Quickly, before class

I was reading Chang's blog, and saw this post, which cracked me up. I'm pasting it in whole (hope that's okay, Chang!)

A forward I received today...

Q: How many Bush Administration officials does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: None. There is nothing wrong with the light bulb; its conditions are improving every day. Any reports of its lack of incandescence are a delusional spin from the liberal media. That light bulb has served honorably,and anything you say undermines the lighting effect. Why do you hate freedom?

Day One
These next two weeks of classes are going to be nothing less than hellacious. This week I have the dreaded presentation, a mid-term exam, and two homework assignments due. Next week: three mid-term exams, two on Monday. Dude!

The good thing is that I have little things to look forward to: a fun weekend when Anne is in town (yay!) for two full days, seeing Jenny at Second City tonight, and...that's all that I've got for now. In the meantime, I'm going to try to not freak out, get enough sleep, and lie in wait of it to all be over. Every time I run into someone in my program, though, we have a little therapy session/pity-party. I get an A++ for Complaining!

Bands, bands, bands..and books.
This weekend was spent studying and seeing lots and lots of bands play. Friday I went with Todd to the Empty Bottle to see The Life and Times, and in the meantime, saw two other bands play as well. The Empty Bottle is a cool little venue with super cheap drinks. Big thumbs up to that. Plus I got a cool new t-shirt, thanks to the Todd.

Last night we went to see two of his friends' bands play. First, Todd's friends For All I Care at this place called The Note. There were seven bands playing there that night (!), and we stuck around to see three others. One was this AWESOME band straight from 1985 called Darwin. I tried to find the web site, but no luck (although there is a band called the same thing in the UK, who knew). They rocked some serious power ballads and the pumped up guitarist did some windmills and Van Halen jumps. Another was this fun power-poppy band called Loomis which seemed to have a substantial following.

After Loomis' set, we went over to the Beat Kitchen to see his friend play in this band called Bear Claw which has garnered some local attention. They were the last band to play that night, so we saw two other bands as well. Bear Claw was impressive and loud. Very, very loud.

That, my friends, makes for a total of ten bands in two days. That's some serious dedication.

I also managed to spend some time studying as well, and making some chili, so a relatively productive weekend was had. I'm going to spend the rest of the day hitting the books and having various group meetings, so hopefully there's more productivity to come.

Hillary and I have a presentation next week on the exciting theory of Extended Optional Infinitive (a way of identifying kids with Specific Language Impairment by their use of infinitive). It's as scintillating as it sounds. We're using PowerPoint, and Todd obligingly created an introduction slide for us to use. I laughed for about twenty minutes when I pulled it up. 

When Audiology class brings me down...
...I need some food porn to lift me back up. Especially for all of you DC-folk, here's an web guide that includes lots of reviews of some stand out ethnic restaurants in the DC area. The author organizes it by ethnicity, and I was pleased to see that he included The Afghan Restaurant (my meter for excellence). Scrolling through, there's everything that you could possibly want!
(via kottke.org)

Creepy, but kind of brilliant
Has anyone seen that new Starburst commerical where the dude has fashioned a bust of his lady out of Starburst and then proceeds to maul it? Lionel Richie's "Hello" is playing in the background, and the bust looks a lot like the scary LR bust that the blind woman made in the music video. It cracks me up.

Marathon
Tuesdays are hands down brutal. The good news is that we got our assisting assignments, though, so today I got to observe the client that I'll be "assisting" with this quarter. This is the second day of getting home at about 7, today about 12 hours after I left my place. The thought of reading information on the exciting topic of Extended Optional Infinitive is not very appealing, but it must be done at some point. God, I'm boring myself with this.

More good news, as well, is that it was warmer today and the snow was melting a bit.

Starbucking
Over on kottke.org, he has a post about the density of Starbucks in various neighborhoods. Apparently the high that he's heard of it something like 143.

I went to the Starbucks page, and popped in my own zip code. In a five mile radius, it says that I have 97 Starbucks. Dude! I can only think of two right away, although I can think of three Caribou Coffees. What's everyone else's read?

Quickly, because I need to get going here soon...
How fast was this weekend? Too fast. Two things of note about this past weekend:

1. Sunday our little group spent four hours on this one articulation project, which was awesome. And we have tons more to do. Yay!

2. I watched Todd's favorite movie with him, "Malibooty." If you visit the IMDB website, you'll notice that it scored 2.6 stars out of 10, which is pretty generous, actually. The "plot" involves a few ne'er-do-wells leaving Arizona to find fame, fortune (a record contract), and, well, booty in Malibu. Bad Movie Night DC people take note: this is a MUST SEE.

Friday and Fishies
After what was an interminable week, I never greeted 11 a.m. on Friday afternoon with such enthusiasm. My schedule makes for long days on most of the days, but getting out at 11 on Friday makes it all worth it. I celebrated the end of the week by going with Lauren, Laura and Hillary to Argyle for Vietnamese food (lots of Vietnamese places there, and we also passed the famed Green Mill so at least I know where that is now). Then we headed over to the Shedd Aquarium, which was awesome indeed. Besides all of the trippy coral and sea horses and the Beluga whale show, my favorite might be Nickel, the sea turtle. It was a fun, Chicago-culture afternoon, and we were all done by 3 pm. Did I mention that I love Friday afternoons?

