a room with a view

i moved into a new desk about 30 minutes ago...

and i have a window!
with a great view!

i get to look at all the bike messengers down below... and the people and the buses and lots of fun downtown activity.

there is also an american flag on the top of the building across the way.

and a man with a blue shirt in the corner office across the way.

and a women with crooked pictures hanging on her wall.

this is going to be fun!

correction (2 hours later): i see two flags. plus a giant clock that is too high to be seen from the street.

holy moly!

WE WON OUR FIRST SOFTBALL GAME LAST NIGHT!!!

moooo-vies

update: the two missing paris movies are online now.

>> the sideways glittery eiffel tower movie

>> the notre dame bells movie

poooo-oo-oof!

apparently this is what the foo and i are making tonight:

"Marshmallows are incredibly cool -- not only do they taste good, but by lighting them you can create a great source of light in a dark campsite!"

what this article DOESN'T mention is how marshmallows make the best sound in the entire world when you drop one onto a cold tile floor.

poo-ooooo-ooof.

oui!

get'em while they're hot!

days 8-13: paris pictures are here!

(except the two movies, which i forgot to upload last night... i'll add them this evening and report back when they're live)

home run!

i don't think i've told my devoted readers some exciting news:

i joined a rec softball team!

we play every wednesday night, in the presidio. it's a bunch of conor's friends from college, plus me, my co-worker, and my friend from high-school/through my sister. and a few others (i'm not sure how we know them). it's a good group. our team name is 'rehab'.

since i'm a terrible fielder (i can't seem to muster up the passion to dive for a ball), i have decided the only way i can meaningfully contribute to my (very ghetto) team is to pitch. and by-golly, i'll get good at this pitching thing if it kills me!

first of all, you can't pitch these games like they taught us to in little league. if a batter stands still and never swings, you can strike them out in only one way: if your pitch arcs over 6 feet in the air and than lands smack on the plate. strike.

anything else (arc too low or it doesn't hit the plate) is a ball.

there are a lot of funny rules like this in our league and it makes for a hilariously goofy softball game.

that, and, well, our team kinda sucks. that makes it fun too.

we're getting better... in our first game, i think we lost by 15 points. each game has been a tiny bit better until this week (gasp!) when we almost won! of course we didn't actually win, but we were close. very very close. seductively close...

i also discovered that drinking several beers greatly improves my pitching and batting abilities.

the last final thing to note is that i resurrected my cursed-white glove for this. the whole experience has been funny because it's a little small but still fits (heck i used it when i was what? 12?).

and it's been treating me kindly so far... but i'm still waiting for it to rear it's ugly head. not a game goes by where i don't get at least one joke from either an ump or a rival player about the glove fooling them... that's when all the nightmares flood back into my head of the cursed day... when that glove really DID fool someone... oh the embarassment!

but here is what i've learned:

a. everybody (or glove) deserves a second chance.
b. laughing it off and meeting the curse face-to-face has helped greatly -- i simply tell the jokesters that it used to get me in a lot of trouble when i played little league, and we laugh and carry on.
c. i still love that a white glove makes me oddly cool in that 'where the hell did you get a white glove?' kind of way.

so the glove and i are friends again...

holy eye-sores

my co-worker sent me an article today about a virgin mary appearing under a bridge in brooklyn...

new york's virgin mary

it brought back waves of memories... oh the glory days of clearwater, florida's own virgin mary water stain!

florida's virgin mary

if only that punk hadn't broken such divine-ness with a stone... alas.

feather that oar

this rower is so totally my hero now. i used to watch him race in the head of the charles (gotta cheer on the alums) and now he's heading for olympic medals! and being a dork the entire way... go steve!

Ex-MIT rower Tucker using brainpower in Olympic quest

brugge pictures are up

i added the pics from brugge today:

day 4: brugge

i swear i'm working on paris. there are just a lot of shots, and i have to think about how to organize them and what to write...

i'm a pokey puppy.

one more geek-out

this is an insane hack. think it will ruin the WMSCI conference?

