So I noticed today that LJ is now displaying ads when you're not logged in. This kinda bothers me, and I'm beginning to think that maybe I'll switch to blogging (when I actually do, which isn't that frequently) on my own site and not on a hosted site. That site has RSS, so you'll still be able to subscribe. What it would probably do is eliminate the ability to write locked posts which only friends can see (since these mainly work by the common user base).

What does everyone else think?

So I'm now two weeks into my job at Purdue, and thought it a good time to update everyone. In my first two weeks, I've taught 5 lectures. They started off rough, and have gotten progressively better (in my opinion). The good news is that students are still coming to class, so things can't be that bad.

However, lecture planning has taken a large portion of my time. For me to survive as a faculty member, I have to get to the point where lecture preparing leaves me enough time to advise students and do research, too. But it's getting easier, so I'm hopeful soon I'll find time for other activities as well.

We did go see Purdue's season opening game this afternoon against Northern Colorado (which Purdue won handily). It was impressive to see that many students at a game -- much more impressive than any ACC football turnout. I think there were 5 sections of the stadium as student sections, where the entire section was students (and each section had around 80 rows). And they were all in black -- they call that a "blackout". Another impressive thing was how the role of the band differed. At the ACC schools I've been to, the band did a pregame show and a halftime show, and some pep music, but mainly during the game seemed deferential to the other spirit leaders. At the Purdue game, the band stands were at the field level, so band members would regularly be dancing around on the grass (but out of the field of play). Also, it appeared the band led the cheers, not the cheerleaders (who followed with the stuff the band was playing). On the plus side, the band was able to synchronize the whole stadium at once, which was impressive. Two other things which were new to me were:

• Variable speed wave: They started the wave off normally, but at some point converted to a slow-motion wave. Literally, looking at it, I initially though that I was seeing things in slow motion, before I realized that no, they were just doing the wave in slow motion. It was really cool. Then later they started a second, fast-motion wave, which overtook the slow-motion wave


• Lifting students up when touchdowns are scored. Both men and women, being lifted up by the people around them, and tossed in the air (some just lifted, others tossed), some number of times before being put back down. At the height of the game, there were at least 20 people being lifted in this fashion across the student section.
  

(to the tune of "Happy Birthday")
Happy Birthday to You!
Happy Birthday to You!
Happy Birthday Dear Kristina,
Happy Birthday to You!

I have defended my dissertation, and filed it with the University. It's formatting has been approved by the appropriate people, and the Dean of Graduate Studies has approved my final paperwork. I believe that officially, I have now completed my Ph.D. Graduation is June 22nd, and my parents, in-laws, and brother-in-law (and of course Kristina) will all be in attendance as my adviser hoods me.

Now it is time for a few brief moments of relaxation and a vacation, then it's time to move on and get started on my career.

Well, to those of you following the job saga, it is now over (pending approval by the Provost). After 2.5 months of interviewing all over the country, we have decided to accept a position in the Computer Science department at Purdue University. None of the details are set yet, so don't start asking questions about when we're moving or anything. But sometime prior to August 18th (my start date at Purdue), we'll be moving to the West Lafayette, Indiana area. So when you find yourselves visiting Purdue, Indiana, Indianapolis, or Chicago, let us know!

At this point, the active San Diego Witch fire (the one closest to us) seems to be at the North and East ends of the burn area, which effectively puts us out of danger. (This map http://www.sdcountyemergency.com/newsreleases/10242007_1400hrs_Evac_FirePerem.pdf of San Diego county can illustrate this).

The neighborhoods north of us which were evacuated are now allowing residents to return. My advisor, who had to evacuate early Monday, was able to return to the neighborhood to find his house largely undamaged (broken water line, cosmetic damage, and currently without power). He was very fortunate, many of his neighbors (and in particular his 4 nearest north and east neighbors) were not so fortunate.

The current threats to our area [not to diminish the threat to other areas of San Diego County, who are still battling the front lines of the fire] now is the possibility of power outages and air quality. Several of the distribution lines of power into San Diego are down, so the power situation is very precarious. Also, with the fires, there is a lot of ash and smoke in the air, causing them to recommend we all stay indoors as much as possible, with air purifiers.

