Posts Tagged food
Maple Pecan Granola Recipe
Until college, cereal was something only to be consumed at breakfast. It was something I ate without much of a liking for it, but I had it every morning with milk and orange juice.
Then, I got to college and faced the experience of eating in the dining halls. Our entire cross country team would pile into the Caf every night after practice and sit in the same cluster of tables. Most of the time, we were exhausted from whatever workout or long run we had done that day and were dying for food. Of course, the stingy workers would only hand out a few pellets of nasty roast beef or a few noodles of pasta after standing in line for ten minutes. We were starving — give us more!
“Get back in line,” the workers retorted.
Thus, after whatever inhaling whatever meager rations the Caf workers gave us, everyone on the team finished their dinner with a nightly ritual: cereal. Cereal wasn’t portion controlled by the miserly Caf workers, so we ate a lot of it. When I first arrived as a freshman, I couldn’t believe everyone else ate cereal for dinner. It seemed so out of place, but soon enough, I found myself doing it every night along with the rest of my teammates.
The Caf always had Kellog’s granola, which in some way or another became my cereal of choice for breakfast and dinner. A bowl of it in the morning gave me most of the energy I needed to get through a day of class and practice. It was also great after plenty of grueling workouts. So, I not only ate cereal with almost every meal, but I became addicted to granola.
At first, I stuck to the Kellog’s brand, which I ate at the Caf. It wasn’t until my sophomore year that I discovered bulk granolas in the grocery stores, while a few years later I found Trader Joe’s, which sold the same bulk granolas as well as other granola-based cereals for cheap. All the while I continued to eat cereal for dinner while at school: my parents would have a fit if I did that at home. Then, after screwing around on the Internet, I found that it was easy to make your own granola with a minimum of ingredients. I found a great recipe here and also here, but my version is as follows:
Preheat oven to 275 and combine the following in a large mixing bowl:
- 4 cups rolled oats
- 1 cup pecans
- 1/3 cup, heaping, packed brown sugar
- pinch of salt
- 4 tsp canola oil
- 1 cup pure maple syrup (I use Grade B, but Grade A Dark Amber is also good)
Place on a cookie sheet with cooking spray. Bake for about 40 minutes, stirring every 10-15 minutes to allow the edges and center to dry evenly. When the oats turn golden brown and the syrup has been absorbed, it’s done.
Since I don’t eat in the dining halls anymore, I wonder if my old teammates still finish off every dinner in the Caf with a bowl of cereal.
Spam or Legit?
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on September 12, 2008
This appeared in my inbox yesterday with the heading “MicroSoft Corporation”:
HEY GENIUS, WE WANT YOU!
Microsoft:
Meet the Company!
9/18
4:30-5:30pm
Andrews Hall room 101
People here love their work because they get to think big and dream big.
Right now we’re looking for the next generation of Microsoft innovators.
If you have talent and a passion for technology, this could be your big moment.
Come find out more about our fulltime and internship opportunities and the area of Seattle!
Bring your résumé for a chance
to win great prizes!
FREE FOOD will be provided!
OMG Free Food? It’s as if the author thinks that the food will change my decision whether or not to go. The sentence structure seems very pedantic and more like that of something a non-native English speaker (Nigerian scammer) would write. It just doesn’t seem to flow very well — usually in these emails it’s more along the lines of “Company X is currently seeking a customer service oriented and highly creative individual to provide services and support as a Junior Software Test/Documentation Specialist.”
The department later sent out a more formal email verifying that this was indeed real, which I found hard to believe. Regardless, I’m not looking for a job at the moment. I will say that the latest round of recruitment emails from our department and the school’s career services has been much better than the typical “Redneck Technical Services is looking for an entry level web designer in Rustic, VA with a starting salary of $20K.”
One week down, many to go
Posted by Matt in general, microfracture on August 25, 2008
I’ve now been stuck in this brace and on crutches for over a week. So far it hasn’t been too bad, but it’s real difficult to do a lot of things that I took for granted before. I’m not sure how I’ll be able to get along at school by myself — I can’t carry anything but a backpack and it’s a real chore to shower and to get food by myself. I’m hoping that I’ll become more adjusted to this and be faster — it takes me an hour to get ready in the morning compared to about 15 minutes before. I’ll see how things go on my own on Thursday and into Friday when I have to go back to have the stitches removed. Driving is going to be interesting and hopefully I’ll be able to get my leg in the car with the minimal amount of movement the brace allows.
