how young are you? how old am i? let's count the rings around my eyes how smart are you? how dumb am i? don't count any of my advice

Wednesday is it ... time for Chelsea to stop gaping in awe at the apparent invincibility of Arsenal, time for us to shake off recent history and prove to the world that north London is not now (nor has it ever been) the footballing center of Europe, time to stop running and hiding when we encounter the first hint of red and white adversity, time for our defense to earn a mystique to rival that of the Highbury back four, time for our expensively collected midfielders to expose the weaknesses of their opposite numbers, time for Hernan Crespo, Adrian Mutu, Eidur Gudjohnsen, and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink to show Thierry Henry that Stamford Bridge has its share of lethal strikers. Time to kick some f@$#ing Arse.

Danny came down and spent the night on Friday so he could get to SJ early Saturday morning to scope out the course of an upcoming triathlon. We showed him a proper San Mateo evening by heading downtown to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, followed by burritos at Pancho Villa. The film was fantastic. Jim Carrey turns in probably his best dramatic performance yet as Joel Barrish, a self-professed "not that interesting" guy who, after suffering a horrible breakup with Clementine Kruczynski (sexy wild-haired Kate Winslet), decides to have his memories of her erased through a novel procedure offered by Lacuna Corporation. Charlie Kaufman, the author of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, again delivers a fantastic surreal experience. You can pick apart the film's meaning from a hundred different angles. I was most interested in how they addressed the notion that memories are subjective constructs that may not correspond with historical truth.

On Saturday i picked up my inaugural postdoc Lan at the airport, and drove him to his hotel. I was a bit unsure of what i was going to do with a postdoc, but now i'm more excited about getting my lab generating some results. He brought me two sets of beautiful decorated chopsticks as a gift from Shanghai. On Sunday we had a visit from Chemdry carpet cleaners, who gave our living room the $300 beatdown including odor elimination and stain removal. It looks great now, although Veronica just messaged me to let me know Cobi scratched the hell out of her tumor again. Poor little pup.