I'm back in my office at school today, but the building is still essentially deserted. UCSD is closed for the rest of the week.

Useful links about the fire:

• Union Tribune Firestorm Blog


• San Diego County Emergency Page with maps from every few hours
  


• KPBS Updated Google Map of the fire

So for our September Theatre, we decided to go see Chicago (official site, review) at the San Diego Civic Theatre as part of Broadway San Diego. As a real treat George Hamilton was cast as lawyer Billy Flynn. What I didn't realize was that George Hamilton also played Billy Flynn on Broadway, in 2001 and 2002 revivals of the play. I, however, know George Hamilton primarily from his role in Zorro, the Gay Blade. As it turns out, Billy Flynn has been played by a number of well known actors from the screen. The movie version of Chicago features Richard Gere, and the original 1975 Broadway production of Chicago was played by none other than Law and Order's Jerry Orbach!

The production was exciting, lively, fun, and talented. I thoroughly enjoyed watching George Hamilton in person. Unfortunately, I'm afraid my enjoyment was primarily fed by hype though, rather than an especially talented production. On the plus side, the dancing was quite good -- worth seeing in person. But otherwise, our opinion of the play was that you may be better of watching the DVD. In the DVD, you get better sets, better articulation, closer views. There were many parts of the play in which it was just hard to understand what they were saying. Had I not seen the movie, I think I might have been confused in many places. Other pros about seeing it in person: the puppet scene worked better on stage, and I don't recall the "Mr. Cellophane" song from the movie (it may just have not been as notable). Finally, two notables: First, there wasn't much to the set. It seemed the play was an attempt to do a play within a play. The actors interacted a bit both with the audience and the band, which was itself on stage rather than in the pit. This was a bit interesting to me. Second, there seemed to be places in the play where the audience as a whole felt the need to call out and shout stuff. It didn't seem prompted, and I don't believe it was completely spontaneous. I felt like it was somehow brought in from elsewhere, and that it was simply the way the audience was "supposed" to watch Chicago.

Finally, as a note to all you theatre goers: DON'T SING THE SONGS ALONG WITH THE CAST OR DO PUNCHILINES WITH THE DIALOG UNLESS SPECIFICALLY ASKED TO DO SO BY THE SHOW. The woman seated next to me had the bad habit of doing parts of the script/soundtrack with the cast. It was very annoying. I glared at her a few times, but I'm not sure she noticed. It certainly didn't seem to bother her.

So here I am, a month late, posting about our August theatre. This post will hopefully be quickly (within a day or so) followed by another, in which I tell about our September play.

So in August we made our way to San Diego's outdoor theatre in the park -- the Starlight Bowl at Balboa Park. This theatre had been built up for us as a cool place to watch a show, because as the planes fly over (which they frequently do), the actors freeze frame when appropriate. (Songs do not present an appropriate time to pause).

The play was the same plot line as the movie. There's not much to report there. Some songs were new, but otherwise it was the same. As to the theatre itself, there were a few things to be desired. First, the actors didn't freeze frame nearly as much as we thought they should, and not stopping during songs was also a significant issue since so much of the play was in song. So that was annoying. But also, the stage crew was a bit less than sensational. In at least two circumstances, curtains fell on plot pieces or people still on stage. As a final issue, though this is I suppose to be expected in such a casual theatre, the seating was not paused during the opening song -- and people found their way to their seats through the whole first song. Unfortunately, we were to the right of an aisle, and these people blocked our view, leaving us to just feel like we were listening to the sound track.

On the plus side, the players weren't bad, and the show was fun. But I don't feel the need to go see another show there anytime soon, at least not for the theatrical expertise.

So I'm a little late in posting about this past weekend, but better late than never.

There were three things of note going on this weekend.

