Unlike many things in life, video games are always there for you. :)

This weekend was pretty fun. As I said earlier, on friday Kelly came over to join us for the dinner I made (Sean was busy, and couldn’t come), which turned out awesome, if I say so myself. We all went to see X-Men, which was entertaining.

Adam cooked some wild steak on Saturday, and Kelly and Sean both joined us (Sean was doing a 24-hour experiment the night before, which is why he didn’t come over on Friday). They brought some kick-ass tiramisu for dessert, and we played some Trivial Pursuit. We then began playing Counter-Strike. Now, the past few times Sean and Kelly have come over, we have done this same ritual… They are hooked on Counter-Strike as much as everyone else in my household… We played for quite awhile, trading off computers inbetween maps. It would be cool to get another computer or two in the apartment so we wouldn’t have to trade off, but that would cost alot of coin.

Sunday morning, James made German Apple Pancakes, which were outstanding. I had never had anything like that before, and I have to say that for all the trumpeting James did about the dish, he lived up to his hype. :)

Today has been very slow, I feel like real crap (and have since I woke up). I just have a wicked headache and am pretty tired.. I feel terribly unproductive at work today, and there is another CSH orientation tonight…. Sigh, the burdens of being a man-about-town. :) I really need to put my nose to the wheel at work this week, I feel like I am behind, even though I am probably fine… This summer has been bizarre…

I like garlic. My roommates like garlic. I do not like garlic as much as my roommates. :)

My roommates are big fans of the cook Ming Tsai (host of “East Meets West” on the Food Network). Ming professes using 4 cloves of garlic in every dish. This is a bit extreme for my tastes.

When I was in the shower this morning, I could smell the garlic sweating out of me. I do not consider this a good thing.

So since I have been in Rochester this summer, Adam, James, and I have rotated cooking detail. For the past month and a half, each night one of us will cook something, usually it is a decent dish, requiring some actual preparation and cooking. Sometimes we ‘cheap out’, but it hasn’t been very often.

Tonight I am preparing Pork Tenderloin on the grill, marinated and basted in Dinosaur Barbeque “Roasted Garlic BBQ Sauce”. I have corn and potatoes for the side, so everything should be good.

I still haven’t managed to beat Adam, who has made some great meals (like Cornish Game Hens). I need to work on this. :)

Adam and Molly have been bugging me to go Rock Climbing since I moved into this apartment. I have come up with some lame excuse or another for weeks as to why I couldn’t go each time. Today, I decided ‘what the hell’, and went with them to RockVentures. I had a blast.

Granted, it was really difficult, but I made it to the top of 3 different climbs, and I only had trouble with one other.

I will probably go again (once my fingertips heal a bit. :P)

Actual exchange with Professor:

S) Hi, I had a question about problem blah. T) We covered that in class, perhaps you should review your notes. S) But I did and I still have trouble understanding it. T) Well, perhaps you should review the chapter. S) . o O ( Like I wouldn’t have thought of that, dumbass ) S) I did. T) Well perhaps you should try these problems in the back of the book (note: one of the problems he recommended was _THE_ question i was asking for help with).

Take a guess as to whether I dropped the course or not.

Today I spent alot of time over at CSH meeting incoming freshman who are moving on floor in the fall… The ones I met seemed pretty cool, but I only met a small subset. I always love meeting the freshmen and learning their various personality quirks, etc.

I got my Portable MP3/CD Player today. While the UI is a bit cumbersome, it is finally great to be able to listen to MP3’s on the road, and the ability to store 10 albums on one CD can’t be beat…. It even supports CD-RWs!

Things are slowly starting to balance out in my life. I still will probably have to widthdraw from Calculus, and I am still very depressed re: that, but so it goes. Chuck visited me this weekend, which was very well-timed on his part. Chuck always does a wonderful job of helping me forget all my worldly troubles and simply making me laugh. Chuck has been my best friend since High School, and I treasure that.

Chuck rides trials, which is a cousin of mountain biking where you hop and ride over all kinds of obstacles. Anyway, Chuck was interested in making a short video of his riding while he was in Rochester. He brought a MiniDV camera, which have restored my faith in videocameras. We probably got down like 45 minutes of footage, which will probably distill into 15-20 minutes once all the bloopers are edited out. He said he was going to continue shooting when he got home too.

Friday night we went to go see “Scary Movie”, which was entertaining. Many of you know that I am a ‘movie guy’, and that I watch alot of horror movies too… This film wasn’t exactly a parody of horror movies in general, instead focusing on “Scream”, “I Know What You Did…”, etc (which were parodies in themselves, to a degree). I guess I enjoyed “Scary Movie”, but a parody of a parody can only go so far.

