I'm a 31 year old native Californian, and for over a third of my life I have devoted myself to a team playing 5000 miles away. How many times have I explained to passersby why "Zola" is written across the back of my jersey? Or why I'm wearing this crazy blue shirt, anyway? For years I persevered as our team struggled to consistently crack the Premiership elite. I made my pilgrimage to Stamford Bridge in 2001, and slunk away without even witnessing a Chelsea strike in a lackluster 1-nil defeat to Charlton. But I kept faith that one day everything would come together. And since the summer when I first heard the name Roman Abramovich, I've bid farewell to old heroes and watched new ones emerge. I've reveled in the puzzled stares of my non-footie savvy coworkers as I roared in ecstasy when Wayne Bridge scored the winner against Arsenal in the Champions League. I've savored my first live blues goals while following Chelsea around the country on its US summer tour. I've watched my first bit of Arjen Robben magic and wondered, "Does this wunderkind really play for us?" I've wept tears of joy at our first league title in 50 years. And I've tirelessly defended our club from its many detractors during its slips on and off the pitch. Be it scraping the bottom of the third division or filling the Stamford Bridge trophy cabinet, this yank will always see the world through blue colo(u)red glasses.

My weekend got off to a somber start as i headed home by 6pm on Friday night to hear the winner of the Fox "Ultimate Chelsea Fan" contest on Fox Football Friday. About halfway through the show, i discovered to my horror that this was not a competition to see who could write the best 250 word essay on why they are America's biggest Blues fan, but instead a big random drawing where the price of admission is 250 words. The show's hosts brought out a duffel bag full of entries and drew one at random. So congrats to Catherine of Collyerville, Tennessee, who's off to see the boys play Tottenham next month at Stamford Bridge. They didn't even read her entry ... geez. If i had known this i would've entered Veronica, my parents, and everyone else i can think of who would've graciously passed the prize back to me. For all i know Catherine of Collyerville, Tennessee can't even name anyone in the squad. Let alone anyone in the squad before the Abramovich revolution. What a crock. I'll post my discarded entry here shortly.

After the crushing of my spirit on cable television, Geoff and Naomi arrived to look after Tara while V and i headed down south for Sean's 30th birthday festivities. As it was already 8:30pm, we had decided to postpone our drive down the 5 until the following morning, so we got dinner and drinks at P.F. Chang's and then quickly introduced our guests to the mystery and wonder of Katamari Damacy before falling asleep. In a not entirely unexpected development, we didn't get our act in gear until nearly 1pm the next day, driving off in the Mini after a take-out Stacks breakfast with our housesitters. V handled driving duties on the way down, enjoying pushing her Cooper S to speeds of over 100 mph when absolutely convinced there were no police in a 10 mile radius. We were scheduled to have a pre-party dinner with Matthew, Dionne, Mark, and Martin at 6:30pm, but when we got on the 405 at 6:20pm and ran into a wall of traffic, we had to improvise. Traffic also waylaid Mark and Martin, so M, D, V, and myself had a huge Mexican meal at a taqueria near Dionne's ancestral home on the way to Sean and Michelle's.

Sean had taken Dionne's lead and reserved a giant Hummer limousine to ferry his partygoers around the greater Los Angeles area. We ended up hitting bars in Chinatown, Pasadena, and ... somewhere else in the greater Los Angeles area. In keeping with Sean's personality, it was pretty chill. No omnipresent dance floors or crunked-out club kids. Which was perfectly cool with me, even if some of our entourage would not shut up about finding a place with dancing. And i have to say, the first mix cd played in the limo ... which obviously came from Sean and not the more dance-interested parties in the car ... was excellent, and i need to get the tracklist from him. Norcal-turned-Socal resident Kevin met up with us in Chinatown and hit the last two places before cabbing back to his car. We ended the night back at Sean and Michelle's, with 1) Matthew passed out drunk in the car, 2) Dionne passed out drunk in their house, and 3) Veronica super-chatty and drunk at the party. I, the sober one, gathered them all up and drove us back to M and D's house. With a minor detour so someone could run out of the car to empty his Mexican dinner and booze all over the pavement.

I had the weirdest dream after being woken up Sunday morning by Veronica on her way to the bathroom and falling back asleep. I was at the Academy Awards, which were being held at some fairly ho-hum auditorium. Kathy Bates was giving the Oscar for best actor, which apparently means she won best actress the year before in my bizarro Hollywood. She gave a speech that involved her wandering through the crowd, stopping at each best actor nominee and saying something, before finally stopping at the actor who played Sam Gamghee in Lord of the Rings ... Sean Astin, yes that's his name ... and dropping the Oscar in his lap. I don't know whether i should be more surprised by the manner of her presentation or the fact that my brain seems to think Astin is deserving of more industry recognition.

But lo, the weirdness continues. After this scene i wandered out of the auditorium and onto the patio outside, which looked like a sort of stadium entrance and was filled with thousands of blue-clad Chelsea fans. I notice Blues and England midfielder Frank Lampard sitting on a planter and go say hi like we're old friends. Which apparently we are. We shoot the shit for a while before he mentions (as if this is something he really wanted to tell me and had forgotten until now) that his dogs just had puppies and would i like one. Unlike the actual me, to whom the thought of owning a Lampard puppy is f@$#ing brilliant, i turned him down, saying that Veronica and i couldn't look after a puppy at the moment. Somehow the actual Ted shone through there.

Once fully awake, i got housed by Matthew in a few games of Winning Eleven 9 ... i really need to go rethink my whole method of approaching WE, as i just plain suck now. We also watched the latest episode of Flavor of Love while we individually readied ourselves. That show ... i dunno, these people exist in some sort of parallel universe where the normal rules of human interaction have been nullified. Maybe the whole cast are aliens and are showing us their culture, which is completely foreign from our own. Or maybe these people are just f@$#ing trash. Anyhoo, we bid adieu to our kind hosts around 2pm and headed over to Whittier to see Veronica's aunt, uncle, cousins, grandmother, and their pack of six dogs. That was very fun and relaxing, catching up with her family while Veronica played with their four chihuahuas, boxer, and white shepherd in their huge backyard. We then got an early dinner at Black Angus, where i somehow managed to consume almost all of my dinner special (an appetizer platter, salad, filet mignon, baked potato, and chocolate cake). I knew i hadn't eaten all day, but this was ridiculous. As the hour was growing late, we said goodbye not long after returning to their house. But not before Austen could clean my clock at Super Smash Brothers Melee ... after trouncing me in the first match, before the second he told me "use somebody you're good with this time". It just wasn't my day in the virtual competitions. We didn't hit the road until 7:40pm, and were greeted with traffic on the 5 until we had passed downtown. Although i averaged about 90mph on the desolate expanses of interstate 5, listening to my iPod on random as V napped, we still didn't get back to Redwood City until 1:45am. Naomi had Scion-ed back to Sacramento, but Geoff and his new bike Black Betty had remained, as it's a shorter commute to Novato from our house than from Sac. Tara as expected was almost doing backflips when we came in the house.

