In my last post i neglected to mention my recent completion of the epic Half Life 2. It was the first game in quite a while where i was actually saddened by its conclusion, as it meant there were no challenges left to face. I was excited to get my hands on the organic gravity gun in the last level, and to gleefully begin tossing my enemies about. The physics engine is absolutely unreal ... so impressive that a recent industry publication reported that physics, not graphics, will be the foundation of the next generation of games. Hopefully it won't take another four years for Valve to unleash Gordon Freeman's next adventure.

Veronica and i began our weekend with dinner and Halo 2 with Geoff, keeping him company while Naomi was off cavorting in Hawaii. The night's climax came while i was babbling lines from Arnold Schwarzenegger's Predator in the Halo pre-match lobby to our opponents. After dishing out an accent-heavy rendition of "Do it, i'm here! Kill me now!", one of our opponents responded, in perfect rhythm, "Get to chopper!". I was barely able to shoot straight after that, i was laughing so hard. After G absconded to his weekend work Saturday morning, i took V to get some lunch and dropped her off for a manicure and pedicure. I used my alone time to write up some materials for the radiation biology program project grant renewal, being submitted as i type. After collecting a newly styled V, we took the dogs to the park for some fun. They were less docile than last time, opting instead to wander aimlessly sniffing everything and barking at any other four-legged creature within twenty yards. The rest of the evening was spent in front of the TV, watching the very funny SNL "Best of Alec Baldwin", and polishing off my imaging write-up for the PPG.

On Sunday morning i resolved to do something about our overgrown lawn in the backyard. The dogs wouldn't go near it anymore as the weeds now towered over them. The rotary mower was now useless as it just pushed down the long stalks, so i headed to Home Depot and picked up an electric edger/trimmer. Five short hours later the lawn was back to a reasonable height. Some of it is still matted down, so i need to go over it with a rake and trim again, but it's far better now than what it was. Despite being completely drained from that task, i also managed to finish attaching the fence to the dog kennel, clean up the kitchen, and tidy the living room and bedroom a bit.

Our Memorial Day got off to a rude start when V and i heard a loud explosion outside while getting dressed. With the dogs startled and barking, i ran outside to see what was up. One of the workers across the street, in the middle of chopping down a large tree and therefore about 30 feet off the ground, let my neighbors and i know that a cannon had been fired as part of a Memorial Day ceremony at the old Civil War cemetary one block over. Phew. V and i finished our readying and then drove up to V's uncle's house in Sacramento for a day of relaxing by the pool with George, Geoff, Lynda, Marissa, Jessie, and fresh-from-vacation Naomi. After a few hours of swimming, i had a burger and couple of dogs then promptly passed out while Jessie watched Cinderella 2. At 5:45pm V woke me up so we could return home to release the dogs from their cell. We took a brief jaunt through Berkeley for some coffee, momentarily soaking up the atmosphere of our college days. It's a unique aura, and certainly not for all, but for me it feels completely comfortable.

My long weekend came to a close with an unexpectedly long game of Lumines in which i bettered the high score of V, N, and G by about 100,000 points. Mwah ha ha.

V, G, and me caught George Lucas's supposedly final entry into the Star Wars saga, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith on Tuesday night at the Metreon. It was alright. Not mind blowingly good ... in fact more than once i felt the urge to go back and watch the 1977 original to see the space opera done right. The effects are all fine and dandy, and there is a certain satisfaction in finally learning how Darth Vader evolved from a promising young Jedi into a ruthless Sith lord. It's also very cool that the ships actually look like early versions of the X-wings, Tie fighters, and star destroyers that are so recognizable from Episodes IV, V, and VI. The problems stem from Lucas's writing ability, or lack thereof. As many have warned, the dialog in this movie is flat-out horrible. My favorite bad line had to be Obi-Wan to Anakin during their final duel: "Give it up Anakin, i have the higher ground". Sure, they've been fighting for ten minutes, but Ani should probably throw in the towel now that Obi-Wan is on an incline four feet above him. A parallel problem is that Lucas stinks at character development. My biggest disappointment is that, even knowing how everything happened, i still feel like Anakin Skywalker one day said "sure, let's give this dark side thing a try". Of course Lucas lays out a grander motivation for Darth's switch, but because of the lack of chemistry and emotion in the characters said motivation is difficult to accept. Anyway, Obi-Wan and Anakin's duel was satisfying, particularly its brutal climax. And Geoff and i agreed that the ticket price was justified simply by the epic scene where Vader is encased in his characteristic black mask.

