Flat Tire

On our way back from Albertson's via the library (Aaron had to return an overdue book, and we figured we could help him get that done), my car got a flat. Walking away from my parked car, we heard a hsssssssss. Tired died all at once, or at least it sounded like that.

So Forrest and Jerry went across the tracks to get Forrest's floor jack out of his car, and we put on my little spare tire. Next place the car goes is to the shop for a tire fix or replacement. Yay...

Home Movies?

Ahh, more amusingness. We were talking about the prank Joe and friends pulled on one of his roommates (they plastered the roommate's with porn). Other Tim contemplated such a prank for his female roommate, but then said, "I don't know if they make enough 'girl porn' to fill a room." And so Aaron suggested, ever so helpfully, "I know, you could make it yourself!"

Aaron's Tie

Aaron Wearing the Tie

Aaron was awarded "most drunk" at our Friday night gathering, and naturally he needed to be awarded with a tie around his head (à la Trigun). Alas, there were no ties handy. They existed upstairs, but that was clearly too far to go for a tie. So Forrest made him a tie out of a USB mouse — a mouse that has been places.

Categories: Aaron, photos

Microsoft Accesses Nothing

Maybe I'm just bitter about all the NullPointerExceptions (or C#'s version thereof) that I've been thrown during my 435 programming. But when I went to rate one of Microsoft's pages, I got this error message: "Object reference not set to an instance of an object. We are experiencing technical problems." No one's above the law, and no one — not even the creators of C# — is above NullPointerExceptions. Muahaha!

Synopsis

Went to funeral home, church, and reception. Catholic services. Mortuary people made Grandma look like herself, more or less. She wore green, as did I and one of my sisters, in support of her non-standard funeral attire choice. Saw cousins and aunts I hadn't seen in ages, which was nice. There's talk of a large family reunion this summer, so that we get to see each other at some time other than weddings or funerals.

Haven't been able to type up my half of the 431 project yet, but I have a good chunk of the algorithm written down in Java in my notebook, and will finish on the bus ride back home. Said bus ride leaves at 8 in the morning (and gets me home with only 45 minutes to spare to type up the code before class), but to get there in time to beat the traffic, we have to leave at 5. :( Thus, must go to bed and not blog any more.

Karma-esque

I just realized that the Spanish cashier who let me pay $2 for $2.39 worth of snacks essentially gave me 40 cents. And earlier today, I gave that mangy guy 50 cents. If I believed in karma, this would be a good example of it. A neat coincidence, in any case.

More Spanish

More language fun. We stopped at a half-way point outside of a small market. The people on the bus and in this city here are largly hispanic, so I'd been hearing a lot of Spanish throughout the bus ride. The man in front of me in line at the store was buying a Coke. The cashier warned him, in Spanish, that he was getting C2, not original Coke. He hadn't meant to grab a C2, so she told him to go look for a bottle that was rojita.

Now, rojo is red, and –ita is a diminutive. But I wasn't sure exactly what "little red" would look like. So, when I was buying my stuff, I asked the cashier about it. Some mutually entertaining Spanglish ensued once we both established a minimum level of bilingualism.

"Rojo," she said, "is more fuerte. Rojito is less, uh..." She wasn't coming up with a term to describe the difference, but then the man came back and held up the normal Coke bottle. "It's brighter?" I suggested. She laughed at our communications and agreed that rojito is brighter than rojo.

Then she gave me Rolos free, after I only had two dollars in cash and didn't want to buy it with a credit card because of surcharges. Very awesome and friendly.

Getting on the Bus

It was rather a pain buying my bus tickets to go home for my grandmother's funeral. Long story short, Amtrak said they could get fined $10k if they sold me a "local travel" ticket, so I had to go with Greyhound instead. Nevermind that I've bought these exact tickets numerous times before, during the first summer Tim and I dated and visisted each other back and forth between SLO and SJ. Bah. And then, because I needed to be at the station early, I missed my class today. I'm worried about the class project due Wednesday, since I may or may not have internet access and time to use it while I'm gone.

Anyhow. While I was waiting at the Greyhound statoin for the bus to arrive, some mangy-looking old guy asked me how much a pay phone call was. I told him I didn't know (which was true, since I couldn't remember just then). But as I started walking away, I considered letting him use my cell phone. As I was asking him if it was just a local call, I remembered that pay phones now cost fifty cents. I actually had some change in my pocket for once, so I have him two quarters. Charity certainly feels much better when you know it's not going to booze.

Then, when I got onto the bus, the driver wasn't there yet. I wanted to make sure I was on the right bus, so I asked a woman in the front if it was the northbound bus. She looked a little confused, so I rephrased the question. She shook her head and said, "No speak English." And I was like, Woohoo! I get to use Spanish! So I asked her again, "¿Este autobus va al norte? No al sur?" She seemed a little surprised, which was cool, and responded, "Sí, al norte."