As a new Morrissey album is almost upon us, i need a new dismissive catch phrase to replace my Scottish-inflected "it's certainly a phenomenon in all walks of life". And Geoff kindly provided me with the inspiration on Friday night. He mentioned how if he ever saw him in person, he would kick him in the balls. To which i replied that he would probably write a song about it, similar to his piss-poor cover of the Jam's "That's Entertainment" where he embellishes the "lights going out and a kick in the balls" line by inexorably prolonging it with "is all .... that you'll get ........ in the name, of entertainment" (wow, looking at the lyrics to Moz's version, he really f@$#ed Weller's version around). So my new stock response for Morrissey discussions is drawn from David Alan Grier's über-prolific blues man on In Living Color, who for almost any topic of conversation responds:

"I wrote aaaaaaa song 'bout it! Like to hear it here it goes!"

I am charging you, my collective and individual readers, with the following responsibility and privilege. As of today, Monday, February 27, 2006, at 10:51am, i am committing myself to an exercise program that will include no less than five hours a week on the oft-neglected elliptical trainer in our garage. I intend to document my progress in these pages. Should you notice a dip in my reporting, you are authorized to harrass me until i provide accounting of exercise that meets the aforementioned criteria.

Okay, that was an ultra-weak red card on Asier Del Horno. If anything it was given as the result of a series of clumsy challenges, but the one that earned the red was baloney. Lionel Messi definitely made a show for the ref. A yellow card, perhaps ... Del Horno ran into him after the ball had been played. But no malicious intent, no last defender status ... i can't imagine why the ref pulled the red in that situation with an hour of the match left to be played. To give Mourinho and Rijkaard something to debate for the next two weeks, i suppose. I guess i (and José) can't make too much of a stink when just a few weeks ago Arjen Robben got Jose Reina sent off after similar embelishment. Although Reina had just hacked down Eidur Gudjohnsen and then slapped Robben, either of which could've been grounds for dismissal. Oh well. I'll let it go now. I'm sure Mourinho won't.

2-1 down after one leg. An iffy dismissal in the match that went against us. 1-nil up before the remaining ten Blues gave up two late goals. Media fireworks forthcoming. At the halfway point of the contest, there are eerie similarities to the way things went down last year. Only this time we played the first leg in London and have to go on the road for the penultimate match. Enough naysaying, i'm behind John, Frank, Damien, Arjen, and company to duplicate last year's epic 4-2 turnaround, this time on the enemy's home turf of the Camp Nou.

I'm half-heartedly watching the American Idol ... Octo-final? Preliminary knockout? Mid-season filler? ... the other day, and it occurs to me ... so you've got about three weeks of preliminary shows, two shows per week, followed by another two weeks of Hollywood tryouts at two shows per week, followed by the first series of voter eliminations to reduce the pool from 24 to 12. At two girls and two boys voted off each week, that'll take three weeks at three shows a week. Then you've got the stretch to the finish, taking 11 weeks and 22 shows to knock it down to the winner. So tallying that up and throwing in the inevitable few "retrospective" weeks and shows, Fox has got American Idol on for 20+ weeks, occupying their prime time slot on a staggering 40+ nights each year. Talk about milking the cash cow.

My fears about Chelsea's dreams of European glory in 2005-2006 were confirmed this afternoon as the team suffered a 2-1 defeat at the hands of Barcelona in the first leg of their Champions League showdown. I knew it was going to be bad when, just before leaving for a lunch meeting at 12:30, i checked the gamecast and saw Asier Del Horno had been issued a straight red card for a clumsy challenge on Argentine teenage phenom Lionel Messi. Whether or not it was deserved, i knew such referee intervention was sure to spark the next round of verbal sparring between the London and Catalan camps, continuing in the tradition of last year's accusations of referee coercion. The last thing i wanted was an excuse for José Mourinho to indulge in his mind games. I was hoping this would be an epic contest between the two current footballing powers of Europe, not a showcase for enormous egos. Hopefully i'm incorrectly forecasting the headlines during the two weeks until the return leg in Spain. We'll need a much better showing (11 people on the pitch for the full 90 minutes would be a good start), and to come up with at least two goals on a hostile pitch. Frankly, i'm not convinced the squad has the heart to do it. All this year i've gotten the impression that the huge expectations and reputation of invincibility has taken away some of the team's unity and passion. Boys, prove me wrong. Please.

Fox Sports World will announce the winner of the "Ultimate Chelsea Fan Sweepstakes" in two days on the 6pm showing of Fox Football Friday. So by 7 o'clock i'll be able to put these silly dreams of a March trip to Stamford Bridge to rest.

I'd forgotten what a lovely, light as air pop song Ivy's "Get Enough" is.

Last night i modified my age-old mp3 library script to run with my new MySQL database, and voila! You can now peruse my iTunes collection from the sounds page. I improved upon the organization, searching, and display from its previous incarnation, and have ideas for further improvements. Anybody want to license the software from me?

A cup of home-brewed coffee with milk and sugar around 9pm does wonders to relax me for the rest of the evening. Until Veronica and i crawl into bed a few hours later and she tells me i smell like a Starbucks dumpster.

