Recent Fun and Updates

It's been a not-so-bad couple of days. Unfortunately, Mother Nature looked at her calendar and remembered, "Oh crap, it's supposed to be winter," and turned the dial down to around freezing. Our group moved back into our old (windowless) offices from the portable trailers we were swapped into during asbestos remediation; that and getting my laptop fixed pretty much wiped any thesis productivity for Friday.


But that night was dinner over at Dan and Daniel's (some lovely salmon, roast squash, pilaf, and beans). A bunch of people came over, and we watched Pedro Almodóvar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. A very fun evening.

As we were wrapping up the night, conversations turned to Christmas and Santa Claus. I love hanging out with clever and funny people--we free-associated our way through a bunch of riffs on "modern communication with Santa," as recorded on Dan's LJ:

Thank you for calling the North Pole. All of our elves are currently assisting other wishers. Your wish list is important to us. We will process your wish list call in the order of nice to naughty.

On Saturday morning, the new grad student and I went to the Farmer's Market, stopping at the new Starbuck's on the way. A fun way to spend the morning--she had been meaning to go down and check out that market, and I've been going there for a while, so I could play tour guide ("...these are the Croatian farmers I get my Japanese pumpkin from"). After perusing the rutabagas, I told her that I could try to cure her childhood phobia of root vegetables with the Cook's Bible oven roasted vegetable recipe (I have it scanned and PDF'd, if anyone wanted to try it out for themselves--a very nice, low-effort fall dish). Incidentally, is anyone besides me amused that there is a turnip disambiguation page on Wikipedia? Or that there is an International Rutabaga Curling Championship that takes place annually at the Ithaca, NY farmer's market?

Well, back to work; thesis simulations are still progressing, but bloody well slowly. I realized that I'm leaving in in eleven days--I'm starting to think, "Ok, what food can I buy and finish before I get on a plane?" More importantly, I need to finish a report section for a client (which is also a thesis chapter) before then. Ack.