I started a weight routine for my legs and upper body which is the best I can do since I can’t run or bike. It should help some when I eventually am allowed more range of motion in the brace. The brace has done wonders for my hamstring flexibility though. I have been putting some weight on the left leg since the doctor and PA said I am allowed to, but I stick to the crutches when I move around. I’m real paranoid about screwing up the healing process and knocking out that clot in the knee that’s supposed to form new cartilage. There’s still a few times each day where I’ll move and I can feel the knee pop right in the area where I had the microfracture. I really hope that’s not the kneecap destroying part of the clot that’s in there. I’ll have to ask about that on Thursday.
There really isn’t much else I can do except work on the school project during the day and watch the Olympics at night. The stuff I’m working on still has problems and the conference submission deadline is at the end of the week. Each test case in the experiment takes about 5 hours of CPU time so each time I change something it takes quite awhile until I see results. And there are a lot of test cases, so I need as many as 20 or 30 processors running simultaneously to get results as fast as possible. I used to wonder why there was a need for systems with so many processors, but now I know. Each group of tests also spits out about a gig in raw data which also illustrates the need for a large amount of storage space.
I really hadn’t watched that much of the Olympics before whenever they had it, but I don’t really have that much else to do this time around. I always watched some of the track stuff, but that was about it. Personally, I didn’t think the coverage was all that great since there seemed to be an insane amount of commercials. Also, since there were so many sports, they couldn’t show everything, so the time was broken into small chunks of each. I didn’t get to see some of the stuff that sounded interesting, like the sailing or whitewater rafting stuff, shooting, or the modern pentathlon (which has cross country). There were a lot of things that I didn’t find as interesting, like diving and gymnastics, which seemed to last forever and require a palate akin to a professional wine taster in order to distinguish between a good and bad performance.
With the entire world watching, you would think that all the athletes would be on their best behavior as a representative of their country and as the best in their sport. Despite this, there seemed to be a bit of showboating and poor sportsmanship. One guy in taekwondo kicked a referee in the face after being disqualified. A wrestler threw his medal down on the mat after being angry over a judge’s call. In the qualifying heats of the 4 x 400, Great Britain’s anchor taunted the Jamaican runner behind him as they finished. And of course, there was all the showing off for the camera by Jamaica’s Bolt in the 100 and 200 — this was so bad there is even a YouTube video mocking it. There were many cases in the qualifying heats of the sprints where those in the front would pretty much slow down and walk across the finish line. Before the championship season every year in track, our head coach always said if we did that we’d never be wearing a uniform again. Of course, these instances were probably the exceptions rather than the rule, but it only takes a few bad apples.
Now that the Olympics are over it’s now on to the hype of the conventions and the fall election. I’m getting sick of a lot of it especially since Virginia is considered a “swing” state. There are tons of ads on TV, most of which are really annoying. There are too many attacks on the other guy and not enough emphasis on the good qualities of either candidate.
Maybe by the time all that is over I’ll be back on my feet again and things will be more or less back to normal. Maybe I’ll be crippled for life, but I’m trying to do everything I can to avoid that.
Five days remain
Posted by Matt in general, microfracture on August 13, 2008
And then I’ll be incapacitated. I feel basically fine now, except that my knee has been popping a lot more than usual. It’s still more annoying than anything, but I don’t want to risk running on it either. I’m not looking forward to the next few months at all but it’s something I have to go through if I want everything to eventually return to normal. I’ve stocked up on frozen food so I won’t have to mess with trying to cook anything while I can’t move around very well.
It turns out that one of my teammates did have microfracture surgery before and at the end of his 6+ month recovery, he was running and working out again with everyone else. It took a lot of work to get back into shape, but he did it and is still running without problems today. Tomorrow I am supposed to meet with the orthopedic surgeon to sign some paperwork and try to figure out what will happen in the days/weeks/months following the surgery.