I also replaced the two blown speakers with a pair of Definitive Technologies satellites, which sound extrodinary. They were much larger (and heavier) than the JBLs that they replaced, but they will also handle the power the Amplifer is tossing out more better. I look forward to settling down a bit so I can really go crazy with my Home Theater setup… :P

Jon (my roommate during the school year) is going to be in Rochester for a one-night limited engagement, this evening. He is up for the Computer Science House orientation party, which I will also be attending tonight. It will be good to see him, but unfortunately he has to go back to NJ tomorrow. He will be coming back later this summer, however, which is cool.

So yeah, while I haven’t yet returned to level, the angle of my life is no longer threatening to dump me off the side. Let’s hope things continue that way.

Didja ever have one of those days?

I go to Calc yesterday, and find out I tanked the Calc 3 exam… I am considering dropping the class now; After seeing the profs grading style (very little partial credit), and talking with him a few times, I don’t see myself eeking through the course. I am going to talk with him again on Monday, and ask him whether or not I should continue. Hopefully he can provide insight, although he has been pretty useless in the ‘advice and help’ department up through now.

I get home from class, and there is nothing to eat, so I go to Wegmans. I decide on Cheese Steaks, and purchase all the necessary items. When I go to get rolls, there are no Sub rolls, no Sausage rolls, hell, no hotdog rolls. So I reluctantly purchased hamburger rolls to fit the bill…

When I get home from Wegmans, (roommate James) tells me “Sean, Bad News: Just after you left before, I heard this god-awful noise. The stereo turned itself up to 80 and it sounds like your two front speakers are hosed”. And, they are hosed.

Just when you think things can’t get worse, they always do. I am the first to admit I haven’t been very chipper this summer, but stuff like this isn’t making things any better. I usually have a very positive outlook on things in my life, but this whole Calculus thing really has me feeling like a failure. Why is it that a non-major course is the one that is giving me the most trouble?

Going to California was such an odd experience for me. On one hand, it was great to get out there and get a feel for what it is like to live there. OTOH, I was hit by a very subtle form of culture shock. As long as I could maintain my “suspension of disbelief”, everything was normal and life in CA was the same as in NJ or NY. But every once in awhile I would realize that things were rather bizarre out there.

I left Rochester for San Francisco, by way of Cleveland, on Thursday around 1pm. We had a prop-driven puddle-jumper to take us to Cleveland, which was actually kinda cool. Those planes have some acceleration.. :) We arrived in Cleveland early, but had to wait for another plane to vacate our gate. We ended up actually walking in the terminal door 10 minutes behind schedule, which was rather frustrating. I had to run to another terminal to get on the plane, but I had enough time to grab a bad bagel. We got on the 737 and sat on the tarmac while the mechanics checked out some failure on the plane. It turned out to be a bad sensor, and we were in the air an hour late.

When I arrived in San Francisco, I was greeted by Chris, who I hadn’t seen in a few weeks. It was definately great to see her again, especially since things have been so weird between us since she has moved away. She told me that since we were in San Francisco, that she wanted to take me to see the Golden Gate bridge and some of the city too, since traffic would probably be terrible during the rest of the holiday weekend.

The bridge was beautiful, even if it was a bit foggy that night. As night came, seeing the lights on the bridge through the fog was unbelievable. The pictures simply don’t describe it whatsoever. San Francisco was beautiful too; Walking and Driving through it, I got the feeling that if it were not for the hills, SF would turn into another overgrown city, but the hills act as a limiting factor, which is nice. We realized it was getting late, so we cruised by Fisherman’s Wharf (the most/last tourist-y thing we did) for a bite to eat. Afterwards we headed back to her condo, which is nice, but not what I expected (I imagined it being newer than it was).

Friday morning, Chris took me to Enterprise to pick up my rental, and she pointed me towards Oakland on her way to work. Meeting up with Scot exceeded my expectations all around. We ate breakfast at Mama’s Royal Cafe, a wonderful restaurant that Scot praised (and rightfully so). Scot then took me over to Telegraph in Berkeley, and we walked down that street, passing all the famous shops and landmarks. Scot’s nefarious intentions became clear when he introduced me to Amoeba Music, the greatest record shop I have ever set foot in. They had works from every artist I could dream up, and the prices were definately right. They had an amazing used collection, and they even had videos and DVD’s to boot. Needless to say, I am quite glad that this store is currently 3000 miles away from me, as I would be spending quite a bit of time there. :)

Walking with Scot through the aisles of Amoeba was great, and I really feel (to use his words) like I have found a kindred spirit in the Be world. It was cool meeting up with him for the first time and finding how much we had in common. I thought that meeting up with him might be awkward, but it was a great time.

