He he

So, watching Dancing with the Stars last night, John O'Hurley said the most awesome thing ever! In their little blurb about the Paso, he said: (I will admit it's not quite word for word, but as best I can remember) "I fought the bull, my job is done. Now someone go pick up the woman and the cape."

Soooo amused. Ahh, gotta love paso.

I'm going to Bronwyn's birthday party tomorrow, it's a fancy cocktail party, so I get to break out a pretty dress to wear. It should be lots of fun, I'm excited. Then it's off to Sarra's parent's house for the weekend. I'm going to miss being around family a lot. But, at least I'll have people I know to be with. It will be nice. And I have to be back to run a participant at 9:30 Tuesday morning. Crazy! Why did I schedule her then?! Silly silly. Ah well.

Have a very happy Fourth of July everyone! Spend happy times with your families for me. I miss you my lovely family. I shall talk to you this weekend.

Evil Act #1

Muahahaha! I have committed an evil act, and Dan said I'm awesome for it! I "stole" a cake from LG on Thursday to take it to the BBQ yesterday. Here's the story:

Once upon a time there was a place where people would get together and dance their hearts out once a week. This wonderful place also served cake to those whose date of birth was during that week. One gorgeous night, the fun and crazy Claremont Crew gathered at the place of dancing, and had a really great time! But they happened to notice that there was a cake at an empty table that looked lonely and out of place. This poor lonely cake sat the whole night through, with no one paying any attention to it, and the awaited celebrants never appearing. At the end of the night, the mighty Justin charged the golden-haired Katie with rescuing the cake from its lonely existance so that they might put it to good use at their large festival of meat the next day. The group agreed that the cake would probably be discarded if left alone on the table, so their golden-haired member went swiftly and retrieved the cake from it's solitary existance. The next night, the cake was happy, and the Claremont Crew were happy, as they had sweet things to accent the smokey savories that they had consumed earlier; and they lived happily ever after.

Can you really say that what I did was wrong? Hehehehe ;)

Oh wow.

OK, so I swear Monday night in Claremont was couples' twins night! I saw at least three couples, and one mother-daughter pair wearing if not the same shirts, the same colors on tops and bottoms! It was so weird! I felt very odd walking by myself without someone to match with. But was highly amused nonetheless. I took an hour long walk around Claremont, and the houses are really nice to look at.

On an even funnier note, Tharyn and I took a lunch break outside today, and then since she'd brought a frisbee, decided it would be fun to throw it back and forth a little, until we both realized that Alan could show up at any moment, and even though we had everything finished, it might not be a good idea for him to find us playing outside. So we ran back in giggling. It was funny. Ahh good times in the lab. We really do get research done. We're just way too efficient for our own good most of the time.

It's Raining Ash?

Well, apparently the fire season has started. Somewhat early according to Sarra. There are two really big fires out near San Bernardino, and there was another one not as far east of here yesterday. The only reason I knew this was because I was out on the back deck happily enjoying the 85 degree weather, and it started ashing on me. Which was funny because the first thought through my head was: Where's the volcano around here?! And then a couple minutes later smelled the smoke and realized it wasn't volcano ash, it was fire ash. So I was chased inside by the smokey ashiness. Which was sad. But, oh well, everything is bright and clear again today. Hopefully the fires stay nice and far away and the smoke is all I'll know of them, and not too much of that either! We'll see how the summer progresses.

Two Two Two Earthquakes in Five Short Days

So on Sunday I awoke to the bed shaking under me, wondering where in the house I would go to protect myself from a major earthquake.

Just a few minutes ago, we experienced our second earthquake of the week! Tharyn and I were in the office, and the computers started shaking. And as soon as we got to the doorway, it stopped. Which was fine. I'd rather not be in the basement of a huge concrete building when there's a large earthquake! Anyway, it was apparently a 5.3, centered in San Bernardino County, just NE of Yucaipa, which is 70 miles east of here. Crazy! Anyway, here's the site of our latest quake:
Hope we don't have to shake too many more times this summer!