If you're planning on betting on sports, you'd be well-served to ask me my prediction and then bet your mortgage the other way. Case in point: the Champions League final between AC Milan and Liverpool. I gave the edge to the Italians beforehand, and after they went up 3-nil in the first half i was patting myself on the back. My major issue with 'pool was that they hadn't had to come from behind in any of their CL encounters, playing to their defense against both Juventus and Chelsea thanks to early goals. I also strongly questioned Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez's squad selection, particularly Harry Kewell and, even more disapprovingly, Vladimir Smicer who subbed for Kewell on 23 minutes due to injury. So what happens? Liverpool mounts a breakneck three goal comeback over six minutes early in the second half, with one of course scored by Smicer, and go on to win on penalties. Grrr. The Chelsea soccernet correspondent pointed out how annoying the scouse love-fest was after they beat the Blues in the CL semifinal. Now we get to hear them trot out Liverpool's epic history and why anyone with 12% of a brain should support the Mighty Reds. Great. Just call it sour grapes from a peeved Chelsea fan. We'll see next year if they can narrow the gap in the Premiership between them and the Stamford Bridge champions to less than 37 points.

I clipped back some of our trees yesterday after borrowing a ladder from our neighbor. Some of them were growing onto the roof, so my mission was to get rid of that growth. V claims i butchered one of the trees, although realistically there wasn't much i could do within my goals as the tree is planted four feet away from the damn house. Oh well. I think this may be a job for contractors. I also finally collapsed the last of our move boxes, now harboring a multitude of insects and fungus as they've been outside since last November. Ick.

Actual, verbatim dialog uttered behind me on my Caltrain ride to the city:

I'm not really into football.

Maybe if you had played in high school. I was a great linebacker. I'll never forget that game where i got three sacks.

Cool, man. I was good at baseball. And i was a really good swimmer.

Yeah, i was a really strong swimmer.

Were you on a team?

No, i was in a class. But i was super fast. I did some weight training too.

Yeah, believe it or not i was a really good weight lifter. Did you ever do that ... what was that thing ... climb the rope in gym class?

Ted commentary: this next line, i shit you not, was actually said:
Dude, i was the king of climbing the rope.

If they had just pulled out their penises and a ruler they could've saved each other about 10 minutes.

When asked what strikers i would buy and what strikers i would let go if i was in José Mourinho's shoes, money was no object (which is almost the case), and money could override any other transfer obstacles ...

I really like Andriy Shevchenko. That guy is deadly. Departing would be Mateja Kezman, as well as Hernan Crespo and Juan Veron who are already out on loan. Didier Drogba is doing a lot of whining for someone who didn't exactly light up the score sheets last season, but I think he will stay and will improve. He's a beast in the air and Mourinho just needs to get a good foil for him up front so he's not reduced to leading the attack by receiving long ball after long ball.

I like Samuel Eto'o a lot but 1) he must friggin' hate Chelsea after the Champions League incident, and 2) he's a prime case where stellar performances on the continent may not translate to a goal flood in England. I don't know much about Adriano but I fear the same problems in adapting to the English game.

The other two strikers I would rate very highly are Thierry Henry (should be raring to go next year after his spate of injuries) and Wayne Rooney (I've come down on him in the past but the guy has undeniable talent, is at least partially established in England, and is only going to get better as he enters his twenties). Prying either of them from our domestic rivals would surely ruffle feathers and add to the imperialistic image at Stamford Bridge.

Final verdict ... I would have four Chelsea strikers. Keeping Eidur Gudjohnsen and Drogba, I would add Rooney and Shevchenko. I like that group, especially with service from Damien Duff, Arjen Robben, Frank Lampard, and Joe Cole in midfield.

More likely? Gudjohnsen, Drogba, and Adriano. I think we need a fourth as we need a more productive pair up front so as not to be tied to a 4-5-1 with Robben and Duff just behind the striker (that works very well but if Robben and/or Duff go down we suffer).

I've invested a bit more work (well, more than a bit, but then it's a labor of love so i don't really keep track) in expanding my listening statistics page. In addition to being able to view my lists of top played artists, tracks, albums, genres, years, and decades (updated in real time as i listen to iTunes at work or at home), you can now click on any of the displayed information to see play details for a specific artist, track, album, genre, year, or decade. I'm probably fooling myself that this may be interesting to anyone other than myself, but i like it, and it was a fun programming project. And i'm sure there are hordes of bloggers out there who would beat a path to my door to have such a detailed online playlist.

