I want my (M)TV

At last we got something to put on top of the TV stand we bought previously. Got a television second hand from an Australian couple that's going back down under, 27'' flat screen Sanyo and it really fits fine. C was thrilled. Now he won't be on my back anymore when I'm trying to study. He'll have his own thing. Worst is though that I don't know if it will help him relax a bit, most often I catch him watching C-SPAN, PBS or the UCSD channel ...

"Honey, you have to understand that TV is not meant for learning stuff. It's supposed to bring a slow, soothing death for your brain cells!"

Compatriot Spotted

I saw a fellow Icelander on my way to work this morning. We were driving on the highway when C pointed to a white minivan in the next lane and said "What flag is that?". On the back of the car there was a big sticker with the icelandic flag. As we passed the car I saw that the driver was definitely Icelandic. (Don't ask me how, I just know.) Maybe there's another Icelandic woman living here in San Diego? Then she turned right into the 52, while we continued our way on the 5.

C's never had a bumper sticker in his life, but he said: "Maybe we should get one like that?" ...

Google Lookups

This is always fun! What do people expect to find on my site, by web search lookup:

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... love restaurants ...

We got lucky this weekend. C's mom came down to be with H while he was working in Encinitas, and we had two get-together's with them and also P & R who came in from Temecula.

We actually planned to have them over, but when there was 6 of us, they decided rather to go out for dinner. On Friday we drove up to an Italian restaurant in Carlsbad. I had a Salade Caprese and a big steak of Seared Tuna with Jumbo Shrimp rolled up in Prosciutto. C got a halibut and his mom salmon, as usual, H got clams, R got a steak and P some sort of salad, I think. I shared a Creme Brulee with my husband afterwards, but we agreed that it wasn't half as good as the one H makes (and which I never tried). It was kind of heavy and grainy. Well, maybe that's the italian style. But I think H will now feel compelled to make us his recipe next time we go up to the ranch ...

Saturday we went to good old Fishery. They never fail! This time I got the Pan Fried Halibut with Stewed Tomatoes, Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Asparagus. We shared a platter of starters: Oysters, Eel and Tuna Sushi Roll, Jumbo Crab Cake and Goat Cheese on Grilled Bread with Strawberries and Cheddar. Warm Strawberries with Balsamic Vinegar on Vanilla Ice-cream for dessert!

As good as settled in ...

After terribly neglecting furnishing our new appartment since we moved in, after we came back from Colorado it seems we finally more or less completed that. Last weekend we found a dining set we were content with, added bookshelves and put together a TV stand, whereas the weekend before I had been lucky enough to come upon a desk that fit into my study room. And, we got this fabulous set of german knives as a pending wedding present from H.
Otherwise, just about everything we go sofar was either on sale or second hand. That saved us a lot of money. I didn't actually think we would be able to do this without resorting to credit, on our tight budget, but it all worked out finally.
So, we paid 60 bucks for a chair with chair and a hutch, 200 for a solid wood dining set, and our Pier 1 bookcases were probably the only thing we acquired full price!
We even had a dinner guest last weekend! H came up from Escondido where he's been working for a couple of weeks.
Oh, we still didn't find a TV set though. C is getting a bit anxious about that. After all, we haven't had TV now for two months. Oh, well ...

Shopping at Ralphs ...

We were to Ralphs supermarket for the first time yesterday. Still, it's just across the street from campus. I guess we are somewhat snob when it comes to groceries. But what can you do? Our favorite local grocery store burned down while we were in Colorado, so now we are kinda lost.

The Ralphs supermarket is enormous compared to the stores we usually go to. However, I managed to run into Cynthia there, as well as a couple of other people that were in my classes last quarter. Actually, the store was swirming with students from UCSD, especially foreign students. There were for instance probably more Indian people in there than what you will find in all the other markets of San Diego put together. I guess some people don't like to venture to far from campus. And I guess they are sort of right in that. I suppose our lives might be simpler if we were just living on campus in university housing and went about our life up there without all this commuting and going to the beach nonsense.

Anyway, the selection at Ralphs is not bad. Good drugstore, big meat and seafood counters, lots of fruits and vegetables including organic, good variety of ethnic foods and condiments. Like, we picked up everything for our Thai Curry there. But, the service is not like at the stores we usually go to. We waited more than five minutes for somebody to show up at the fish counter, and the kids at the register are not friendly. Not like at Trader Joe's where they'll wanta tell you there favorite music band is Sigurrós and that they are going on vacation in Brazil while they bag your groceries, or like at Henry's Market where they may shamelessly share with you that they just had a nervous breakdown and that getting up in the morning is sometimes hard ...

A new web interface

My hosting site has undergone a major face lift. Not that you should notice, because normally the look of my page shouldn't change at all.

On the other hand, the features I had learned to use before now look totally unfamiliar, and what is worse still. The new weblog editor has a rich text interface, so instead of me typing in html code, it will add the html's for me. Problem is that it adds formats I didn't ask for, like two blank lines at the end of each blog ...

Totally uncalled for and totally frustrating and I am trying to work out a way to remove that and reedit the format of the blogs that already went out like that.

Technology is a curse, isn't it ...?

... and there we go again!

My third quarter and it's about time I get used to being in school again, with everything that entails: classes, homeworks, exams, projects, presentations, deadlines, lagging behind on reading, frustrations about not getting full score for some silly homework and about a teacher waisting your time by coming to class without knowing how to pull out the proof on Chernoff Bounds. And what if they don't like me and all that ...

But I survived two quarters already, and somehow I got straight A's each time, so maybe things are sort of OK and maybe I should just stop being always so anxious and start enjoying it instead. And maybe I should stop thinking that I somehow every day need to proof that I deserve to be in grad school with all these other terrifically smart students.

It's all good sofar, I have had great classes, very competent, very friendly teachers, and gee ... I've learned so much.

I actually believe (for the moment) that this quarter might be relatively relaxed compared to the last two. I have a different mix of classes now. Have one class which focus is a single research project, another one that is an advanced class on algorithms and covers some pretty tough material but presents itself otherwise to be fairly mellow, an a third class on probability and statistics with a pretty regular workload of two homeworks a week and a project every other week.

And I give myself time to go to the gym three times a week without stressing out about it and sometimes more. And C really likes that ... !

Notes from Colorado

It was fun to visit Colorado, even if we didn't have any plans and actually spent a lot of time just hanging out, recuperating from all the stress of the preceding weeks, dragging breakfast over two hours, doing sudokus etc. Our friends were great and received us well and it was fun being together again with those guys (and girls) from our old workplace. C's friends from college were awsome too, especially Jeff with whom we stayed in Boulder.

So, we hiked a little, well, not really - took a few hours walk up from Fort Collins, did some prairie dog watching. Visited the Rocky Mountains National Park. Went pub crawling in Fort Collins and visited their excellent breweries. Dined at a number of restaurants (in Boulder especially they have a great range of them and we had a very nice caribean meal with J and M - and a few Mojitos ...) We looked at a few climbing spots. There was none of the snow I had hoped for, except up in Rocky Mountain Park, but well ...

Boulder had a great appeal to me. Not too big, not too small. Nice old town, people walking, people biking, people peoplewatching, street artists, lots of cafés. Active people and fit. Probably easy to stay fit there too, you walk straight into the mountains and the canyons from downtown and there are biking and hiking trails everywhere. C took contact with some people at the university, you never know ...