I've resolved to apply for a total of 5 grants between now and June. That should be a trial by fire for my new research process manager, who is charged with organizing the submissions. While i was still in Boston, a colleague of mine mentioned that when you're developing methods that will be useful in the study of many different types of cancer, it is helpful from a funding perspective to then submit variations of the same grant to funding agencies dealing with a specific disease site (ie, brain, prostate, breast, etc etc). I never liked that philosophy as i felt it was a kind of cheating, but lately i've realized that in the rough and tumble competition to get funding, it's a perfectly valid approach. So in the next month or two i will giving myself the crash course in ovarian, prostate, and testicular cancer biology in order to determine how i can apply my work to those pathologies. I'm also applying for a brain tumor award, but i like to think i know something about those as i did do five years of research on them. *nose in air*

I've got the emotional stability of Joan Crawford on a bender when it comes to work these days. A compliment will send my confidence skyrocketing, as happened after the program project progress meeting a few weeks ago when i presented my work on the development and installation of a collimator to turn a microCT scanner into a conformal radiotherapy unit. By the same token, an offhand remark that i can even remotely perceive as a criticism of my work sends my morale into the toilet. This has got to stop. When i get a funding base and get some papers published, i think i'll have a bit better confidence base to lean on. I had a great lunch meeting with a collaborator in bioengineering today and her postdoc/husband. She's a junior faculty member at Stanford, having come over from Boston. And she's gone/going through many of the same trials and tribulations that i've gone/going through. It's great to be able to commiserate. Even better, the three of us are planning some novel collaborative work that will hopefully produce interesting results on which to base further research.

I didn't mention that a few weeks ago Veronica and i saw Columbian rock en Español sensation Juanes at the San Jose State Event Center/basketball arena. It was a good enough show, but he is the kind of Spanish language artist that doesn't inspire any interest or curiosity in me whatsoever. It didn't help that at least twice during the show did i tap Veronica on the shoulder and inquire if he hadn't already played this song. I did get a kick out of the pirate t-shirts on sale .... this was the first concert i'd been to in quite a while where i saw the pirate vendors hawking their wares to the line of arriving/departing cars. There was an amusing legit t-shirt playing on Juanes's hit "La Camisa Negra". It was black and simply read "Tengo la camisa negra" ("i have the black shirt"). Clever.

Off this weekend down the 5 to hit Sean's 30th birthday party, featuring the second party bus excursion (the first being Dionne's epic 30th birthday, an evening which ended with a drunken Matthew hopping into bed with me and getting frisky). I'll keep my fingers crossed that i avoid his amorous advances this time. Naomi has graciously agreed to spare Tara the kennel and watch her for the weekend.

Of course i will have to get in a few matches of Winning Eleven 9 with my arch-rival. The learning curve seems to get steeper as i get more experience with the game. I thought i had reached a level of comfort with it, starting an English Premiership season and winning my first four or five matches, including a personal best performance in a 3-nil demolition of Liverpool. Then all of the sudden i went ten matches without scoring. I couldn't even muster a shot on goal each match, let alone slip one past the keeper. Somehow my attack had become completely disjointed and ineffective. After much swearing and even more practice, i've regained a bit of confidence, but still struggle to coordinate my team at both the offensive and defensive ends. For better (and worse), WE9 does well to represent the game of football: it takes thought and imagination to unlock a defense, and when you finally do create a chance you'd better not squander it as they don't come around often. Similarly, your defenders had better not make dumb mistakes because the AI will not fail to punish you for them.

I'm quite looking forward to the Belle & Sebastian and New Pornographers show at the SF Concourse next month, even if 1) it is at that horrible venue, and 2) the gorgeous Neko Case is not touring with NP. I'm digging both of their new albums and have wanted to see the New Pornographers ever since first hearing "Mass Romantic" five years ago. Elsewhere in music, i'm quite taken with the indie pop of the Clientele after hearing "E.M.P.T.Y." on Sirius. I'm in love with my Sirius radio. First Wave, Left of Center, Chill, Howard Stern, and Boombox (except for those awful Grandmaster Flash mash-up sessions) are all fab.

I saw the most entertaining hour of ice skating i've ever seen the other day. It was during the next-to-last night of Olympic ice dancing, and at least half of the contestant couples ate it in some way, shape, or form. The most spectacular fall was a woman who lost her hold on her partner's arm while spinning in the air and flew off, landing smack on her hip. For someone who could care less about the artistry, grace, expression, and gayness of ice skating, this was about as good as it could conceivably get.

As much as i loathed his ego early on, i must say i think Santino is the most interesting character in the finals of Project Runway. Everyone else (including 90% of the self-righteous, whiny losers who showed up for tonight's reunion episode) is a f@$#ing wimp.

I really wish i had more time to play the guitar. Lessons would be sweet.

Our second annual MIPS retreat was held at the Theater 39 on, appropriately, Pier 39 in San Francisco on Friday. Ivana, Lan, and i carpooled up to the city, arriving on the overcast Embarcadero at 9am and making our way over to the theater. Whereas last year each lab was given ten minutes to present their work to the group, the faculty this year decided to give all the students a chance to describe their research. As there were sixty students present, event organizer Sandip decided to have a series of one minute talks. My friend Craig was given the responsibility of keeping us on time, using a gong to politely notify the speaker when their time was up. I had fears of how this affair might come off, afraid that the talks would be so short they wouldn't of use to anyone and that everyone would go over and the episode would last forever. Actually everything went quite well, and i took plenty of notes on a number of interesting talks. For lunch, the attendees were given a container of curry and rice and hustled off to a Blue and Gold fleet cruise ship for an hour long excursion on the Bay. As temperatures were in the forties and it had begun raining, this wasn't as nice as it could have been, but the food was good and warm and we got some good photos, including this one of my fledgling lab. Shown are my radiochemistry expert Lan (unfortunately soon to be returning to his native China), and my molecular biologist Ivana. All in all, the event encouraged me to redouble my efforts to secure long-term research funding and develop my projects.

The weekend has been pretty low-key. Saturday Veronica and i did essentially nothing, shopping a bit for entertainment centers at Ikea and a few furniture stores before grabbing a very late lunch. We then came home, and i took a nap. The lethargy continued in the evening as Veronica broke out the bizarre "roll things into a big wad" PS2 game of Katamari Damacy, something we've had for a while and never tried. That kept her occupied well into the wee hours, as i did some more web programming on my laptop.

My discovery of SQL has excited me to program new and better things on this site. I've converted the back end to do everything via a MySQL database, and i'm quite pleased with how that metamorphosis has streamlined my code. I'm not quite sure what other things to add at this point, but i'm sure something on the web will catch my eye sooner or later. In the short term, keep an eye out for my mp3 library, coming soon.

Today i got back to my recently neglected status as domestic fuhrer, spending 2-3 hours cleaning the entire house before heading outside to trim the hedges lining our driveway. V asked me to remove two foxtail bushes in our front planters, which i agreed to before realizing just how much work i had taken on. Once i began pulling on the bushes i learned that these things had a pretty extensive array of roots. I've yet to purchase a shovel or even a trowel for my gardening episodes, so i was reduced to hacking away at the bushes' bases with my hedge trimmer. I finally got down on my hands and knees and began digging with my fingers through the dirt, pulling out the roots one by one. After a half hour i'd finally extricated both bushes. For the evening i picked up some takeout Thai and a few pints of Ben and Jerry's and came home for my Sunday evening ritual of Family Guy and American Dad.