• Muffins. Sunday morning we got up and wanted breakfast. But we didn't want to make pancakes, didn't have any bread made, and didn't have any green pepper for burritos (and anyway, we'd had a burrito at the Zoo Saturday morning and probably would not have wanted another one immediately). So I came up with the idea of making muffins. Of course, we didn't really have anything to put in the muffins, and I don't think we were all that keen on plain muffins. But, upon consulting the cookbook, we discovered a cheese muffin recipe, so we decided to try it out. (We also saw a bacon recipe, but were too skeptical for it). I made two modifications to the recipe. First, I used sharp cheddar rather than american. It's what we had on hand. Second, I forgot the sugar. (Kristina and I were discussing the recipe later, and I denied it called for sugar, knowing I hadn't added any. She corrected me -- oops). They were actually quite good. I was very surprised. Kristina said they were a lot like biscuits, in the shape of a muffin, which is probably a fair description. The sugar might have changed that slightly. But we also decided that they'd be good if we added the bacon to that recipe too -- a cheese and bacon muffin. You should try it sometime.



• Zooloretto. This is a new game we got from my sister for my birthday. We didn't get the opportunity to play it at the beach, so we gave it a try Saturday night. We weren't going to--Kristina and I had already cozied up for an evening in when J and W, whom we had called earlier in the day, were calling to let us know they were free finally, and did we want to do something? So we invited them over for dinner and the game (yes, it was a late 9:00 dinner). It was a neat game. Not too complicated or long, but still satisfying. Others said it was like Puerto Rico in its play, but would not likely suffer the same fate where after a times playing the game would be decided based on a strategic move early in the game. Definitely on the list of games worth playing. And later, J pointed out that on the Zooloretto website, there are free downloads of some additional pieces which can be added.



• Harry Potter 3-d. Since the aforementioned friends were busy earlier in the day Saturday, Kristina and I decided to go see the newest Harry Potter movie (Order of the Phoenix) before it stopped showing in the 3-d IMAX theatre. Overall, we were pleased. No, it wasn't exactly like the book, and yes, it left out some important details/scenes, but hey, we're talking about a very long book after all. The big disappointment for us is that we expected the whole movie to be in 3-d. But instead it was just the conclusion -- the last 20 minutes or so. Granted, that was the primary action, but for it to be made a big deal of, I would have thought the whole movie would be like that. Oh well. Worth seeing, though probably okay if you want to just rent it later.

This week we're quite busy. Tonight we went to a going away party for friends moving to the Bay area, Friday we're going to a party for a friend who's just finished her kitchen remodel, Saturday morning we're going to help paint another friend's house who had to remodel/rebuild after a big flood in their house, and Saturday evening we're goint to see "Beauty and the Beast" at the Starlight Theatre. More on that after we go. What we're looking forward to at this theatre is that it's outdoors, and right in the flight path for the airport. Apparently they freeze-frame the acting when a plane flies over, which I'm looking forward to seeing.

So today we went to go see Avenue Q. It marks our July trip to the theatre.

Avenue Q is a sort of "adult" tribute to Sesame Street (puppets and all). Not for kids. Not for the easily offended.

Overall, I though the play was very funny. It was definitely lewd and crude at times, though less so than I had thought based on what others had told me (Kristina disagree on this point -- it's pretty much what she expected).

I was pleased that it in fact had several positive themes to it. It also had several parts where video screens dropped in from the top to show segments like would be found in a Sesame Street episode, which was very clever.

Anyway, I really can't do it justice, but we enjoyed it.

Then off to church. Afterwards, to Trophy's, where we celebrated the final night Ray would be in town. Ray is the server at Trophy's we get every time we go, which is probably twice a month, with our friends after church (including Tom). We go often enough that he knows precisely what I order, he just asks me if I want the usual. It will be sad to see him go. Trophy's just won't be the same without him, and the draw to go there will be much less.

Anyway, we finished the last episode of West Wing season 2, so now we're moving on to Alias. I'm watching the pilot now. Pretty good so far. I can see how people who started from the beginning could be wrapped in.

So today was our 5 year anniversary (and on Friday the 13th). A very pleasant anniversary. It was, as were our prior two, spent at the Hotel del Coronado for dinner. Unlike prior years though, it was spent with Kristina's parents, who provided the financial sponsorship of the evening.

It was a very nice dinner, though I'm afraid Kristina was a little disappointed with her pork chop. It was a fine pork chop, we both agreed, but for a really nice dinner, a "fine" meal just isn't really what you expect. But I know she enjoyed both the shrimp appetizer and her Creme Brulee, so overall I think it went fine.

