Weekend at Y's

I hadn't seen Y since VOV, so I went over to his condo this past weekend to visit. Y has a condo in Virginia, but with the downturn in the housing market, he and his wife have been taking a look around for a house, and in anticipation of getting a house, Y has been renovating one of his bathrooms in anticipation of renting out his condo. Also, my high school friend T also happened to live relatively in the same area as Y, so I drove over to pick up T to join in on the fun. After eating a delicious lunch prepared by Y's wife, Y, T, and I engaged in some Wii Sports golf action to see who would reign supreme on the virtual golf course. The competition was intense as I went into the last hole with a 1 shot lead, but I managed to dunk my 2nd shot into the water as Y managed to get his way to the green safely. However, the Wii decided to freeze as T was beginning to take his shot, so I declared victory on the golf course :P Afterwards, we hit up the nearby tennis courts near Y's condo. Despite rustiness all around, we managed to get into a grove with our shots, but my lack of exercising began to take its toll as my knees began to scream in soreness. After we were all tired, we retired back to Y's condo where Y's wife joined in a 4 player battle of Mario Party 8. This was a fierce battle of hotel ownership for stars, and Y's wife managed to pull off the win at the end by getting the 3 star hotel at "grandmas" and by getting bonus stars from buying and using the most candy powerups. The game itself was sort of cheesy, but it's surprisingly fun with a group of friends. After getting some dinner at a local small Chinese place, we ended the day with some Texas Hold'em, which ended up going way too long into the night. Y had to go to work for a bit on Sunday, so when it came down to heads up between me and Y, I did my best to end the game by going all in blind, but that plan seemed to backfire as I won the next 6 hands in the row as T managed to deal Y 4/5 off-suit for like 4 of the 6 hands. But you can't go all in in the dark forever, so the statistics evened themselves out in the end and Y was victorious. I took T back to his place and then came back to Y's condo for bed.

The next day, Y, Y's wife, Y's dog Gizmo, and I went down to DC to take a look at the cherry blossoms that were in full bloom. It was the perfect day to be outdoors to enjoy the sights, and the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. We made our way along the Tidal Basin to the Jefferson Memorial since I've never been there before, and we ran into a large group of people watching a cultural performance in front of the memorial. But I managed to sneak into the memorial and cap a few pictures of Jefferson's statue before being overwhelmed by the crowd. By this time, Gizmo had seemed to reach his limit of walking, so we decided to head on back, but before heading back to the condo, we stopped for some lunch at a pizza place and did some shopping at Trader Joe's, which Y's wife really wanted to go to. Upon returning to Y's condo and inspired by the drumming performance, Y wanted to do some Rock Band drumming, so we assembled the drum set I brought over and rocked out till dinner, which was Y's friend R, who has a gigantic house and allegedly lives close to Gilbert Arenas. Yan managed to find out that the mix of Coke and Captain Morgan's results in a chocolate tasting drink, but I argued it really tasted like vanilla. On a side note, I'm beginning to realize that alcohol accelerates my heart rate rather than act as a depressant, but I can't find any good reasons for that. Also, the slight shortness of breath that accompanied it told me it was time to stay away from Y's new drink. After dinner and a tour of R's remodelled bathroom, we headed back and I started by drive back to MD. On the way back, I forgot that there was a toll road I needed to go through, and I didn't have any cash on me and the booth didn't take credit cards -_- But fortunately, the woman working at the booth was rather nice despite it being about 12:45 am and basically said that a bill will just be sent for $2 (which is the regular toll cost) to my house, so I was relieved.

Thanks to Y and Mrs. Y for having me over!

Poor man's Guitar Hero

Check out JamLegend, which gives you the GH experience just with your keyboard. What's especially funny is if you tried to play the songs "jam style" as they suggest :P

Things to fill free time with...

Now that I've crossed the finish line and finished all my degree requirements, I have a lot more time to myself after work, and since I don't want to be a couch potato, I began thinking of things to do.

1) Reading for leisure: I think the last time I read a book for leisure was the last Harry Potter book, and that wasn't really for leisure since I was speed reading through it so that I wouldn't be left behind in all the HP discussions :P Any good suggestions out there?

2) Get my butt in shape: The funniest reminder to me that I need to get back in shape came this past summer when Dragon and I tried to do some suicide runs on the tennis court, and we were pumped up to do this across all four courts. Needless to say, we gave up after only going halfway across one court and just collapsed to the ground with laughter at how pathetically incapable we were -_- The issue with this is that I don't like going to the gym and would rather play sports to stay in shape. I'm thinking of looking into maybe joining a local tennis club or something because I have an itch to get back onto the courts after hearing about KiraTomato's attempts to take over as the number 1 tennis veggie :P

3) Finish video games that I bought: Yeah, I know I said that I wouldn't be a couch potato, but I want to get full value from all these games that I bought!

4) Take a trip on weekends to someplace different: It'll be hard for me to get lost in the Kungmobile, so I figure to try to plan a weekend trip somewhere interesting. Might lead to some interesting blogging and some photography practice.

5) Read up on investing: Might as well put the $$$ I make to work for me.

6) Learn to cook: Frozen foods just don't cut it taste-wise...

I'm sure I'll think of more things to do since I hate being idle and doing nothing...

Crossing the finish line

As of this morning, I am officially DONE with grad school! :) All the paperwork has been turned in, all fees have been paid, and my dissertation has been submitted. Fortunately, the dissertation submission was done online, so I didn't have to make another trip all the way to Columbus to turn it in myself. And yes, =VGI= has been incorporated into the acknowledgment section, so people who these crazy people are when they read my thesis ;)



But seriously, I want to thank everyone for all their encouragement while I was in school :) You all helped pull me through!

The End of a Journey

It's hard to believe that back in 2003 that I would have found myself going down the graduate school path towards a Ph.D. (especially when people had asked me before whether I would go for more studies, and I vehemently told them that I wouldn't), but now the path has started to turn its last corner, and I'm coming down the home stretch. My defense is next Tuesday on the 17th, which happens to be St. Patrick's day. Hopefully I won't need that much luck, but a little bit helps :P

The presentation slides are almost done, and I'm debating right now whether I should reference the veggies in the acknowledgment section by their veggie name. I don't think too many people will be looking at my thesis in the future, but apparently my thesis will be archived in variously Ohio Libraries and the Library of Congress, and I just think it would be funny for someone to randomly pull up my thesis, read the acknowledgment section, and wonder "who the heck are these people? Cucumbernator? GrapeofWrath? Catnipped? jOrangeJuice? Kiratomato? ..."