Thanksgiving Pictures

Just a quick assortment of pictures from the holidays:

First off, Alicia and I attended the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade:



Here's the crowd from left to right:




I guess we had to expect it would be busy: this is Time Square in New York City.

It actually wasn't bad, though. The police only let a certain number of people through to the parade. We arrived an hour early, so it worked to our advantage.

This girl:



... has pictures on her blog. In fact, she has so many posts about Thanksgiving, it would be awkward to post links to every one of them. They are on the front page right now, but if you're reading this months in the future, check out her posts on December 1st, 2008.

How'd the turkey go, you ask?



Pretty well. We even had a fancy setup for it:



The four place settings were to include Alicia's friend from High School, Tanya, as well as her boyfriend Jorge. It was a great Thanksgiving. Not as good as spending back in Minnesota, mind you, but a fine night indeed.

Update #5

The Great News: Everyone is healthy and happy:



The Good News: The holidays are officially here:



You can tell by the Christmas lights.

The Bad News: The end of the semester is looming. I've got a fair amount to get done, and blogging shouldn't be it. Expect this blog to lie dormant through December 2009.

What I've Thought About: Gotta admit, its the linux computer I built last weekend. It had been in the back of my mind for months. Black Friday (the big sale day after Thanksgiving) presented a $99 19" monitor. The next day, I headed over with Alicia to a computer store and purchased everything I needed to make the computer work.

It's running a AMD Phenom X3 2.4Ghz 64bit processor (meaning it has three processor cores running 2.4Ghz each), 4GB ram, and 500GB. Those components together only cost $230. The case, motherboard, DVD drive and others brought the price up a bit more, but I built it just a bit more expensive than a bottom of the line desktop computer available at any major computer retailer. And it has top of the line specifications. I'm relatively proud.

It's running Ubuntu Linux (as opposed to a Windwos operating system). I've mapped it as a hard drive to both Alicia and my computer, so we can treat it like a file server. I've added a streaming music application so that Alicia and I can listen to our music anywhere in the world. I've got a bunch of more ideas for it, but I just don't have the time to play with it.

Alicia has more on her blog here.

What I've Enjoyed: The Wire. Great show that used to air on HBO. Really top notch stuff. Alicia and I have finished season 2.

Update #4

The great news: Thanksgiving is here! Although I won't be home with my family, things are looking good. I received a package from my uncle Gary and aunt Mary containing Lefsa, my favorite holiday delicacy. They sent it to make me feel more at home. I can't believe how sweet they are too me. 

Alicia is handling the turkey this year. We've got a 14lb frozen butterball turkey that we're brining at Alton Brown's suggestion. Alicia's got more about that on her blog. My job on turkey day is stuffing (care of my grandmother's recipe), rolls, the veggi tray, and moral support.

We're also hitting the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The parade route ends across from Macy's, which is one block away from my school (where I'm typing right now). Our plan is to start here and walk up the parade route until we find a nice place to stay.

The good news: Of course. Alicia passed the bar! This should be great news, but It happened almost two weeks ago now that most of you have already heard it. But I thought it required at least a mention here.

We celebrated with Nicole (Alicia's friend from Minnesota who happened to be in town), and good times were had. Hopefully, pictures will soon follow. But if you're not patient, Alicia has it covered on her blog already.

The bad news: Thanksgiving preparations resulted in an influx of groceries in our apartment, which has made our storage closet almost unbearable. My plan tonight is to clean it. Which isn't bad in itself. What's bad is I've been procrastinating on it. Shame on me.

What I've thought about: Klein bottles and mobius strips. The mobius strip is a one sided surface you can make by twisting then taping the two ends of a strip of paper together. Don't believe me that it only has one side? Trace one side with your finger, you'll reach everything on the paper. The klein bottle is a bottle that is one sided as well.

I've been studying them a bit lately and to be honest, I always thought the mobius strip was cheating... how could it really only have one side?? Apparently, it does.

What I've enjoyed: Eating out of the fridge. To clean out the fridge to fit the new food coming in, Alicia and I have been making an effort to eat all the food that doesn't ever seem to go away. This means frozen meals, sauces, etc. My mother warned me about "owning" food, and she is right. It can be bad if you don't keep up with it. So it has been fun trying my best to eat everything older.

Livia Pictures

Back by popular request, here are some pictures of Livia: 

Update #3

The Cost Co. load Alicia and I brought home last weekend.

The great news: Nicole (Alicia's friend from college) is coming to visit this weekend! Good times to be had. I've been scrambling to get enough work done so that I can be lazy while she's here. I can't wait to be lazy!

The good news: Midterms have left, and my students did fine. Both classes had students with 100%, and my second class only had ten students with a D or lower. That seems like a lot, but it's pretty good for a college math class.

The bad news: I've felt overwhelmed lately. So much to do, and I never seem to get it done. It'd sure be nice to not feel guilty all weekend.

I guess it's just hard to balance work that I will appreciate immediately (like doing the dishes) versus work I'll appreciate four days later (like reviewing class notes). Ugg. I've been in school most of my life and I still haven't gotten this "studying" thing down.

What I've thought about: Computers. I keep thinking of the many reasons why a new computer would be nice. I could buy a "Skype Handset" which would basically give Alicia and I a home phone. We could store all our photos on the computer, we could have all our music in one library, and we could have a central computer which allowed us to easily back up our files. 

Plus, if the computer was in the bedroom, we could have a monitor there and watch television. I haven't had a TV in the bedroom in about four years, so that thought tickles me. 

But, my laptop is still working fine four years later. I just can't reasonably go buy a new computer. But I can think about it. 

What I've enjoyed: Fresh chopped tomatos in salsa. I never knew it was so simple to chop tomatos and throw them in salsa. Up until this point, I've always bought canned tomatos. But fresh tomatos make a huge difference. 

Halloween Parade

I've got some Halloween pictures to share. Better late than never, right? 

First off, here's me: 

And here's Alicia:

There's a spooky atmosphere, as captured by this photo:



Turns out, the spooky atmosphere is caused by green hair:



In that last one, you can see the what the parade was about: cool puppets. I'm sure there were a ton of costumes, but we weren't in the front, so they remained invisible to us. Here's a better idea of what those ghosts looked like:



The old fashioned faces were a nice touch.

There were floats:



This one in particular was cool, but it stopped in front of us for about ten minutes.

It was fun though, costumes everywhere. I've never seen New York so crowded and that says a lot.

Livia

Just a quick picture of Livia sleeping. She's the bee's knees.