Ugh, stupid heat wave. I believe the worst has passed but the past week was nearly unbearable. It's been retarded hot and my apartment doesn't have air conditioning. I ended up staying in the lab after hours for a bit before returning home. (Only because the lab has air conditioning.) Normally, I wouldn't have a problem but the humidity is what's killing me. I believe Monday was somewhere around 93°F. Yuck.


I finally got to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest on Friday. Amber, Jeanine, Jess, Justin, Melissa and I went to the carousel Mall to catch the 8:30 showing. The plan was to meet at the food court at 7pm, buy our tickets, grab something to eat and then go to the movie. Unfortunately, sometimes these things just don't go according to plan. As I was about to leave the lab at 6:30 Friday evening, the power went out for five seconds. Immediately after the power went back on, every piece of equipment with an alarm on it goes off. So there are twenty or so things in the lab in four different rooms with alarms blaring. Of course, I have to check on them to make sure there wasn't a power surge that fried their power supplies (especially with the -80°C freezers). As I was checking on the equipment, I was greeted by three security guards in the hallway. I found this strange since I was the only person on the south wing, 8th floor. The hospital was in some state of lockdown. Well, local penitentiaries do occasionally send some of their tenants to be treated here. Now I was wondering if one of them took the five second blackout as a chance to escape. Fortunately, the guards didn't hang around long and might have been just a precautionary measure until a proper head count came in. It's just more crap to delay my departure.

I finally left 20 minutes later than I intended and arrived at the mall 15 minutes after the proposed rendezvous time. Everybody was already there and waiting. Walking up to the ticket booth, we saw the 8:30 showing was 'OCA'. We didn't know what the hell that meant. An employee filled us in. She said that it stands for 'Optional Captioning' and the movie would be subtitiled. Well, we could deal with that so we just took it.

Dinner was at "The American Cafe". It was a little pricey, but the food was good. It was a little tense since we had to leave the restaurant by the time the movie started. Of course, I was the last one to finish my food as everybody stared as a method of encouragement. Still chewing, I raced out of the eatery to catch up with the rest of the gang. 5 minutes before showtime, the theater was already packed. And since there were six of us, in order to stay together we took the second row. Intense neck crane-age ensued.

As the movie started, we saw what they meant by subtitles. Everything was freakin' subtitled. The beginning of the movie went something like this:

(Rain starts)... (heartbeat)... (rain falling on teacups)... (ominous music starts)... (heartbeat stops)... (Music fades)...

I quickly learned to ignore the subtitles.


I liked the movie but I think they left a lot of loose ends at the end of the film. Not to spoil anything, but it'll be hard to remember all of these loose ends come next year when the third movie rolls out. I'm also convinced that Davey Jones is the evil cousin of Dr. John Zoidberg. The octopus head and lobster claws... C'mon! This film was also a lot darker than its predecessor. Crows picking at eyes, guys. Good stuff.

After the movie, I sped home because I had to get up early the next day.


I got a call at 5am from Sudipta because I agreed to drive her to the airport for her flight out to Stanford. After dropping her off, I spent three hours in the lab to wait for the 9am bus heading towards Watkins Glen.

Amber, Jess, Justin, Melissa and I (the usual suspects) picked seats together on the charter bus and sat through the two-hour ride to the Wine Festival.

Melissa's ready to rock.

Jess and I are ready to get drunk before noon.

We finally got there. The itinerary anticipated the bus ride to be an hour and a half. We were a little disappointed with the extra thirty minute sitting-down time. Time wasted when we could be wasted. Anyway, the New York state wineries were out in full force. As were we. We immediately went booth hopping, sampling three to four wines per booth.

Amber and Jess with their complementary wine sampling glasses.

It wasn't long before the need to go to lunch. I think I had the equivalent of three glasses of wine in my system by then, with no food and it wasn't even noon yet.

The food was expensive and unsatisfying.