V and i drove north to Sacramento on Friday afternoon for her cousin Marissa's high school graduation. We did it on a spare tire in the Jetta as V had gotten a flat on her way to work that morning. It's always fun hanging with Naomi and her family (and of course Señor Lee). However my fun was cut short as i had to return home late Friday night to see the dogs and get ready for Saturday's 100th anniversary of the Stanford departments of Radiology and Radiation Oncology. It wasn't until halfway home that i saw the warning on the spare that it shouldn't be driven over 50 mph. Being a full size spare i hadn't even thought about it. Doh. I got home around 2am to two lonely dogs and checked to see if FSW was showing the FA Cup final between Manure and the Arse the next morning. Nope, off to bed.

To my dismay i found out (too late) the next morning that the cup final was shown on ESPN2. Oh well, sounded like the Arse sucked and only United's season-long inability to convert chances into goals allowed the Londoners to win on penalties. Now that most European leagues are drawing to a close and the Champions League final will decide a winner on Wednesday, attention turns to the transfer market. As in the last two summers, more than likely anyone wanting to improve their salary will claim Chelsea is interested in them (see Pavel Nedved last summer), so figuring out who the blues are really pursuing will be difficult. Possibilities that aren't complete bulls@$t include Liverpool's Steven Gerrard and Inter Milan's Adriano. What we really need is a left back and a world class striker (someone on par with Andriy Shevchenko, Thierry Henry, or Samuel Eto'o). Chelsea however must first learn their fate for their alleged illegal approaches to Arsenal and England left back Ashley Cole and Manchester United's new teenage signing John Obi Mikel. The smart money is on a stiff fine.

Back to my weekend ... i then had a look at the flat tire in the Jetta's trunk. The thing was completely sheared, no chance of patching. Again, oh well ... i put the doggies in their sunny kennel and headed to Stanford. The anniversary was fun, catching up with colleagues and listening to some good talks by the Stanford Radiology and Radiation Oncology kingpins. There was an interesting panel featuring a Stanford economist and the CEOs of GE Medical Systems, Siemens Medical Solutions, and Varian discussing whether society can afford the latest advances in medical technology. Afterwards we adjourned to the Cancer Center lobby for a reception, boasting some very swank catering. I had a few beers with my departmental chums before heading home to liberate the dogs. Pepe was not pleased, to say the least. At least that kept them from soiling the house. I got in a few hours of Half Life 2 (can i say once again that this masterpiece is in my opinion the pinnacle of the gaming industry?), before V, N, and G got back from Sacramento (they'd stayed up there for a graduation party Saturday afternoon). Geoff and i closed the evening by getting in a few more fun rounds of online Halo 2.

Today went by pretty fast ... got two new tires put on the Jetta, had a relaxing brunch at Stacks with VNG, picked up the sequel to Donkey Konga at Gamestop for some more bongoing madness, and went to Kenneth Cole at the Stanford Shopping Center with my parents to replace my dad's b-day watch (one of the pins was falling out) and get my some nice new Reaction kicks. On deck for this week is a viewing of George Lucas's attempt at science fiction redemption (aka Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith) with V and G (N is off to an all-girls week in Hawaii) and revising my NIH grant for resubmission. It got fairly positive reviews, so i think i've got a decent shot at getting it funded this time around.

In retrospect i had a relatively full weekend, but my body just couldn't seem to get motivated. It's a problem that seems to be plaguing me more and more, a general lack of enthusiasm for anything. I need a vacation ... i can't even remember the last time i took non-working, non-illness time off for longer than a day or two. Hopefully my year-late honeymoon in September, a two week jaunt around northern Europe (Cologne, Brussels, and Amsterdam), will remedy that. Although the trip is initiated with the fourth annual meeting of the Society for Molecular Imaging in Germany.

Friday i actually only made it to a half day of work as my general lethargy had solidified into a concrete feeling of not-quite-right. I did manage to attend my 4-5pm meeting with Stanford molecular imaging kingpin Sam Gambhir, who gave me some encouraging words on my ongoing projects and career development. I then headed home, fed the dogs, and caltrained to the city to meet V, N, and G for the first anniversary of the SF Scooter Girls, Naomi's new scooter gang. It was held at the San Francisco Motorcycle Club, where i'd attended the King's Classic Scooter Rally somewhere around 1996 or 1997, in my pseudo-mod days. Geoff and i had a few Heinekens, Buds, and PBRs, we watched a supremely amusing air band cover new wave classics, i spilled beer down my shirt, then we had a late night dinner at Bagdad Cafe where i, in my drunken state, was indirectly chastised by a fellow customer for not putting the toilet seat down after using the bathroom.

