My post last night omitted my excursion on Thursday morning to take my Jetta to Newark for service, including a 45k mile checkup (a glorified and overpriced oil chaneg, essentially), and replacement of my burnt out right side headlight and the long broken latch on my center armrest. As i was swamped with work and could in no way, shape, or form miss a full day at Stanford, i requested a rental car. Unlike Mini of Mountain View who simply shuttles their customers a mile or so up the El Camino to an Enterprise Rental outlet for a relatively crappy (albeit free) loaner, Bob Lewis Volkswagen provides a shiny new Volkswagen at a price of $30 a day. That meant i got to give a 2006 Jetta a whirl ... one even with the high end climate control and stereo. Very nice. It seemed larger than my Jetta (with the all important back seat space that i feel my car lacks, making me feel guilty about crushing my rear passengers). The climate control was very cool, with independent settings for the driver and passenger sides. And i thought the in-dash six CD changer was swank, although i didn't have any CDs on hand to try it out. I'm not sold on the aesthetic redesign of the new Jettas, but i must say its features had me forgetting its somewhat repugnant appearance.

I imagine i'll stick with my Jetta for another few years, but i'm always on the lookout for future suggestions ...

The work keeps coming ... in addition to completing those two grants last week, i wrote another shorter proposal for inclusion in an upcoming collective molecular imaging submission on Friday, then wrote another two page application on hypoxia and ovarian cancer tonight while drinking copious amounts of coffee and watching Dodgeball for the umpteenth time on cable. Last week i also gave a ten minute talk at a mini-symposium on lung cancer at Stanford, and helped my grad student and our machine shop engineer have a go at installing our collimator in the microCT scanner in the imaging center. It's still not ready to go, but we're inching closer. While Veronica was getting a swank Di Pietro Todd haircut i got a good start on my 45 minute AMI lecture. I looked a bit out of place in the salon waiting area with a laptop and my iPod, working on background slides on tumor hypoxia. On the docket for next week is 1) completing my evolving but still formative AMI talk by 8am Sunday morning (which may cause me to use my free Saturday in Orlando working on it instead of squeezing in a trip to Disneyworld), 2) getting this ovarian cancer grant out by the 2pm deadline Tuesday, 3) starting, finishing, and printing my AMI poster on the as-yet uninstalled small animal radiotherapy system before i fly off to Florida on Friday, and 4) performing experiments with my postdocs essential to the completion of their AMI posters by the same deadline. Work is snowballing, but i feel more content at Stanford than i have in a while.

My social calendar for next week is no less busy, with shows by cockney-flaunting Art Brut and Scottish indie pop giants Belle & Sebastian (supported by the fantastic New Pornographers) coming up. V and i have lost interest in Art Brut since buying the tickets, so i think we'll be flaking on that. V also noticed that my favorite New Zealand indie pop band, the Bats, will be stopping by the Rickshaw on Wednesday, so we snatched tickets to that. Hopefully it will be as brilliant as the godhead show by Aussies the Go-Betweens last June.

Because of my science-related endeavors, i had to forgo seeing V for Vendetta on opening weekend. It's gotten lukewarm reviews, but i'll definitely see it ... it'll have to wait a bit. I'm fairly amused that a non-trivial debate has arisen over whether a terrorist is a suitable hero for the film. Some rather frightening food for thought regarding the current political climate. I'm sure if someone had the audacity to remark that the founding fathers, heroes of the Revolutionary War, could have easily been called terrorists by the British, they would get a serious dressing down from the powers that be. Terrorism bad. Big brother good. We know best. Just fall in line.

I started Alan Moore's Watchmen, and i must say the first 50 or so pages have got me spellbound. The commentary on the evolution of the superhero is intriguing, not to mention Moore's creation of a fully-realized new superhero universe.

After work on Friday, i swung by Whole Foods ("Whole Paycheck" as Becky calls it, and she's not way off) to grab ingredients for a chicken Veracruz dinner for V, Jenz, and myself. It came out quite good, even with my swapping chicken for fish and baking for grilling in the original Rick Bayless recipe. V and Jenz whiled away the time while i prepared the meal by watching a slew of viral videos on the web. After dinner, we introduced Jenz to the majesty of Guitar Hero before driving her back home to SF. Saturday as i mentioned above i took V to SF for her haircut, after which we got a tasty lunch at Brickhouse near her work. V headed down to SJ to attend a Jenz family dinner while i got some more work in. I gave up around 10pm and watched Team America: World Police on a DVD borrowed from Matthew. Even with all the buildup, the puppet sex scene had me rolling on the floor.

Okay, i love the song, but the video for Editors' "Munich" is freakin' retarded. Gymnasts? What the hell is that all about?!

I had a revelation recently regarding reality shows, one which everyone else may have had years ago and i'm patting myself on the back for realizing only now. It relates to the age old problem of anthropology, where the accuracy of observations of a cultural practice are called in question because of simply the presence of an outside witness. It's also similar to the quantum mechanical concept that the act of measurement fundamentally alters a system. In the case of reality TV, my beef is that we commonly forget that these events we're supposedly spying on are in fact being videotaped by a swarm of camera and sound men. Do you really think people are acting as they would in ordinary life when they've got cameras and sound booms shoved in their face? This is less of an issue for shows like Fear Factor than for something like the Bachelor that purports to depict actual human interactions. The FX "race experiment" Black.White. is rendered almost completely meaningless because of precisely this problem.

Speaking of reality television, i think i would have to kill myself if a) i somehow found myself at a queen-of-the-has-beens Lisa Loeb concert. But i would have to make it extremely painful if b) cameras for Loeb's dating reality show Number 1 Single recorded evidence of me at said gig and broadcast my shame to the world.

Don't even get me started on Chelsea. Another Premiership loss this morning (2-1 loss to Fulham), more claims of "we would've won but ...". I f@$#ing hated it when United used to bust out that excuse, and i hate it even more when it's my team. I have to say i agree with 90+% of what José Mourinho says, but it's undeniable that he paints a target on our backs, and that pressure is not helping. And our recent spat of red cards and temper tantrums by the squad are bad omens. John and Frank need to start busting heads on the squad and recapture the unity of last year's team.

I tried to play Winning Eleven 9 this morning, but was too damn depressed to put in much of an effort. Oddly, after a horrible performance i still managed to beat Wigan on an injury time Hernan Crespo strike, much like Chelsea's first match this season.

I finished Black last Thursday. A great game, if a bit short. The last level took me roughly three hours, made even more frustrating because you can't save in the middle of a mission, meaning i had to finish the level or do it all again next time. There were at least two or three episodes in that last level where i found myself being swarmed by streams of enemies, with little or no cover with which to organize my attack. The final battle took me an hour and a half by itself, and nearly had me beating my head on my fireplace.