Fat Cats

I was going to post about our recent camping trip. Then I saw this. A photo gallery of people's "Cubby Pets". This is certainly the strangest yet of MSNBC.com's photo albums. The pictures are disturbing if you ask me. But the reason this gallery is blog-worthy? Check out the ratio of cats to dogs in the album. It's not even close. Of the 60 shots, I counted only 10 dogs. The rest... fat cats. I'm not sure yet whether or not I hate fat cats more than I hate regular sized cats (they're all jerks one way or another), but I think I probably do.

Ok, back to work.

I once was blind

but that was a long time ago. I've been wearing glasses or contacts since 6th grade.

This morning I attempted to order a year's supply of contacts online. I just received an email saying that my order was placed on hold because my prescription has expired. And suddenly I felt something welling up inside me. A feeling. One that can only be described as... rage. Why on earth do I need a freaking prescription to buy contacts? It's not like they're some kind of drug that I'm going to sell to local teenagers who are looking for a cheap way to get their kicks. Nor am I going to smuggle them to Canada (they probably get them free up there anyway). They're freaking contacts! And if I know what kind I need, why should I be forced to pay an eye doctor money I don't have to tell me what I already know? Perhaps a better question is, why would an optical prescription expire? Oh right, so the eye doctors have a chance to gouge me. What kind of a scam are the optometrists running here? I imagine I could attempt to plead my case with them - that I'm a grad student and therefore have zero expendable income and am quite content with my current prescription. But even in my imagination, I am rebuffed and told to make an appointment and pony up the cash so I can have the delicate genius sign a sheet with the same damn prescription as my current little sheet that is apparently no longer valid.

Ugh. Sorry about that. Stay tuned though. I have tales from the camping trip this weekend.

But now I'm found

Dear reader,
Did you miss me?
I did.
That is all,
Dr. C

So I realize this has been the slowest patch of blogging since I first began The Musings. Thanks for sticking around. I plan to be fairly bored at work for the rest of... well... until I graduate - so I should have plenty o' time for blogging. For now, I'll just try to catch everyone up.

Two weeks ago TinRoof and I flew to Chicago for the annual Boomshaka show. Most of you are familiar with Boom. But for those of you that land on this blog looking for information about the fate of Judy from Family Matters, Boomshaka is a student performance group at Northwestern University. A simple explanation is they're a rhythm and dance ensemble. I was in the group for 4 years during my undergrad days. To put it succinctly, I love me some Boomshaka. Annnyhow - the show was fantastic (as usual) and while in town I had the chance to perform with Be The Groove - a professional/alumni spin off of Boomshaka (videos coming soon). It felt pretty good to get back in the groove again. It had been too long.

We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with The Expert (not you, Nodnarb) and his wife Emba (I can't believe how long I just sat here trying to think of a good nickname for her... and clearly I failed). Hung out in Evanston and Chicago. Saw a White Sox game on Sunday. They got slaughtered by the Royals. Yes, you read right. Ate delicious food. Went to the Lincoln Park Zoo, Navy Pier, etc. All good things.

Tuesday we took the train down to StL. TinRoof could only stay a day and a half as she had to return to CVille for graduation; though thankfully not before we had a fun evening with the family. FYI: Homemade wine makes dinner time fun. I stuck around through the weekend for Arbusta (my baby sister)'s wedding. It was a very beautiful day. And everything went off without a hitch (er... with one hitch). Well, aside from their exit music starting to play way too soon. That may be the funniest communion I've ever witnessed.

And now I'm back. Back to the grind of research - with the important exception that there are no longer classes or TA-ing to distract me. And it'll be like this for about a year. I'm still hoping to defend in early February of '08. After that, who knows. Maybe I'll be able to find a sugar momma to buy me one of those fancy places in Lincoln Park.

This weekend we're off to Seneca Rocks to do some camping with Rojas and his crew.

