's only 90 today, 97 tomorrow. . .

yep.

Ariel: sorry about the delay with the cookies, decided best way to approach this is to make dough for one type of cookie each day and then bake them all on the weekend when it will be less hot. DX So you don't have to worry about getting fat until next week. :P

Friday, June 25, 2010

Re: Rants

Read Amy's post about jobs and started writing this as a comment, but it got long enough to be it's own full post:

Yeah, I've been thinking about this a little bit too. My major problem in the past was just wondering what the heck I would do with a physics degree. I eventually decided my dream job was probably to work at a big government research lab like my mom does. And I guess that would be cool, since the pay is good and there is much better job stability than in some other positions. But I don't really know if I'd like always doing someone else's ideas. I kind of want to be able to do my own thing and think creatively.

Sadly though there isn't a lot of room for that in physics, seeing as most of the major things like gravity have already been explained. I thought my only avenue would be particle or quantum physics, something like working at the LHC. I would also love to work there at some point, but I kind of feel like quantum might not really be up my alley. . . although I'll find out later if it really is after Physics III.

Then I sort of realized that astronomy still has a lot of room for exploration. Add that to the fact that I've been exposed to that my entire life from my dad being an amateur astronomer and actually enjoy it, and it seems pretty good. Although I'd be afraid of ending up just working at a science museum observatory or something and not getting to do any real research. Also astronomy doesn't really seem that lucrative.

The other option would to just be a professor. Which before I thought I would absolutely hate, but after tutoring this girl a bit for her math final, I found out maybe I would actually like it. I found tutoring to sometimes be exhausting, but at other times be so blissfully rewarding I went around the rest of my day happy enough that my parents thought I must be high.

Professorship doesn't really pay well at first, but if you stick around long enough for tenure it's pretty damn good. And in addition to teaching you get to do your own research, and with the resources of a good university you can do some pretty amazing things. Tenure also gives you wayyy more job stability than basically anything else. And there are universities all over the country so the option of moving around due to the job of a spouse or whatever other reason is also available.

It also seems that universities do a lot of the leading research in any field, and professors are often the ones who get mentioned in new articles for discovering this or that. And also get interviewed in various things. Another dream of mine is to some day explain some really neat physics thing on NPR.

Yeah. So I guess the conclusion of my rant is that I've finally found a direction to go in, while poor Amy has just gone afloat. So after having been there for quite a long time myself, my advice to you is just to think about it. Also definitely talk to people. It doesn't matter if they are professors or even someone in your major (though this probably would help in your particular situation. . . but I've actually never talked to profs about this. . . goal for next year?) It just matters that they have a different point of view. Something they say, even if it's something really small and in passing, could just trigger whatever it is you need to think of something new.

Yeah that was kind of preachy I guess, but I didn't really mean it that way.

-sigh- We all have a long road to go down and are only just beginning. Also I'm guessing that after next semester all of what I said here will be completely reevaluated. Hooray! DX

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Shrinky Dinks

http://www.shrinkydinks.com/

Anyone remember these? I really want to get some sheets and draw on them now. . .

Monday, June 14, 2010

Cornell Adventures Part IV

Last day!

We explored the library, which had a super fancy room donated by a previous university president










Afterwards we went to visit the agricultural building. . .


Tee hee.


And found the apple vending machine!


Triumph!

Cornell Adventures Part III

We went down to the commons which is a shopping area down a steep steep hill.

First stop was a thrift store, tried on some scandalous dresses and figured out exactly why someone had chosen to sell them . . .



At the same thrift store found buckets of toys. Guess what I bought? XP

Afterwards we visited a bookstore with comics! And also another secondhand/vintage store that was much ritzier and had funky things from WWII.



I am jealous of their elevators. . .




Retreated again to cowcliffs to stack cards. Guess who won?



Hint: Not me.



Someone baked a portal cake to celebrate it being free on steam. Since we were playing portal at the time, of course we had to have some. ;)


That night was the last night of the dining hall being open, and as per tradition, all residents dress up to go eat.



INSERT COMMENT ABOUT OBLIGATORY SEMI-EMO MYSPACE STYLE MIRROR PIC.

Cornell Adventures Part II

Long overdue. . .



Drawing in the living room, which for some reason is called cowcliffs?





Caterpillars!





Another night, another room. . .

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Italian Food & Cake

So I got to make dinner again for my family, more italian food.



Bread I made from scratch. It turned out to be absolutely delicious and well worth the 2 days I spent making it. It wasn't really that hard, just a lot of waiting. Recipe from here.



The main part of dinner was chicken parmesan. Something that I've never made before, but something that you all know well that I love. This wasn't too hard either, and it also turned out really good.


So a new bakery called Cake opened up in town so I went down there with a few friends to check it out.