Tomorrow we're headed to Seaworld. Probably our last trip there while we live in San Diego -- Kristina's membership expires on Monday.

As a final note, I've started a new tech blog on my website, one more appropriate for work/school use. I'll post all my personal stuff here, and all my computer stuff there. If you want to read about my tech stuff, you'll have to check that out too. There's an RSS feed, so if you use an aggregator it shouldn't be too hard.

So last night I ventured to try out a new recipe. I sort of loosely followed the recipe in a cookbook for calzones. This meant I made the dough in our bread machine, using a cross between the recipe suggested in the book and the recipe out of my bread machine cookbook. Then, I made a filling by mixing some store-bought pizza sauce with some ingredients from the suggested sauce--peppers and onions, and prepared the chicken pieces mostly as suggested. I stretched the dough as instructed (really cool!) and filled it with chicken pieces, some sauce, and some cheese, then sealed it over and baked it as instructed.

Overall, I was very pleased. I think that I could probably have filled it with more stuff, but it was a lot of fun to put together. The challenge with adding more stuff is getting it put together without spilling everything and making a big mess. The other thing I discovered is that at least on the stoneware, after folding over the calzone it's not easy to move it, so you have to be careful about where you put it down so that you don't run out of space for preparing the others.

So that's all from this Kitchen Edition, tune in next time for more food talk.

So this mid-week event marks the beginning of a crazy season for us. Today we went to a party at a friend's, but she didn't have fireworks plans, so afterwards, we're back at home watching the NY fireworks on TV. I think it's nice, because I think I'm a little tired of seeing mediocre fireworks shows. I miss the NC Symphony in concert with the fireworks.

Anyway, before moving on from the 4th, just thought I'd plug a friend of mine's 4th of July reflections: Independence Day from Tom's blog.

So Friday we've been invited to a wine and cheese party, then have to run off to get my in-laws from the airport, who will be visiting us for the next two weekends (one of which marks our 5th wedding anniversary). Then we'll be in NC for a week at the beach with the 14 of my family as our big family gathering this year. This takes us to early August, when we'll get our next break.

So wherever you are - happy July 4th!

Hello there readers. I'm making an effort to post about each play we go see in our year of theatre, in an attempt to make sure I do post at least once a month. :-)

So last night was the latest installment, All Shook Up. It was enjoyable as is, though I think it could have been better if (a) we knew the Elvis music better, or (b) we knew Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. At any rate, it was basically a play to weave a plot around the music of Elvis, in a fashion I imagine is the same as Movin' Out, based on Billy Joel's music, though I've also heard that its plot is very thin, and the dancers don't sing, so I guess it's rather different.

Anyway, I'd rate it that if you're looking for entertainment, like Elvis' music, or Twelfth Nigth, it's a good pick. If you're looking for an outstanding musical, I'd probably pick something else.

So this morning, my paper (on which I had help from 3 coauthors), was awarded Best Paper at NSDI 2007. The paper, should you feel compelled to read a Computer Science research paper, is available as a link from my research project page http://mace.ucsd.edu. Look for "Life, Death, and the Critical Transition". Don't worry, I'm not actually expecting you to download and read it.

For the March edition of our play-going endeavors, Kristina and I went to see The Farnsworth Invention, an Aaron Sorkin play about the invention of the television. I hadn’t really considered the fact before that I couldn’t name the invention of the television. Turns out it’s a very complicated history.

Sorkin, you may know, is the man behind The West Wing. At intermission I heard someone mention his name, and then I looked at the playbill to check it out. I then remembered that we knew that when we bought the tickets, but that was so long ago I forgot. Anyway — I realized then that I could see his influence in the play, with the fast pace and quick changes of topic.

I doubt the play will ever be a big hit, but I think it’s worth seeing. I found it entertaining and informative.

So this morning I volunteered at CPR Saturday.  (For those who may not know, I'm a volunteer CPR instructor for the Red Cross, though my involvement has fluctuated over the years).

I didn't really know what it was when I volunteered, I just knew they were asking all the instructors to volunteer.  I didn't go for the whole day (7a-4p), because Kristina and I were at the Zoo from 8a-10a for Early Hours at the Zoo, a benefit of being in the Keeper's club.  (I talked more about the Keeper's club in my last post).