Oh and by the way, the packaging for Orbit gum really sucks. What's the deal with that? It's like I'm trying to pull out Excalibur or something. All I want is a stick of gum.

One time, OK, see, one time (part 5)

OK, so what happened is one time Randy Beaman went on a trip with his dad and they picked up a lady who wanted a ride home, and this was in Kansas, and she sat in the back seat and when they got where she wanted to go they turned around and she was gone!

And Randy Beaman's dad talked to the man who lived there and told him what the lady looked like and the man said, "Oh, that's my wife, but she died four years ago."

Spooky, huh?
'K, bye.

Final Final

Over the next two days I will take the final finals of my academic career (not counting my dissertation defense as a final as it is surely much much worse). I am not sure how I should view these occasions. Perhaps I should be working extra hard. Did I come all this way to give up on the final finals? Shouldn't I go out with a bang and smoke my last two academic exams? Then again, I've also been at this game so long that I don't care much for "grades" any more. To be honest I don't care much about the two classes I took this semester either. They were moderately interesting and I like both of the professors; but I am quite indifferent on the subject matter and particularly on the prospect of my attempting to master any of said matter. I've learned enough to know that most things I learn will be forgotten within a fortnight. Thus, here am I blogging with my Chemical Reaction Engineering notes as a prop under my right forearm and my Nonequilibrium Gas Dynamics text book under the left. Isn't it ironic? A little too ironic? You tell me Alanis, you seem to be the expert.

Tech Support

To be clear - I did not write this. I actually don't know who did as I received it as an email forward. But its hilarity is sure.

Dear Tech Support:

Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 . I soon noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and valuable resources.

In addition, Wife 1.0 installed itself into all other programs and now monitors all other system activities, such as Poker Night 10.3, Football 5.0, Video Games 7.5, and Softball 3.6

I can't seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run my other favorite applications. I'm thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0 , but the uninstall doesn't work on Wife 1.0 .

Please help!

Thanks,

Troubled User.....

_____________________

REPLY:

Dear Troubled User:

This is a very common problem that men often complain about.

Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 , thinking that it is just a Utilities and Entertainment program. Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and is designed by its Creator to run EVERYTHING !!! It is also impossible to delete Wife 1.0 and to return to Girlfriend 7.0 . It is impossible to uninstall, or purge, the program files from the system once installed.

You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is designed to not allow this. Look in your Wife 1.0 ! manual under Warnings: Alimony-Child Support . I recommend that you keep Wife 1.0 and work on improving the situation. I suggest installing the background application Yes Dear 2.7 to alleviate your program problems.

The best course of action is to enter the command C:\APOLOGIZE! because ultimately you will have to give the APOLOGIZE command before the system will return to normal anyway.

Wife 1.0 is a great program, but it tends to be very high maintenance! Wife 1.0 does come with several support programs, such as Clean and Sweep 3.0, Cook It 1.5, and Do Bills 4.2

However, be very careful how you use these programs . Improper use will cause the system to launch the program Nag Nag 9.5 . Once this happens, the only way to improve the performance of Wife 1.0 is to purchase additional software. I recommend Flowers 2.1 and Diamonds 5.0

WARNING!!! DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Secretary With Short Skirt 3.3 . This application is not supported by Wife 1.0 and will cause irreversible damage to the operating system!

If I were a rich man

This morning the radio woke me up to an announcement of the Virginia Millionaire Raffle. It's basically like the lottery only there are not as many tickets being made. But help me do the math... the guy exclaims, "Three grand prizes of a million dollars! Less than 200,000 tickets will be sold!" But ten seconds later I hear the quiet, fast-paced addendum: "Actual chances of winning 1:110,000". Doesn't that mean that there must be at least 330,000 tickets printed?

In other news, a couple of weeks ago my jazz combo here at UVA had a spring recital. TinRoof used her trusty digital camera to get my two vocal tunes on video. And as I'm recently addicted to YouTube, I've posted them. Enjoy...

There Will Never Be Another You


Nature Boy