MIT students pull prank on conference

also, i found a webpage about the program they used...

SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator

boston marathon

here's my big shout-out to the marathoners running today... yay! keep it up! good work!

and congrats to the winner who came in at 2:11:45. it's funny to think that he could run a marathon faster than some of the people ran the 7-mile hike/run with me on saturday. it's amazing such fast humans exist in the world. part human/part cheetah? one has to wonder.

sigh... what i wouldn't give to be in beantown, egging them on... i love that race. i hope my sisters are there cheering extra loud on my behalf.

power maneuver

for the nerds out there...

macromedia (the company that spawned my company many dot-com moons ago) is being acquired by adobe!

read the nytimes article

will we really see a seamless integration between photoshop, illustrator, acrobat, dreamweaver, director, flash... in our future? it's too exciting to think about!

girls on film

here are some pictures from yesterday

burning sensation

i decided, sort of last minute, to jump in & run a 7-mile race this weekend, just north of the city, in marin county.

the race was yesterday morning at 9 am. there was also a marathon and a 25k starting on the same cource, but luckily i had enough clarity of mind when i registered thursday to only do the 7 mile run. i almost did the half-marathon, and for even a brief second i debated the marathon even though i'm totally not in shape for one.

i'm crazy like that (or some might call it stupid) -- one of my ex-boyfriends, several of my friends, my brother, and i had a history of running the boston marathon with no training. we always decided to run the week before the race. my first time i convinced my friend from crew that she needed to do it with me. that was on saturday, after practice -- the marathon was monday. we ran it - and had a great time. but i couldn't walk for a week.

brian and i used to joke about writing a book called "how to train for a marathon in one week". we even had plans for a sequel called "how to train for a marathon in three days". i think we'd make millions...

but back to my story. yesterday's race was great, awesome, fun - and also THE most insane run i have ever done! (keep in mind that i grew up in florida, so i don't run up mountainsides very often)

we started at sea level, on the beach. it was a gorgeous misty morning that cleared up and became an extremely wonderfully sunny day. since i got there a little early, i was able to spend about half an hour just walking the beach with my coffee and my ipod, watching the surfers wipe out and the little birds hunt for food. it was the kind of thing i wish i could do for the start of every day. pure heaven.

but the course -- we started at sea level, and by mile 3, we had completed the climb to the top (1500 ft). for some reason i didn't expect it to be such a bad climb - but the trails we took had completely vertical sections on it - complete with stone steps and ladders. before the end of the first half mile, i think everyone (i mean everyone) was walking. you had to in certain sections or you would have killed yourself... but also, our heart rates were probably hitting 300 from running straight up. we all needed to move to colorado to do some training!

at the top it was great - there was about a mile of rolling flat, and i got some great speed and was able to pass a few girls who had smoked me on one of the ascents. that felt good. now all i needed to do was keep them behind me on the way down, which made me nervous - i have bad knees, and they DON'T like going downhil. even if the downhill is mostly more stone steps because it was so dang steep!

i've never had to run on human-sized (not car-sized) switchbacks before, going top speed down a mountainside in a race. it made for an interesting experiment. i got to play around with the size of steps i took (large leaps that send me four feet and land with a uncontrollable thud before springing back into the air, out of control? or short, choppy steps that have less impact per step but overall more repetative bang and are generally slower?), all the while being extra-aware that the faster i ran down the more i would hurt the next day, and the slower i ran down, the higher the likelihood those girls would catch back up to me.

not that i'm competitive of anything.

the race also drew some blood (not from me, thankfully). we had to duck under a lot of trees - some small branches, and other very large redwoods that grew diagonally across our path and left about a 3 foot tunnel of crawlspace to get beyond them. two men had gashes on their heads at the finish. and there was one a girl who must've not seen one of the tight switchback turns and fallen into a ditch - or maybe she lost her footing on one of the single-track trails where there was a huge drop off to our left and she tumbled down the side... i'm not sure. but she had a huge scrape covering her entire thigh when she finished. ow.

i managed to get out with a tiny scrape on my ankle and some mud on my legs from the small streams we had to leap over. i felt good.

and when all was said and done, i got to drive home down route 1 with the windows open and the most awesome views of the pacific ocean. definitely a glorious way to pass a saturday morning.

