february 2007
february 28 2007 8:52 pst the first day in a week we didn't wake up to rain. instead, it's snowing. but it's a balmy 36 degrees, so the snow isn't sticking.
both of our cars are super-dirty. i want to wash mine, but until it stops raining for more than one day at a time, really what's the point?
not to restate the obvious, but: right now in pasadena, it's sunny and 50.
february 24 2007 12:42 pst cold, wet, rainy again. sure, it's still february, and sure the days are getting longer... but today in santa monica, it's sunny and 65.
february 23 2007 23:12 pst today i went to visit the nike campus with some kids from the law school. it was a nice reminder that i will have a life once school is over, and that if i study hard and i'm very very lucky, i might have the chance to be part of something great. on the one hand, yeah, they're just a shoe company, exploiting cheap asian labor to make 300% profit selling disposable fashion accessories. on the other hand, they really are serious about using technology to help athletes to be the very best they can be. and the campus is breathtaking- the architecture, the landscaping, and the sculpture and artwork scattered around the outside of the buildings all look as though they're exactly in the right place.
and all of the employees we saw or talked to seem... happy. which is pretty remarkable in and of itself.
the one shot that doesn't fit in this group is what i found in my backyard last night. the city is apparenlty planning to exercise their property rights over the easement on the side of my house by digging a big hole in my back yard. i'm not entirely convinced that the box they've drawn is inside the lines of where they are allowed to dig. if i have a spare 10 minutes this weekend, i'm going to pull out the map and see just how far the easement extends from the property line... and if they're over the line, i'm going to have to pick a fight with somebody.
february 19 2007 18:53 pst for about 15 minutes after class today, we tried to fly the kite. the wind was light and gusty, so it wasn't very satisfying. we got it up into the air, and it would hang there like it's supposed to do, but then... it came back down again when the wind died, and that was that. we made 3 abortive launches, and after the third time, we packed it up just as the rain started again. i'm still hoping for a good flight day this spring...
february 18 2007 19:50 pst an afterthought: i attacked the big rosebush in the backyard today, because i noticed that it was beginning to grow shoots all along the runners it grew last year. it's one of those roses that will just grow and grow and grow if you let it, until it's fifty feet wide and eight or nine feet high, like the bushes at grandpa's farm. i cut it back pretty aggressively late last summer, after the first flush of blooms had died and it was starting to rain again. it grew another flush of flowers which were eventually killed off by the frost. i hadn't noticed the buds before, but there were long (like 1-2 inches) shoots on some of the nodes near the ends of the canes. must be getting close to springtime.
i cut it back to the stumps. once it pops a couple of shoots out again, i'll give it some fertilizer and we'll see how it does this year.
february 18 2007 13:28 pst another random thought- p registered her car in oregon this week, and passed her driver's exam on the first try. hooray for new license plates!
february 18 2007 13:10 pst and just like that, three weeks go by. apologies to anyone who thought we must have died. being sick was pretty bad; we were lucky to get antibiotics. some of my classmates and teachers were sick for three solid weeks- some of the profs are still coughing gently when they try to increase the volume. it was the kind of chest cold where you hated to laugh, because every laugh ended up sounding like you were trying to choke a lung out.
anyhow, we're better now. but there were 3 or 4 days there where i couldn't do any work because of the fever, so i had to get caught up from that. and then we had a research/writing paper due, so that really cranked up the study burden for about 10 days or so. and at the same time, i had a quiz in my constitutional law class.
it sounded like a good idea when he announced it: instead of gambling the whole grade on one test at the end, we would split it up between 2 quizzes (1/3) a midterm (1/3) and a final exam. then came the hook: each quiz (16% of your final grade) would be only 5 multiple-choice questions, and we'd have about 10 minutes to answer them. no pressure. students who had the class in prior years told us that the class average is usually between 2 and 2.5 right out of 5, for a class of 60 students. but no pressure.
our class average was 2.5 out of 5, with a sd of .98 points. one guy got all five right, 7 people out of 60 got 4/5. i was one of those, so i guess it worked out ok for me. taking the test itself was nerve-wracking, just because there was so little time to do any real thinking, and essentially no time to read anything through for a second impression. you just had to go with your gut instinct about the right answer- and even then, i switched my answer on the last question from one of the wrong ones to the right one just as the proctor was calling time.
and then we started playing indoor soccer last week. i've played indoor before in college, just pickup games, but i haven't played any really organized soccer since i was 9 or 10 years old. we had an intramural team in college, and the two things i remember best about that team were that (a) the league misprinted our team name on all of the schedules and announcements, becuase someone decided that the one we submitted was too uncouth or profane for public use, and (b) some of my teammates regularly smoked cigarettes during the halftime break. oh, and no orange slices. i thought that was a total rip-off. this indoor team is significantly more... sober... about showing up to games, and the general fitness level is higher- but the experience level shared by my new teammates is also significantly lower, so maybe it all balances out.
so everything happened all at once over the last two weeks. and nothing was really photogenic so far, so no new pictures. i'll bring the camera to the indoor game today and we'll see what turns up.