My cell phone was slowly breaking down over the last few months and finally seemed to give up the ghost yesterday. Aside from the 10-15 minute battery life, it had gradually been unable to connect with the cell network. For awhile, it would randomly lose and reconnect with the network, but yesterday it was “No Service” everywhere I went while everyone else I saw was yakking it up. Normally I don’t talk on the phone very much, but when I’m out on the bike or driving somewhere and something breaks down, it’s good to have. I’ll have to figure out what to do about this and I am not sure I want to plunk down more money for something that’s intentionally designed to wear out after a few years. I really just want something that can make calls and has a long battery life; all that other crap like pictures, video, unwieldy web browsing, and text messaging I have no need for.
Yesterday my mom dropped by and we took the ferry to Surry and tried going to a barbecue place for dinner. Naturally, it was closed on Tuesdays. An hour of driving and the ferry trip and there wasn’t much else out there, except for the Virginia Diner, so we went there instead. It wasn’t bad, but not all that great either. I’ve seen that place while driving by on 460 several times, but never ate anything there. We’ve stopped a few times to buy some of the peanuts and peanut brittle they have, but never the food.
As we drove through Surry county, I saw lots of signs and bumper stickers reading “No OLF” in giant red letters, protesting one of the potential sites for the Navy outlying landing field for all the planes at Oceana and Cherry Point to practice landings. A much bigger protest has been going on in Northeastern NC for a lot longer since that was the Navy’s first choice. My mom said she couldn’t blame them for protesting it since a lot of people live out in the middle of nowhere to avoid stuff like that, but the funny thing is that is the same reason why the Navy wants to build there in the first place: there’s nothing around. For over 20 years I’ve lived within 5 miles of Oceana and the jets flying around at all hours never really bothered me. In fact, I sleep way better at home than I ever do in Williamsburg, where it’s usually quiet. Sometimes the quiet seems kind of unnerving because I almost expect there to be some kind of background noise of planes flying and cars driving down the nearby highways. It’s probably why Williamsburg seems so tired to me. That said, I can’t really fault the people in Surry for protesting either since they were there first and live there so they don’t have to deal with the noise and irritations of living in the close quarters of a city. If I were one of them, I would feel the same way.
I have only a few more days to enjoy my freedom of movement, and then I’ll be confined to crutches. I’m still biking as much as I can and walking everywhere I can too. Not being able to do much else will allow me to spend more time with school, but it’s good to have a break. Following a few weeks of downtime, then the real challenge of recovery begins. It’s always way harder to recover from an injury than it is to manifest one or take the initial time off after getting one. In the meantime, I’ll try to enjoy what I’ve got.
Three weeks and counting
Posted by Matt in general, microfracture on July 30, 2008
On the 18th, everything is going to change. It’s the day I’m scheduled for knee surgery. Every day I think about all the things I do other than just biking/running and how I won’t be able to do them for quite awhile. Just getting up to go to the bathroom makes me think: this is going to be a major chore with crutches. So, I’m walking around as much as I can because in a short while, I won’t be able to do it anymore.
At this point I’m not entirely sure how I’ll get around at school to get food and get to the office. I’ll have to find out during the pre-surgery doctor visit if I’ll be able to bend my knee to sit down or get into a car. I won’t even be able to drive my car since it’s a stick and the left knee is the problem. In fact, other than running, I feel the knee the most when I put in the clutch. I may be able to trade with my parents for awhile, but I still might not even be able to drive right off the bat.
As much as I really don’t want to do this, there isn’t really a choice. If I don’t get this done, I’ll never be able to run again. From the sounds of it, even if I don’t try to run again and don’t have the surgery, the wear on the bone will get worse and I’ll have to get a complete knee replacement. I don’t want that. So for the past few weeks and probably for the next couple, I’ll be biking. Biking doesn’t seem to hurt it much, and when it does, it only happens for a few seconds at the beginning of the ride. My bike isn’t in that great of shape, and really I could use a whole new bike, helmet, and shoes, but in a few weeks I won’t be able to use any of them, at least not for a long while. I could try saving up for some new stuff and wait until the late fall/winter when I’ll be able to use it again (hopefully).
I really don’t get that much pain right now, my knee is more of an annoyance if anything, so it seems that the cure is worse than the disease. At least for the moment. Reading other people’s experience with microfracture surgery tells of really long recoveries, with some people having more pain than before they were operated on. It seems that a lot of people went in thinking they were having a meniscus tear removal which has a very quick recovery time — some people are allowed to walk out of the hospital from that one. Instead, some people wake up and find that they had microfracture and then won’t be able to walk for 4-8 weeks. At least I can go in knowing that already.
