Long Weekend

It was kind of nice having zero plans really made for this weekend. What I did:

- househunting
- hanging out with the Saccoruddels
- thesis writing! and finishing the drafts of the IEEE poster & paper. Woot!
- hiking at Big Basin Park with Caro & Thad

So all in all pretty eventful.





Also, a friend of mine is doing this "30 books in 30 days" thing, where there's a question about a book you've read each day for 30 days. Anywho, I'm going to do that on here too, just 'cause it's fun to see what she likes (The Great Gatsby is her fav book. Ugh! Discussion point anyways.)

And so, Day 1:
Your favourite book of all time?
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy

Feel free to judge :)

Permanent Visitors!

So after checking out the potential new place in the Mission on Friday, I headed over to Mat & Justine's! Who live just 5 blocks from potential new place! Yay!

Since I worked late and then went to the house thing and had no cash on me, I didn't eat before turning up at their place. Justine satisfied me with a salad made in part with edible flowers:



I crashed at their place that night, then we went for breakfast in the morning at some amazing cafe around the corner from their place. A few of their friends from Stanford came up for the afternoon, and we explored Japantown. Japanese BBQ lunch, crazy Japanese dollar stores, and then a climb to a hilltop park to enjoy the brief warm, sunny weather.





With incredible views once again:

Epic Journey

So I'm house hunting again. I've looked at a couple places in and around Menlo Park/Palo Alto again, and then Friday I went to check one out in the Mission District in the City. I took the Caltrain down to 22nd & King after work (after working late. Grrrr.) and had Google directions on how to get to the house by bike. Well, the Caltrain is on 22nd, and the house I was going to was on a cross street that ran between 22nd and 23rd, but down a ways. Google told me to go all the way up to 17th, around, and back down. I though "Pshaw, whatever. I don't need to go all that way. I'll just go down 22nd."

Well.

For some reason I went to 20th at started biking along there. It was so steep I had to walk up it. I thought "I'll head back over to 22nd, maybe the hill is not quite so steep there". So 2 blocks back to 22nd, and this is what the street had become:





Ok, so I walked my bike up the dirt & wood path that 22nd had turned into until it hit the next road. When I got to the road, instead of 22nd becoming its own road again, it became a stair case:



I thought, well, that doesn't look too bad. I'll just carry my bike up and then I'll be able to bike again. But then when I got to the top of the stairs you see here, there were more stairs.



There was actually access to a driveway that ran parallel to the stairs about 1/3 of the way up, so I was able to push my bike the rest of the way up instead of carrying it. Biked for about a block when I got up, and then there was a super steep downhill that I was afraid to bike down now. I didn't trust my brakes to be able to stop me at the cross streets. So I walked my bike down, worrying now that the traction on my shoes wasn't good enough to hold me on to the sidewalk. I expected to slide down the sidewalk in my running shoes at any moment.

I made it to about the bottom of the hill and saw this. 22nd is the 'street' to the left of the dead end sign.



It was a footpath that ran over the highway:



That was the last bit of craziness to 22nd St. After that, I entered the Mission where everything is blessedly flat. So it was a bit of an adventure getting there. But I must say, San Francisco makes up for the pain of going up and down all these crazy hills with some pretty stunning views.

In case of emergency...

I pretty much got this for the package.

Safety!

Today was the second day in a row that we've been evacuated from our building because of the contractors renovating the other half of our building.

Yesterday one of the guys knocked the head off one of those water spray things in the roof that are there in case of fires. We had to shut the water off to the building. The fire department came. It was exciting. Later in the afternoon one of the contractors having lunch in the equipment yard asked if I had been worried. I said no, when the alarms went off, I checked which one it was, and it was the fire alarm, not the gas, so I didn't really care.

Today the contractors knocked a hole into a gas line. Apparently one of the guys ran into the Dep Lab and shouted "Get out now! We've put a hole in the gas line!". Larry freaks out, "Which one???" Guy is like, "THE gas line!". Larry thinks he's got 5 sec. to live. We all get out. It's the natural gas line, and not even just our building, like one of the mains lines I think. Yesterday the fire department came with 1 truck. This time there were 3 of the big tankers, 2 others, and several police cars. I guess the building could have blown up, but all I'm thinking is thank god they haven't cut a phosphine line yet. Richard says they wanted to tap into our silane line for the new half of the lab, but luckily were convinced that that would be a bad idea.

Anyway, we went to Starbucks. Went back to get our stuff out of the building once the gas to our street had been shut off. Left for the day at about 2:45, which meant I had time to chill at Barnes & Noble before the next Caltrain at 3:45 came by. Exciting times.

plot(Thesis+Hockey=Double_Win!)