On Saturday V and i did some cleaning here and there, but basically nothing until G and N came by for dinner at Naomi's namesake Naomi Sushi in Menlo Park, followed by the 9:35 showing of Unleashed in Redwood City. I loved the film ... Jet Li deserves an Oscar nomination, although being an action star he'll never get it. His depiction of a man trained to be an attack dog by a Glasgow gangster (the ferocious Bob Hoskins) is perfect, from the intensity with which he attacks when released from his collar to the awe and wonder with which he regards life after he manages to escape his brutal upbringing. The fight scenes are of course brilliant, too. Geoff and i wrapped up the evening by becoming reacquainted with online Halo 2 killing. Recently a few new maps have been added to the online multiplayer game, as well as a number of new game modes. The new challenges are quite fun, and (for one evening, anyway) we managed to get paired with people against whom we could generally compete.

More laziness and malaise on Sunday morning, before heading to the Stanford Shopping Center and P.F. Chang's for my dad's surprise birthday dinner. V and i stopped at Kenneth Cole beforehand to buy him a new watch. Dinner was fun, catching up with my sister, her boyfriend Jeff, and my aunt Cathy and uncle Bud, as well as my parents. I then settled into my three week-old Sunday night ritual of drinking coffee and watching new episodes of Family Guy and American Dad.

I couldn't shake my not-quite-right feeling Monday morning, particularly after listening to the dogs click around the hardwood floor all night long, so i spent the day at home, working on an animal experiment protocol and playing Half Life 2. That game never ceases to amaze. I'm back at work today, now screwing up the courage to look at the just-received reviews of my NIH grant, which i'll need to address when resubmitting. No two ways about it, i suck at taking criticism. Better get used to it ... grants don't come for free.

I'm quite happy with my new listening statistics interface. Once i get some more entries in my played list the statistics might actually mean something.

Long-time readers of stormy clouds will remember when the little musical notes link above took them to a sortable, searchable list of my mp3 collection, along with a utility for querying my listening habits in terms of artists, albums, and songs. That was generated using a Winamp plugin that spit out your recently played songs into a text file, which i then uploaded periodically to my web server and interrogated with perl. When i switched from Winamp to iTunes i found that no comparable plugin existed, and hence my listening statistics went the way of the dodo.

Never say never ... i recently became aware of the iTunes COM SDK, allowing programmers to write scripts and/or standalone programs that can send/receive information to/from iTunes. I spent a little time over the weekend learning it, along with Microsoft's JScript scripting language. And today i put the finishing touches on a script that uploads songs to my web server as i listen to them, allowing the server to keep track of my listening statistics. It's even better than the Winamp method, for two reasons. Firstly, the song information is sent in real time, therefore the web interface reflects changes immediately. Second, in addition to text info (artist, track, album, etc), using XML i can also upload album artwork to the server as a base64 stream. And using the miracle of PerlMagick, the receiving perl script can resize the images to thumbnails (75x75) and store them.

I haven't listened to much since getting the new script running, but have a look!

On Saturday i headed up to the city with Veronica to give her hand at work. Afterwards we headed over to Best Buy so i could pick up a 1GB USB jump drive (rapidly becoming a necessity for me at work). Although we left empty handed as i knew i could find them online for less than the $110 Best Buy wanted, we spotted a decidedly British Mini Cooper in the parking lot, complete with personalized license plate. No International Men of Mystery to be seen, though.

It's my happening baby, and it freaks me out!

The rest of the weekend was fairly low key. After returning to Redwood City on Saturday afternoon, we decided to take the dogs over to a park a few miles from our house. They were in rapture. Tara is definitely gunning for the alpha dog spot, always muscling the otherwise laid back Pepe out of the way when he discovers something she thinks she should be interested in. I would walk Pepe at a leisurely pace, but if he got in front of the "white she devil" as Veronica calls her, Tara would try to force him back. Pepe met a big black labradoodle and was reasonably friendly, but Tara tried to pounce on it when given an introduction. Other than those follies our two demons merrily romped around the grass, sniffing and marking territory. We sat down for a while to watch a youth soccer game. The kids, who looked somewhere around 9 or 10, actually had some decent skills. The team wearing West Brom-esque kits executed several nice attacking moves, one in particular where a wing player pushed the ball around a defender, ran onto it, and centered to a striker who slotted past the keeper. One rather portly striker tended to use his mass a bit too much, throwing elbows and pushing kids off the ball. I started to get a little vocal towards the end, worrying Veronica over what might happen should i get involved in our kids' sports.