Neverending Story

So, it seems that problems down here are always coming up. Over the last week Tharyn and I have noticed that the program that collects the EEG data, and the stimulus program (the one that I had to work so hard to make operational) might not be communicating correctly. And that would be bad. My hope is that we can recreate the experiment using both sets of data together if they really are not working, but I have no idea if that's truly possible.

The medium net also has a broken stretchy string which holds the electrodes in place. I know this is bad, and it's one more thing to go wrong, but in the scheme of things I'm not as worried about that.

Tharyn and I just realized that we only have enough money to compensate fifteen more people for their participation. Which means that we're going to run out long before the summer is over. Which is not good if we want to run more people.

And to top it all off, Alan hasn't e-mailed me back in almost a week now! I'm in charge, yeah, but when it comes to things like this... I need him there too. Meh. Why does something always have to go wrong?! Seems like if it's not the house it's the lab.

Also, on a not working note, my Firefly DVDs came on Saturday, but two of the DVD cases were smooshed, so I couldn't open them, which means I can't watch them yet. So I'm waiting until my replacements get here. Should be tomorrow, but still... I need my Firefly! Anyway, that's enough ranting for today. Wish me luck and fewer problems in the future!

They're Coming!!

I finally broke down and ordered my own copy of the Firefly DVDs. Since I've taken to watching them fairly consistantly and now Sarra's are off in Oregon with her, I decided that I just needed my own set. And really, how can you not want them? They're Firefly! Absolutely wonderful show, and I'm just waiting in anticipation of the movie in September! :) Yay for Firefly! Anyway, now I have to wait a week, but they'll be here! I'm so excited!

Rhymes with Tree... Sounds like Bees

Some of you have already heard this. I swear I'm cursed when it comes to home ownership, or maybe it's just living in a house, I don't know. But the house is trying to kill me again!

So, Saturday morning Sarra and I were getting ready to go to her parents house, and she was packing stuff up in the family room while I was in the kitchen, and suddenly said, I think we have a problem. I think there's a bees nest in the chimney. And I looked over, and there were definitely yellowjackets coming out of the fireplace, and a rather loud buzzing coming from within it. Fabulous. In the other fireplace there were what must have been about 50 yellowjackets trying to get out of the screen that was blocking their enterance to the house. So we blocked up the one fireplace that was letting them in, put duct tape around the edge of the other fireplace just to make sure they didn't come in, and left, leaving the ones that had gotten into the house to their own devices. Fortunately, when we got back, they were all dead, they must have burned themselves flying around the one light in the house that's on a timer. Weird.

Anyway, the adventures just don't stop. Poor Alan, getting a frantic message from me every-other day or so. It's just awful. *sigh* When will it end?!

As a note, the yellowjackets seem to have gone away, but the pest people were coming today to make sure that there actually wasn't a nest in the chimney. Hopefully it was just a swarm that for some random reason decided my house was a good place to crash. Bad idea buggies.

In A Grocery Store Near You!

It's Store Wars! And it's absolutely amazing, and if you haven't seen it, you must! Absolutely!

http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.html

It's better with DSL or ethernet of course, since it's faster, but I think you can watch it anywhere. Just amazingly clever awesomeness. :)

It has it in for me!

If you didn't think four mishaps was enough...

At about 5:30 this morning, I was awoken from my sound and peaceful sleep by what sounded like a tree cracking and then falling over. And indeed, that's exactly what had happened. The huge olive tree that grew just outside the window of the room that Sarra and I sleep in had broken basically in half, and fallen into the yard. Fortunately there is no damage to the house, and although a lot of plants are smooshed, and a small branch broken off the tree down below, the main damage seems to have been done to the olive tree itself. And I can't figure out why. The wood seems to be in good condition, hard and fresh looking, and it was misting this morning, but there have been much heavier rains which I would have thought would have brought it down if it was going to fall. But no, it just randomly fell off! Which means that now I have to deal with getting a tree service out to the house to clean up. I haven't heard back from Alan yet, we'll see what he says. In the meantime, take a look at these pictures and tell me just how amazing this random hunk of tree falling down is:


It's down! 


It's large! 


That's all that's left. 

On a slightly happier note, here's my favorite picture from the weekend with Ian. It's just so cute!


Ahh, so domestic.