My labors were made a little sweeter knowing that my Chelsea had dispatched with league one (second division? Why does the FA constantly change the league names?) Colchester in the FA Cup, 3-1 at Stamford Bridge. Not having seen the match, i had to rely on media reports that describe the match either as "Chelsea spared blushes by two late Joe Cole strikes", or "Chelsea see off plucky Colchester". I think it's important for the team to emphasize that last week's 3-nil debacle against Middlesbrough was an aberration, to avoid giving any further fuel to Alex Ferguson and Rafael Benitez's hopes of a Chelsea slump to give their title challenges validity. We'll learn our next FA Cup opponent soon, and thankfully we still enjoy a 12 point cushion in the Premiership so we can afford a small blip. However, our continental task doesn't get any easier as the brilliant Barcelona visits the Bridge next Wednesday for the first leg of our second annual Champions League showdown. I am hugely impressed with Barça's play and am very nervous about our chances. Our usual rock solid play, described as ruthlessly efficient by even the most anti-Chelsea pundit, has exhibited cracks in recent weeks. I'm not quite sure we can make a run to the European final this year. José Mourinho's master plan might need another year to coalesce. Until then, i'd be happy with another Premiership title and, oh what the hell, the FA Cup. And nothing for Liverpool, please.

I watched a couple of episodes of the A-Team on TV Land a week or two ago, relaxing in bed with Tara while V was up at Popscene. Man, this show is not nearly as entertaining as i remember it. The episodes i caught, one featuring Michael Ironside as an evil taxicab company tycoon, were borderline nonsensical. This was the one show that i can remember my parents outright banning from my viewing. Maybe they were onto something.

For fear of descending into a full post on the pure evil of American Idol (graven idol? false idol?), it will suffice for me to say just this ... how freakin' stupid do you have to be to compete in a nationally-televised, hugely popular show, making it through the first few rounds and shooting your mouth off all the while, guaranteeing you lots of airtime ... but all the while you're fully aware that there a multiple arrest warrants out for you on forgery and fraud charges? Do you think, hmmm just maybe, there might be a remote possibility that one of the, oh i don't know, three or four Idol viewers might be in a career like, say, law enforcement? What kind of self-righteous nutjobs are they getting on AI these days?

Anyway, i plan to use the phrase "my spirit has been broken" as much as possible now.

In other trashy TV news, the big explosion at the Red Cross Mardi Gras benefit in Pine Valley has generated a host of opportunities for me to further ridicule Veronica's favorite soap All My Children. It drives me nuts that no one in this town has the common sense to just end an argument. Or for that matter, move somewhere where people aren't insane or stupid. These people exist to spawn conflict. My current favorite plotline is the Other Sister-esque star-crossed romance between Lily the idiot savant (emphasis on idiot) and Jonathan the brain damaged former psycho turned loveable simpleton ("they cut my hair ... my head ... they took bad out of my head! Bad tumor gone, it made me bad ... i'm good now!"). Every time he speaks i revisit the episode of the Venture Brothers with the Fantastic Four spoof, featuring the retarded Thing look-alike Ned: "bad man make Cody cry hurt!"

On to topics i don't have to be so guilty about. Valentine's dinner at MacArthur Park was lovely, filet mignon for me and rosemary chicken for Veronica, and a heart-shaped chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert. I'm spending my time at work devising schemes to increase my lab's budget and get some more students and postdocs here. The ideas for projects are coming thick and fast now, but i just don't have the manpower to execute them. Worse, my first postdoc Lan will be returning to China in April after a good two year stay at Stanford. He's done some great work, and will be tough to replace.

never been near a university never took a paper or a learned degree some of your friends think that's stupid of me but it's nothing that i care about well i don't know how to tell the weight of the sun and of mathematics, well i want none well i may be the mayor of simpleton but i know one thing, and that's i love you when their logic runs cold and all thinking is done you'll be warm in the arms of the mayor of simpleton i can't have been there when brains were handed round or get past the cover of your books profound some of your friends think it's really unsound that you're even seen talking to me well i don't know how to write a big hit song and the crossword puzzles, well i just shun and i may be the mayor of simpleton but i know one thing, and that's i love you i'm not proud of the fact that i never learned much just feel i should say what you get is all real, i can't put on an act it takes brains to do that anyway and i can't unravel riddles, problems, and puns and the home computer has me on the run and i may be the mayor of simpleton but i know one thing, and that's i love you

I finished remolding my website backend to make full use of SQL databases today. Most everything is now represented by a searchable MySQL database, including journal posts, album reviews, comments, photo albums and photos, and playlist entries. With the perl DBI interface, this has made extracting and organizing data a thing of beauty. I'm amazed at how much this has improved the operation of my listening statistics scripts. The last thing i want to do is put up a searchable list of my mp3 library, which using the same approach should be relatively straightforward. As soon as i get a chance.

Apart from my renewed interest in coding, my weekend was pretty laid back. Veronica and i had a chill lunch at the California Café in Palo Alto with my old high school friend Iqbal. It was a good chance to catch up. Iqbal and i are very similar in lots of ways, so it was good to just spend a little while hanging out. Afterward, V and i did some window shopping around University Ave. before heading home to see our little fur factory, aka Tara. It seems shedding season is on us again, as no amount of sweeping or vacuuming seems to stem the endless tide of white hair for long. We decided to forgo my department's Mardi Gras party at Stanford, and as V was feeling lethargic she settled in for a Saturday early evening nap. Jenz called me to invite us to San Francisco for New Wave City, which i thought sounded good. I told her i would call her back when V awoke. Turns out that didn't happen until late, and she wasn't in the mood to go out, so we stayed home. I must apologize to Jenz because i neglected to call her at that late hour, and she ended up hibernating because my wake-up call never came. Without Saturday Night Live because of the Olympics (yes, i'm still watching SNL even given its recent crappiness), we got to see the live announcement that Michelle Kwan had withdrawn from the Olympic ice skating competition due to injury. Oh, the horror. To paraphrase Norm MacDonald, "the real shame is that because of all this interest in figure skating, even more good hockey games are going untelevised".

