November was a sparse time for posting. Probably due to the fact that trips to Philadelphia and Chicago bookended the month, and that my research is continually expanding and taking up more and more of my time. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Quite a good thing, actually. Anyway ...

My time in Chicago at the RSNA was pleasant. Not for academic reasons ... the meeting is a huge spectacle of business and networking, with some science sprinkled on here and there. But it did give me a chance to meet some new people and socialize with ones i already knew. On Sunday night my old friend Bill W braved the traffic and the labrynthine layout of McCormick Place to fetch me and bring me to his house in Aurora. His wife Elizabeth made us a nice ravioli dinner, and we reminisced while watching the Chelsea/Manchester United match from earlier that day. A 1-1 draw for the Blues, and a great evening with two good friends. And their very friendly dog Harry, a giant Airedale.

As usual, i watched a lot of Law and Order and the History Channel during my time on the road. I've also found that perusing Wikipedia is a fantastic way to kill an hour or four. It goes particularly well with the aforementioned History Channel. I watched a documentary on Hannibal, and pulled out my laptop to check Wiki for further info, and wound up reading about the Roman emperors, Caligula, and bizarre 70's shock films.

I returned from Chicago last Wednesday, a day after i attended the Stanford Radiology reception at the amphitheater at Millenium Park. I was worried about arriving at the reception along and being a wallflower for the evening, but luckily i ran into Radiation Oncology colleague Kate immediately upon entering the venue, and soon was chatting happily with a bunch of MIPS and Radiology chums. At the close of the reception, my Atlanta partner-in-crime Sandip and i walked up to the Hyatt Regency to pick up a couple of suitcases from a friend of our MIPS colleague Jianghong, for delivery back to the Farm. A bit shady ... absolutely. As Sandip put it, an opportunity to finally give an interesting answer to the airport security question, "Did you pack these bags yourself and have they been in your possession since then?" Too bad they don't ask that anymore. Sandip returned to his hotel to finish off his talk for the next morning, but i was tabbed by our friend and Nuclear Medicine resident Andrei to meet him at a blues bar, for the expressed purpose of keeping him company in the midst of his other companions, all married women. I got to Buddy Guy's Legends at 11:30pm, and had a few drinks with the Stanford crowd while watching a decent group jam. I'm not a huge fan of the blues, but somehow when you're in Chicago, it's after midnight, and you're on your god-knows-what drink, it sounds perfect.

My return flight was a much better experience than the way out, thanks to a plane that was only a third full. I was worried when thunderstorms woke me up Wednesday morning, but luckily the weather didn't delay my flight. I got out of the windy city just in time, as Thursday temperatures dropped 30 degrees. Egad. I wandered through the airport bookstore to find some reading material, and was intrigued by Chuck Klosterman's Fargo Rock City, a chronicle of the pop culture guru's time growing up in rural North Dakota, idolizing Mötley Crüe and Poison. It's an interesting read, although Klosterman has a few habits that are particularly annoying. One is equating commercial success with importance, or in other words claiming that band X is better than Y because they sold more records. Certainly that's true in terms of society, but i'm more interested in personal importance. If someone loves a band and their music, they don't care whether they're the only one that bought the record or if everyone in the country has a copy. Well, that might not be entirely true (and one could argue preferences towards either situation), but it remains insulting for one to hear that their passion is somehow inferior or less valid. I got through about half of it before i turned towards writing a paper on my laptop.

I had a scant two days to enjoy Redwood City, home, and the Tara dog before V and i hopped in the Jetta to drive down to LA. We made it out of the house on Friday at 3:30pm, and took the poor doggie over to her weekend home at the Mission San Jose Animal Hospital. We then took off down the 880 to the 101, naturally running smack into rush hour San Jose traffic. It didn't slow us more than a half hour thankfully, and we made it to Kevin's apartment in Santa Monica around 10pm. Fetching him and subsequently his girlfriend Amy, we met up with the Matthew/Dionne/Michelle/Sean crowd at the 10th anniversary of longstanding britpop club Cafe Blue. On our drive down, V had expressed dismay that i never really cut loose with her, citing as examples my doing shots with Rudha in Boston but never with her. After a few beers at the club, i made the command decision to right this wrong and bought kamikaze shots for V, Kevin, Amy, and myself. We downed those, although V couldn't make it through hers so i wound up with another half a shot. Suddenly i was the life of the party, lighting up the dance floor. I wasn't taken with Cafe Blue, as i recall repeatedly mentioning how suddenly Popscene was totally genius to me. We stuck around to the end of the evening, suffering through the club's abysmal audio system. I mean, what self-respecting britpop club cuts off Pulp's "Common People"? We then drunkenly decided that late-night food was in order, and headed over to Benito's for burritos. I got some carnitas, but arriving back at Kevin's found i was fighting nausea and didn't wind up consuming it. Everyone else told me it was fabulous, however. Before we all passed out, we got in an hour or so of Guitar Hero II as well as Kevin's new acquisition Sing Star, a microphone-wielding karaoke game for the PS2 featuring an impressive collection of indie hits including Bloc Party, the Killers, and (eek) Scissor Sisters. The highlight of the wee morning was that none of us knew the actual melody to Elton John's "Rocket Man", and wound up performing various renditions of the William Shatner/Stewie Griffin version.

