Starstruck

Tonight, Nick was flipping through the channels and I was like "hey, go back." :::he flips back::: "I think I know that guy..." "Dude, that's Nick D'Anna." I was about 98% sure of it, but then some girl called him Nick. Then he was talking and it was definitely him. He's on E's "Sunset Tan," whatever that is. Jessica tells me that she's seen him on there since about a month ago.

I went to school with that kid in middle- and high-school. I remember when the only CD he listened to was Blink 182's Cheshire Cat album.

I have often wondered how many famous people I will know. I don't think this counts as famous, but it's a start.

On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction

I just finished On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction by Karl Iagnemma on Thursday. What a great name for a collection of short stories written by a mechanical engineer from MIT. The stories themselves aren't that awesome, although this is the first time I've encountered non-trivial, formal mathematical notation in a "pleasure-reading" book. Karl seems to have a fascination with not-quite-modernized human society and the cold. I'm not sure if the cold in his stories is symbolic or just something that he relates to and therefore feels the need to include.

The title of the book is the title of the first short story and also of an unfinished PhD dissertation by the protagonist of said story. Not all of the stories are about romances between romantically-awkward geeks. It's not on my list of books to recommend, but you can borrow it if you want.

Awesome Dinner

So, I took my micro prelim this morning. Think I did well enough to low-pass...whatever that means. I won't find out for a couple weeks. Afterward, came home, met Micah TBW around 3:30 and headed to the batting cages. Tried out the slow-pitch softball, 40mph, 60mph, and 70mph. Not bad performance for not hitting for a while. I was a little late on some of the 70mph and whiffed a couple of them. I was really early on the slow pitch, which reminds me that I have a hard time waiting on a pitch...one of my big game flaws in softball. After hitting in the hot sun and wearing sweat-soaked shirts that made us look like the 3 of us had just gone swimming, we wondered what we'd wrangle up for dinner.

Went to Publix. On Micah's suggestion, we got stuff for kabobs. Beef, green pepper, onion; chicken, green pepper, onion; shrimp, pineapple. Stubbs marinade for the beef, Sweet Baby Ray's honey chipotle sauce for the chicken, and Jack Daniels sauce for the shrimp, olive oil basted on the veggies. Came home, cut stuff up, grilled it. Blue Bell chocolate chip cookie dough for dessert. It fed me, TBW, Nick, Micah, and Glenn. Tasty shit. I probably haven't had a dinner that good in a long time. It was probably just as good as Brock's 4th of July food, but we had way more of it. We all ate our fill. I think the total bill for dinner was $35 or less. For the 5 of us. MAYBE one reason it was good is that all the meats were fresh. Plus, the Lake Ella Publix didn't have regular Publix chicken breasts, so I had to get the Publix Premium ones. HOLY MOLY MELT IN YOUR MOUTH GOOD!!! If you're planning a dinner in the near future...this is easy (although it creates mounds of dishes) and awesome.

Chopper Blades

After one of the coolest birthday presents ever, I took this picture when we were on the ground. It's the business end of a Bell (something or another) helicopter.

O Valencia!

You might know that I'm thinking about applying for a Fulbright grant for the 2009-2010 school year in order to study abroad on someone else's dime. Ideally, I would end up in España, but I would settle for Chile, Peru, maybe Bolivia... The problem is that you can only apply for one country. However, I think I might have a chance at getting in to the Spain program (which is fiercely competitive).

In the fall, I will be working for Dr. Cooper on money from a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. Dr. Cooper has coauthors in Barcelona and Valencia. I don't speak Catalán, and don't really think that I'd like to spend a year in Barcelona (maybe more than the one weekend I spent would be cool, but I'd put a voluntary 2 week cap on time in Barcelona). However, they speak Castillian Spanish (castellano) in Valencia in addition to the local language, valencià, which is predominate in communications such as public signage. It is a form of Catalán, but I can actually read it, as opposed to the kind they speak in Barcelona.

So, if things go well with Dr. Cooper, I may have the opportunity to get a letter of recommendation from him, a letter of affiliation from the university where his coauthor works, and letters of recommendation from two (former??) Fulbright scholars who were my thesis advisor and my favorite spanish teacher in undergrad. It's at least worth applying for.

Valencia would be better than a latin-american alternative because I can go straight south whenever I want on my own dime...If I can get the US department of state to pay for a year-long trip to Spain, then I might as well milk it for all it's worth. With this connection, there might be equal odds of me getting in to any of the 4 countries of potential interest. I need to talk to the scholarship lady at FSU to see what I need to do to beef up my application.

I also need to come up with an idea for community involvement in the city of Valencia in my proposal to go to there. Let me know if you have any ideas that could help me rock out the application process.

Side Projects for Fall

In addition to going to classes, I figured that I would pick up a few side projects in the fall since I hear that the second year of grad school is supposed to be easier than the first. Here is a non-exclusive, non-binding list of things I want to do more/start to do:

Marathon/triathlon training
more soccer
learn to play (at a very basic level) the piano
learn (beginning) Swahili...I'm going to buy the Rosetta Stone program.
cook more/be creative in the kitchen
read Atlas Shrugged
start lifting weights again
not slip on my school work.

Stat Counter Retraction

Wow. I am surprised by what the counter tells me. I didn't think that anyone visited my site. I have decided to make my counter visible. It will only count "unique visitors," not "page loads," so I can't inflate my own numbers by re-loading the page a bunch of times.

The StatCounter is pretty sweet. It can tell you where people are in the world when they log into your page, what link they followed, and all kinds of other stuff (like their screen resolution, OS, IP address, .....).

Let me know what you think about StatCounter if you check it out for your site. Check out my stats (I'm responsible for the bulk of the page loads on the first day...just playing with the counter stuff).