On Sunday we headed to Buca di Beppo for a relaxed Mother's Day dinner with my parents and sister Hilary and boyfriend Jeff. Following that, V and i came home and i chilled out in front of the tv with a cup of coffee, watching the latest episodes of Family Guy and American Dad, while V caught up on some more Arthur Beren work. I'm also getting more and more engrossed in Half Life 2 ... what a freaking awesome game.

Let's see, songs with positive predictions for Chelsea ...

The last two years have ruled out "Going Down to Liverpool" by the Bangles and "Choke" by the Cardigans. And we can dismiss the Beatles, Echo & the Bunnymen, and the whole of Manchester entirely.

"Chelsea" by Elvis Costello? No wait, the full name of that song is "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea". Dammit.

"Parklife" by Blur, diehard Blues fans singing with another Chelsea fanatic in Phil Quadrophenia Daniels? The Chelsea fight songs on endless repeat?

On second thought, i'm not even opening iTunes on European match days next year.

Last year the song that presaged Chelsea's Champions League downfall was "Choke" by the Cardigans. This year the writing was even clearer. One hour before i left work to watch the climactic second leg of our Champions League duel with Liverpool, my iTunes leapt into "Going Down to Liverpool" by the Bangles. No ambiguity there.

The match ... can be summarized fairly quickly. In the 4th minute Milan Baros flicked a ball over Petr Cech. While he had a decent case for a penalty on Cech, Luis Garcia ran onto the arcing ball and punched it towards goal. John Terry had misjudged the ball to give Garcia space, but deflected his shot. However, by the time William Gallas arrived to clear the ball had clearly crossed the goal line. The rest of the game? Chelsea dominated possession but just couldn't click with each other in the final third. Eidur Gudjohnsen missed a tight angle shot in the fifth minute of second half stoppage time, game over. We can't really claim injustice when we had only one shot on goal, a low Frank Lampard free kick that forced Jerzy Dudek into his only save of the match.

Over the two legs neither team really distinguished themselves, so Liverpool certainly deserve to head to Istanbul for the final. They got lucky early on today and then sat back and soaked up Chelsea's pressure. They've done that quite well in this year's competition, earlier frustrating Juventus in the quarterfinals. Can they unlock AC Milan's stingy defense while keeping their playmakers Kaka, Shevchenko, and Crespo at bay? We'll see.

Chelsea on the other hand looked like a team that had simply run out of gas. After the emotion of our Premiership-clinching win at Bolton on Saturday, the bruised and battered Terry, Lampard, and co. just couldn't put it all together. When Arjen Robben came on as a sub he looked out of sorts, his control lacking and his pace slowed by his recent injuries. Also missing Damien Duff, our attack was reduced to lofting balls in to Didier Drogba, hoping the massive striker could lead our assault from the air. No dice.

With the domestic title won, our season effectively comes to a close. The loss to Liverpool quickly fades with thoughts of our first English title in 50 years. Where do we go from here? Abramovich and Mourinho have hinted that we will make only three purchases this summer, but that all three will be big names. Odds are one will be the long-discussed prising of Steven Gerrard away from Liverpool. However what we really need is a striker. Drogba and Gudjohnsen have their moments but as yet have failed to emerge as truly clinical finishers. We need a Shevchenko or an Henry to give us that absolutely feared hitman up front. The leaders of Chelsea have also hinted that we will begin to trim down our sizeable squad. Let me offer some suggestions there ... Tiago is not good enough to be starting for us. As a substitute defensive midfielder he'll manage, but he looked way out of his league today. I've given Mateja Kezman the benefit of the doubt so far, but he has been a complete waste this season. He does nothing for the attack and must go. In addition to those two, i wouldn't be surprised (although i certainly am not out for their blood) if Geremi and Scott Parker exit because of a lack of first team football. Rereading my comments, it seems we can actually remain at the top with a minimum of shuffling. That would give the squad a much needed summer to gel and strengthen our challenge in 2005/2006.

