behind schedule but trying not to lose hope

in more ways than one...

mostly, with respect to the IROS submission deadline on monday. it looks like i'll make it, though it's unclear as yet what the quality of the final submission will actually be like. that i'm none to happy about the fact that we have an official 4-day weekend, and i'm having to work all the way through it and getting no credit for it (in terms of extra vacation or whatever). anyway, i'm in no danger of running out, and it's looking like i won't even be able to take the vacation days i'm allotted, so i'm not sure why exactly i'm complaining, except for the fact that on principle, it just really sucks. and it only makes it worse that the weather is fucking gorgeous. who'd'a' figured?

i'm also behind on posting anything about what little of interest has been happening in my life lately. sadly there hasn't been much, but i've been remiss even in writing about the little things. unfortunately, given the deadline on monday, now probably isn't the time that this situation is going to be remedied, either.

but for now, we end on a happy note: even though not quite on the original schedule, i am making noticable headway with my diet. this morning i weighed in at 69.0kg and 20.0% body fat. therefore, after a little math, in the last three weeks, i've lost 1.6kg of fat, leaving 4kg left to go for my mid-way goal. i had originally wanted to get there by june 1st, but realistically, it may slip past that a little bit. maybe by my birthday instead; that would still be good.

oh, and another pleasant side effect of my three weeks back on the diet: i've reclaimed 1.5-2 notches on my belt. it used to be that the second hole was comfortable and the third was a little tight; now the fourth is snug, but i can pull it all the way to the fifth if i want (though that's pretty tight, and not exactly comfortable yet). just have to keep at it... just have to keep telling myself that i just have to keep at it...

setting and achieving realistic goals

okay, well, despite the fact that i haven't written about several recent events yet, i want to get this down right away. i finally restarted my diet about a week and a half ago, and i'm going to try to take it more seriously this time, and maybe finally get to the bottom of this mess once and for all.

to this end, i decided last night that i am setting the following goal, which i [at least currently] believe to be realistic, and even somewhat conservative, if i'm strict with myself:

by june 1st, 2007, i will weigh at most 65kg at 15% body fat.

today, the 19th of march, i weighed in at 70.3kg and 21.9% fat (-6.9%=-4.85kg, leaving 65.45kg, so the relative numbers should be reasonable). there are 11 weeks between now and then, which means that we're shooting for about 500g per week, leaving a small margin for mistakes, just in case. (that's approximately a pound a week; the reading i've done leads me to believe that this is safe, reasonable, and even slightly modest---but if you believe otherwise, please do let me know why. given my history, i obviously want to be very careful about doing this in the safest manner possible.)

well, i guess all that's left is for you to wish me luck... [hint hint]

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...

when it snows, it white-outs

the ski season this year has been nothing if it hasn't been disappointing. we're in the goddam *swiss alps* and there's no fucking snow...

but karen, krister, godefroy, and i braved it up the mountain anyway on sunday, since there had been a little bit of snowfall near the end of last week. of course, we showed up only to find that now 3/4 of the lifts were closed due to wind, and most of what was open were the "ass-pullers" and "crossbows" (literal translations of the words they use to describe the two different types of t-bars). and i still maintain that any civilized person would laugh uproariously at the thought of going to some ass-backwards place where they still used t-bars... unbelievable.

but we were already there, so we gritted our collective teeth and charged up the mountain to claim it for our own. when we got to the top however, visibility was about 15ft maximum, and the enormity of my error began to sink in. even in the radius of sight, there was no contrast, and any contours in the snow were hence completely and utterly invisible. now, i'd like to think that i've gotten to the point where i can hold my own pretty decently on the snowboard, but it seems that much (if not all) of this is predicated on the fact that i **be able to see where i'm going and prepare for the terrain ahead.** as this was not the case, i was not doing well, and felt like a fucking idiot. add to this the fact that krister is apparently the kind of badass that likes to go off the trail into the middle of nowhere where it's deep and i sink, well, it didn't work so well. but somehow we ran into michael, and all had a very nice fondue together for lunch, and it started to clear a little bit after lunch. i tried my hardest to keep up, but still felt like i was probably holding them back. eh, whatever.

stopped off at karen's house on the way back home and had a nice little dinner. her house really is fabulous, i can't say that enough.

a night on the town: is it a blue moon again already?

recently, i've been waking up in the morning with back pain and no idea why. the only reasonable thing i can think of is that the mattress might theoretically be starting to sag (it is a three year old futon mattress), but it doesn't really look or feel any different; certainly not enough to justify such a drastic bifurcation (the change came quite suddenly about a week and a half ago). so yeah, puzzling. kinda hope it stops soon.