So I was on the right bus. Yay. :)

Music Video Fun

When I was visiting Olya, she showed me the original music video for Dragostea Din Tei (the one that Numa Numa sings to, with lyrics here). Also amusing is Daler Mehndi's Tunak Tunak Tan. What's with the hands? Wish I knew.

Just thought I'd share what I was looking at instead of programming like I should be doing.

Friday Flowers

Friday Flowers

"Just because" flowers are the best. These ones were Happy Friday flowers from Tim.

Tim can be so wonderful, and "just because" flowers are just further evidence of this. When he came home from his morning classes today, he had these flowers for me. They're now sitting in a vase on our dining table. :)

Categories: Tim, photos

A Remembering for Grandma

My sister called me earlier tonight to tell me that our grandmother had died in the hospital, just two days after we all found out she had cancer. So far as I have heard, the rest of the family is taking it pretty well, given the circumstances.

Cresaean culture holds that a person isn't really lost until they're forgotten, and so stories are continued to be told about the deceased as if they weren't dead. I'd like to do something like that for Grandma, but I'll need help from my family in gathering and retelling her stories. I do remember...

• ...her telling me about how she worked in an office where she was (one of?) the only women. It reminded me of how I like being the only female in a group, and I was surprised to find that I shared this trait with Grandma.
• ...visiting her at RBC, back when the family still ran it. She had an office in the back (or was it the front and my dad's office was in the back?), past a office-hallway thing that never seemed to have anyone in it. I liked to write with her pens from her desk — they were wide at the base and tapered to a thin point at the far end, and felt like ballpoint plumes. She also let me play with her whiteout in my writings. I wonder if she knew how much fun I had with such a simple thing like that? I was too young to think to express my feelings about it then, and I've only just remembered it now.
• ...talking to her in her living room, with her sitting on her plush couch and surrounded by all the teddy bears we had given her over many Christmases. Grandparents are notoriously hard to buy gifts for, but Grandma liked her bears.
• ...listening to her play the piano. Grandma couldn't read sheet music, but she was an incredible pianist who played by ear instead. I felt jealous in an awed sort of way by how well she played. She also played the organ in the back of the living room once or twice, I think, but I don't remember that as well.
• ...looking at all her photographs on top of her piano and along the various end tables. She would tell us who some of the less frequently visited relatives were and how they were all related to each other.
• ...trying (and mostly failing miserably) to help her with little things in the kitchen when she still prepared Thanksgiving meals herself. (My dad eventually took over most of the food preparation as she got older.) She made an awesome shrimp salad that I've never found reproduced quite as tasty anywhere else. We often had pies, too — pumpkin comes to mind — but I'm not positive whether she actually baked those herself. And she always had a pot of hot coffee and nice cups and saucers ready whenever we were there.
• ...her wearing a lot of crocheted clothing (vests, mostly) that she had made herself. She liked dark greens, and dark brown (or maybe white?) moccasin-like shoes.
• ...playing with my cousins at her house when my dad's side of the family got together for Thanksgiving or Christmas Day. She let us use her old typewriter up in that little office in the far back end of the third floor, and let us play with all the old stuff up in her two-level attic. We picked lemons, rode in an old metal wagon, passed "mail" through the mail slot in the little dining room, and explored beneath the deck and behind the tool sheds of her back yard. She didn't directly participate in our games, but they are part of my memories associated with Grandma.

I wish I had talked more with her when she visited our house during holidays and birthdays. It's just so easy to let the grandparent-generation people talk amongst themselves while we kids escape to play video games or watch movies during family gatherings. But now we can't form any new memories of Grandma, aside from sharing with one another things we each remember about her.

24, which is like 42

That is, 24 miles per hour: the airspeed velocity of an unladen (European, not African) swallow. So now we know. Incredibly awesome.

Me & Olya in Hell

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Extreme
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Dante Inferno Hell Test

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell — The City of Dis!

Same level of Hell as Olya. So I'm in good company. ;)

I also have personal news (went to Tim's cousin's wedding in Vermont, visited Olya at Dartmouth, found out my grandmother has terminal cancer), but these things all deserve posts of their own, when I have more time to blog.

I'm currently spending most of my waking time programming for class, along with my college friends (who come over just about every night until midnight or so to program together).

Categories: quiz, Olya

To the East Coast!

I'm just about out the door to the airport, final destination the east coast, Tim's cousin's wedding, and quality time with my high school best friend. I'm excited, except for the average maximum temperature over there being a freaking 32 degrees Fahrenheit. I strongly disapprove of such weather.

Anyhow, gotta run. Will take pictures.

I know where you sleep at night!

Or at least I know where your ISP is...

So: Muahaha, I know who visits my blog now! In a very vague way, anyhow. I have your IP addresses, I know which of these are local ones, and I even know two of your IPs individually. (Hi, Jerry and home family! :)) It even looks like I have a couple visitors who travelled from the far-away land of my conlang web pages — Cctoide, do you visit here sometimes? (He's my Portuguese conlanging acquaintance, in case you other folk are curious.)

Anyway, if you want to see my stats (which are based on the downloading of the sidebar's background image), they are over here.