Last night the snow came down (and it's still coming down right now, Saturday morning, actually), so I stayed close to home. Todd came over and we walked a block to have Mexican food and margaritas and then conked out in front of "Lost in Translation." I also forced him to watch "Elimidate" at some point in the evening, causing him great pain which he bore rather stoically. I love my trashy tv on a snowy night.

Help me?
I'm dragging today and need a nap in the worst way, and sadly, that is all I have to share.

This man can take a picture
Check out this collection of photographs from Michael Wolf, this particular set I like on eating in China.

He's got a whole slew of China collections, including one set on architecture & density in Hong Kong (too cool), and the Shaolin Monastery, and 50 Years in the People's Republic of China. He's also got some non-China stuff in there as well.

Warning: extreme cuteness. 

More on Mzee and Owen
I stumbled across a BBC article on them as well. My favorite line:

"The hippo follows the tortoise around and licks his face," she said.

Check out the sweet new picture above.

I was wondering this myself.
How Embarrass, Minn., Got Its Name - And what lumber's got to do with it. By Brendan�I.�Koerner

Inauguration Craziness
I'm kind of sad to be missing the insanity in DC with the inauguration. It sounds like a circus. Clarence sent an email this morning detailing a run in with some of the people in town to celebrate:

Last night we are at a local burrito chain ("California Tortilla" in Chinatown) when two happy girls were asking for directions to the DC Armory. (The DC Armory was holding the "America's Future Rocks Today" inauguration youth concert hosted by the Bush twins. Barf.) Jonathan gave them elaborate but unfortunately correct directions on taking the Metro while I just had this surly look that I reserve for Chinese vendors trying to sell me unwanted knickknacks (it didn't help that I was still sick). I had this feeling of unwanted invaders taking over my home territory, as I'm sure they feel about immigrants in whatever red state they're from.

I had to find out who the hell was playing at this concert and found this info online:

Jenna and Barbara Bush will play host to teenage singers Hilary Duff and JoJo at this concert designed to appeal to young Americans. 'American Idol' winner Ruben Studdard, 3 Doors Down and Boxkar will also play. The night will include musical acts, video clips and guest speakers, including former football player Jason Sehorn. The message of the night will be community and public service. Jenna, who just signed on as a public school teacher in the District, makes an ideal example for the youth of America as they choose their career paths. Kid Rock, on the other hand, had been mentioned as a possible performer, but won't be playing. At his performance at the Republican National Convention, he said if he were president he wouldn't be caught having sex in the Oval Office but would install cameras in the Lincoln Bedroom -- maybe not as great a role model.

First of all, how bad does that line-up suck? Second of all, I didn't know that Kid Rock performed at the Republican National Convention...that's hilarious. Thirdly, I would almost be curious to have gone to this thing to have seen what the crowd was like and to take pictures. Also, I am dying to know what Jenna's experience will be like being a public school teacher in the District, a Democratic stronghold.

For A Dose of Something Cool, click here.
A note book torn to look like a topographical map; it's actually quite beautiful.

(via kottke.org)

Found Photos
Here's a cool web site called Look At Me that features of a collection of found photos.

Over break, my dad shared with me a bunch of photos that someone in our family had handed over to him. Most of the photos were old family pictures (very cool in their own right), but there were several that were of mysterious orgin. My dad had no idea who the people were or what their connection to the family was. Kind of haunting stuff, actually. There was one neat collection of Christmas photos that one Catholic family sent out every year--it seemed like with every new picture, there was another kid added. I'm trying to pressure/convince my dad to make up a website of some of the images, actually.

Patterned Responses
This morning in Audiology our professor lectured on hearing tests. She was giving guidelines on testing clients and talked about how we would need to make directions clear to clients that they would need to make some sort of response if they hear a tone during the hearing test. She said that any response would be acceptable as long as it was clear that that was how the client chose to communicate that they heard a tone.

Our professor elaborated with a story about how one of her colleagues was doing a hearing test on a kid, and she realized that his chosen patterned response was to flick her off every time he heard a tone. The audiologist just kind of shrugged at it, since--hey--patterned response. That story made my morning.

Dirty Signing
Okay, so first of all..it was like ONE degree out today. On the way to the el some of my coffee spilled over onto my mittens and by the time I went to brush it off, it was already slush. What's up with that, dude? I bundled up like crazy today, though, so didn't really suffer all that much.

This week feels busy already with school work, but what else is new? Since I don't have much of my own to report, I figured that I would post an email that I got from my dad today that I liked and wish that I could have been around to witness:


Last night your mom and I went to see B.B. King (absolutely not to be missed, by the way) at The D.A.R. Constitution Hall. The first warm up act was an old guy named Clarence Carter whose repertoire consisted almost entirely of raunchy blues and soul numbers. Most of his stuff was suggestive, but some was so graphic that your mother understood it.

This is all rolling on when I noticed that in the balcony there was a guy, with his own spotlight, signing the lyrics to a bunch of people that I couldn't see. This guy was really into it, basically dancing ( when I was in high school, we used to call it the "dirty dig") while he signed. Very cool - putting on a better show that the performer - and during a number called "Strokin' ", he was especially blissed out. The signing had a certain rythmic style all its own. That was when I realized that this guy was getting off on having a excuse to talk dirty in sign to all the deaf folk. He was replaced at the beginning of the next set.

At the end of the show, B.B. was doing the obligatory recognition of people for applause. "Mayor" Barry got a big hand. B.B. noted that the were people from the White Hose in attendance and there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in the response.

Dad