Justin and I picked up a Philly Cheesesteak from one of the food booths. I swear the thing was on a hot dog bun that was cut in half. It was tiny and the steak was dry. Big waste of $6. Anyway, we both picked up a pulled pork sandwich from another vendor for $4. It was small too, but it was just enough.

We ran back into the tents and jumped from booth to booth. There was a total of 76 wineries and we hit most of them, almost all of them. Different vendors had different levels of generosity. Some would only give you a sip while others would fill your glass halfway. Of course we loved the generous vendors.

Amber, Jess and Melissa.

I'm enjoying myself.

No, seriously.

The ladies had their tall shoes on that day.

It was hot that day, but not as bad as previous days since it rained that morning. The problem was now the humidity. The air was so muggy in the tents we had to run outside every couple of minutes.

I picked up three bottles of wine while the rest of the group bought six. Since I'm moving soon, I don't need to be dragging more stuff around with me to the new apartment. We boarded the bus by 4pm and arrived in Syracuse just past 6pm. As soon as I got home, I passed out. Getting up at 5am on Saturday is way to early for me.

Chuck's was a bust on Monday. Their air conditioner was busted and we didn't want to hang out in a sauna.

I saw The Producers last night. It's a good movie, but I'm not crazy over it.

Tomorrow is Lunch with the ESF crowd. Wonder how that's going to go down. I'm also signing my lease in the evening.

Friday is a BBQ at Brandy's and a party at Josh's.

Busy, busy.

Richard, update your blog!
-Kristi - 061007 - 2310EST
http://www.mykristi.com
kgovella@gmail.com

I have to say that this round of house hunting was rather dramatic ever since the beginning. I wouldn't really mind staying here but there were a couple of things that are bugging me about this apartment.

First of all, the floors are paper thin. There is no sound insulation whatsoever. It's kinda like in the movie Office Space when Peter can hear Lawrence through the living room wall. It's not really a problem during the day since I can tolerate background noise. The real problem is for the downstairs neighbors when I have to study. It's not uncommon for me to pull all-nighters or near all-nighters (until about 4am) and they can hear me move around the apartment. Even if I move my desk chair a little bit, the sound is amplified through the floorboards. It also doesn't help that the floor squeaks throughout the hallway, close to the doors and other high-traffic areas. I don't want to be bugging them any more than I need to. Another thing is that I have a Dolby Digital 5.2 surround system (stereo subwoofers) and I haven't turned it on in months just because I know how annoying it would be if it were on. I need to fire that baby up, it's been a while.

Second, I want a garage to stow the motorcycle for the winter. I was fortunate enough to have Amber allow me to stash Ayame in her garage for this last winter. However, I'm also rather uneasy feeding off others' generosity. I also want a place to work on Ayame and The Crushinator. The car, especially, has been needing some shop-vac love for quite some time. One of the rules for the complex is that we're not allowed to work on our vehicles in the parking lot for whatever reason. I changed my oil and adjusted my valves anyway. Yeah, next time I want to adjust the valves under some kind of shelter to avoid getting another awesome watch tan.

Third, the neighborhood isn't that great. Personally, I haven't had any problems but this area is usually featured in the local nightly news and it's usually not in a good way. (However, the U District in Seattle was a lot worse.) So I guess it would be better to move now instead of waiting for something to happen. Well even though the area isn't that great, the apartment complex is relatively secure with guards on nightly patrol. It's like a little oasis amongst the ghettos.

There is also this one thing that annoyed me. One time when I came home from campus, one of the neighbors informed me that some kids were playing on my motorcycle while I was out. Not only does that annoy the shit out of me, but if the motorcycle happens to fall over on the dumb kids playing with it, guess who's liable? Not only would I have $700+ worth of motorcycle fairing to replace, but most likely I would be facing a lawsuit from an angry mother for not securing the bike properly which caused greif in the form of a broken arm/broken leg/death or whatever. Welcome to sue-happy United States and New York state is teeming with lawyers, so I wouldn't like to test it. I need to live somewhere where people leave others' shit alone.

