Damages films on our street

Just going through some of my pictures from Fall 2009. Back in November, the FX show "Damages" filmed a few scenes in front of our building. They posted flyers all over the street two days prior to filming, then began to park trucks everywhere. I didn't see anyone famous walking by the apartment, but there were signs pointing to catering, trailers and principle photography. It was a cool insight into how a show is made (there were a lot of people!).

Here's some pictures I took from my roof:

Favorite Things

When I first made this blog, I created a sampling of things I liked along the bottom of the header of this blog. It's that strip of pictures of random things you can see directly below the title of this blog.

I just thought I'd share one my newest favorite things:




It's a clock from Ikea. I don't know how Ikea does it, but they are very good at pleasing me. I especially love it contrasting with the turquoise wall of our bedroom.

The clock actually has a lot of storage inside of it. It's a thin metal clock with a front panel that opens up. I've got no idea what to hide inside of it.

If your curious, those are Bucky Balls attached to the front. They are 216 rare earth magnets that stick to each other surprisingly well. I'm sure I'll post about those in the future.

Christmas 2009

The Holidays have come and gone and we're already well into the new year. But I've got one fantastic picture to share.

On Christmas Eve, Alicia and I were busy talking to our family on the phone, eating a wide variety of junk, and slowly opening presents. So we did a terrible job of taking pictures. But I managed to snap these pictures of Alicia opening a gift from her parents:

Is that a girl whom loves her Legos ®, or what? I promised I'd post this picture about two weeks ago. I hope it was worth the wait!

Just to round out the holiday pictures, here's the kitties:

Secret Santa

I've been using a community website called Reddit for some time now. Anyone can submit a link (funny pictures, news, How To Guides...) to the site and the users vote on the pages. There aren't any guidelines for voting, just whatever you feel like. The links with the highest votes make their way to the front page and become popular. It's a fun way to surf the web and it has developed into quite the community.

In November, someone decided to try running an internet Secret Santa program. All you had to do was provide your address and you'd be anonymously paired with someone else to shop for. $15 was the suggested dollar amount. I trusted the website pretty well and though it would be a lot of fun. I was right!I spent the first ten days of December trying to find the strangest collection of stuff for a guy living in Washington DC. Here's what I assembled for him:







The second picture was actually posted on the internet by the guy I was giving to. All told, he got:

• Bucky Balls
• A light for his toilet
• A light for his cell phone
• A USB fan

Here's what he wrote:

"All of these gifts are AWESOME! When the mailman pulled up, I was so damn excited I ran out the door to greet him in order to get my package seconds sooner. Thanks SS!"

He's living in Washington D.C. and still doesn't know who I am.

I sent that gift out December 10th. That same day, I received my Secret Santa gift. I can't tell you how excited Alicia and I were at this mystery box. It could have been practically anything. The excitement was too much to wait for Christmas and I opened it up that night. Here's what I got:







My Secret Santa clearly found out I was a mathematician. It's a Klein bottle, which is actually a one sided shape. I actually recognized the box before I opened it, since the same manufacturer made my Klein bottle from last year. Now I've got a set!It was an extremely awesome experience, one I'll happily repeat next year!

Update #1 for the New Year

The Bad News: I've been bad lately, in just about every area but cleaning. I haven't studied much, I haven't blogged much, I haven't produced much! I hope you'll forgive me, internet. There's just been so much to do that I had put off all semester. We rearranged our furniture, I set up computers, I played video games, I cleaned... It's felt great knocking things off my to do list, though.

The Good News: The holidays went well, despite being stuck in Brooklyn. Alicia and I were grounded when flight ticket prices skyrocketed. Rather than spend approximately $1,200 to fly home, we hunkered down and spent the holidays in New York. It was sad, sure. But we were on the phone as much as our families would bear talking to us. We even managed to enjoy each other. To be frank, we were lucky. Weather in Minnesota would have almost certainly ruined our trip home. Who knows what would have happened to our flight.

To enjoy ourselves, we went to the grocery store and ate very well. We watched the neighbors cat, finally paying him back for watching our cats during the Wedding. Overall, it was a decent holiday. We'll be back to Minnesota next year, though. Absolutely.

The Great News: My classes are done for the year. They've been done for a few weeks now, but I really haven't mentioned it here. Grades were almost perfectly average, which lifts my spirits. Next semester, I'll be teaching a Saturday morning course at 8:30am. It'll be strange, but I'm excited to have extra time off during the week. I'm hoping it'll really help me keep a good sleeping schedule. I'd have declined the class, but it's Pre Calculus, the most interesting course I've ever taught. They tend to be the most interested students, too. So I'm excited.

What I've Been Thinking About: Technology. I've finally gotten time to set up our electronics in a nifty way. We've got Alicia's laptop hooked up to the monitor in the living room. I've hooked up the Xbox to the bedroom television, which is finally getting some good use. I've even installed Windows 7 on our homemade computer, so I can play around with that. I'll have a lot more to say about this in a later post.

What I've Enjoyed: Reading. Reading is actually one of my New Year's resolutions. Not just reading, but enjoying reading. It's one thing to force yourself to sit and read a book. That isn't fun, and I rarely finish what I start. For 2010, I'm hoping to actually enjoy reading. I want to want to sit down with a book and hammer through it.

Alicia's been a big inspiration lately. She can finish a book in one to two days. I forget that it's possible to read a book that fast. In my head, especially thanks to Math text books, books last weeks to months.

So far this year, I've read SuperFreakonomics and Lord of the Flies. Let's hope the trend continues!

A New Year, New Motivation!

Hello!

Well, I've been less than good writing here. For the new year, I've taken a step back from my blogging and Twittering and given it some thought. I realized that there are two walls that have stood in the way of me blogging:

The big one is picture posts. I know pictures are fun, but it's a hassle to take them, transfer them to the computer, load them onto the internet then finally format them on the blog. I had a policy of posting a picture with every post. I think that breaking this habit will make it easier to write a lot more! I'm hoping pictureless posts can be likened to letters home. I can keep everyone updated with what's going on and maybe sprinkle some photographs at my convenience.

Secondly, Twitter really ruined a lot of blog posts I would have normally written. I would "tweet" a tiny little snippet (that you used to be able to see on the right side of this blog), but then I would have no motivation to write about it later. So, for the new year, I'm going to cut Twitter out of the picture. It's probably a good idea, anyway. I don't need to make the personal details of my day to day life public knowledge!

I'm really going to give blogging again the old college try. Check back periodically to see how I do. Wish me luck!

Happy New Year!!!

Happy new year from the Copelands!