Dan & I went to watch the hockey game over at the Old Pro in Palo Alto, since I don't have a tv and he no longer gets ComCast. I took my laptop along because I had a Matlab issue and was going to get him to help me. So I pull out my laptop at the first intermission and I'm like "Dan. Ok, how do I do this graph thing in Matlab?" and then these two guys down the table perk up and say "Oooh! is that Matlab? Can I help you?" So random recent mech eng grad from Princeton wrote me up a Matlab program to make my graphs in about 5 min.

Things I have learned from this:

A) I totally would be finishing my thesis faster if I worked on it in bars, not coffee shops or libraries
B) You could probably totally pick up guys looking for computer help
C) I learned how to do some graph programming stuff

And the Canucks beat the Sharks 3-2! Win all round!

Writing

What I like about Kate Beaton: that her writing process looks a lot like my writing process.



Also, that she can get me to laugh at Lester B. Pearson, then spend an hour or two reading about how awesome he is.

LaviKen Wedding: Part 2

So Ken and Lavinia had their second wedding reception, and it turns out I did take some photos!





This one was in Toronto. Turns out there will also be receptions #3 and #4 in Calgary and Vancouver.

And even more visitors!

So Yael and Andy came to visit! First they were both in SF with me, where we went for Mexican food and dueling pianos with a co-worker of mine and a guy from the Michigan solar car team:



Yandy were excited about the red plastic cups:



We also went to Endor, then met up with Mal & Lyndel & Dan in San Jose for the Sharks game:



Andy then had to go back to work, so Yael and I had a few lovely days of hanging around not doing much. This was the day we decided to watch some P&P, eat TimTams, and knit:



Next Up: Yael journeyed to Waterloo with me where we attended a Stag & Doe for my brother and his fiancee. Phil has some photos up on his website. Yael met heaps of my family, Waterloo friends, saw all the embarrassing baby photos, art projects, etc. Then I got to vote on Monday! Then back to work. And then both Andy and I came out to Toronto for Ken's wedding, which is happening tomorrow.

Well, Yael had such a great time in Waterloo that we came back. One of the highlights from last weekend was the mini-Waterloo tour, which encompassed checking out the Waterloo solar race car, Midnight Sun. So we took Andy to check it out too, and Yael managed to get us to work on that car as well:





And to finish, a photo of the notorious UW Canadian geese:

American Road Trip

Catch up time. So while Pako was here, we went on a road trip. Vegas, Valley of Fire, Zion, Bryce, Coral Pink Sands, Antelope Canyon, Grand Canyon. 6 days of awesomeness. Some of the best photos can be found here, and I've posted a subset below.

Valley of Fire:

An hour outside Vegas. Star Trek: Generations was filmed in part here, as well as numerous other Westerns and Sci Fi's. We hiked around a bit. It was hot, hot, hot, and dry. The cacti and desert flowers were just starting to bloom. Stunningly beautiful place. Some of my favourite photos from the trip were taken here.







Zion:

Didn't spend enough time here. Passed through on our way to Bryce. The tunnel with no lights was fun, and we stopped after the tunnel to do a hike up to a view point:



Bryce:

Unlike anything I've ever seen before. Spent a cold night camping here, and woke up to see the sunrise on the hoodoos:





Coral Pink Sands:

Totally chill and laid back. Aside from a couple families that turned up to slide down the dunes on cardboard boxes, we were the only people there without ATVs. Next time. But it was a great park, with great facilities, and chill people there for the weekend. Mostly just regular American's, no real tourists, so Pako felt he was getting a taste of 'Merica.



Antelope Canyon:

Spontaneous side trip. That's what road trips are for, right? Woke up in the morning, Pako said he wanted to see it, wasn't that far off the route, so we went! Pretty cool. It's on Navajo land, and you must have a Navajo guide take you to the canyon (our car would never have made it over the sand anyways). We rocked up at the perfect time of the day for seeing all the sunbeams light up the dust in the canyon.



Grand Canyon:

Massive and majestic. Beyond anything Pako had imagined. Only had one day, so didn't make it down all the way to the Colorado river. We hiked instead to Plateau Point, spent an hour for lunch, and hiked out again. I think about 12 km. Or miles. I forget which. Took most of the day. Absolutely awesome view of the river and surrounding canyon. You could spend a lifetime here and not explore it all. Next time we'll do a 4 day hike: one day down, one day up the opposite rim, and then back on different routes.