update...

So I've been away for a while... a few things have happened...

1. I'm dating a certain someone. She's an astronomer and pretty cool to boot! This makes me happy.



2. The bike pump and saddle bag I always kept on Gertie got stolen. This pisses me off. Seriously, unless you've got a roadie as well, when in the world would you ever need the following items:
   
   
   
   1. Bike pump for a presta valve
   
   
   2. Spare road bike tire with a presta valve
   
   
   3. Road bike tire levers
   
   
   4. Metric Hex wrench
   
   
   5. CO2 cartridge with adapter for filling up tires with presta valves
   
   
   
   Notice how I kept emphasizing presta valves? 90% of the bikes out there (mostly mountain bikes) have schrader valves. Really, there's no conceivable use for these items unless you're riding a road bike. Most bums and college-age budding thieves that I know aren't really into the road-biking scene. Hell, you can't even sell this crap on the black market, that I'm aware of. But still, all that "crap" probably cost me ~$60. Whoever it is, I certainly hope you got some use out of it rather than just tossing it in the nearest dumpster once you realized what it was. Bastard.
   



3. Said girlfriend's brother is coming to town in a few days... I'm supposed to take him mountain biking. I have a feeling he's going to show me up.

That's all for now...

visiting the colombian... and julie

So, I went to Virginia over the weekend to visit Nathalia.

all in all, it was a fun trip. Expensive, but fun.

Friday, I got up at the ass-crack of dawn and had Vince take me to the airport. As payment, I bought him Mi Madre's. I

Chicago was f-ing cold.

Upon arriving at Dulles, I waited for Nathalia, since my flight was ~30 minutes early. Then, when she arrived, we went to go pick up my rental car. When I rented the car, I almost couldn't believe the price. $30 for 2 days. Not too shabby, I thought... However, I forgot about insurance. That raised the price to ~$100 + gas. Oh well... it was nice to have a car.

As southwest is not famous for their extravagant in-flight meals, I was famished. She navigated me to "Tyson's Corner", a ginormous mall. Seriously... this was an industrial size/strength mall. I grabbed a burrito in the food court, and we made small talk.

After lunch, we went bowling. I don't see how she bowled with her long nails, but she did very well.

After bowling, we went back to her host-family's house. Oh my... they have a monstrosity of a castle. There's 3 stories. Each floor is comprable in square footage to the size of the house I grew up in. AND they're adding on. A new "wing", if you will. They have a walk-in wine cellar. It looked a bit like the potion room in Shrek 2.

After lounging around the house for a little bit, we got ready and went salsa dancing. Some business professionals association was sponsoring salsa lessons, so there was a $15 cover, which was a bit steep, I thought. I did learn a bit of salsa though :-)

My knee, while healed enough for hard-core mountain biking, is still a little tender when it comes to salsa dancing. It was fun though. She's a pretty good salsa dancer, and she humored me. After the lesson, there was a live salsa band. They were pretty good. The lead singer could speak spanish faster than even Nathalia could understand it.

We dipped out of Cecilia's (the salsa joint) around 1:30 and headed home. Driving with someone whose first language is not yours can be interesting... Apparently, in Spanish, derrecho means "go straight", while derrecha means "turn right". A single vowel separates two fundamentally different directions. Kinda like the well-known exchange in english:

"so I turn left here?"
"Right"
"What? Right left or right right?"

*crash*

Saturday, we went to visit Julie in Fairfax. We ate lunch at a Thai restraunt which was, suprise, expensive! Julie paid for it, so she's awesome. Then we went to go see Pan's Labyrinth. Probably not the greatest choice for a movie, but hey, it was in spanish.

In the evening, we rode into DC with Julie and her roommate on the metro. We ended up at Club Citron, where we spent the rest of the evening.

I can do clubbing in small amounts. Especially when they are not overcrowded. However, when people are packed so close around you it would make a nazi train mashall start to wonder if they'd overloaded the trains, I start to get a little claustrophobic. I really hate it when someone (usually drunk) thinks it is perfectly alright, nay encouraged, to throw his/her shoulder/hip/purse into me with all their weight repeatedly. I can deal with the occasional bump and unintentional grind, but people, there's something called personal space!

Other than that, it was fun. I got to meet one of Nathalia's friend, Flor. She's from Peru, so they spent a lot of time gabbing in spanish, and I tried my best to keep up, but they speak so damned fast, I could only catch every fifth/sixth word.

Overall, it was a good trip. It's amazing what can happen from a chance encounter on an airplane... It's a shame we don't live closer to each other.