Fourth, the management has been pissing me off lately. They're all friendly when you say you're interested in an application, but once you're committed to a 12 month lease, things change. Maintenance scares the shit out of me sometimes. In the double-fine print it says that the maintenance crew will have access to the apartment at any given time. What this means is that they would knock once then unlock the front door and come inside. It would be for random crap too like fire alarm tests. I might've socked one of them if they came inside while I was taking a nap. They also have trouble keeping their records straight. What actually pushed me to leave was when they sent me a letter to renew my lease saying that my term is up at the end of June, a month early. I replied that it's actually at the end of July and I could provide a copy of the lease I signed if they need proof. It's petty crap, but it was the last straw. I sent them a signed letter stating that I would not be extending my lease beyond the end of July. A couple of weeks later, I receive a note saying that they haven't received my renewed lease and it's late. Whatever.


Anyway, those are the reasons why I decided to move. It was just a ton of little things that I can ignore, but I just don't want to bother with it anymore. I'll be moving into the upper level of a house turned apartment by August. I have to admit, it's a little smaller but it's not like I used all the space in my current apartment. I'll probably make another faux Cribs entry.

EDIT: I have pictures up now, in the LJ

"Isn't it time you gave up hope of ever improving yourself in any way?"
-Bender

I stand behind by previous statement regarding how summer equals laziness. I'm already lazy to begin with and summer makes it exponentially worse. Lazy in the sense of updating this thing. A lot of things have been going on and I haven't whipped out the camera Pavi's going away party. Not once! Maybe if I had a sexy T9 then maybe I'd be more prone to carrying a camera around and whipping it out. But in the meantime, all I have is my trusty SLR (the camera in the cell phone never counts) and I haven't touched it in a while. Bah well.

Lab has been alright. The first two weeks in my permanent lab I dove headfirst into a stack of papers all related to plasmacytoid dendritic cells. By the end of all that, I was already filling my second 2" 3-ring binder with journal publications. In the end, I produced a 13-page paper that contains all the useful informaton I had gathered from that two inch thick pile of paper. While I was writing it, it's purpose was only for my own benefit. However, once I got others to read it they've been encouraging me to turn it into a formal review. Gawd, that means I have to rewrite the whole thing. I wrote it all in the first person which should not exist in proper reviews. Bah. So far, I haven't done anything about it. Maybe I'd put the paper up on the site if anybody's interested... interested in reading a paper on the technicalities of plasmacytoid dendritic cells from a research perspective. Yeah, whatever.

Since last week, I've been trying to grow some cells in tissue culture. Exciting, no? The problem is that they're growing rather retarded. I think they've been frozen down too long so most of the sample died (12 years, I believe). Luckily, another lab has a batch of the same strain that was frozen down about a month ago. They're up and growing. I'm just trying to get them to a working concentration. Soon, my pretties.


Somehow, I got put in charge of a med student who's working in the lab for the summer. I don't know how this happened. I believe it's somewhere along the lines of losing at 'not it'. I might have been out of the room or something. I have no idea what to do with him. Oh well. The worst part is that he doesn't leave until 5pm and since he doesn't have keys to the lab I have to stay to lock up. I tend to leave early on Fridays if I need to come in on the weekend (which has been the trend since I got here). B'oh well. It's hard figuring out what somebody else needs to do when I don't know what I need to do in lab. Guh!

On the 23^rd of June, Thien and I had a Filipino Party. I suppose he made me co-host so more of my class would show up. So the four Filipinos that showed up to the party were Thien's slaves for the evening. It was a fun night packed with Filipino food and drunken Karaoke Revolution goodness. For a personal record, that day I brought the largest batch of Adobo I've ever put together. At first the party started off a little karaoke-shy then into the night (as the liquor reserves neared depletion) the microphone didn't get put down. A couple of people asked where I bought the game. So now I'm assuming I'm no longer needed at parties since there's another copy floating around. Oh well. I didn't think it was that big of a party but Thien thinks it was too big. It's all in perspective, I guess.