On Sunday we drove down to SJ and Stevens Creek Toyota to reclaim my months-old Prius deposit, now irrelevant as V has her Mini and i'm thrilled to be back in my Jetta. The dealer has been giving me a bit of the runaround in refunding it, and Sunday was no exception. The sales rep took my receipt and credit card numbers and assured us that the refund would go through on Monday morning, because for some vague reason they couldn't do it right then. Monday came and i called to verify they'd kept their end of the bargain, but no. At this point i got a manager, who had me fax him my receipt and told me it would be done this morning. Turns out he's not in until 2:30pm. I'm calling there in 10 minutes and if they can't do it immediately, i'm threatening to call the Better Business Bureau, the state Attorney General's office, my credit card fraud office, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Panamanian kingpin Manuel Noriega, and a few select members of the Russian mafia. After that unpleasantness, we did a bit of shoe shopping at DSW, with V picking up a $15 pair of creeper look-alikes and me getting a replacement pair of Sambas as well as a pair of black Converse All-Star low-tops. We got an early dinner at the Consuelo Mexican Bistro at Santana Row, and did some more window shopping before getting dessert at the Ben and Jerry's.

I did indeed pick up Winning Eleven 9 at Electronics Boutique as soon as it was in. And in keeping with the trend of the series, Konami has made the most recent installment true enough to its predecessors to be immediately recognizeable and playable, added enough new visual and mechanistic bells and whistles to keep it fresh, and tweaked the gameplay enough that you can't pick it up and achieve the same level of dominance you had reached on the last version. The latter adjustments come this year in the form of general player movement and interactions. Defenders are much quicker to close down the player with the ball, and are not as likely to let passes skirt by them without getting in a deflection. Also, one of the tricks i used to great effect previously was player redirection. In old WE incarnations, the player with the ball could be running in one direction with a defender at his heels, then pull up and move back in the opposite direction leaving the defender in the dust. This worked great for creating space in the box to attempt a shot. However, it was also generally unrealistic as any defender worth his salt wouldn't fall for this constantly. So this little trick is gone from my arsenal, and i'm now struggling to consistently create offensive chances. However, as before these new challenges are exciting rather than exhausting, bringing the game to a new level of realism and making the payoff of a goal that much sweeter. Also fantastic is that this year Konami has acquired the license to Chelsea, meaning the accurate logo and kit are there to behold as i take my team onto the virtual pitch.

Unfortunately the actual Chelsea played like my floundering WE9 squad on Saturday, getting demolished 3-nil and looking nothing like the strong, confident team that is chasing a second consecutive Premiership title. And to make matters worse, this debacle had to happen against Middlesbrough, guaranteeing that i'm going to be hearing about it for months (if not years) from Boro disciple and s@#$-talker Matthew. I have no idea why the squad suddenly tripped up in such stunning fashion ... we just *don't* give up three goals a game anymore. Hopefully this blip won't progress into the full-scale slump which Man United manager Alex Ferguson has been doing everything short of making voodoo dolls to bring about. Who knows, maybe he's tried voodoo too. I wrote and submitted a 250 word answer to the question "Are you the biggest Chelsea fan in the U.S.?" to the Fox Sports World Chelsea Sweepstakes. If selected, i'll win a trip to London next month, tickets to see the blues play Tottenham at Stamford Bridge as well as to a few gala Chelsea events, and a week's stay at the posh Chelsea Village Hotel. Sweet. I quite like my response, although i couldn't figure out whether the entries are being judged or if FSW is just picking one at random. I never win these sort of things, but hey, i can dream.

I finally walked through the credit card refund with the sales manager from Stevens Creek Toyota just now. Christ. I don't know why i'm surprised that it took so much effort to get a car dealer to give me money back. Veronica suspected they were stalling while trying to find a car to coerce me into buying.

I watched a tivoed copy of Mel Brooks's History of the World, Part 1 last week. What a great slapstick gem that film is. I first saw it way back in early high school, and its lowbrow humor (lots of masturbation and sex jokes) was perfect for my adolescent psyche. Watching it now, i'm struck by its vaudevillian roots. Apart from being chock-full of classic comics, including Mel Brooks (obviously), Henny Youngman, Shecky Greene, and Sid Caesar, a lot of the bits (particularly those set in Rome) transcend the storytelling motif of film and bear more resemblance to stage comedy acts.

Roman centurion: Do you know the penalty for a slave that strikes a Roman citizen? [turns to clamoring crowd] Ok, you, you had your hand up first. Man in crowd: Death by torture! Centurion: No. You. Another man in crowd: Crucifixion! Centurion: Wrong. You. Third man in crowd: They shove a living snake up your ass! Centurion: Ah! No, but that's very creative.

I had a fun dinner after the MIPS seminar series at Lavanda in Palo Alto last night. And today being Valentine's Day, i'm taking Veronica to MacArthur Park for another high class din din this evening. She gave me my present yesterday evening, two tickets to see my latest favorite comic Jim Gaffigan at the Palace of Fine Arts in April. Should be hilarious.

What is nachos? Nachos?! It's a tortilla with cheese, meat, and vegetables. Then what is a burr-eeee-to? Tortilla with cheese, meat, and vegetables. Then what is a tos-taaaa-da? Tortilla with cheese, meat, and vegetables. Then what is a ... Look it's all the same shit. Why don't you say a Spanish word and i'll bring you something?

When i first started fac13/stormy clouds, i made it a point to not use any scripts or other software obtained as a "black box" on the web somewhere. I wanted to program everything, to understand how everything worked inside and out ... to use a Seinfeld-ism i wanted to be "master of my domain". Therefore, as the site evolved i had coded my own version of a lot of common web software ... blogging utilities, photo galleries, music playlist monitors, and on and on.

However, not being a full-time or classically-trained software engineer this approach also caused my solutions to be less than optimal in many instances. Case in point: databases. All my journal, photo, and music databases consist of a series of text files for which i've written a variety of query utilities. This has worked fine for most of my applications, but lately my music database has been screaming to be reworked. Because of limitations of the speed of my implementation i could only store the last 1500 songs in my playlist database, because to store more meant casual queries to the database took too long to execute. Recently i began wondering if perhaps i should make use of a standardized database language, and this week i took it upon myself to learn MySQL. After spending a while learning the Perl DBI interface to the language and even longer reworking my music scripts, my playlist database now exists in SQL form. And what a difference that makes ... complex queries that used to bring my home-grown code to its knees now run in milliseconds. My playlist database is now free to grow at will.

When i get a chance, i'm going to convert most of the site to an SQL implementation. I'm also going to put up a searchable archive of my music library, previously impossible due to size and speed constraints. Onward and upward.

