Let's Go Europe, part 2

It seems like forever (but was only five years) ago, that six second-semester seniors decided to take three weeks of January and backpack through Europe.

It was my first backpacking/hostelling experience, and although we had some minor mishaps (two cases of food poisoning, one stolen backpack, one hostel with very cold outdoor shower stalls, an overly zealous customs agent, and many many train-chasing episodes) overall it was a good one. We saw parts of England, France, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain, and got a pretty decent idea of what we'd want to do when we went back.

Last year, I went on a week-long whirlwind trip through Scandinavia (Denmark, Finland, and Sweden), but somewhere in the back of my head I was still sorting out the logistics of a second major European backpacking vacation. Finally, last week, four of us sealed the deal by buying plane tickets for this September. We'll be flying into Paris and out of Lisbon, and we plan to see as much of France, Spain, and Portugal as we can, in two and a half weeks. I'm already counting the days.

ick

I wish I could plan being sick. It's just my luck that I always have a whole bunch of meetings on the days that I'm sick, so that I end up coughing and sneezing all over everyone and potentially making them sick too. If I knew ahead of time, I could work it into my schedule. If we can't cure the common cold, at least we should be able to detect it a few days beforehand?

Doug Christie's wife...I mean, life

So, most NBA fans are aware of the whole situation with Doug Christie and his demanding and paranoid wife, Jackie. During games, Christie signals an "I love you" to his wife after anything resembling a good play (for the longest time, I thought he was calling plays, which didn't make sense, since he's a shooting guard).

Widespread rumor has it that Christie is forbidden from speaking to female reporters, that Jackie follows the team bus everywhere in a car, and that he changes in a closet when female journalists are in the locker room. It's known for a fact that they re-enact their wedding every year (rings, vows, guests, and all), and that Jackie once smacked a female fan who touched Doug on the arm.

I've been told that among guys, a popular "you're whipped" gift is a Doug Christie jersey.

Anyway, now that Doug Christie has been traded to Orlando, I wonder if his wife is going to be able to continue with her plan to have them star in a reality TV show? It's my morbid curiousity asking.

happy new year!

Yesterday a bunch of us went out to dinner to celebrate the new year. Like most Chinese holidays, the Lunar New Year involves eating, which is fine with me.

I'm curious about how the Chinese co-opted the Lunar New Year and made it commonly known as "Chinese New Year", though. And, I wonder what the Koreans, the Vietnamese, and the Mongolians think about it.

gadgets for clothes

This came up last week in a lunchtime conversation, and was revisited when I was chatting with a friend yesterday: Why aren't there any cool gadgets designed to deal with clothes (and shoes)? My answer: not enough women engineers.

Let me start by saying that I don't think women are intrinsically more interested in clothes. Unfortunately, it seems that in our culture, it is much more acceptable for men to wear the same types of clothes every day, or even the same outfits, than it is for women. I'm reminded of this every time I get invited to yet another wedding, and I have to figure out what to wear, while I watch the guys drag out the same old suits.

But, back to my point. If there were more women engineers, I bet we would have cool closets that would optimize space but easily switch between winter and summer wardrobes. There would be an attached computer which would have a catalogue of all the clothes in the closet; once an article of clothing was selected, it would take only the push of a button to retrieve it. Shoes would be automatically machine-sorted into bins based on color and style, and be kept out of the way.

In fact, the ultimate clothes gadget would be a laundry machine, which would automatically take dirty clothes and determine whether to dry clean, "hand" wash, or machine wash, perform the appropriate action, and then fold or hang the result. Have I mentioned how much I hate laundry? I would pay a fortune for a machine like that.

fontifier

If my handwriting didn't change drastically from page to page (and sometimes from paragraph to paragraph), I might try paying $9 to Fontifier to make a font out of my handwriting.

work and play

Wow, it's been a hectic couple of weeks. Since January 20th, I've skiied Tahoe (two trips of two days each), stayed at a Napa Valley B&B, gone to two company events, hosted out-of-town guests for a weekend, gotten a smog check, paid my property taxes, and changed my auto, home, and umbrella insurance policies.

Yeah. It's amazing that I've gotten anything done at work, but I have. Unfortunately, there's this one big looming deadline, and it's made it impossible for me to get anything else done. All the little tasks have fallen by the wayside, and there's one medium-sized task that I've been meaning to finish since September, and I just can't seem to get it done. What happens is that I start working on it, get interrupted, and end up working on something else for awhile. Two weeks later, it takes me a whole day to get back in the swing of things, just to get interrupted again in a day or two. Must stick to plan and finish it this month.