It seems quite a few people are able to return to running with their knee better than before. One guy has a website that chronicles his whole experience. He has run several marathons since and says he never felt better. Hopefully I can use that as motivation. From the sounds of it, I won’t be able to do much of anything until the crutches come off, and then I can do some stuff in the pool along with whatever the PT people tell me to do. After about 3 months or so it looks like I’ll be able to use the road bike again, and then a month or two after that maybe running. It just depends on how everything turns out. The doctor/surgeon seemed very optimistic and seemed to think that I would be able to run again with no problem. I hope so. It’s just going to be extremely frustrating between now and then, especially since I will get completely out of shape. Even the guy who has ran six marathons since his surgery said he lost a ton of muscle mass in his legs and never got it back.
With all that’s going on (or not going on), I feel so disconnected from the world I live in. Everyone I really was good friends with has moved on, yet I am still here in Williamsburg. The bad thing is that it’s so dead here in the summer, especially on the weekends. I’ve gone home nearly every weekend just to escape this place. A lot of the excitement in my life has ended with my time on the xc/track team. There were always races and workouts that loomed in the near future, but were great when you had a good one. There’s just been a huge void ever since that has ended, and I’ll never be able to go back to it. Even if I am able to run again, running workouts with the team (if I could) wouldn’t be the same since everyone is different and much younger.
That said, I still enjoy the work I do. It isn’t too hard, but not too easy, either. It will give me good opportunities for the future. In the past, I made a few big decisions based on stuff that was happening in the present instead of thinking ahead. For the most part they turned out okay, but sometimes I wonder What If. There isn’t any going back in time so I have to do the best with what I’ve got, and sometimes it wouldn’t have mattered anyways. Like my knee, for example. I don’t think I could have changed anything even if I went back in time to early January and told my past self that within a few weeks it would blow up and it would lead to this whole mess. If I had not run that day or gone later or something, it still probably would have given out sooner or later. The previous two years of twisting my ankle and other punishment just gradually took its toll and caught up with me. I guess it would have been possible to go back even further and tell myself to take it easy on the trails, but even that I’m not sure about. What’s done is done and now it’s time to face the future. Here’s to hoping it will turn out well.
Interesting correlation…
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on April 13, 2008
I stumbled across this posting of food expenditures for different families across the world. It starts with those that spend the most and goes down to the least. Look at what those at the top are eating versus those towards the bottom. The stuff eaten by those that have higher costs is nearly all packaged and processed. The farther down you go, the more fresh, locally grown food you see.
This really seems to illustrate two points: 1) Locally grown fresh food can be cheaper to obtain, and 2) No wonder so many people in western countries have so many diet-related health problems — look at all that packaged stuff!
Of course there are upsets to this order of things, the main thing being government intervention. The farm subsidies set up here in the US heavily favor grain and cattle farmers with a series of price floors and economic incentives. There are basically no subsidies for fruits and vegetables. This is what turns us into a fatty beef-eating corn-syrup chugging society with heart disease being the biggest cause of deaths every year.
The cost of food has definitely skyrocketed for me. Since I eat most of my meals in the dining halls, I get cereal, milk, orange juice, and a few other snacks and beverages about every two weeks. I used to spend around $25 for every two week period, but now it’s gone up past $40. The media blames it on increased energy costs, demand due to population increases throughout the world, and diversion of corn to ethanol production.
If the farm bill were reorganized to promote all food to be locally grown and sold, this would eliminate a lot of the energy-based cost increases. If we shifted our diets away from all the prepackaged stuff and ate more fresh food, this would get rid of a lot of the production costs and would be a lot healthier to boot. Also, I know that there is the argument that so much of grain production goes to cattle feed and that if we cut back meat consumption this would really help things in terms of lower costs and better diet. Unfortunately, I like meat, and lots of it, so I can’t really support that change. I also don’t mind drinking soda and processed/manufactured cereals. At the same time, I walk into the caf and most of the stuff they have is deep-fried and straight out of some factory and it disgusts me. I can’t stand the country-fried steaks, french fries, heavily-oiled pastas, and canned sugary sauces and gravies.