After leaving Scot, I headed over the Bay Bridge (the other side of Route 80) towards Be’s Headquarters. I met up with Dave Bort there, which was a great time. He showed me around the offices, what they were working on, and introduced me to some people. I also ran into Joe Onorato and Jeff Hamilton, two people who I know through Cristina and BUGGER, who are interning at Be. Perhaps I will go and work there after graduation. :P

I left Be, and headed to see Chris’ work. Cisco is a huge company with a huge campus, and to see it in all its glory was rather impressive. They have 40-sum buildings throughout San Jose (and they are in close proximity to the Correctional Facility!) The buildings they have are well-engineered and attractive (even if they did kinda look like Barnes and Noble stores), and they seem to be designed to keep their employees happy, complete with lunch balconies looking over the valley. They also had this wicked fountain that had columns of water forming the Cisco logo, which was great. :P

That night we cruised over to Chili’s for drinks and dinner (in that order, of course). I was supposed to meet up with Kate that day, but I called and flaked on her (i really under-estimated the amount of time meeting up with everyone would take). I told her we would definately get together on Sunday.

Saturday was filled with general ’living in San Jose’ type stuff, which was the kind of stuff I was looking to see. Chris and I went shopping for furniture, ran errands, grabbed lunch, and other ‘day-to-day’ stuff. The popular supermarket chain there, Safeway, was OK, but it definately wasn’t Wegmans. :) It amazes me how that area is so populated, both with people and businesses. Chris made me some great Meatloaf, which was the first time she attempted the dish. She even ate it (and liked it) herself, and I always am excited when I introduce people to new things.

Sunday we did more of the same, and we also met up with Kate. While we were waiting to meet Kate at the Oakridge Mall, we decided to check this Jamba Juice place out. Jamba Juice is one of the “California Anomalies” I was describing earlier…. It is a store that sells fresh-made smoothies and juices, and it is something that could only exist in the confines of California. The smoothies there were great, and we ended going back there 3-4 times before I left. Chris suggested that they put crack in the smoothies, which is something I agree with now that I am having widthdrawal symptoms since returning. :)

Meeting up with Kate was wonderful, she looks very healthy (probably related to her resumption of eating meat… :P), and it was great to see her again. We met at one mall, and headed over to the Great Mall in Milpitas. This mall was pretty large, but it was really strange (arranged in a big loop, so you couldn’t cut across to the stores on the back side of the mall. On our way out, we noticed the “Vans Skatepark”, which according to Chris wasn’t open a week ago. This place was amazing, a gigantic skatepark with many halfpipes, pools, ramps, and other things to keep a skateboarder occupied. If I do end up out there, it is definately something I am going to go to often.

Sunday night I made Chili, and Chris and I watched Fight Club (me for the (n+1)th time, and her for the 1.2th time). She was uncertain about the movie, but I think it is something she just has to see again. That movie is definately not one to be understood fully during the first viewing, and i hope she revisits the movie in the near future. I was impressed that she actually made it past the first 15 minutes of the movie without falling asleep. :) The Chili I made was finished towards the end of the movie. It was odd chili for me, because Chris is just getting used to this idea of beans, so I had to go easy on it… I think after eating the Chili, she realized that beans aren’t as bad as she thought… She also made me stop putting peppers and spices into the Chili for fear of its wrath. After tasting it, she complained it wasn’t spicy enough. :) The peppers they have out there are wonderful, though, and even Habaneros were readily available

Monday was “Cat-Maintenance” day, which was interesting. Chris adopted two full-grown cats about a week ago. Their names are Layla and Cisco (Cisco was originally named Meow, but it didn’t respond to it, and on top of that, Meow is a stupid-ass name, so she changed it). Layla was sneezing and breathing funny, and Chris suspected a upper-respratory infection. The vet confirmed her suspicions, and gave Layla some antibiotics to fight it off. I have to say that, while I am not a cat-person, her cats are pretty cool. I kinda grew attached to Layla, but mostly because she is a mutant.

We didn’t have much time to do anything fun on Tuesday, as my flight was at 1pm. As you can imagine, it was hard to go, for multiple reasons. I really like things out there, and I could see myself living out there, but it is a really tough decision for me. On one hand, many of the companies I would like to work for are on the West Coast. But moving out there puts me so far away from my family and many of my friends. I am going to have to think long and hard about that….

So, I am just back from California. It was a wild trip, and I will provide a much more detailed account of what went down in the next day or two…

I did want to take this opportunity to point out that Jamba Juice is the crack-cocaine of California. I am currently sitting on my bed, in the dark, hands shaking, licking the inside of my refillable Jamba Juice mug.

Until Sunrise….