Only now, it's starting to hit me. Up until yesterday, I didn't feel like I was moving out to New York. Previously, the days just felt like any other day. Tuesday became Wednesday, which turned into Thursday. One day at a time. The days just snuck up on me. I'm shipping out either tomorrow night or Thursday morning. I'm not sure about it yet.

Yesterday was my last day of work at the Institute for Systems Biology. I finally caught up with my lab notebook, inking in months of backlogged data, then I had to runaround, doing the employee checkout. I had to turn in my labcoats, notebooks, backup my data, upload my protocols, and do other things related to leaving the workplace for the last time. But what really got me was turning in my keycard. That was the last thing I did. After doing that, I returned to my old, cleaned out desk. I looked around and saw how empty it was. The drawers were finally cleaned out, an empty space sitting where my laptop is normally stationed, and the random papers I occasionally referred were gone and chucked into the recycle bin. I then laughed at myself, thinking I've been here for over three years. Yeah, I have worked there for quite a while. I have also learned a lot in the various labs I've had the privilage to work in. When I first started working there, I didn't know what to do with my undergraduate career. I figured working in a lab would give me some inspiration on what to do with my life. In May 2002 when I started working there, I didn't even have a clue on what major to declare, yet heartset on medical school. As the years progressed, I became fond of research, finally declared my major and swapped my desire for an MD into a PhD. This place meant a lot to me. And there I was, sitting at my empty desk. My card key turned in. Now, I'm no longer an employee there. I'm stripped of my rank and became a citizen. SOmetimes I would spend more time at work than at home. Now, I no longer have this great place to work at. Perhaps, I just gotten too comfortable there.

I said my 'Thank Yous' to everybody I've worked with during my three year stint. I sat at my hollowed out desk, thinking about everything this place meant to me. I have to admit, I caught myself choking up. This was goodbye. Even if I came back, it wouldn't be the same. This was the point of no return. I don't have my keycard anymore. As soon as I walked out the building, I couldn't come back. I couldn't come back on my own. I couldn't come back to the place that has grown comfortable to me.

It's going to be the same leaving the house. It'll be hard. I've also gotten comfortable there. I'm going to turn my key over and pace away, eastward, without any intention to call Seattle home for a long time. I'm going to miss all my friends. All my experiences I will keep with me. I will always remember the good times. I will always remember the bad times. I've learned from these things and they made me the person I am today. Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much. You will be missed and don't forget me. Only yesterday, it started to hit me.

I have to go, the ferry's docking.

we'll miss you man, and no matter what you say, know that your friends and family are here in washington. that alone is reason enough to call it home. so take care friend and godspeed.
-ben - 050727 - 1214EST



Mango, you know you're always welcome back in Seattle. We're here for you, and so am I. The house just isn't the same without you, and nobody can fill that void. I'll really miss you bro, call us anytime if you need to talk. Love you dude, and make us proud in New York.
-Brian - 050728 - 1137EST



Do great things... represent... get some!
-Isaia - 050729 - 1121EST



So the first time I see you after years was the last, how crazy? But ish owl good...wasn't joking when I said now there's a reason to actually see NY since I've never been there. Enjoy the new things but don't forget home...=) See you later!
-Joysha - 050802 - 1512EST



You still alive, Richard? You can't still be on your road trip, can you? Get back here and post some more! :)
-Kristi - 050812 - 0456EST

kgovella@gmail.com

Such a poetic name, isn't it?

On the morning of Saturday the 9^th, Aron, Rosanna, CarloR, Shannon and I went up to Lake 22 for some hiking goodness. Aron has already put up his pictures. I suggest you check them out.

The directions to the trail head were a little confusing. Especially when one instruction reads "Turn right onto local road". The hell does that mean? We had to drive through a small town to get there. The town had a general store and there were a bunch of middle aged men in flannel shirts and jeans hanging out on the porch sitting on rocking chairs with beers. Now THAT's a rural town. Aron and I were cracking up. Then we started talking about shotguns, Deliverance, Sling Blade and whatnot. Nevertheless, that was why we were out there: to get away from the city. We were just a little unprepared how away we were going to be. All our cell phones lost service as we were leaving the town, marking the frontier of metropoltan civilization.

After fighting thoughts of "Maybe we should've stopped and asked for directions" for ten or so miles, we found signs marking the existence of the Lake 22 trail head. After parking, we were off for adventure upon a well-beaten path.

I took so many pictures. I haven't been hiking in a while and I tend to forget how green Washington is.

Aron took this picture of Rosanna and myself. Anticipating rain, I had my beanie on early in the hike. I look like the freakin' unabomber.

The trail was occasionally broken by intersecting streams. Some stretches of the trail actually run with the stream, so you're either hopping rocks or your socks are going to get wet. I suggest bringing extra socks.

CarloR and Shannon led the pack most of the way. I took the rear most of the time so I could take that impulse photo without worrying about getting run into. That and Aron has a sweet ass.