Of course, this also means i've most likely introduced a new set of snafus into previously functioning code, so if you notice anything amiss please beat me over the head with it.

Friday was an ultra-hectic day around Stanford. I awoke at 6:30am ... argh ... to make it to the Cancer Center by 7:30 so i could hear a lecture by our department's visiting professor for 2006, Dr. Paul Harari from the University of Wisconsin. He gave an excellent presentation on the pros and cons of the new wave of molecular-targeted anticancer drugs. I then had a spare half hour, during which i completely forgot there was free breakfast associated with the lecture and thus missed my morning meal, before heading off to our 9-10am monthly radiochemistry meeting in the Lucas Expansion. Then another brisk walk back to the Cancer Center for my group's biweekly journal club, this time attended by Kevin, a Castro Valley high school student eager to get some lab experience. The following lunch at the Linx Café between Ivana, Kevin, and i was accelerated so we could begin our 12-3pm imaging session in the Clark Center promptly. Kevin was awed with our mouse experiments, but perhaps moreso by the group of researchers next to us who were performing dissections. That had him downright mesmerized. We finished our experiments on time, with some very interesting results, and had a quick coffee before bidding farewell to Kevin. I was able to finally visit my office, where i found i had several pressing issues regarding registering for a meeting and finalizing a grant application. I put out those fires by 5:30pm and headed up to the city. Veronica had a couple of pairs of shoes waiting for me, a reward for the plethora of Perl programs i've written for her and her coworkers to analyze their inventory and sales data. I just realized that i now own two pairs of Bruno Magli shoes and one Bruno Magli leather coat. If, god forbid, Veronica is ever horribly murdered then i can blame it on OJ. Oh, i'm gonna hear it for that joke. The two of us then learned that Jenz and Brandon were having din-din at All You Knead over on Haight, so we joined them for a yummy meal (a stick-to-your-ribs plate of fried chicken for me, just like mom used to make).

We didn't hang around in the city for long, as i had to be up at 6:30am again on Saturday. The cause for my repeated loss of sleep was the resident symposium associated with our yearly visiting professor. I somehow made it to work at 7:30am, and miraculously retained lucidity and attention through the end of the Dr. Harari's final lecture (an excellent personalized summary of treatment of head and neck cancer, albeit with some rather gruesome photos) at noon. After a quick sandwich, i went home to change and grab V so we could Caltrain up to the city to fetch her Mini at her work, where she'd left it the previous night as i drove us home in the Jetta. We again hooked up with Jenz, this time for dinner at her favorite Italian place in North Beach, Franchino's. My caprese salad was pretty good, but the pasta and sausage special was fabulous. Afterwards we wandered around Chinatown and North Beach in search of dessert. I was thwarted in my efforts to get pork buns from a Chinese bakery as they were sold out. Doh ... those would've been nummy num num. We headed home around 10pm as my energy after two days of getting up early had completely bottomed out.

Today i again had to rise early, as i was volunteered to give radiobiology faculty meeting this morning. Preparing my presentation occupied the evening time slot after the not-so-Super Bowl yesterday. During that V put on Saturday Night Live from the previous night, which despite Steve Martin's mostly excellent performances continued the show's recent downward trend. Maybe i've passed it by, or it's passed me by, but i just don't find it very funny anymore. The recurring characters are built around quickly exhausted themes, like the Target employee who keeps leaving her register when seeing the cool things her customers are buying. As when i complained that the Simpsons had jumped the shark, my SNL complaints arrive just as CNN is praising the show for its continual reinvention. Dunno ... i think they're glossing over the fact that the show reinvented itself in the mid 90's because the writing had become abysmal. MTV2's indie video show Subterranean was also not so great on Sunday night. Perhaps the Super Bowl just put me in an awful mood.

I've picked up a bunch of great music lately. The advance of the new Wilderness album is interesting, while i finally found the old dark indie rock albums of Satisfact, which are wonderful. Spurred on by an Amazon list, i've discovered a great indie pop band in Human Television, who carry on in the jangle pop tradition of Let's Active and the Bats. I'm trying out the alternative rock/pop of Enon now, their 2002 album High Society is quite good so far. Got a bunch more to listen to ... experimental indie stuff by Thunderbirds Are Now!, Six Finger Satellite, and an advance of what is surely the next lovely Swedish pop record by the Concretes. In video games, i'm hoping that stores receive their copies of Winning Eleven 9 within a day or two of its proper release date tomorrow, so i can check it out. The videos i've seen on IGN are fabulous. I didn't get a chance to pursue Shadow of the Colossus any further over the weekend, but i'm excited to see what other visual goodies it has in store for me. I haven't played much PSP or SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo lately. The gameplay mechanics aren't as smooth as i'd like so i haven't been persuaded to spend a lot of time with it yet. I'm still slowly working my way through my pleasure reading, now consisting of both the Middle Ages-to-present account of conflict in the Middle East Holy War, as well as the much more lighthearted collection of short essays (in many instances bordering on poetry) Soccer in Sun and Shadow. I love the graphic from the cover.

Now it's lunchtime, and i'm ready to have a go at the proscuitto and salami sandwich i made myself with the leftovers of my big sandwich fixins yesterday. Mmmmmm. Due to yesterday's big sandwich, i wasn't able to grill the beef kebabs i bought from Whole Foods last night, so those await Veronica and i this evening. Double mmmmm.

I love a good football game. There's no better way to cap off a weekend than by relaxing around the house and watching the ol' pigskin. Even if you don't care about the teams ... in fact sometimes it's better if you don't care at all about the teams. You sit back and enjoy the matchup, analyze the plays and appreciate the nuances of the sport.

Despite the lack of media interest, the matchup was decent ... Seattle has been performing consistently for most of the season, while Pittsburgh and their "bread and butter" approach of running the ball and defense had shed its recent mediocrity to beat the top three seeded teams in the stronger AFC. I set myself up with a big sandwich (more on that in a bit), a few bottles of Sapporo (not very American, but then i'm not going to drink a freakin' Budweiser), some Doritos, and settled in for the game.

