I always find it interesting when people tell me to blog more. I appreciate it, but usually I just see it as an indication that I need to spend more time just talking to that person. However, this time, that's clearly not the case. It was actually one of the people I talk to the most that requested an update. So here goes.
So other than the fact that I'm 25 and people comment on my blog, what has happened since June 1? (i.e. what do I need to talk about before this whole wedding thang.) Let's see...
One project that's ended up being a decently large undertaking is reformatting this whole blog. I've been slowly making the conversion to
blogger. If you follow that link, you'll see a boring looking blog (for now), but I did manage to move over all of the content from the past 4 years, including comments. Now I'm just slowly going through it, tagging things, fixing grammar and whatnot. Then eventually I'll reformat the whole thing so it looks pretty and includes all the material from probablydavid.com. All in good time.
Theatre review! After I saw A Chorus Line at the Fox, I realized the awesomeness of the $25 student tickets. So I went to see RENT, with the original Mark and Roger, and, since I was alone, I got a seat 11 rows from the stage right in the center. Twas awesome. I'm a little sad I don't have someone here in St. Louis that I normally hang out with to see plays with randomly. Oh, and last weekend I also saw an original play at the Tin Ceiling, where I did my most recent 24 hour plays. Elise and I also have seen a Sinatra impersonator with the St. Louis Symphony.
I've also seen 3.5/5 of the Muny shows thus far, most of which I had never seen before. 42nd St. was fun, but definitely old school and a bit predictable. I also thought that Lullabye of Broadway was the closer of the show, but it turns out its just in the middle of Act II. I skipped Annie, but then saw Meet Me in St. Louis. Also, old school, but a little less unconventional in terms of plot development. Good concept, perhaps, but maybe could be tightened up a bit to move things along a bit. It was fun to see the final scene at the 1904 World's Fair at the site of the 1904 World's Fair. Then I watched half of Godspell. I was expecting it to start with Prologue, which Matt Hall introduced me to many years ago, but it didn't. I then spent the rest of the act trying to figure out if it was actually from this musical (it was). I don't think I inherently have a problem with religious musicals, but for me, Godspell lacked plot and character development. So, since I was sitting in the free seats anyway, I left. (I also had other stuff to do). And last week I saw the Music Man, which was great. I'd forgotten how much I love that musical. There might be a nostalgia factor there, since it was the first musical I saw New Paltz High School do, but I think it has what a lot of the other shows lacked: everything moves along a central plot line, with a slew of well developped characters, and a couple of twists at the end that make it interesting. And I'm hoping to see Camelot on Thursday with my friends and family.
In sports news, softball has been a little slow lately due to my other time commitments and the weather. But in the most recent game I played, I went a solid 3/5, with 2 runs and a good play at the plate. I also hit my first double, which could have been a triple (maybe), but its been so long that I've had to round first, I nearly ran into the first baseman. I'm going to avoid the topic of the Mets, who I believe to be punishing me for living in St. Louis and cheering for the Cards.
The other huge thing that happened in June was Elise studying for and eventually taking her boards (i.e. the big scary test that comes at the end of the first two years of med school). They can be best summed up with a quote from Harry Potter 6, which I am currently rereading.
"I know I messed up Ancient Runes," muttered Hermoine feverishly, "I definitely made at least one serious mistranslation. And the Defense Against the Dark Arts practical was no good at all. I though Transfiguration went all right at the time, but looking back...I know I've failed everything!"
And we all know what happened to her. I rather enjoyed the latest Harry Potter movie, especially when I talked through the various motivations for some of the changes that they made. I still would have liked to see a bit more of the final battle, but overall I was impressed with how often the filmmakers were able to translate subtext into nonverbal scenes.
Meanwhile, in my own non-Hogwarts academic work, I've been moved onto a grant based on improving the teaching of computer science. This is giving me an exciting opportunity to try to make some changes to courses to make them not as dry as they previously were, and increase the active learning portions of the classes. I'm currently gutting the old sequence analysis assignments of the class that Michael teaches, and putting in a more open ended competitive assignment. Gene prediction for the win, literally.
I also took my oral qualifying exam, which was a big todo. Compared to taking boards or some of the other trials that other departments put people through, my exam was quite simple (although not trivial). I had to read three semi-related papers and synthesize them into a presentation on the state of the field. Followed by a rigorous questioning by three faculty. Funtimes. I passed! Hooray. I now know more about flux balance analysis than I would have thought possible. I'm not sure if its what I'm going to do my thesis on, and most of my current work is for the teaching grant. We shall see.
Brief poker interlude. I went over to Zeke's for poker one evening. Fun times were had. Later into the night, I ran out of chips and rebought. Unfortunately, the blinds were so high that after I rebought, I was still short stacked. First hand, I was dealt a Ace Jack suited. Ended up going all in, with my five dollars in chips. It didn't work.
That hand I lost. However, I did get dealt an exceptionally sweet hand. My parents decided to sell me and Elise my mom's old car, where old means 2006 Toyota Corolla. It's pretty sweet, and nice to have air conditioning, working windows and back doors.
OK, July! Go! Fourth of July was spent on the nearby rooftop of a friend. We could barely see the fireworks that were downtown, although for a while you could see the silhouette of the Arch. However, we were able to see fireworks in nearly every other cardinal direction. It was even better than last year when Elise and were driving across Kansas watching multiple fireworks displays.
Elise and I trekked up to Madison, Wisconsin for the wedding of some old college friends. It was the first time that Twitter was almost useful for something. I ended up being DD for the bachelorette party. So, I was hanging out at a fair trade coffee shop in Madison and twittered so. Then I discovered that
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
mookieghana was also in Madison. So we began to make plans to see each other....only to realize we were in town for the same wedding. So it was cool to talk to him and his wife for a bit. The wedding was fun too, although fairly tame, considering Elise, her friends and I were the most active people in terms of dancing. Madison is a nice town too, and we went to an arts fair the day after. That bumped it up a couple notches on the post-grad school city list.
The All Star came and went without me attending any festivities in the stadium. I considered going to the homerun derby outside left field fence, but decided it was a little too unlikely that I'd catch anything. However, it would have been cheaper than the $400 they wanted for tickets. I did run the
All-Star Game 5K. That was a lot of fun. I did get to high five
Fredbird and a couple other mascots. Unfortunately, my hopes of crossing the finish line and high fiving Mr. Met were not ...met. To make matters worse, on the train home, I managed to leave a ziplock bag holding my drivers license, school id, phone and house keys on the seat. FORTUNATELY, the driver managed to find them at the end of the line and responded to the text message I sent to my phone. WHEW. MAJOR RELIEF.
Finally, the lady and I went to a Coldplay concert last weekend. This was the first megaconcert I've ever been to, bringing the ratio of normal concerts to Weird Al concerts I've attended almost to one. It was definitely a unique sensation for me to be at an event with so many people, all of whom were on the same plane as I was (as opposed to baseball games, where people are on multiple levels). The concert did not disappoint.
And that's it. Nothing much exciting I guess :). The first wedding guests have already begun to arrive. Spent a few hours hanging with Evan today, which needs to happen more often. Now I have to go off and do the last little bit of planning. Wish me luck.