Aron and Rosanna trekking along.

We ran across the occasional waterfall on the trail. The day ended up getting rather hot. Since we were anticipating rain, most of us had sweaters on and the mist kicked up by the falls was exactly what we needed.

Coming out of the forest, we found ourselves running along a mountain face with switchbacks zigging along upwards. One thing I found strange was that we've been hiking uphill for the past hour and a half. We were supposed to be going to a lake. Lakes tend to be, ya know, downhill, right?

As strange as it seems, we kept moving uphill and uphill, then we re-entered a forest. After a couple more yards of uphill trail, we turned a corner and suddenly there it was, Lake 22. It was beautiful. Lake 22 just sits there in a basin at the top of the mountain. You can see the clouds touching the mountain peak.

In the center of this picture if you'd look carefully, you could see a little stream and waterfall feeding the lake from the peaks.

We decided to hike around the lake. The trail hasn't been finished yet and crossing the mouth of the river draining the lake involved running atop the logjam to the other bank. I felt like the Prince of Persia or something.

Rosanna had a little problem with running the logjam.

Aron came to help. However I think that just made it harder to balance on the logs with two people on it. The river gets quite rapid just outside of the picture. You could see it picking up speed right after the board. Now we know what's feeding all of those waterfalls earlier in the trail.

I had my picture taken atop a rock. I kinda wanted a little more background for the picture, but I never made that request. I could be freakin' anywhere in the world in this picture. Ah well..

Rosanna found a snowman made out of rock... Would that make it a Rockman?... Then in the United States, it would be a Megaman? So confused...

These are a couple of tents we saw around the lake. We walked through the camp, but nobody was around. I guess it's just left there from the researchers studying the lake.

We sat down to eat a quick lunch. This is a little island of trees off to the side of the lake. Every once in a while you could see a fish snap at the surface for a waterbug. The rest of the trail was a muddy mess. The trailmakers haven't touched a quarter of the path around the lake yet. We found a backhoe on the way out. Some of us ended up stepping in mud that sank past our ankles. And I thought wet socks were bad. Muddy socks suck.

On the way out, I hardly took that many pictures since I took so many on the way up. I took a total of 44 pictures along the hike. I didn't get too many pictures of Carlo and Shannon since they were leading most of the way while I was in the back. Curses!

Luckily, we were able to make it to Lake 22 relatively early (~9:45am). On our way down, we saw several groups on the way up. We were lucky to have the lake to ourselves before the rest made it. The hike was fun. We should have been doing this earlier, like while Isaia was still here in Washington. As for me, I only have two weekends left here. ::sigh:: Where does the time go?

So it seems the next hike would be on the 24^th, the day after my BBQ. Hope you won't get too hungover to hike a couple miles out into the wilderness.

music: Switchfoot - Meant to Live

It seems to me that people are losing interest in the internet. Well, I'm just basing this observation through the people I know and talk to. What I mean is that people aren't as eager to claim a little chunk of the web to call their own lately. I remember back when the group weblogs S2, Power Strangers, and Blooger.net were up, alive and kicking. Of course I'm not expecting things to stay that strong. As time goes by, especially in college, we get less and less spare time to dick around with and little side hobbies like webpaging get kicked to the side.

I've also been feeling less and less motivated to update at all. Is this because I have better things to do or is it because my subconscious is telling me that I'm getting less and less interesting. Perhaps it's a little bit of both. I remember years ago, I would take precious time away from sleep every night to update these things. At first it was just time that normally would be wasted through my insomnia. Later on, I've gotten better with sleeping and it eventually felt like I was staying up for the sake of updating. My thoughts, reflections and observations of the day would torture my mind depriving me of sleep. I needed to get it out and chose online journalism as an outlet. I believe I've taken on CarloR's philosophy: "Don't worry about it." I guess it's working. Now that my insomnia isn't as bad as before, staying up to do this is starting to feel more like work. Maybe the insomnia stemmed from my parents' house. I'm never really able to get enough sleep while I'm there.

I have been getting busier and busier lately. I've pulled two all-nighers in one week this year amongst other study binges. Now that I've graduated, the baloon has burst. I have spare time, I'm just not sure what to do with it. I've been going out, eating out, hanging out a lot as if I'm desperately trying to make up for lost time. Or perhaps, it's just that my time that's running out. I'll be moving soon. Sooner than I realize at the moment. It still hasn't hit me yet. I don't know when or how hard it will hit, but it probably won't be pretty. You guys probably don't want to be around for this.

Do I really think that life is getting less and less interesing? This is a hard one. All I have going right now is work. To me, it's far from the daily grind as possible. Different problems and different solutions arise in the field of biotech each day. It's far from boring. It's just that I'm not free to discuss a lot of things going on at work. I signed an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) since we started collaborating with an outside company. Hush-hush. Outside of work, I'm out doing whatever. It isn't boring at all, maybe I'm just thinking that it's not really worth mentioning. Or maybe I believe it's not worth mentioning since I'm finding life less interesting... Touché.