friday afternoon, we tried to organize what yannick has been calling an "el cheapo" yoga session with our little group, but the only people who ended up coming were karen and i. we had a good practice, and i even started to feel my hips open up a little bit with my increased frequency of practicing (i think i got four sessions in last week), which was encouraging. afterwards, we picked up a couple of pizzas, brought them back to my apartment, and had a nice little dinner with maurice. later, karen and i joined alex and his friend magnus (visiting from spain) for a drink, and eventually even krister showed up. a 'progressive party' of three establishments later, i was dragging myself into bed at about 4am. it was fun, but i'm really glad it only happens very rarely. i must be getting old.

saturday was hence cut short, for obvious reasons including the fact that i didn't get up until nearly 10:30, and was pretty much a lazy lounge around my room day. though i did make a trek out to obi (the 'home depot' sort of store here) with three goals in mind, and failed miserably at all three of them. i wanted:

1. baking soda in a package bigger than an artificial sugar packet (you know, like a real arm and hammer box). of course they had no idea what i was talking about, and suggested that i go back to the grocery store and buy the sugar packets. coming up with a half cup of the stuff for treating a slow drain using sugar packet sized servings sounds utterly ridiculous.

2. a protective plastic briefcase-like box filled with puzzle foam for making a carrying case for the wii. i'm dead certain that the boxes nikolaus keeps the alices in and various other similar things that we have here around the lab all came from obi, but again, the sales people i talked to all claimed they had never seen or sold such a thing.

3. a small lamp, so i can read in bed without needing the overhead light on. they had a bunch of cheap-ass (and cheaper looking) plastic desk lamps that were not terribly inspiring. so i looked with the real light fixtures, and found a set of really ridiculously gaudy hanging glass globes. the set as a whole was quite terrifying, but i kinda liked the smallest one which was leveled off on the bottom to sit on the ground, thinking i would put it on my bedside stand thingy. it was a bit on the spendy side (~$30), but it was made of real glass and had a nice wispy swirly kind of pattern blown into it, and looked kinda nice and different, so i flagged down a flunkie and asked them if i could buy one. ten minutes later, he comes back and tells me that they hadn't been delivered on schedule, and wouldn't be for at least two more weeks.

and so, i went back home empty handed.

key lime sublime

sunday we still had the leftover limes from spicy night mexico, and they weren't getting any younger or jucier, so i made a key lime pie. and, if i do say so myself, i did a fucking good job of it, too. my pie crusts are always pretty good, but occasionally they come out perfect, and when they do, watch out! this one was perfect. (yes, i'm proud of myself, let me have my moment and just deal with it.) naturally, we're ignoring for the moment the simple-yet-obvious fact that such a pie is not even remotely on my diet. yeah, gotta do something about that; this diet has been making little if any progress yet.

oh, and on the subject of bizarre mood swings again, another ridiculous anecdote (at least it's a good one). at thursday's choral rehearsal, it ended up that i was sitting near a couple of the 'popular kids,' as i tend to think of them, but i suppose all that really means is that i'm mildly jealous of their charisma. anyway, as per usual, i started to get a little antsy after a couple hours, and went to crack my back to realign it (crossing my legs to brace my elbow against so as to induce an extreme twist/extension; very effective, and occasionally surprising to someone who's never heard that many pops at once before). what *i* didn't expect, though, was that they would try to imitate me. (mimicry is indeed a very effective---and for me, unexpected--- form of flattery.) and we all got a brief chuckle out of their realization that it wasn't quite as straightforward as it looked, and even that they weren't quite flexible enough to do exactly what i had done. a few minutes later, i assumed a half-lotus sit on my chair, and they followed suit again, or at least attempted to, with amusing results, until just settling on an indian-sit compromise. after we had all had our little giggle about that, i playfully mentioned that i didn't think i had ever had this much influence, and when the response came back (even though obviously just joking) that they "would follow me anywhere," well, let's just say that moment ranks up there amoung the most pleasant i've had in recent memory.

there was fondue and settlers at fabius's place saturday night, and friday we took the wii up to the 4th floor conference room again (the one with the fantastic rear-projector and sound system). unfortunately, i still haven't found a solution for using it at home yet, but i'm hoping this will take care of itself sometime soon. and i'd prefer that the solution which presents itself not be for me to buy one of these abominable flat monstrosities that cost the equivalent of two new cars... unfortunately it seems that these are all anyone is selling anymore, though...

reader's digest does chris's christmas vacation

hrm. current events are rather routine... the highlights are basically:

1. i went up to the mountain (crans-montana) with thomas and RK on sunday, and there was actually enough snow to go out, and we had a great time skiing/snowboarding.

2. last week i basically got my ass handed to me in karate class again. which is kinda silly, since we're not even really fighting---they just decided to do a suprise test on the memorized formal sequences, of which of course i remember basically nothing. my short term memory for repeating something you show me? pretty decent. instantaneous long-term recall? not bloody likely.