On the flight back, I actually got a fair amount of work done. I wrote an SED plotting program, which I think will turn out to be very useful.

Some observations...

Virginia is EXPENSIVE!!! 2 glasses of red wine + 2 beers + tax + tip = $30!!!! 2 beers + 1 crappy tom collins + 1 mojito = $27!!!

venetian razors - part II

Referring back to an old post.

Have you ever tried to shave with one of those single blade razors you get from hotel front desks? I normally shave with at least a double (maybe triple) blade. When I was in Ithaca, NY on a business trip, I forgot my shaving kit and had to ask the front desk for one of these suicide blades. Now I realize the purpose of the extra blades. I guess it spreads out the force across your entire face so you don't cut yourself as often or as severely. Maybe it's just a matter of practice, but DAMN! I'm not sure if I'm ready for 5 blades, but I'll stick with 2 or 3.

gimpy - day 1

So I went into work today. Vince and I drove to Mi Madres for breakfast (lame, I know, but I've got an excuse!) and then to work. Before we went, Vince decided to make me a walking stick out of a tree-branch. I ended up using it most of the day... I guess I looked pretty funny, but oh well.

They screwed up my order at mi madres, but I didn't say anything b/c I didn't want to wait for them to fix it. And besides, practically everything there is awesome. Well, this one wasn't exactly their best taco, but I decided it wasn't worth the trouble.

After lunch, I took the Dunham to the airport to go back to New York for the holidays. He was bitching about having to pack cold weather clothes. On my way back, I stopped into a Walgreens to drop off my antibiotic prescription for my knee and went back to work.

I didn't get a whole lot of stuff done today, I'll have to admit. I hate feeling non-productive. Which is bad, because it happens altogether too frequently.

In other news, Russell and I extended our 42 losing streak to 6 games. We won our first 4 games, and then have proceeded to drop the next 6. It's rather disheartening. However, after the league game was over, I managed to beat Mary in two games, AND the in-the-box game.

Mandy's car is acting up, so I guess I'm going to have to stick around Austin until we're sure she's going to be able to get it fixed or have a ride.

I feel bad about only spending a week and a half in Dallas.

Birfday - Austin Style

So, as of tuesday, I've begun my second quarter century. To celebrate, I invited all my astronomy/domino/other friends out dinner. We decided to go to Conan's Pizza, a local Austin pizzeria dedicated and decorated with Conan the Barbarian artwork. After haggling over what type of pizzas to buy, we ended up ordering a total 8 pizzas for ~18 people. It was awesome.

After people finished eating, we headed next door to Vulcan Video. Unbeknownst to me, Mike Elliot was working that night. He hooked me up with a sweet birthday discount (i.e. free!) I asked him to recommend me a bad movie, something on the level of Hell Comes to Frogtown. Luckily, Vulcan didn't disappoint in this department. We rented 4 flicks. Class of 1984 (with a very young Michael J. Fox!), Lady Terminator (First she mates, then she terminates!), The New Barbarians, and Vince made me get Porno Holocaust. Don't worry, we didn't watch the last one... I think we just got it for the shock value.

Anyway, we retired back to mi casa, and watched the New Barbarians and drank some lone star and shiner and wine. After the first flick ended, the domino crowd retreated into the back room and we started tossing tiles. Mandy, Mike and Tammi showed up around this time. The astro crowd put on the next movie, Lady Terminator. I don't think I ended up winning the game I was playing, but I had fun anyway, which is all that really matters. Terry even showed up after the basketball game.

Thanks to everyone who came, even if only in spirit. I had a lot of fun.

BTW, Marci and Becks took me out to lunch b/c they had plans and couldn't make my super-impromtu excuse for a party. Much thanks, you two.

south of the border....

so it seems I've met someone...

I was flying back from my business trip from Ithaca, NY (I was up there testing some optics for the FORCAST camera which will fly in SOFIA, a 747 with a 2 m telescope in the back). I flew from Rochester to Washington Dulles, and there I switched planes to a flight back to Austin. I sat down in my aisle seat, hoping I'd repeat my luck from the last flight, and have the row to myself. For five minutes, it was looking like I'd lucked out again, but then a very pretty girl came walking down the plane and took the window seat next to me. We didn't talk too much in the first hour of the flight, only I asked her for a pen so I could do some work on the flight. I read a paper or two and made some notes, but it wasn't too productive.