I got a box of mini cupcakes, one of each kind, to try them out and share with my family. Half of them had been eaten already by the time I took this photo. . . XD



And of course I got a big cupcake for myself. Mmmm, mocha. . .

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Homelessness

I remember being told in school that there were some homeless people in our town, but until today I never really believed that.

My town in general is really well off, and you never see any bums lying around on street corners and whatnot. But I've been in the center of town everyday to go to the library for tutoring and I noticed that I always seem to see this one old man looking in trash cans. If I hadn't seen him taking bottles out of the trash for the recycling money, I wouldn't have thought he was homeless at all. He seemed fairly well dressed and not in the least bit scruffy. But all the same I realized that he must be homeless because he was wandering around and checking every trash can for bottles. When he found one, he'd put it away in a big old shopping bag that was stuffed to the brim with them.

Even in lexi-land there are touches of the real world.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Wisdom teeth

So I got my wisdom teeth out yesterday, how exciting!

It really wasn't that bad. Just a lot of swelling makes it painful to eat/swallow/talk. Also I can't eat anything really delicious. :(

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Cooking! Cooking!




PIZZA!



My mom has been buying crazy organic awesome good stuff so uncured pepperoni and fresh mozzarella awww yeahhhh.






EGG SALAD!




SOUS VIDE EGGS!

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Silverware!

So the past saturday we had what is known as "Discovery Day" in my town. This is when all the local shops in the town center put out booths and have sales, etc.

There was also a special sale of random old stuff from who knows where. The historical society, maybe? So I ended up getting a tea set, 4 other teacups, and a whole bunch of silverware, all for $8.

Life in 3D!



3D glasses with the lenses poked out! :D

Aquarium store!



So when going to see the Jade Buddha, we also went to an aquarium store! Which I have pictures of before my phone died.




First Day on the Job

So I just survived my first day of being a math tutor. 2 hours and 20 dollars later I guess it wasn't that bad.

I was really worried that I wouldn't remember enough Algebra 2 to be helpful, but I guess it turned out I did!

Next time: Probability. . . this I will definitely need to study up on. :/

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

METROID



'nuff said.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Cornell Adventures Part I



The flight to Ithaca required two hops, the second of which was in this tiny 20-person jet with propellors. There were about six people on the flight.



So I get to Cornell and after some exploration of the dorm and a delicious dinner of poser Mexican food, we headed over to the community center to watch Glee. Obviously I was more entranced by my mocha smoothie than the show. . .



My friend's roomie didn't want me to sleep in her bed (even though she wouldn't be there at night) so we used a semi-abandoned room instead. Apparently this room had been adopted by two guys who lived across the hall (both friends of my friend) and was also sometimes used as a hookup room. Great. . .

Somehow I managed to fall asleep anyway.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Pudding

Today my sister told me she had made chocolate pudding. Being hungry, I went downstairs to the kitchen to have some. On the counter is the container of pudding mix, still 3/4 of the way full. Sure enough I open the fridge to find four cups of very watery looking pudding.

Turns out she read the 1/4 package serving size as the amount of mix you were supposed to use to make it, but still used the full 2 cups of milk.

It's safe to say I'm somewhat worried about her. . .


And yes, I am back from Cornell, some more posts about that later.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Learner's Permit!

Today I went down to the DMV and after forever of waiting I finally got my permit!

Be extra careful when crossing streets in my town. . .

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Playground Stargazing

Finally got to hang out with High School friends today. We went to see "How to Train Your Dragon" which was very cute. Afterwards we headed over to Emilie's house where we played apple to apples. I ended up being "shiny." We had pizza from upper crust (nomnomnom) quizzed eachother about social and academic happenings (mostly about bfs for those of us who have them.)

Afterwards we ran off in the dark to the nearby elementary school and climbed around on the playground for a while. I got spun around on a tire swing. Eventually we all retired to the normal swings. It was really awesome when you swung high enough and tilted your head back to look at the stars.

It was also determined that at least one of my friends was super jealous of me going to cmu purely because we have all the nerds. :P

Saturday, May 15, 2010



Was also running around outside my house a bit yesterday. I forgot how awesome our garden is.

Also, the tree out front is just epic on it's own.


Wild Willy's


Went to wild willy's last night with my dad and my sis. They have the best burgers around. Maybe not the best ever, but grass fed beef with local vermont cheddar? Mmmmm...

Friday, May 14, 2010



Mocha cheesecake and ginger ale is a surprisingly delicious combination.

Broken Down Bus

So I'm home now, but on the way to the airport from CMU the bus I was on broke down. We had to wait for the next bus to come, which took a good half hour. By the time the next bus got to the airport I was running late for my flight. Luckily a bunch of other people on that bus also had the same flight, so they held the flight for us.

So it was an adventure but I got home just fine.