I did join a locally-grown food co-op and their offerings are definitely expensive — again, since all this stuff is mostly fruits and vegetables, it’s not subsidized and will be more expensive. It’s also in part to the co-op being small and the cost to truck in a small number of potatoes or lettuce from Suffolk being pretty high. The stuff they do have is pretty good, though. Williamsburg also runs a Farmer’s Market that I’ve bought some good stuff from — bread, seafood, and peanuts, among other things.
Downtime
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on April 5, 2008
I finally feel like I’ve gotten past the latest surge in work and don’t feel as bogged down as I did a week or two ago. My work is more clearly defined.
I can get going on some implementation of the system I am working on with my advisor (finally) so that we can move on to putting out a paper. If I don’t finish this, then I won’t ever get my M.S. The Theory of Computation class has some difficult NP-Complete reduction problems so while that will be difficult to get through, I don’t have to finish it right away. Looking at those problems a little bit every day is much better than staring at them for hours and getting nowhere.
Since I do have some free time, I got Call of Duty 4 through Steam. Though a lot of people complain about it, I really like the concept of Steam. There isn’t any rummaging through various B+M stores looking to see if they have what you want. There isn’t any annoying packaging and CD to insert everytime you want to play. There isn’t any CD to lose, either — you just redownload.
I’ve played through a portion of the game already in the past day since I downloaded it and so far, it’s been great. It’s very cinematic and the battles seem so out of control. A lot of the time I feel so helpless with stuff blowing up all over the place and bullets screaming by. At the same time, though, the game depends on you to get stuff done. The other soldiers you’re with won’t advance until you do, so you do have to make some kind of progress. If you don’t, they’ll just hang back and the enemies will continuously respawn in the same places. The linear aspect of the game is the only drawback (along with a pretty weak AI), but the action definitely makes it fun. I haven’t played the multiplayer yet, but I heard it’s great, which is one of the reasons I bought the game. With many games, the multiplayer is pretty bland, so I’ll finish the singleplayer and then leave the game to collect dust — four hours of gameplay isn’t really worth $50. But, a good multiplayer that allows hours of fun in addition to good singleplayer allows me to recoup my investment.
I also saw Into the Wild, which prompted me to buy the book. The movie reminded me of a few guys on the team that had a similar attitude as the main character. It would be great just to cut loose and forget about all the nuances of every day life, except this guy really did it. Christopher McCandless graduated college and decided to hitchhike, hop trains, kayak to Mexico, and live in a bus in the Alaskan wilderness. Unfortunately, he took it a little too far and starved to death. It seemed that he didn’t have much knowhow in terms of wilderness survival, or that maybe he wanted it to go that way. The movie (and maybe the book) got me thinking about what it would be like if I just up and left without telling anyone. To disappear into the great beyond with no real destination in mind. Forget sleeping in the same bed every day, going through the same old routine, going to class, eating the same bland food, and seeing the same things. Every day would bring something new and exciting. Of course, it wouldn’t be any walk in the park — things that I normally take for granted would suddenly become a huge problem, mainly food, shelter, and just general health kind of stuff.
The Colonial Relays were this weekend and I caught a little bit of the meet. A few of the guys who recently graduated came back and it was nice to see them. Most, like myself, are still in school, just somewhere else. It’s funny how removed I feel from practicing and competing despite still running every day from the locker room and seeing everybody that’s still here. At this point it’s difficult to imagine racing. Just running is an accomplishment at this point.
The semester is coming to a quick end — only 3 weeks and two labs left to TA. Hopefully I’ll finish everything successfully.
Hard to find: Fruit Butters and Juice
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on March 26, 2008
At some point over the last few months, I’ve grown a liking to fruit butters. I put them on bread all the time. The UC dining hall always has apple butter, and while I’ve had access to it for years, I only really started to eat it regularly. It’s really grown on me and it’s better than jelly/jam since it’s thicker, has more of an apple taste, and isn’t as sugary.
Then it dawned on me that there was more than just apple butter. Looking on the internet, I was able to find pumpkin butter, pear butter, peach butter, and even cherry butter. I bought some apple butter and pumpkin butter from Kroger without any HFCS, and found it to be much better than the stuff at the UC. Some of the stuff at the grocery store is cheaper and made in some factory with corn syrup and other added crap, but the stuff I got came from a farm in West Virginia. The pumpkin butter was like pumpkin pie, but not as sweet.