3. last night i went with krister to alex's yoga class that he's starting. he actually does a really good job. that doesn't change the fact that it feels weird breaking the whole "never do business with friends or relatives" rule, but at the same time i'm happy to be helping him out a little. and, yet again, it re-affirms my ever-present and yet still unacted-upon desire to be practicing more frequently (like, daily, in the ideal case). incidentally, i have been going to bed earlier---austensibly with the intention of getting up earlier and practicing (or even just getting up earlier)---though all that's really happened so far is that i get more sleep and wake up at around the same time as usual. i suppose that's not necessarily a bad thing either, but i'm a little disappointed just the same. anyway, afterwards last night, tia made a quick dinner for the four of us, and we sat around and chatted for a bit. always nice.

okay, got the recent stuff up to date. let's try to tackle some of my ridiculous "vacation." (is it still considered a vacation if it's nearly as taxing as being at work?)

lessons learned:

1. air france operated by air france, quite nice (i.e. our trip to boston last spring). air france operated by delta, rather crappy (what i got this time). luckily, i got a real air france flight going back, which was again reasonably enjoyable. but compared with delta, the continental flights i had been taking were even much nicer...

2. i do have to give delta credit, though, for being *extremely* accomodating with the whole bereavement thing. i gave them the phone number of the funeral director at forest lawn, and they traded me straight across my pdx->gva ticket for an lax->gva ticket three days later (no fees!). that was pretty fantastic.

3. christmas gifts went surprisingly smoothly this year, though that may have something to do with the fact that i probably spent way too much (there were easy big-ticket items that i knew would be appreciated, so i just jumped on it).

4. i desperately need to go back on my diet, and once i do, i need to stop making "exceptions" for vacations (i gained 15 pounds in the three weeks i was back; unbelievable).

5. even though you think the hard part is over once you finally find an available game console that you had been staking out the stores for, the real challenge is having to continue staking out the stores in order to subsequently find the additional controllers and accessories. [rolls eyes]

6. it is, apparently, possible to form a stable suspension of mangy cat hair in stale air and cigarette smoke. (cleaning out edna's apartment was a rather harrowing experience.) in slightly more lighthearted news, though, i guess i've been put in charge of having tom's old mechanical clock restored, which frankly is very cool.

7. funerals cost a ridiculous amount of money. tom's parents had already paid for the plots, and we fought tooth and nail with finley's to do everything as simple and inexpensive as possible, and it still added up to somthing more than $6,500. note to anyone who cares: when i die, have the state dispose of my body, and buy yourselves something nice with all that money. better yet, see if you can sell my organs on the black market and buy yourselves something even nicer with all that additional money...

8. despite some legitimate ancestral ties, OSX is not UNIX. in particular, i learned that apple's new abomination which calls itself the "netinfomanager" is in reality nothing more than an equivalently evil (if outwardly whitewashed) version of the windows registry. and it is every bit as unusable and inscrutible. regardless of how frustrated that makes me, i'm still very happy that i got mom and dad the three year service plan (the mac mini was just a side benefit; i was actually buying the service plan so they'd stop wasting money taking computers in to get fixed by idiots). hopefully i'll eventually be able to put together the configuration i had originally envisioned, but at least their happy with it for the moment as is.

9. sad occasion notwithstanding (uncle chet's funeral), it was really fantastic to see some so-cal friends again. jon, adam, mike, dave&co, joe... conspicuously absent was the boy (doug), but nothing can be perfect, right?

10. regardless of one's views on the whole "global warming" issue, things are indeed getting warmer at least over the short term history of my memory. i mean, my god, i remember winter being mild in los angeles, but i don't remember it being like the middle of freaking june! i swear to stalin, it was like 70 and sunny basically the whole time i was there. amazing.

11. an oxy friend decided to take me out to the range and teach me how to shoot. that was, well, an "interesting" (read: "terrifying") experience. mostly because the people one sees at a shooting range are just really fucking scary (on multiple levels). but i eventually started to get the hang of it. the last 5 of my third clip with the .45 i hit every time (and then wisely quit while i was ahead [smirk]). the rifles weren't much easier, though that might have been because we didn't spend a very long time calibrating them. oh, and the wind was pretty wild too, though that's likely just a lame excuse (i have no idea how much, if at all, wind would actually be able to affect something that heavy moving that fast).

12. and last but not least, (i should have known this already based on previous experiences, but i guess i'm still a slow learner) one should be *very* wary of returning to visit one's alma mater. it's never the same, and i seriously doubt that it ever gets better. seriously, i almost cried when i saw what they had done to the south houses. and the fact that they apparently deliberately 'prolonged' the construction just enough that only a maximum of **one term** of current students had ever even seen the old houses just makes me sick. okay, i'm going to leave it at that so that i don't get all emotional all over again.

well, that's probably not the best travelog ever, but it's better than nothing. if i think of anything important that i left out, i'll add it in later.