Seattle started off brightly, throwing out routes to Darrel Jackson for the first two or three plays of the game, before sputtering and punting. Pittsburgh and their second year quarterback "Big" Ben Roethlisberger then came out and were mostly ineffective. Three downs and punt. This sort of trend persisted through most of the first quarter, with Seattle looking potent if not capitalizing, and Big Ben failing to find any sort of rhythm. Not a pretty game, to be sure ... a lot of lousy football and weak performances. That's when the real star performers of the game reared their heads ... the refs. Starting with an incredibly weak offensive pass interference call against Jackson that negated a Seattle touchdown, the officials made a series of questionable calls that all favored the Steelers. An iffy holding call negates a long Seattle pass that would've put the ball on the Pittsburgh 1 yard line. What isn't called on the play is offside on Pittsburgh as their right defensive end was across the line a half second early. Another weak holding call negates a long Seattle punt return. Replays show Big Ben getting stopped clearly short of the goal line on a run, but the touchdown is given anyway. Matt Hasselbeck gets called for a ridiculous "low block" when making a tackle after throwing a pick. Hasselbeck loses the ball upon hitting the turf after a bootleg run, when he was clearly down by contact ... only a blatantly obvious replay prevented the refs from letting the fumble stand. For the first time in my sports viewing history, i believed that the refs were actively deciding the outcome of a contest.

To be sure, Seattle let way too many opportunities slip. They completely outplayed Pittsburgh in the first half, and yet were down 7-3. Jerramy Stevens dropped four easy passes ... something you just can't do, especially when you got into a trash talk war with chatty Pittsburgh linebacker Joey Porter during the week. And to their credit, after the game they were quick to blame themselves. But on the flip side, Pittsburgh didn't look like champions. I couldn't figure out who would get the MVP ... Roethlisberger was terrible, the Pittsburgh defense didn't play particularly well (Porter and Troy Polamalu were mostly anonymous), and neither Jerome Bettis nor Willie Parker (despite a 75 yard TD run) really got their ground game on track. It ended up going to receiver Hines Ward, who had decent numbers.

The game in a nutshell for me ... after stopping Seattle's last play on a 4th and 8 with only 3 seconds left in the game, Joey Porter didn't run off to celebrate with his teammates (who were swarming the field despite the game not yet being technically over). Instead, he spent a good fifteen seconds jawing at Jerramy Stevens. Why? You've just won the Super Bowl, you dips@$t. Do you really need to rub it into your opponent like that? Totally classless. Oddly, both teams were rather subdued as the clock struck 0:00. Seattle, well for obvious reasons. Pittsburgh, maybe because they'd just won the championship in the most unconvincing manner possible.

It was a thoroughly dissatisfying viewing experience. However, i did enjoy getting a bit nostalgic in making the aforementioned "big sandwich". Back in my first year of grad school in 1996, some of my classmates and i decided to start a Monday night football party. We held it at my apartment in Oakland. For food, my friends Max and Neel and i went to Safeway and got some deli meats and cheeses, a big loaf of bread, and some veggies and made a friggin rad sandwich. Since then the big sandwich became somewhat of a tradition, appearing at numerous Super Bowl and MNF parties thereafter. I knew i couldn't sit and watch the Super Bowl without remembering those good old days with a loaf of sourdough bread stuffed with fixins. This year, it turned out to be the best part of the game. And i made sure to leave myself some leftover stuff, in addition to some proscuitto i bought that didn't really fit into the motif of the current sandwich, for lunches this week. I bought the deli meats from Whole Foods this time, and i must say they've got some good stuff. The roast beef was out of this world, while the herb turkey was also incredibly flavorful.

Also mitigating the crappy American football on display for the world on Sunday was Chelsea's defeat of their recent rivals Liverpool in a Premiership grudge match at Stamford Bridge. With a goal in each half, and a couple of questionable offside calls negating further Blues scoring, the final tally was 2-nil. But of course the scousers need something else to focus on besides getting bested domestically yet again by the Blues, and it was provided by Arjen Robben. Towards the end of the match, Reds keeper Jose Reina raced out of his box to clear a ball but failed to get there before Chelsea striker Eidur Gudjohnsen. Being held off the ball by Gudjohnsen and unable to return to guard the goal because of a lack of defensive support, he executed a ridiculous scissor tackle from behind that left the Icelandic striker in a heap. As the ref came over to warn or possibly dismiss the keeper, Robben and a number of other Chelsea players were reading Reina the riot act. Robben however must've said something particularly offensive to the Spaniard, as he pushed him in the face. Robben milked the contact and fell over like he'd been shot. Because of this, the ref showed Reina the red card. Voila, a red herring for Liverpool. Why discuss how they got handled again by Chelsea, when manager Rafael Benitez can begin a moral crusade to eliminate such mischievous play-acting from the game? Hell, i don't like what Robben did at all. He probably should've gotten a yellow for his antics. But Reina could've (and should've) been sent off for his tackle on Gudjohnsen alone. The topic is open to debate now because referee Alan Wiley has stated he cautioned Reina for the tackle and dismissed him for the Robben incident. Whatever. At the time Liverpool were 2-nil down and not appearing capable of a late comeback. If it makes you feel better, i, a Chelsea fan, will admit that what Arjen Robben did was disgraceful, unnecessary, and should be punished. I also know that such consolation means f@$# all in the context of the scoreline.

I'm a staunch defender of the 80's and all, but Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus" is the one thing that gets me going "what the hell was i thinking?!" I mean, in seventh grade i could recite the whole "1756 ... Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is born" thing. That piece of crap?

I didn't recount the closure of the "broken sewer pipe" episode. The city repairman did indeed arrive bright and early on a Monday morning a few weeks ago. When i returned home the job was done ... pretty much. The pipe in question has been replaced, and our house drains are now back in full working order, buuuuuut ... they didn't take too much time in repaving the wound they'd inflicted on our sidewalk and street. Instead of laying new concrete on the sidewalk (which in retrospect was probably wishful thinking), they simply put asphalt down over the hole in both the sidewalk and the street. So we've now got a black scar about a foot and a half wide and six feet long running from our front bushes into the road. I suppose i'll further research our city's services to see if we can request a more aesthetically pleasing finishing.

I bit my lip and faced my fears head on this evening, giving Shadow of the Colossus a whirl. While i'm not completely sold on the gameplay mechanics, there's only one thing i can say about the visuals. HOLY. SHIT. I defeated the initial colossus only when i was able to stop gawking at the beautiful effects and focus on deducing my foe's weak point. And how to reach it. I can't believe what Sony was able to pull off in the golden days of the PS2. It makes my mind boggle over what sort of engrossing experiences the PS3 has in store for me.