So anyway, I showed up at around 10:00, and found my way to the volunteer sign-in.  The people at the sign-in seemed pretty excited---apparently the set of instructors were a limiting factor in how smoothly everything runs.  Unfortunately, none of the instructor trainers were around at the time, so they took me up to the break room, and told me they'd send up Frank Carson, the IT in charge of instructors.  They also filled me in on what exactly was going on.  Apparently CPR Saturday is a day when the public can line up and take Adult CPR (and get certified) for free.  They bring in volunteers to help organize, volunteer instructors to teach, and a host of other volunteers to help keep everything running smoothly.

So Frank came and got me, handed me two strips of paper with the skills I would be teaching, and took me down to the floor where it was all taking place.  He paired me with an instructor who would be leaving before long, so that I could see it once before doing it myself.  However, before that instructor actually got a set of people to teach, Frank came back -- they would need me to start teaching before I would get to see it through.  So he walked me down to an instructor in progress, and told me to watch for a bit, then take over at station 8.

During the time I had before I took over a station, I found out a bit more of how it works.  We're teaching Adult CPR, and the way it works is that they bring the people through to different stations, and the instructors teach the same skills over again.  There are 4 main stations: the video and test, the conscious person skills, the mannequin skills, and finally a re-test/certification card station.  I never got to see the other stations, but I was working on the unconscious (mannequin) skills, which includes CPR and obstructed airway.  There were probably 24 stations for CPR skills.  Each one had 8 mannequins for participants, and they would bring them around in groups.  During the day I probably worked with about 64 people.  The most interesting person I had was a woman who spoke poor English.  Her son would translate for her when I spoke too quickly.  But another instructor I saw was working the skills with a blind woman.  Because of her disability, she got 1-on-1 instruction, which had to cover modifications such as keeping 1 hand on the victim's chest during breaths to feel the rise/fall of the chest.

So anyway, that's CPR Saturday.  I heard that around 1630 people came to take the class.  I think that's pretty impressive.  And hopefully that may equate into saved lives at some point.  Now to get back to my research...  :-)

Good evening all -

I just wanted to take a few minutes to post an update. First, though many of you know by now, the other paper we submitted has also been accepted for publication.  This paper is the one about Mace, the language extensions I write for C++ to let you easily build distributed systems.  (The other one was about a model checker for Mace, which means finding bugs systematically).  This paper is being published at PLDI 2007 (Programming Languages Design and Implementation).  Unfortunately, the conference is here in San Diego, so I don't get to do any exotic traveling for it.  Now we're busy working on the next paper, which is due March 18th.  There's a lot of work to be done before the deadline, so I'm keeping busy.

Tonight we went to the "Black and White" concert at our church.  Our two Dominican priests are pretty good singers, so they have this show they do, singing a bunch of stuff together.  "Black and White" is one of those double meanings for them -- on the one hand one is black while the other white, and on the other the Dominican "tuxedo" is a set of black and white garments.  Anyway, it was a pretty nice concert, and then afterwards we went with the young adult group to dinner.  It was a pretty good crowd -- 18 people made it.

We've joined the "Keeper's Club" at the zoo, which means on the 2nd Saturday of every month we get to go to the zoo an hour before the gates open in the morning and have a quieter visit.  We went to our first one last month and had a good time with friends from church who also are members.  We've also deemed 2007 the year of the theatre.  We've decided to go see a show each month.  Starting in December, we saw the Grinch at the Old Globe Theatre.  Then in January it was Don Quixote at San Diego Repertoire Theatre, and February was Ace back at the Old Globe.  In March we're going to see The Farnsworth Invention at La Jolla Playhouse.  The ones we've seen so far have been quite interesting.  The Grinch was nice, with some catchy tunes and very creative costuming.  We still periodically find ourselves singing "Who likes Christmas?  Who's like Christmas!".  But without the arm motions and inflection it's just not as good.  Don Quixote was different.  It bore some resemblance to the play I know, but it was not the musical Man of La Mancha.   We knew it was different going in of course.  This one seemed to be mostly about religious tolerance, and while it wasn't quite a musical, it did feature some songs and a juggling act.  Then most recently Ace (a new musical) was an excellent show about a boy growing up and learning about his family of pilots.  It also included some history of American pilots roles in WWI and WWII in Europe and China.