I wondered what the other butters tasted like. I searched everywhere and couldn’t find anything but apple butter and occasionally pumpkin butter. What’s more, the stuff seems to be “seasonal”. I could find apple butter easily in the fall, but it’s a rare item now. I never could figure out the seasonal food scam — it’s usually the best stuff but stores/people only make it during one sliver of the year (girl scout cookies, Reese’s PB eggs, pecan/pumpkin pies, pumpkin-flavored ice cream, sweet potato dishes, some beers). I finally broke down and ordered a trio of jars (cherry, pumpkin, and peach) from a national park website that offered the stuff.
It finally came in yesterday and I tried out the cherry — good stuff. It was like jam, but thicker. It’s also really different than the apple and pumpkin butters I’ve had.
The other thing that gets me is fruit juice. I signed up for a campus food co-op where local stuff is offered every week and you tell them what you want. Then you go and pick it up when it comes in. I ordered some “cherry” cider, which turned out to be apple juice with cherry concentrate and tasted in kind. I went to the grocery store and bought fruit juice labeled as “cherry”, but found cherries to be down the list after apples and grapes. It didn’t taste anything like cherries. I finally found pure cherry juice and blueberry juice at Trader Joe’s, but I’ve got to finish off the “cherry” cider first.
Five weeks of school and four labs left
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on March 23, 2008
This semester is busy and filled with all kinds of stuff for me to do, but it’s coming to an end quickly. Looking at the calendar, there are only five more weeks of classes. I’ve got a wireless paper presentation, a handful of assignments for Theory of Computation, and a wireless project paper and presentation along with the usual readings. That’s just the stuff for my two classes.
Then, I’ve got extra stuff for my adviser for the M.S. project/research which is really an extension of my wireless class project. There are weekly things he wants me to do which can make things tough. Since he keeps changing his mind on the details of the project, I have to continually refine the paper I’m working on to reflect these changes. I really want to just pick something and go with it so I can do some actual implementation, get some experimental or simulated results, and put the stuff in a paper. Then I can get my M.S. degree. The deadline for my M.S. paper and project is basically next week and my adviser didn’t want to push it, so I (hopefully) will get my degree in the summer.
The end of the semester won’t be the end, but I’m hoping that I’ll be done with my M.S. stuff by then. I then have to apply for candidacy into the PhD program (actually I don’t even have to be done with my M.S. project for that), but I have to be done with the classes I am taking this semester. Hopefully I can choose a committee without any problems and they will look at my classes and grades and say: OK. Hopefully. This all seems like a dream and it’s hard to believe that this is where I am in my life.
There are only four labs left for my intro Java class, so there won’t be too much left for that. Some of the labs are getting more complicated and some of the students are having trouble with some of the concepts (arrays, interfaces). I do my best to help, but I can tell that some of the students don’t like me. This is mainly because I get as frustrated as they do when I can’t explain something to them very well. As I’ve said before, learning to program is an individual task — spoon feeding the answers to problems doesn’t help you learn. Teaching the concepts helps, but you really have to work on stuff on your own to truly understand everything. I have to try to get the students to think independently. I try to make them ask the right questions about what went wrong when they have problems.
The housing selection stuff for the gradplex is this week so my roommate and I have to pick out a place. We have to find another building since we are going to be here in the summer. The one we are in now is going to be renovated. Unfortunately, the building also has the laundry machines for the whole complex. I have a feeling they will just close off the whole place and I’ll have to go somewhere else to do laundry. The computer science building is really close to one of the undergrad dorms which has laundry machines. I could drag my stuff over there and do it while I’m working in the office.
The other day I was thinking about taking home a lot of my winter clothes since I wouldn’t need them anymore. Then I realized: What’s the point if I’m going to be in Williamsburg year-round? I can just keep everything there and not have to take it home. That seems weird. It’s like I’m gradually starting to move out of home. At the same time, though, I’ve gone home a lot more than I used to.
