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.