...

results

my time: 1:32:04
overall fastest time: 1:03:41
overall slowest time: 3:40:00
my place overall: 46 out of 137
my place (women): 15 out of 80
my place (age group F25-29): 4 out of 22 (crap! how did one sneak by?)

see the results online

pictures to come...

more pics!

two more pages are done... feast thine eyes.

day 6-8: brussels

&&

day 5: lier

i also added a second movie to the antwerp page, so check it out.

still to come: brugge & paris!

(here's the main menu)

searchable maps

this is by far THE coolest thing i've seen all day (thanks to my lil bro for the linkage)... i can't wait to use it this summer when conor, catfoo(d), and i have to pack up and move!

google maps + craigslist apartment listings =
interactive apartment hunting superfun!

go on, pick a city, any (craigslist) city...

first leg

my first day of pictures are up! the rest are being worked on but aren't completely done in terms of how i want the pages designed, or the text i am writing to explain all about what we did. i'm using the pages i'm building as my place to tell you about our adventures, and so i'll let you know when they're up, piece by piece - meaning that i won't tell you until i'm done writing it all down

(i say this because i know some of you will snoop around my site, but its your own loss because you will miss juicy details that i plan to add this weekend, as well as pictures that i haven't uploaded yet. so there.)

day 1 was easy:

day 1 & 2: flying into amsterdam

day 3 is mostly done. it's lacking only a description of one of our favorite restaurants (from the entire trip!). some of you won't care about that, but for those who do, check back to this page later on to read about it.

day 3 & 5: antwerp

a blogosphere

"the blogger" had a fake conversation with me lately and blogged about it. i feel loved. i wonder if "the blogger" sits alone in his room and has fake conversations with hundreds of people that he later blogs about...

"the bloggers" blog posting

blisters

i went running today and developed a giant blister on my left foot. ow. it's one inch long and 1/2 inch wide and i'm so mad. i hate blisters! what did i do wrong? i run in these shoes all the time and they don't give me blisters.

i blame my socks.

it's an old pair, cotton, that i haven't worn in a while. i think they weren't whisking away my sweat like my newer, more high-tech socks do. they were just kinda old and sopping wet, and, well, loose. stooopid socks.

well. whatever the reason, this blows. ow.

rowdy

howdy!

i swear those pictures i spoke of are almost ready for viewing... i've got about 1/3 of them online, but i figure i'll wait to post the link until they are all up. maybe if you're nice i'll put a sneak-peak up later...

so this week back at work has been, well, much better than i anticipated! my co-workers are great. they make transistions easy. what would i do without them?

so conor sends word from europe - the latest report is that he's glad he got his train tickets booked a few weeks ago because everyone is flocking to italy this weekend for the pope's funeral. he also says he misses american culture, particularly the use of ketchup. ha ha. gross.

i told him i'm going to a baseball game tonight and i don't think that helped. but, well, i am! yay!

THE GIANTS vs THE ROCKIES

californ-eye-aye vs colorado... and guess who i'm rooting for? well, lets just say i purposely avoided wearing orange and black when i got dressed this morning. tee hee!

i'm back!

... to let you know, i can really shake 'em down!
da nuh nuh nuh

europe rocked.

my trip was great. my friends are great. belgium beer was great. conor is great. paris was great. food is great. weddings are great.

everything except allergies and the poor value of the dollar versus the euro was great.

but alas, i will write details later.
i will post pictures later.
i just wanted to say 'hi'.

hi!