The next Friday, Will had a party at his house. It was alright. Since his roommate is an MD resident, there were a bunch of MDs from his side and PhDs from Will's side. And as such, the party was pretty segregated between the two camps. It was like 5 PhDs versus 17 or so MDs.

Here's a concept I'm not used to. Apparently it's common practice for a party to move from a house to a club here in Syracuse. From what I'm used to a party only moves to a club if it either a) was only intended for pre-funkage and the club was the real event or b) the party really sucks and the only way to save it is to hit a bar/club/whatever. I followed them to the bar. I quickly got bored since everybody else was occupied with somebody so I had three options: act as a third wheel and stick my nose in-between converstaions, roam around aimlessly around the bar by myself, or go home. I went home.


The next day was Amber's barbeque. Since her family was around she decided to host a little get-together. Unfortunately, since this was also the Fourth of July weekend, a lot of students from my class went home to see their families. Brandon, Justin, Renee, Shannon, and Thien were in attendence. I also managed to convince Miriam to stop by for a bit. Burgers, bratwurst, chicken, corn, beer and Jello shots. What else could you ask for? Her family probably thinks we're nuts and it goes without saying that they believe Amber fits in well among us. More karaoke goodness ensued that night. This time, we actually got Renee to give it a try. Good stuff.

I did absolutely nothing on July 4. I just sat around the apartmement all day. I really needed it since I hadn't had a day to relax in a long time. So I picked up Kameo on the third and beat it on the fourth. And if you have an Xbox Live login, you can see it for yourself.



The gamercard is a little scary. You can see whatever that person is doing as long as their Xbox360 is on. It'll tell you if the person is playing a game and which game it is or if they're watching a DVD. Ha, oh well.


The following Friday, Jess had a little get-together at her place. It was a little moving-in party now that her roommate has her stuff in the house (yet was suspiciously absent from all the festivities). Amber brought and whipped out some board games. As expected, we were all schooled (at least the opposing team) by Amber who, in fact, owns these games. I bet she studied the cards. My alcohol tolerance shot through the roof somehow. I put away seven beers before I realized that I put away seven beers. I was hardly buzzed too. I bet I looked like the alcoholic of the night as the others were working on their second or third. Well, I brought a six pack and I put away seven . That means I have a net gain of one beer. Awesome.

On Monday night (like two nights ago) Amber, Jess, Justin, Melissa and I got trashed/wasted/crunk. The concept seemed innocent enough. "Weenie roast at Jess' at 7:30." Only the 24 addicts were invited since we need something else to do on Monday nights when a season's not running. The night would have been clean and sober if it weren't for the Beer Margarita's we made. Yeah, it sounds ghetto but they mask the alcohol so well you wouldn't know you're drunk until it's too late. The recipe is simple enough to make even when you're drunk. I know! Because that's what I did. I was making it all night and the five of us were slamming it down like water (we put away four batches of this stuff). Anyway, it's a can of lime-ade concentrate blended with an equal amount of tequila(!!) and two Coronas. There's just a little alcohol aftertaste but as long as you keep it cool, you'll be messed up before you know it. So it was chili dogs and beer margaritas on the menu that evening. I would elaborate on what happened that night but everybody else agreed on "Whatever happened at Jess' place stays at Jess' place." So let's meet at Jess' place and I'll tell you all about it. There are some rather embarassing stories that some people *cough*Melissa*cough* wouldn't want spread around. Heh. I need to get my hands on the pictures Jess took that night. We didn't leave until three in the morning. By the way, Melissa is an awesome drunk.


This Saturday is the Wine Festival. I'll be going with Amber, Jess, Justin and Melissa. This should be interesting. I better bring my camera.

I have found a place to live. This takes a whole load off my back. I'll be moving at the end of the month and a moving-in party is likely to ensue.


music: Utada Hikaru - Wait and See