I keep meaning to sit down and summarize things over the last week or so, but work beckons. Or chores at home. Or Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory/Doom 3/Winning Eleven 8 International. Whatever the distraction, it means the site keeps getting bumped to the bottom of the list. No longer. If only because the list of things i want to write is only getting longer.

One thing that has brightened my month so far is the initial review of the NIH grant, which i received a few weeks ago. A grant is first evaluated to see whether it even merits the review committee's time. If it passes this test, it is then discussed by a "study section" and assigned a numerical score. Lower scores are better, with the best being 100. The grants are then grouped in percentiles, and the top whatever percentiles are funded. So far all i've got is the numerical score, which was a 193. I'm told this is on the fence and may or may not get funded. Why am i so excited then? Well, first of all the grant passed the initial evaluation, which considering the NIH's shrinking budget (thanks, Dubya) is no small feat. Second and more importantly, if the grant doesn't get funded i'm allowed to resubmit it, commenting on what i've done to address the reviewers' concerns. Typically resubmitted grants have a higher chance of getting funded. For my first-ever submission, i'm friggin ecstatic.

My assorted projects at work have been gaining steam, making me feel ever more comfortable here. My postdocs Ivana and Lan are nearing readiness to submit their first papers, and the software i developed for display and analysis of PET/CT images is now becoming more popular for research projects within the department. I've developed several good friends within the Stanford molecular imaging program, which has made me feel much more at home with my colleagues in the Radiology department. I may be ready to call an end to the initial uncomfortable period that i go through with each new job.

My other jobs lately have been the house and the dogs. Last weekend i spent all day Sunday pulling weeds and trimming plants around our front and back yards. It took about 7 hours, manly because most of the plants had become quite overgrown since the last time i did yardwork. I find that pulling weeds out at the roots is a sort of perverse thrill. And there's something heartening about getting your hands dirty and doing some honest-to-god, back-breaking work. Both yards are now much improved, although i still have to find a way of cutting the back lawn now that the grass has overgrown so much it has rendered the rotary mower useless. I'm still getting over the soreness, but all for a good cause.

The weekend before last Michelle and Sean came up from L.A. to spend their last few days of spring break (they're both teachers) with us. V took them to Popscene on Thursday night, and i came from early from work on Friday to have lunch with them at the quite good Palo Alto Creamery in the Stanford Shopping Center. That evening the three of us hopped on Caltrain and met V in the city, where we then headed to Jillian's in the Metreon for my good friend (and wedding officiant) Michael's going away party, just two days before he headed off to a new job in Vietnam.

Allow me now to take a sidebar and say what a great friend Michael has been over the years. We met in the summer of 1995 ... i was berating my roommate Jayson as he was going to be in the UK when my new favorite band the Verve were in town, thus depriving me of someone to go to the show with. He suggested i call his friend Michael as he would probably be going. Michael was more than happy to let me tag along with him and his friend Tim, and i had a great time. Not long after the two of us again met up for a free Gene show in Union Square, and things snowballed from there. Both of us britpop junkies, Chelsea fanatics, and obscure music inside-joke purveyors, we just click. Over the years i feel like i haven't spent enough time with him, but he knows i love him (and that i'm just a flake). I hung out with him at the party to the end, when Peter loaded a ridiculously drunk Michael into his car at the garage across the street. I hope he has the greatest time in Vietnam, and that he knows that there's always friends for him back here. I'll be in the far east to visit before long, no doubt. By that time Michael will certainly be the mayor of Saigon.

That sadness aside (i tried in vain to get a tributory Campari and soda before the end of the night, but failed), V and my weekend with Sean and Michelle was fun. We saw Sin City the next night at the AMC 1000 Van Ness with Geoff, Naomi, Nathan, and Summerlea. Camps were split on the movie ... Geoff and i thought it was fantastic, with brilliant visuals and a nastily violent and biting sense of humor. V and Nathan however contended that the last half of the movie dragged and didn't hold up the pace and artistry of the first half. To each his own. My feelings was that it was exactly a comic book brought to the screen. Shot composition, lighting, color ... everything was as you would find on paper. Now to read the original graphic novels.

Chelsea's magnificent season has lately been overshadowed by manager José Mourinho's antics and the club's feud with UEFA (the governing body of European soccer). The manager's accusations of referee misconduct during the Champions League first leg match against Barcelona ended with a two match ban for Mourinho for making false statements. I was actually happy about that, as i wanted to get the whole affair settled. Any punishment short of getting kicked out of the Champions League was fine by me. A few days later however an UEFA report that seemed to back up Mourinho's claims surfaced. Mourinho also was reportedly upset that Chelsea didn't back him up more in his case, and allegedly was considering quitting. During the first leg of the CL quarterfinal against Bayern Munich, rumors swirled that despite his ban Mourinho was communicating with his assistants on the sideline via cell phones ... the media pointed to a "suspicious hat" being worn by the fitness coach and his unusual involvement in most coaching decisions during the match. We won the tie 4-2 and headed to Munich the next week to seal the deal. Mourinho then further pissed on UEFA by sending his fitness coach and fourth choice striker to the pre-match press conference (in contrast, Bayern sent their manager Felix Magathe and captain Oliver Kahn). What does all this mean?

1. UEFA are a collection of retards.
2. While his escapades may have some positive effects, José Mourinho needs to tone it down a notch before the whole world hates us.
3. Our squad is stronger than previously thought.

On the video game front, i was getting a lot of time in with Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. I'm on the fourth or fifth mission now, and am quite liking the minor improvements to the series. The bank mission was a lot of fun, stealing documents and some bearer bonds to make it look like a heist. As always, SC boasts the best graphics and lighting effects around. The AI is improved in this round, with guards much more likely to pull out flares and flashlights to investigate the dark spots that formerly provided nearly infallible hiding places. The other day however i received Doom 3 for Xbox from Gamefly and have been loving that. The game is almost the reverse of Splinter Cell: whereas in SC you're looking for those dark areas to hide, in Doom you dread them as they typically conceal some snarling demon. Doom 3 has made me jump on more than one occasion. When the lights suddenly go red and you hear a low rumbling laugh, fear of a horde of bloodthirsty monsters taking you apart grips you. The graphics here are no less impressive than SC, with fantastic texture work and character modeling. Now to just check out Half Life 2, if my PC can handle it.

I keep finding myself listening to Iron Maiden's 1988 concept album Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. I had the cassette in high school, it was one of my swim meet favorites. The record's story about the titular seventh son, his clairvoyant ability, and the village whose destruction he foretells, is a bit difficult to glean from the lyrics but is discussed in detail on a number of web sites. The music is a bit more synthesizer-driven than Maiden's previous efforts, but not overly so. "Can I Play With Madness" is almost atypically poppy but is a great song nonetheless. "Infinite Dreams" is a fantastic sprawling Maiden opus. A great album all around, and none of your "Iron Maiden?!?!" cracks please.

In more indie cool-friendly music, i heard a great Cocteau Twins song on VH1's The Alternative last night. I don't dislike the Cocteaus but hadn't until yesterday heard anything that really got me going "wow!". "Love's Easy Tears" has several fantastic bright, sustained, echoed guitar pieces, over Liz Fraser's typical lyrical gobbledygook. A few years later Chapterhouse used a very similar sound and riff for "Something More" on their classic debut album Whirlpool. The question however, is why can't i find any Cocteau albums that sound like this?