End of 2003

Happy New Year's Everyone!

My mail seems to have stopped working, but Mom (or anyone else), if you're reading this, leave a note here to say hi.

See you all next year [grin]

-emily

Almost Fixed

I think I've fixed the Hay in Art Database. I ran the following perl script (posted here in case I need it again later...)

perl -pi -e 's/\r/\n/g' hayinart.db

but now the records have extra line breaks, which I'll have to repair tomorrow... (sorry Alan!)

Tate Modern

Met up with Aunt Susan (who is here in London on a theater trip) and went to the fabulous new Tate Modern.

One work we saw that we believe had haystacks was Raoul Dufy's The Harvest but since I've broken the hay database, I'll have to wait until I can fix it to check and see if its there already. Hanna and I are guessing that its mostly grain, but some haystacks in the back at least. Alan will know for sure.

Here are some photos of the Weather Project which I thought was stunning.

That's Hanna and I in the middle reflected on the ceiling. Everyone was lying on the floor "sunbathing".

In London!

I'm in London visiting Hanna and John! We're just about to start digitizing Brian and Karen's wedding video!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my 29th birthday!!!

Here's a photo from dinner with Dr. Bruce and Maria:

A little of both

Tonight we did a little of both -- Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas!

The Last Samurai

For our Christmas movie, Eduard and I saw The Last Samurai. Followed, of course, by going out to Chinese food with the whole gang.

Jonathan and Christopher

Jonathan and Christopher stopped by to see us and to visit Grandpa. Jonathan even helped Eduard revise the song he composed for class!

Dinner at Blue Lemon

We went out to dinner with Timon & Lori, Aunt Susan, and Peter at Blue Lemon before Bill and Liz went out to midnight Christmas Eve services. Merry Christmas!

Betty's Hair

My sister Betty donated 10 1/2 inches of hair today to Locks of Love which "provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children under age 18 suffering from long-term medical hair loss." Here are her before and after pictures. I think she looks great and that it was a wonderful thing to have done!

Internship!

I just found out that I've been offered an internship with the Santa Clara County library system that I had applied and interviewed for a couple of weeks back. Training is January 20-21 and then I get to shadow a reference librarian for 60 hours with the hope of being kept on as part of their extra-help reference pool.

My first library job!!

Double Feature

Spent A LOT of time at the movies today! Saw Lord of the Rings: Return of the King with Eduard and then Mona Lisa Smile with Betty and Mom. LOTR was amazing! I came home feeling like we had just returned triumphant from saving Middle Earth. There were a lot of things that they had cut from the book -- I just wish I could convince Eduard to read it so we could compare notes! I couldn't get the music out of my head.

MLS was pretty good -- certainly the costumes and design were fabulous (the 50s always look so great).

Diet Black Cherry

People here keep asking me if I miss the East Coast. One thing that I do miss is a good deli. We went to Gold's for lunch today and had matzo ball soup and my favorite -- Dr. Brown's Diet Black Cherry soda. I even split a hot pastrami sandwich with Betty (despite not really eating meat for almost 2 years now -- just couldn't resist!)

Love Actually, again

Saw Love Actually again tonight with Mom and Bill but hope to see some of the other ones on my list while I'm here (especially LOTR and Mona Lisa Smile)

Hanukkah Party

Tonight was our big Hanukkah party.

Here are a bunch of photos from the dinner.

Lots of wonderful food:

Mom and I made latkes:

Liz decorated dreidel sugar cookies:

Bill, the Higbys and the Randalls

Karen and Brian, Betty, and the jr. Higbys

Brian, Karen and Aunt Susan

Grandpa with Karen's mom

Bill and Karen

Karen's Dad, John Vacarro and Me

Betty with her new gloves

The Vacarros

I'm not sure Brian liked his presents...

Annie and Brian with their presents

Karen and Liz

The Higby's

Me and Aunt Susan

Karen and her Mom

Mom and Bill

Another group shot

Home for the Holidays

Back in Connecticut for the holidays where it is COLD (making me appreciate our California winter...). They had already lit the candles before I arrived but pulled out another menorah from the collection and we did another round for my benefit. Eduard showed off his new ipod and even played a song of his own composition!

Tomorrow will be lots of cooking for the Hanukkah party and some last minute errands.

East Bay Adventure

Spent the day up in Berkeley and Oakland with Alan and Margaret. We saw a hay/straw installation in Oakland, visited the California Digital Library folks, went to the Berkeley library's holiday party (where I even won a random raffle prize) and then met up with Grace and Devan and Brenna for dinner at Unicorn, a cool pan-Asian restaurant.

Here are some other photos from the Oakland Art Gallery exhibit:

And, keeping with the hay theme, there were even pitch-fork chairs at the Tully's we stopped at for coffee!