I have gone home a ton and I’m at home again now. It’s nice to get good food and to sleep like a rock when I’m here. My dad is here for the first time in what seems like forever since he is always working. It seems a lot more peaceful at home than at school when there’s always someone that’s crashing around in the building or yelling outside. Despite that, the undergrad dorms, and especially my freshman dorm, were like pure mayhem compared to the gradplex. I’ll probably wind up at home again next weekend since it’s Sarah’s birthday. Also, she probably won’t be able to come up to Williamsburg because of her job. Funny that this time around, she just ordered what she wanted online (a coat) and I’ll just pay her back for it. It doesn’t seem like much of a present since I don’t wrap it or even get to give it to her, but it’s probably for the best since it’s something that she wants and will enjoy. At least I got a card.
The going isn’t necessarily ideal, but I am making some kind of progress.
OMG! Spring Break! Woooo! … not
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on March 2, 2008
Invariably, after any period off from school longer than a weekend, torrents of the same inquisition echo across campus:
How was your break?
Was it a good break?
Where did you go on your break?
What did you do on your break?
Everyone runs around like chickens with their heads cut off screaming these same irritating questions at each other. “Blah blah blah break blah blah blah.” I would venture to say that 95% of the students do the same thing as I do: go home and do nothing. I ran into a bunch of teammates on Friday before I left as most were heading to practice for a workout. They all seemed jealous that I got to go home while they all had to stay at school for most of the week to practice and get ready for IC4As. I consider them to be the lucky ones. They get to blaze around the track in tough workouts and head to Boston for one of the meets I’ve enjoyed the most. Plenty of times this semester I’ve walked by the track on the way to the UC for dinner and seen everyone working out. It leaves me feeling sad that I’m not a part of that anymore. I would feel a lot better if I could run again normally and I could join them again at least one or two days a week.
Sarah has an elliptical machine at her house so I went over there yesterday and did that while she did some homework. It was better than the rec center since we put on Animal House and I had to strain to see the only clock in the room. The machine was a lot different than the ones at school — the school ellipticals are more like those nordic trac skiing machines and don’t make you cycle your knee through much of a range of motion. This one was more aggressive and its resistance was also greater, which probably put more pressure on my IT band. It didn’t hurt, but it seemed a little tight afterwards. I’ll try some running today to see how it goes (a couple loops around the block) and maybe head over there for some more elliptical. I don’t enjoy it that much, as I’ve said, but it’s better than sitting around and being a bum.
I do have some work to do over the next week. First, I’ve got to typeset and turn in the Theory of Computation homework that my professor has been so lenient about. I’ve done the actual work on paper, but now I’ve got to typeset it, and I feel really lazy and don’t want to do anything school related. I’ve also got to start on the design overview for the sensor network project I’m working on. As it turns out, my Theory of Computation professor said most Master’s students who do a project just write a paper based on a proposed system but don’t actually implement anything. If I can convince my adviser to finalize our design as quickly as possible (we’ve been screwing around a bit and changing things), then I might actually be able to get the paper done by the end of March. If I do that, then I’ll make the deadline for the Master’s project and get my degree in May. That would be nice, but I’m not betting the farm on it. This week I should also modify my TA lab grading script to handle infinite loops when running students’ code.
My dad has a trip to San Francisco this week, so that would be cool to go out there and come back, but I doubt there will be empty seats on the plane. Since I’m hurt, worrying about having to run hasn’t been bothering me as much, so I can be more flexible about stuff like that. Unfortunately, I’ll probably just be stuck here.
Screwing around on the Internet as I do nearly every day, I came across something interesting: a maple-flavored pie that someone had found at some restaurant in Vermont. The pictures and testimonial made it sound really good, so I scoured the Internet for recipes. I found one that appeared on several sites, which took maple sugar. Since you can’t really get that in a store around here, I ordered some from Vermont and made the recipe with the help of my mom (with the crust). It wasn’t all that great and didn’t look like anything in the pictures. It came out more like a maple flavored quiche — very eggy. Later, I found the recipe that was probably the one in the pictures and variations of it. Basically, just condensed milk or cream, maple syrup, and some versions have flour, but no eggs. I could try making that one.
Being able to eat decent food and sleep in my own bed are two great things about being at home this week. Since the first day of my freshman year, I’ve never slept well at school, but as soon as I’m home, I’m out like a rock every night. I don’t know what gives. Also, the UC food has been really crappy and repetitive as of late, especially with regards to having some kind of vegan patty just about every night as the main attraction. Being able to eat good stuff again has improved my mood.
So, that pretty much sums it up for the next week or so. I guess now it’s off to see how my IT band does today.
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