And that's it for this edition of the news from San Diego.  Good night, and good luck! (btw -- we saw this movie recently from our Blockbuster subscription -- quite good.)

Just a quick post this morning to acknowledge a couple of celebrations.  Yesterday, we attended the Wedding and Reception for jawajames  and Mrs. Whitney Barnes!  It was a beautiful celebration and I was honored to be a part of it. 

Also wanted to wish lepeintre  a happy birthday!  Wish we could be there to help celebrate.

(correction: it is Mrs. Barnes, not Floyd-- thanks James)

So this past week we got the best news of all this Christmas.  My paper submission to NSDI'07 (Networked Systems Design and Implementation) was accepted.   Yay!  So, I will finally have my first 1st author paper.  The conference is in March, so I'll be traveling then to Boston so I can give the conference talk.  Hopefully we'll be able to work it out so Kristina can come too, at least for a weekend of visiting.  Maybe I will graduate eventually.

Correction: The conference is in April, not March.

Since our apartment is remodeling the fitness center, Kristina and I had to look for a new place to workout for the month of October.  Well, after talking about it a bit, we decided to use RIMAC, the athletic center at UCSD.  Unlike previously, when we went swimming, now we're actually going over to the gym, to use the equipment there.

Well, after trying out the machines, I convinced Kristina to try out racquetball. We can borrow the racquets from the center, and the courts are just available for use. 

It fairly well, for the most part.  I don't remember the rules, and we don't want to keep score anyway, so we pretty much just try to take turns hitting the ball.  The one not so great part of the game was when Kristina fell and bruised her knees.  But we still had a good time.

Also, another nice thing about RIMAC vs. our apartment complex is that they have much more equipment, and a wider variety.  It makes it less likely that we'll get there and not be able to work out because everything is in use.

Anyway, all's pretty well here.  Keeping busy.  Saturday we're going to the Miramar Air Show.  Of course, it's supposed to rain, so that might make it a bit soggy, but hopefully it'll still be a good show.  Then Tuesday we're going to the Wild Animal Park to do a safari caravan.  It's going to be an exciting week!

So the last time we were in Asheville, I played a round of golf with my father, split between two days. This prompted Kristina and I to decide that perhaps she would learn a bit of golf, both because I enjoy playing and never get to, and so that in the future she could play with my family.

So we looked at golf clubs retail, and quickly decided we would not be able to afford them that way. So, remembering my success with DDR, I began watching Craigslist for ladies golf clubs.

After a while, my patience was rewarded, and a young couple who were getting deployed elsewhere and she had decided she'd rather go fishing than golfing decided to sell her clubs (a full set with an extra driver, woods, hybrid woods, graphite shafts, and irons with metal shafts), and threw in the bag, balls, and push cart for $40. Looked like the set was nearly brand new. And unlike other sales I had seen for clubs, this one was respond by email, not phone, making it much more convenient for us. Well I jumped on that deal, and a couple hours later we had the set.

We waited a week before we attempted to use it. I had located a driving range we could go practice on, which also has a chipping/putting green, and in fact has putt-putt too, as well as a 9-hole par 3 course pretty close to here. First we went to the driving range, and I started to show Kristina some of the basics. She actually got to the point that when she swung, the club struck the ball, and it went forward, frequently in the air. They weren't terribly long shots, but I thought for a first day she did a great job. Then we drove to the course, where the plan was that I would play a round, and she could walk with me, getting a feel for the course, how a round is played, etc.

Unfortunately, the course doesn't allow non-players to walk the course, so we went ahead and paid for her to play (at $8, it wasn't a big deal), not really sure if she'd actually play, but so she'd at least have a set of clubs to walk with and look like she was playing. I chipped down to the first green, and she dropped her ball on the green to get the putting practice. After the first hole, we decided perhaps since she had payed, perhaps she would try playing. After all, there was no-one else really on the course, and therefore she didn't feel like she had a big audience watching her learn.

