potential warning sign of a future evil mastermind #11: the limp

what do you know, we're two weeks behind again...

the weekend of the 17-18th i let yannick talk me into going up sking for a half-day on saturday morning, before returning to marathon rehearsal weekend for the chorus. it was fun, and i'm very glad i went (also, it was nice to finally meet his girlfriend, stephanie, who still lives in lyon). however, as i didn't find out until later that day, i apparently torqued my left knee something fierce near the end when we were stuck on a sheet of ice. didn't notice anything at the time, but as soon as i stopped moving (well, and subsequently sat still for close to 5 hours) it locked up nice and tight such that when i finally went to stand up, i promptly fell over. and, of course, i've been doing a really shitty job of taking care of it (staying off of it), so it's still kinda sore at random times. mostly i probably shouldn't have gone to karate last week, but they already think i'm a loser, so i didn't want to give them any more excuses.

some new friendships are developing quite nicely with the aforementioned swiss-german kids i met in the choral group. it's kinda funny, though, i've been noticing that the vast majority of the people i've make friends with since i started college are all about ~20 years old when i meet them, give or take a little bit. in the beginning, they were mostly older than me (sharon & co., zack, nate), but within the standard margin of error. as i got towards the end of my undergrad career, they tended to be younger than me (jason, ed, the theatre crowd, joe), but again, nothing out of the ordinary. as i got closer to finishing at caltech, i noticed that i was meeting people younger than my sister (dave, doug, mike, dorota), and now it's starting to strike me as a wee bit odd that i was in the second grade before dominic and co. were even born... obviously, this is pretty much completely immaterial, and like usual i'm probably subconsiously filtering the data points to fit my odd-theory-du-jour, but it was just a random thought that struck me.

anyway, spent last week hobbling around on my bum knee, finally finished out the accounting for the last years stuff with the chorus, and bought a road bike (finally!). paid twice as much as i wanted to spend, but it was much more bike than i really need, so it was still less than it's probably worth, and therefore a pretty good deal. saturday i bought (very expensive [gulp]) shoes and cleats to go with the clipless pedals that are on it, but naturally as the whole week had been mind-blowingly gorgeous, a massive rainstorm blew in on friday night and stayed the whole weekend, so i haven't tried them yet. i also finally bowed to mounting pressure from the people at the karate class and went in search of a real gi (the unbelievably stupid looking suit-thing that they wear). unfortunately, i actually found one, which meant i felt obligated to buy it (since my primary excuse was gone), and it wasn't cheap either (like around ~$100).

saturday night teodora threw a going away party for herself before she goes back to bulgaria, and it was very well attended. so much so that i started feeling claustrophobic at times (no, i still haven't learned to be a party person yet). i hung around as long as i could, but at around one i was starting to nod off, so i excused myself. rumor has it they were still going strong when the sun came up on sunday... wow. nice people, but totally not my scene.

tried raph's new sunday morning ashtanga class with yannick, and then in the evening went up to his parents house with the wii and cooked dinner there and played around with him, his flatmate jen, and his sister marie-noelle. lots of fun. gotta get a tv that i can use it on at home. maybe.

which brings us to now, with me (in classic fasion) procrastinating at work, since i feel overwhelmed by all the crappy stuff i need to do. well, it wouldn't be so bad except that more than half of it is ill-defined (as per usual), meaning that i'm not even really sure what it is that i need to do... grr... okay, i should probably at least try to get back to it. god, am i going to be one happy camper when this whole phd mess is finally behind me...