My updating pilosophy: I'm doing this for my sake and my friends' sake. Entries should be complete and not cryptic. I'll probably forget what the hell I was posting about a week later if I had cryptic entries. I must admit that I do get a little wordy. I even get sick of reading these through myself. That would explain my lack of proofreading on fresh entries. I usually sleep on it then worry about it later. I even delete entire paragraphs because I don't want to read it over again. I've done it twice so far writing this already.

Maybe it's time for this all to bounce back. It's already happening. The old Skeeet weblog is back in the form of a LiveJournal community. This is becoming more of a necessity since distance is starting to separate us. Isaia's been in Japan since last year. Aron has married and moved out to Everett. CarloR has moved out and bought a condo in Mill Creek.

This year, Kristi's moving to Japan, Chan's going to Tokyo for a year, Jhoana's moving to D.C., Star's moving to Florida and I'm moving to Syracuse. We're all growing apart and we all keep a webpage of some sort. Maybe it'll all bounce back, maybe it won't. Maybe we'll have a lot of experiences we want to share, remember and discuss or maybe we'll keep it all to ourselves or even maybe we'll succumb to the daily grind and see every day as the same damn day. (Scary thought!)

For me, I'm starting to see it as a necessity. I'm not about to pay $60 for a domain name and some space and NOT use it. I know I'm not good talking on the phone. I'm not a phone person. I always need a couple of moments to gather up everything I want to say before saying anything. I really don't want to forget to mention anything. There's usually some kind of awkward silence in my phone conversations if I'm not concise. And I'm usually uneasy since there's that nagging feeling that I left something out. I also don't like repeating myself. There's something about being redundant that makes me feel real inefficient. I rather just say something one time and one time only. That's why I'll be keeping this site. I know it means nothing right now, but it'll have potential once I move away. Granted, if people still care about me out there. This will be my portal of communication to anyone who cares.

What's my take-home message? Not sure,.. heh. I just may have ranted myself into a circle. We're losing interest in publishing our lives. However, I see things bouncing back (at least for myself) as distance separates us all.


Alright if that was boring, I've transcribed Stewie's rant from the latest Family Guy

Ha! I got your hat!
Take that, hatless!
Now go back to the quad and resume your hacky-sack tourney. I'm not going to lie down for some frat boy bastard with his damn Teva sandals and his Skoal bandits and his Abercrombie and Fitch long-sleeve open-stitched crew neck henley smoking his sticky buds out of a soda can while watching his favorite downloaded Simpsons episodes every night!
Yes, we all love Mr. Plow.
Oh, you've got the song memorized, do you?
So does EVERYONE else!
That is exactly the kind of idiot you see at Taco Bell at one in the morning. The guy who just whiffed his way down the bar skank ladder.

(Liddane: Good night, Stewie)

If he wants to throw hands, I'll throw hands. I'll tell you how do-...

-Stewie Griffin

music: Yellowcard - Miles Apart

BTW, it was recently the five-year anniversary of that ALL YOUR BASE web phenomenon. Damn, I'm feeling old.
-Richard - 050712 - 1743EST
http://rmangio.com
rmangio@gmail.com

HOLY SHIT S2. I REMEMBER THAT!
-Lee - 050716 - 1244EST
http://rockcalypso.net
most.incredible@gmail.com

Yeah, the good 'ol days of weblog past.
-Richard - 050716 - 1206EST

Livejournal made me sad. I'm back on my own domain. Go ahead, click around 'till your heart's content. I made the headers interactive. Clicking on it will refresh it. The "R" underneath it does that also. Then the numbers point directly to a jpg to replace the random image. If you want to play with the random images again, then click on the "R".

I know the whole random image playing thingie was first done by Ben a couple of years ago. But now he doesn't have it anymore and it's mine now. Nyah!

I know some of those images are recycled from the last layout, however I haven't really been taking pictures. Unless you just want two pictures cycling around randomly, this is better. I may swap out the Seattle pictures once I move east.

This site is running off of Greymatter once again. It's a bitch to code for, but if you know what you're doing things could look great. I've built it from the ground up. Yeah, it does look similar to the old site. I'm just THAT creative. Deal with it.

The space and domain are now being hosted by Dot5. $60 a year for 50gb/month bandwidth and 1.5gb webspace. Good deal, I say.

Anyway things may be a little shaky for a while since the domain name is still in transition between servers. You may be redirected to the old site. It should all settle down in the next couple of days.

Anyway, I guess this place is still in Beta phase. If anybody catches a glitch or bug in the programming or so, comment in (unless that's not working) or let me know some other way. I've optimized it for IE6+ and Firefox. Let me know which browser you're using if you want to report an error.

Thanks you much.