Santa vs. The Snowman

Saw the Santa vs. The Snowman IMAX movie tonight at the Tech's 5th Birthday party/staff holiday party. It was SO much fun -- I really didn't expect it to be that funny! We'll have it at the Tech for the next two years around the holidays, and it definitely should be part of everyone's holiday tradition.

This morning was my last Tech shift of the year, and my last time working in Grossology (since its leaving 1/4).

The Dragon Charmer

Finished Jan Siegel's The Dragon Charmer today while waiting for someone to FINALLY take their wet clothes out of the washing machine so I could do my laundry. A bit denser than the first one of the series, Prospero's Children and not quite as gripping, but still hard to put down.

Old Photos

Alan scanned these for me after we borrowed them from Annie and Harold's wall.

Laban (Marias?) and Rose Stynowsky Rabinowitz (Jacob's parents)

Morton and Naomi Brodin (Jennie's parents)

Jennie and Jacob were my great-great grandparents (them -> AR -> Betty -> Mom -> Me), so these are two sets of my great-great-greats!

Blogs with Tom Mandel

As Tom wrote here (before I edited it): "She is helping me learn Movable Type and more generally blogging, and she is also going to help me find a new hosting service. "

In America

Saw In America earlier today and am now watching part II of Angels in America on HBO.

"Anything can happen -- any awful thing."

Christmas in the Park

Walked around downtown after the Tech and checked out San Jose's Christmas in the Park. My favorite tree was this Alice in Wonderland one, and it was nice to see one menorrah there as well.

Young Black Stallion

Saw a sneak preview of The Young Black Stallion Imax movie at the Tech today.

Jellyfish DNA

At today's Board meeting, we got to do a little genetic engineering and inject jellyfish DNA into bacteria to make it glow! A picture of our work was available online on Monday. Ours was labeled "the boiler makers" because my two lab partners -- one Moira Gunn from Tech Nation -- both went to Purdue apparently.

Happy Birthday Brian!

12/11 is Brian's birthday! Happy birthday!!!

Deception Point

BobbiLynn leant me Dan Brown's Deception Point which I finished today. Not as good as his other books, but a very enjoyable quick read and more grist for the conspiracy mills. I'm going to bring it home for Mom to read before I return it to BobbiLynn.

Return of the King

Reread Return of the King so I could go see the movie next week (Eduard's promised to take me). I've been rereading them one at a time right before the movies come out so they're fresh in my mine (the movies have been great, but the books even better!) I was hoping I could convince him to read it as well but its pretty much hopeless!

End of the semester

Turned in the last three papers for my two classes today so I'm done for the semester! Yay!

It still looks like its fall here though -- though it was so windy today that most of the leaves are finally falling off the trees.

Angels

Stayed up quite late watching HBO's absolutely amazing Angels in America. I never managed to see the play, but everyone always said how wonderful it was. I think they did an amazing job with the movie and can't wait to see the second part next week!

Volunteer Holiday Party

Today was the Volunteer Holiday Party which was a lot of fun! BobbiLynn and my cookies didn't win, but the competition was pretty rough! I did win one of the raffle prizes though, two tickets to the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco.

I think the best part though was watching Roomba, our robotic vaccuum, clean up all the cookie crumbs after the party!

Then I had dinner and hung out with Rika and Laura which was great!

Here's a picture of Brittany chasing Roomba around.

Snow at home

According to Mom, they're getting tons of snow in CT today. So much that she and Eduard couldn't even drive on our road and had to walk home! I guess the rain here isn't all that bad...

Members Holiday Party

Ellen and I celebrated the last day of our Research class (yay!) by going to the Tech Museum's Member Party! They had a real reindeer and lots of fun crafts -- plus Ellen got to try out the Segway.

Cookies!

BobbiLynn and I made cookies today to enter into the Tech Volunteers' Holiday Party Cookie Contest! Its actually our second annual holiday cookie baking get-together, since last year the very first thing we did to hang out besides work at the Tech together was to bake cookies along with Brenda!

We made these adorable (if we do say so ourselves) holiday mice and tried out the cookie-press (with mixed success) that Brian and Karen had given me last year for my birthday.

Can you spot the one Chanukkah mouse?

The cookie press:

Volunteer Management

Spent the day at a CompassPoint workshop on Volunteer Management and then chaired the VAB meeting.

December

Its December! Always a crazy month -- end of the semester (4 papers left to turn in), holidays (I'm excited to get to be home for Mom's latkes this year!), birthdays, travel, etc. Countdown to the end of being 28, the end of 2003... Its certainly starting off as a rainy month around here, but at least its not terribly cold.