Tara must've been calling in favors as her and Pepe's date with the kennel approached. The day before we were set to drop them off and head down to L.A., V gets a call from her stepdad Bob telling us that he was on his way up for the weekend. She told him that we were leaving on Saturday morning, but proposed that he stay at our house if he wouldn't mind looking after the dogs. So Tara and Pepe escaped the kennel by the skin of their teeth. I've got visions of her going through V's rolodex calling people asking "can you come take care of us?".

So Bob arrived on Thursday in time for a homemade burrito dinner. I headed off to work early the next day to host a visit from a collaborator from Australia. The day was spent walking all over campus to show him around, organizing a seminar and being told the room i had booked was in fact not reserved, scrambling to get the 30 attendees into our alternative seminar room, taking him to lunch with the radiobiology folks at the California Café, and getting unexpectedly rained on while taking him to see the new Lucas Expansion. A good day, socially and scientifically, but exhausting. On my way home i decided to reward myself and go see if Best Buy had any PSP's in stock. They did, and i was able to buy one without being forced to purchase a bunch of crappy accessories. I headed home to Bob and the dogs with the basic PSP kit, Ape Escape: On the Loose, Wipeout Pure, a 256 MB memory card, and a service plan. Not bad. We took Bob to dinner at the fantastic Palo Alto Cuban place La Bodeguita Del Medio on California. On returning home we found the power was out on our block, so i packed for our L.A. trip in the dark and was forced to leave the PSP untested as i couldn't charge it.

We left the dogs and Bob at about 8am the next morning, hurrying to get to Pasadena by 1pm for Veronica's haircut appointment. By making only one five minute gas stop and driving 85-95 the whole way down the 101 to the 152 to the 5, we made it just in time. I dropped her off and headed to Downey to see Geoff's friend Alex at his car shop, eager to get my new Alpine deck and iPod adapter installed. He was super friendly and had me hooked up in an hour. The new deck is sweet, although the iPod interface can be a bit tricky. It's a limitation of the head unit, which has a small amount of memory and can only cache a portion of the iPod's contents. However, i generally listen to my iPod on shuffle and it's great for that. It shows the artist and song on the stereo, and it charges the iPod while it plays. I'm loving it, although until V gets her new car i'll only get to take advantage of it on weekends and trips. Doh. While Alex was fiddling with my car i got my first chance to try out the PSP. Freakin' sweet. Wipeout is incredibly slick. This thing kicks the Nintendo DS's ass, hands down. Nintendo has made a slew of lousy business decisions in recent years, but i figured their stranglehold on the portable gaming market would continue. The concept of the DS is fine, but they have piss poor third party development and as usual have only released a handful of mediocre games in the months following launch. Sony might clean their clock in this battle.

I then picked up a freshly shorn and colored Veronica and we headed to Matthew and Dionne's. After i lost yet again in Winning Eleven 8 International (this time squandering a 2 goal lead and going down on penalties), we all got dressed and met up with Kevin, Kelly, and fellow visitors from the north Nathan and Summerlea for an excellent dinner of Japanese barbecue at Manpuku. V even tried the surprisingly tasty marinated beef tongue. It was then off the Downey (again, for me) for Michelle's 30th birthday party. For me, it was lots of Newcastle and soccer talk with Matthew and Sean, but fun nonetheless. Pics can be seen here.

We again made hasty travel on Sunday (but not after i recovered some dignity by beating Matthew 2-nil in a final WE8I match) so i could attend a dinner with more hypoxia imaging colleagues, in advance of a Monday meeting at Stanford to discuss implementing a hypoxia PET clinical trial. Very productive. My work week is now occupied with polishing off a fellowship application for a graduate student i'm working with, generating slides for a presentation at Nuclear Medicine Grand Rounds next week, and setting up even more collaborations. Things are snowballing now, which is very good for me. I got word that i was awarded my second grant a few days ago, this one a $150k award spread out over 5 years to develop PET agents for imaging epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). Busy busy!

V is heading south again this weekend with Jenz, Naomi, and Geoff to attend Coachella, aka baked indie party in the desert. The lineup is great but i 1) need a rest, and 2) don't want to leave the dogs for a second weekend in a row. It'll give me a chance to get ready for Grand Rounds next week and to devote some time to my completely overflowing cup of video games, including Half Life 2, Doom 3, Wipeout Pure, Ape Escape: On the Loose, and the now almost-forgotten Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

Got an advance of the forthcoming debut album Exits by the Boxer Rebellion the other day, and it's sweeeeet. The band has put out a few ep's over the past couple of years, including the brilliantly moody burner Watermelon, but seemed to be dragging their heels in getting an album out. Signed to Alan McGee's reemergent Poptones label, i thought maybe they'd go the way of other super-hyped bands and implode before making the scene. The album was worth the wait though ... certainly a throwback to the days of Creation, but not a weak song on the record. I find it amusing that the reviews all refer to the Boxers' sound as aping B.R.M.C.. Yeah, like those numbskulls invented that sound. Need to go back a little further, guys.

Chelsea have just kicked off in the first leg of their Champions League semifinal against Liverpool. Something not so entertaining about a European cup tie taking place between two teams from the same country. Oh well. We've beaten them three times this year, but none were particularly emphatic. Liverpool have played like crap in the league lately, but have managed to get to the CL semifinals by defeating Bayer Leverkusen and orchestrating a shocking upset of Italian giants Juventus. Their form in Europe has been the complete opposite of their domestic follies, and they seem to be building confidence so i'm worried. We can certainly win this thing, but Liverpool could be a sticky wicket. We've had nerves in our matches of late, as we try to seal the deal in the Premiership and the Champions League. We only need 1 point from four matches to claim the league title, which will hopefully come at the weekend at Bolton. However we've got to maintain our steely resolve to progress in Europe. The return of Arjen Robben will be a much-needed shot in the arm. The light at the end of the tunnel is in sight guys, but let's not get blinded just yet. A sobering thought is that should we advance past the scousers, in all likelihood we will face AC Milan in the final, who have been imposing their will on the pitch with hitman-like precision and coldness.