Eventually, (I can't remember how) we started talking. It turns out, her name's Nathalia, and she's an au pair for a family in Virginia. She's from Columbia and wanted to practice her english. Her english is still a little rough, so I got a chance to practice my spanish as well. It was fun because my spanish is about as good as her english. All in all, it was one of the most interesting conversations I've ever held on a plane. Not because the subject matter was terribly interesting, but more because it was fun trying to converse with someone with whom you only had half a language in common. We would each say something in the our native language, and if the other person still had a look of non-comprehension on his/her face, we'd try our best to say it in the other's language. I was amazed at how much spanish I still knew, as well as how much I'd forgotten. As the flight went on, more and more of my spanish came back. It was quite fun.

She's studying to be a Chemical Engineer back in Bogota, and she's almost done. However, she doesn't want to graduate quite yet, because it's harder to get a visa if you're not a student. She really wants to come here to America to re-start her degree at an American University, because the job prospects are much better with a degree from America.

Anyway, she was coming to Austin to visit her cousin for Thanksgiving. I gave her a list of things to do while she was in Austin. I suggested stuff like 6th street, the Alamo Drafthouse, Town Lake, Hamilton Pool, and Trudy's, to name a few. We exchanged phone numbers once the flight landed, and we went our separate ways.

Much to my surprise, she text messaged me after a few days, and we continued our broken conversations. She really wanted to go salsa dancing, but since her cousin was ~35 with three kids, he really didn't have time to take her out. Since I had a homework assignment due on wednesday, we decided that I'd take her out salsa dancing on wednesday night, after I was finished.

Thanks to a miscommunication, I ended up swiping Vince's car on monday night and we went out for coffee and then to RLM to see the Austin skyline at night.

On the way back home, we stopped at the capitol building and took some pictures.

Finally, Wednesday rolled around. I fought 5:45 Austin traffic and picked her up and met her cousin and his wife. They seem like nice people. We then went to Gueros and had some dinner. I had the chile relleno, and she had faijitas. For a hispanic person, she really has no tolerance for spicy food :-P. To be fair, Gueros does have some pretty hot pico de gallo. Anyway, after dinner, we walked across the congress bridge to Copa, a latin bar which claimed (on the website) to offer salsa dancing lessons ever wednesday night. However, since this was the day before thanksgiving, it ended up being closed. So, we ended up toodling around 6th street. We went to Nunos to listen to a band for a little bit, and then to Maggie Mae's to people watch from the rooftop. After we left Maggie Maes, we ran into Sarah and her crowd. She was in Austin with her boyfriend (Matt) to help her little sister celebrate her 21st birthday. We ended up hanging out with them for the rest of the night. Matt is Peruvian, and spke a little spanish with Nathalia. We ended up in a bar/club just off 6th street. Much fun was had by all, except when Emily's purse got stolen. The good news is, someone ended up turning it in, I think, so I don't think she has to worry about replacing EVERYTHING.

I took her back home and dropped her off. Before she went inside, she gave me a little figurine of a Columbian Chiva (basically a bus people use to get around in rural Columbia), a bracelet with the colors of the Columbian flag, and some columbian sweets, including bocadillo. Bocadillo is... well... kinda sweet and chewy, but yet still kinda crunchy. I think they make it out of cane sugar and guayabas. Whatever it is, it's very good.

We didn't kiss goodnight, per se... She did request that I kiss her on the cheek, but I think it's more of a custom, kinda like a hug or a handshake here in America.

Anyway, she flew out on friday, and she's now back in Virginia. However, we've exchanged skype numbers, and we've talked enough to definitely say there's something there. Sucks that she lives in Virginia. Oh well... we'll see.

Road Bike!

Come monday, I will be the proud owner of a Trek 1200 road bike! I just have to draw out $450 of my hard earned cash and go pick it up. It's going to be awesome.

Jarrett and I went mountain biking today. It was a lot of fun. And f-ing hot. It must have been at least 100 degrees out there. I couldn't suck down water fast enough. I think I'm still a little dehydrated.

I think I'm getting over my fear of death and dismemberment on a mountain bike. While there are still drop-offs I don't think I'll ever be able to ride off of, I am getting braver and willing to take a few more plunges. And even the ones where I pull up short, I know that it's just a matter of getting a little more speed and leaning back a little further, and I'll be alright. I think I'll wait until after I buy a new helmet to try these though... I got my current one second hand, so it may have a history of which I'm unaware.

Courage is a bitch to build up...

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To a certain someone...

While you're not the reason I come to domino night, you are the reason I stay so long...