For those of you scratching your head over what the title of my previous post was referring to, rest easy ... my recently arrived seasons 1 and 2 box sets of Kids in the Hall have refreshed my memory of my favorite comedy troupe ever. The quote in question comes from Bruce McCulloch's angst-ridden heavy metal teenager. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the season 1 box set now, and have seen a good 5 or 6 sketches for the first time. Including a hilarious art school graduation speech by Scott Thompson's school of hard knocks tit painter Manny Coon. Oh, the wonder of the DVD age.

The Mini has performed admirably so far, following its valve replacement and reprogramming earlier this week. I really hope those fixes addressed the root of the problem, as it royally sucks to be wondering every morning and evening if i'm going to get a call from Veronica telling me the car has crapped out on the freeway again.

Been exploring the formative days of electronic music lately, getting the "classics" from Cabaret Voltaire (a band who i'd appreciated in small doses from their contributions to the soundtrack to the awful film Salvation, which also boasts some forgotten gems by New Order), Throbbing Gristle, and Chrome. I'm seriously in love with this mid-90's alternative/shoegazing outfit Revolver now, particularly after finding a copy of their ep compilation Baby's Angry featuring the entrancing "Red All Over". Speaking of music, the final somewhat underwhelming Coachella lineup was released the other day. No MBV. There are plenty of worthwhile acts, to be sure ... the mesmerizing Sigur Rós, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Editors, Mogwai ... but to reiterate i feel like i need to be afraid my life will be worthless if i don't go in order to put up with all the crappy aspects of festivals. V is pushing for my attendance, my current response is "sure, i can go play video games in a hotel room for two days". As i've agreed to at least make the trip, she's now turned to persuading me into going all the way to the Indio polo fields for the show.

As soon as i compliment Arsenal and England defender Sol Campbell, he has a horrible game for his club, making mistakes directly responsible for two goals. He gets subbed at halftime and storms out of the stadium, and has now been dropped from Arsenal's squad for the weekend. Hrm. Looks like England's central defense may not be as set as i thought. I hope Eriksson doesn't return to former mainstay Rio Ferdinand for the job. I watched the entirety of Blackburn's 4-3 defeat of Manchester United last night, and he looked awful, eventually being sent off for a series of stupid fouls that could most likely be chalked up to frustration. Exactly what England doesn't need. Chelsea could only manage their third successive 1-1 draw against Aston Villa, but with Arsenal and United both losing and third-placed Liverpool giving up a shock late equalizer against 10 man Birmingham, we actually distanced ourselves even further from our chasers.

United, though. My god. What an awful performance against Blackburn. Alex Ferguson tried to do his usual spin ... "the refs held us to a different standard, the penalty we conceded should never have been given, Blackburn was fouling us all game long" are sounding more and more hollow. I didn't notice any serious referee bias. The penalty that was given against them was because Wes Brown literally threw his arms behind him to block a cross ... as clear cut as you can get. The United defense is in shambles. With the departure of Roy Keane, Rio Ferdinand is filling the defense midfield role, and becoming increasingly marginalized. New wing back Patrice Evra was mostly anonymous, while their recent central defender purchase Nemanja Vidic was terrible. Totally ineffective in thwarting runs by Shefki Kuqi and Morten Gamst Pedersen, he also made a ridiculous back header that if not for a poor finish by Kuqi would've gifted Blackburn a goal. That would've been on top of the gift they received when poor communication between Ferdinand and keeper Edwin van der Sar allowed David Bentley to waltz through the defense and tap the ball home. I was amazed when they failed to reach the knockout stages of the Champions League, but on this evidence, that was totally deserved.

Still haven't given Shadow of the Colossus a spin. I'm a bit worried. I'm not a big RPG enthusiast. While SOTC isn't really an RPG, it bears similarities to games like Final Fantasy VII in that it's a sprawling adventure epic. Therefore i fear that, as with that game previously, it's going to suck me in and dominate my thoughts for a few weeks. Hopefully the release of Winning Eleven 9 next week will inject a dose of more compact gaming excitement to prevent such an addiction.

I left a voicemail with the Mini of San Francisco service department yesterday around 3:30pm to make sure i heard from them regarding the status of V's sputtering Cooper S before i headed off to my evening meetings. I got a callback about ten minutes later and was told the car was ready. I was a bit taken aback that i hadn't been notified, but it turned out he'd called Veronica instead so i was pacified. On that front, anyway. He told me their diagnostics had revealed a faulty bypass valve in the engine, which they'd replaced. According to V and the work description she received upon picking up the car, they also did a recall repair involving reprogramming some of the electronics in the engine. How this relates to what i read on the internet yesterday, i have no idea. Veronica only drove the Mini briefly yesterday evening, coming home in the Jetta instead so i could have it today. We'll see tonight how the Mini deals with her commute. I'm hoping the valve and reprogramming will correct the intermittent stalls Veronica experienced, but until she gets some miles on the repaired car we can't say for sure.

My evening meetings involved disassembling the microCT scanner in the Stanford Center for Innovation in In Vivo Imaging (or SCI3 ... it's all about the acronyms) from 5-6pm, in order to take some physical measurements in preparation for installation of our custom-built collimator. Following that tinkering, i hurried back to the Cancer Center for an evening faculty meeting. In accordance with Dubya's state of the union address that night, our meeting was a state of the department. While it was interesting to review the administrative details of our collective efforts, it ended up running from 6 until 8:40pm. Luckily a dinner of reasonable quality was provided. As Veronica had my car, i returned to my office to call her and request a ride home. Little did i know, she had sent me a text message telling me she was off to see Coldplay in San Francisco with Jenz. My phone had failed to get the message until i went outside to see if perchance she was waiting for me. Unfortunately, by this time my colleagues had all left and i was forced to concoct a new strategy to get home. By this time the Stanford Marguerite shuttle had stopped running, so i started walking off towards El Camino and Caltrain. I arrived within sight of the train station just in time to see my train departing. As the next one was an hour away, i started walking up El Camino in hopes of catching a bus. Because of sketchy strangers hanging around bus stops i walked for a while, and managed to witness another possible ride (the KX Samtrans bus) passing me just before i arrived within running distance of a stop. I finally hoofed to Menlo Park and found a well-lit bus stop and bench in front of Kepler's Books. I sat around for 40 minutes getting progressively colder and listening to Anthrax on my iPod before being picked up. Tara was overjoyed when i arrived home at 11pm, her dinner being five hours overdue. I had some Chunky Monkey and watched Sunday's new Family Guy episode, featuring a few absolutely brutal scenes involving Stewie beating up Brian for not paying off his gambling debt, before falling asleep around midnight.