Now i'll return to somberly munching my linguiça (in tribute to the Chelsea Portuguese contigent). Congrats boys, don't let this setback get you down. Remember you get to kiss the Premiership trophy on Saturday!

My weekend began at 4:45pm on Friday afternoon when i finished delivering my portion of my colleague's three day course on image-guided radiotherapy, a forty minute lecture on administrative and quality assurance issues in PET/CT. Not the most scientifically enlightening three quarters of an hour, but it went well. After i fielded the last few questions, i grabbed my bag and ran to my car, flew home to change clothes and give the dogs dinner, then headed up to SF to meet Veronica and Gary. The three of us then crossed the bay and headed to the Henry J. Kaiser Auditorium in Oakland for the evening's Chemical Brothers/New Order show. We had a crappy meal of hot dogs and nachos inside, then got down to the Chemmies amidst the numerous glowstick-wielding bozos. They were good, although i stand by my assessment that i could stay at home, play their cd, and watch a skipping DVD on 4x frame advance and have the same experience. After finding seats up in the balcony, we settled in for New Order's set. They opened with a good version of Joy Division's "She's Lost Control", commemorating Ian Curtis's death 25 years ago this May. Their set read like a greatest hits tracklist ... "Love Vigilantes", "Regret", "Bizarre Love Triangle", "True Faith", "Crystal", as well as their latest single "Krafty" from their newly-released album Waiting for the Sirens' Call. Sadly nothing from Technique. They also included two more Joy Division songs, the mandatory "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and the hypnotic "Transmission" (although Barney's smoother vocals and occasional yipe! can't match Ian's fervent delivery). The boys (with Gillian having left the band to care for her and Stephen's children, it's the three JD alums and former shitty Marion guitarist Phil Cunningham) closed with a rendition of the 1987 remix of "Blue Monday". A good evening, although Gary and i were in agreement that playing live is not New Order's forté. It beat sitting at home watching Friday night tv though.

After sending V and Jenz off for their Coachella adventure and taking in Chelsea's title-winning effort at Bolton, i arranged to have lunch and a movie with my parents. My mom was the one who encouraged me to read Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels, so i wanted to take her to see the newly-released movie version, twenty years in the making and commemorating Adams's legacy after his untimely passing in 2001. After enjoying the lunch buffet at Bombay Garden in downtown San Mateo, we made it to the 3pm showing. Critics have given the movie mixed reviews, but the three of us quite liked it. It thrives on the wry British humor of the books, and may be inaccessible to those not familiar with them. The filmmakers and actors captured the spirit of Adams, making a few modifications to produce a cohesive and compact film but without compromising Douglas's vision. The Office veteran Martin Freeman was an excellent choice for the demure and flustered Arthur Dent, while Mos Def put my fears to rest and excelled as Ford Prefect. Sam Rockwell steals the show as the irrepressible Zaphod Beeblebrox, and Marvin the chronically depressed robot is given a perfect voice by Alan Rickman. The otherwise wonderful Zooey Deschanel takes a mostly backseat role as Trillian, through no fault of her own.

The rest of my Saturday was spent doing yet more laundry (at the moment i can't find anything more to wash, so i think i'm done). I awoke Sunday morning to give the dogs their customary 7am meal, then grabbed a few more hours sleep before undertaking the none-too-easy task of bathing them. I completed two baths in forty minutes, although combing out the mounds of shedding hair on the porch took another half hour. As near as i can tell, Tara is essentially a hair factory. After giving myself a good cleaning, i hopped in the car to buy ingredients for a homemade Sunday dinner and to pick up another few PSP games, the acclaimed rhythm-puzzle game Lumines for Veronica and Twisted Metal: Head-On for me, a remake of the pinnacle of the series Twisted Metal 2. For dinner i decided to try out one of Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Meals, Thai chicken noodle soup and pork and shrimp balls. As we don't own a food processor i had to improvise a bit, but the end result was fabulous. I'm salivating thinking about the leftovers for tomorrow. To conclude my Sunday night i made a pot of coffee and relaxed watching Seth MacFarlane's conquest of Fox with great new episodes of Family Guy and American Dad. Now if they'd just put to rest the travesty that the Simpsons has become.

If i was pressed about it, i'd have to say my favorite band of all time is the Jam, my favorite movie is Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (please god don't let the Tim Burton remake suck), and my favorite mathematical concept is the Fourier transform. If i was pressed about it.