Passing out on Kev's couch at 4:30am, i managed three hours sleep before nausea forced me to the bathroom. I managed to quell my hangover and get a few more zzz's, after which our crew walked over to Hurry Curry for what Kevin billed as a fairly effective hangover remedy. It worked admirably, but unfortunately by this time my sinuses were well on their way to full obstruction. We bid farewell to K&A so we could rendez-vous at Matthew and Dionne's, and take long-overdue showers. In celebration of Matt's birthday, we then drove back to Santa Monica for dinner at Bubba Gump's. By this time my nose was mostly for show, and i suffered through dinner with a reduced appetite. It seems they don't serve my previous Gump favorite of lemon pasta and shrimp anymore, and the scampi wasn't a good substitute. Our party returned to M&D's place for some post-dinner revelry, including ... dum da dum dum ... the 2006 incarnation of the SMFA Cup.

it's raining outside, i haven't seen it rain so much
i can't ride my bike, wish the sun would shine a while
let's play for a while, can i play your record player?
let's call ourselves by indian names
let's build a tree fort in the den

Truth be told, Matthew is clearly my superior in this department now. He whooped my ass twice during our regular season (and rightfully did some serious celebrating in the process), and stomped his way into the playoffs, drawing only once to surprise defensive stalwart Gary. At the close of the season, the results were:

		OVERALL							HOME						AWAY
		P	W	L	D	F	A		W	L	D	F	A		W	L	D	F	A		Pts		GD
Middlesbrough		6	5	0	1	14	3		2	0	1	5	0		3	0	0	9	3		16		11
Chelsea		6	2	2	2	7	8		1	1	1	3	5		1	1	1	4	3		8		-1
Manchester United		6	1	3	2	1	5		0	2	1	0	3		1	1	1	1	2		5		-4
Manchester City		6	0	3	3	0	6		0	3	0	0	6		0	0	3	0	0		3		-6

That got us into the knockout portion of the competition, which unfolded as follows ...

Middlesbrough (1)	6						1	Chelsea (2)
Aiyegbeni (2) Mendieta Downing Viduka (2)		Middlesbrough (1)	0		1	Chelsea (2)	Robben
Manchester City (4)	2				Shevchenko		0	Manchester United (3)
Barton Corradi

Despite surrending five goals in our first encounter and another two in the second, i somehow managed to thwart Matthew's attack in the 4:30am final and emerged with the trophy after a 1-nil win. It should be noted that the goal i scored was due to a keeper miscue by Matthew, passing straight back to a lingering Shevchenko and allowing him the easy strike, as opposed to any offensive cleverness on my part. We played our customary north-vs-south 2-on-2 at 4:45am, with each team using the US squad. And thanks to the notable dearth of talent in these squads, we went to penalties before Gary and i fell to Sean and Matthew. I climbed into the guest bed with Veronica around 5am ... my bedtime clearly not reflecting my advancing cold.

I had ordered custom t-shirts a week before the tourney, designing the logo at left in Photoshop (borrowing liberally from the Premiership logo) and making garments for each competitor with their team logo and record in each competition on the back. While originally scheduled for delivery on the Friday we left, inclement weather in the midwest delayed them until after the weekend, and the event. I received them last night and they look pretty nice, so now i'll have to send them on.

Memories of the Cup are peppered by the Guitar Hero and Sing Star forays being conducted on the TV next to the wall where Matthew projected the Xbox 360 and Winning Eleven. Veronica, Michelle, Danny, and even SMFA competitor Gary sang away, while Veronica spent some time unlocking a bunch of the GH2 songs. While the third place match between Sean and Gary was going on i played a bit of GH2 on the hard difficulty, tackling the fiendish "Who Was In My Room Last Night?" by the Butthole Surfers as well as Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name", which started off quite manageable then got insane during the solo. Perhaps the finger exercise got me warmed up for the SMFA final. I also must note that because of my deteriorating health and my experiences the previous night, i stuck to tea rather than beer that evening, a factor that may have also given me an advantage. I'll post the scoring and card statistics shortly.

I slept until almost 1pm on Sunday, catching up on my rest after two consecutive late late nights and trying to quell the advance of my illness. It worked somewhat, and i stayed coherent enough to enjoy a late afternoon visit to Veronica's aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandmother, followed by the customary six hour drive back north. Portions of the drive were spent futilely trying to remember the name of that Madonna album, the one with "Cherish", "Express Yourself", and "Like a Prayer". Turns out it's Like a Prayer. Go figure.

Somehow i managed to get a full day of work in on Monday, including the 5pm MIPS seminar and the following dinner at Left Bank. Veronica had retrieved the overjoyed Tara dog from the kennel that morning, and she was doing her usual exhausted but content routine on her bed when i came home. She seems excited and worn out all at once when she sees us again after an absence. Like she can finally relax once more. Perhaps i'm like that a bit.