hosting is fun

and, amoung other things, it motivates me to actually clean my apartment---which, amoung other things, makes my life a much happier place to be. :)

wednesday evening i had a bunch of people over (oscar, anne, norman, jim, nikolaus, olga, august, emanuella, and me, makes 9; probably my new record) and attempted to make falafel. the falafel turned out to be much more difficult than i had anticipated, simply because even after soaking the garbonzo beans for 24 hours instead of the suggested 12, they were hard as rocks, and i had to mash them a handful at a time with the mortar and pestle. however, once it was made... hot damn, it was tasty. nikolaus even claimed that it was the first falafel he'd ever had that he didn't hate (he actually said he liked mine). and of course there was the lemon meringue pie for desert, which always seems to go over well.

i had originally lured all these people into my lair on the pretense of showing a movie; a french film called "sous le sable" ("under the sand") by a french director i kinda like, francois ozon. but for whatever reason, people seemed to be having a good time just sitting around and chatting it up, so i didn't feel like interrupting to put in a film. strange how sometimes the party dynamic just "happens." the problem is that the times when it doesn't are usually the ones when you want/need it too the most (!?!).

norman turned in his thesis (finally), and so last night he had people over to his place. (yeah! party week!) i think he beat me by a few people, but then again, he's graduating, which is slightly more of an event than a film we don't end up watching... the impressive part is that his apartment is even smaller than mine, but he's done pretty well with it. almost a caltech-like solution; he built a loft. (ah, fond memories of being proud of my resourceful creative engineering in dabney 42. 'tis a shame that they will almost certainly tear it down during the renovations this year.)

i finally finished reviewing my six abstracts for SIS2005, though i probably was more thorough than i needed to be (or rather, i gave more [and hopefully better] feedback than most other reviewers will probably bother to do). can't wait until june; it's gonna be awesome to see some of my socal friends again. i miss you all, a lot.

my certificates are currently in the process of being translated into italian. every day i get a little bit closer to being a citizen! whoohoo! yeah, you know it, i'm excited.

my bonzais are slowly returning to health. i've basically decided that it was a combination of the cold air and overwatering, but i'm learning, and they're doing better now. and if the weather ever decides that it's not winter anymore (we had another random snowburst at the beginning of the week), i'll start planting my balcony vegetables again. maybe this year i'll do it right, and only put one seed in a pot. last year i thought i'd just throw them all in and transplant the seedlings. well, the ones i transplanted died, so i left the rest, which never got very big, since they were basically root-bound. so, if i learned my lesson, and things work better this year, i'll be very glad.

i think i've run out of things to say...