I was actually quite proud of her -- most holes she scored no more than a 6, and I think there were even some 5's. There was one hole where she lost 3 balls (unfortunately right after I had congratulated her on not losing any thus far), but otherwise it was a very successful round.

So we're not ready to take her out on a big course yet, but it's a good start.

So it's been a while now and I've been wanting to write about our new bread machine.   The paddle to stir the bread had gotten stuck on our old bread pan, and we never could get it to make suitable sandwich bread even before that, and we had some gift cards from my sister to use, so we decided to go ahead and get a new one.  (Thanks T!).

We looked at the options, and ended up with a Breadman Ultimate.  It seems to be discontinued, but was a pretty good price and got great reviews for the most part.

Well we've been using it a few weeks now and I can tell you we are quite pleased.

We've made a banna-nut cake (from a boxed recipe), 3 loaves of white bread, 2 loaves of wheat bread, 1 loaf of italian herb bread, and 2 loaves of cinnamon-raison bread (one which didn't turn out due to user error).  All but the one have turned out great, and we've actually stopped buying bread as a result.  We presently alternate between making whilte bread and making wheat bread to use for toast and sandwiches.

Another thing we discovered is that to cut the bread, what works better than our bread knife is the electric knive we bought at a yard sale two summers ago in Seattle.  Much easier!  Now I can slice the bread thin, too, though I'm still working on getting the slicing just right.

A final tip I read about while researching this one -- after the last shaping cycle, and right as its about to enter its final rise cycle, remove the paddle from the bread pan.  This prevents you from getting a huge paddle-sized hole in the bottom of your bread!

Other cool features:
- drop basket for adding raising or nuts at the right time
- user programmable instructions for cook/rise/mix/punch/shape
- pause button, so you can do stuff (like remove the paddle) without it being part of the cycle.
- programs are different depending on loaf size and crust color

So kmkillian and I have been hearing bits and pieces about "Dance Dance Revolution" (popularly known as DDR, not to be confused with the memory). First it was just her younger sister who has it and loves the game. Then some of our other friends have also started talking about it, including one who claims to be addicted. Well, in a recent trip home to visit family, Kristina actually got to try it with her sister, and had a blast.

So we thought, hey, it might be fun to get it, and use that as our workout some days. (For those of you who don't know the video game, basically they take the controller, and create a pad for you to stand on and "dance" on the controller. The game plays music while prompting you with the moves to make. The better you hit the moves on the beat, the better your score.). So we started pricing it, and quickly discovered that you can spend a small fortune between the game and the dance pads. (A quick online search suggested retail pads come in at $50).

Enter Craigslist. For those not familiar with Craigslist, it basically is an online classified section. Lots of people buying and selling stuff, and you go to the section for your town, so you only deal with local people (helps cut down on fraud and scams). In an unrelated afternoon, I was browsing Craigslist looking for ladies golf clubs, and remembered that we had talked about getting DDR. So I thought I would do a quick check on Craigslist. Jackpot. The top link was a listing posted 2 days prior for a person selling DDR Ultramix 2 and 2 pads for the X-Box for $35. We just happen to have an X-Box, and $35 sounded like a great price, so I emailed the listing. 6 hours later, Kristina and I are now the owners of DDR Ultramix 2 and 2 pads.

So I've now tried it out -- we used it as our workout that night. At the "beginner" level, it doesn't burn calories particularly quickly (it told me I burned 250 calories in the span of 90 minutes), but it is fun, and I did get sweaty. I tried the "light" level once. Good grief. If that's "light", I want to know what the expert levels are like, and who you have to be to be good at them!

So yesterday Krisitna and I played Robo Rally for the first time.  (Thanks Susan for the game!).  We really liked it. 

If you don't know the game, each player (up to 8) is a robot in a factory floor.  The game is a kind of obstacle course -- trying to touch all the flags in order, while being battered by lasers and other robots.  Anyway -- Kristina beat me, though only barely. 

Hope all of you are doing well.  Things here are fine.  The weather has finally turned fairly nice and yesterday we went to the spring picnic for the young adult group (though it was chilly yesterday).  Since we're off to mass now, I don't really have time to write more now -- but I wanted to let you know we are doing okay.  We've been thinking about all of you lately.  Take care.

-C