January 2004 Archives
One of the books that I got for Christmas was Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History. Though I'm not a chemist and never was all that great at it, so some of it's a bit over my head, it's a great read. I don't read much these days and very little non-fiction, so it's rare for a non-fiction book to grab me this way. It's interesting to see how things could've been different without the discovery or synthesis of certain molecules and molecular compounds, what these discoveries influenced, and how the tiniest change in molecular structure (even as simple as, say, a bond being a double or triple bond instead of a single) can change a chemical from benign and useful to something incredibly lethal. Great book and I recommend it to anyone.
Bought the Concert for George CD for myself after Christmas, since I had to return something. Excellent CD. Methinks I'll be checking out more George Harrison stuff soon. Though I always loved his Beatles tunes and I liked the solo stuff of his I'd heard, I never really got into George, but there are some great covers on here that make me think I'll really like it.
Posted on January 5, 2004 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I had a pretty vivid and somewhat lucid dream last night/this morning. I really need to learn to keep a pad of paper or something next to my bed. When I woke up from it, I remembered most of it, but then I went back to sleep and I remember very little. The only thing I remember is that, for some reason, I was back in college, but the rest of my present life was the same, I think. For some reason, I was taking Russian. And I remember wondering (which was, I think, the lucid part) how I was going to manage both Russian and Japanese at the same time.
Weird.
Posted on January 6, 2004 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
That was the most pathetic snow storm. Totally missing us after they predicted one to three inches? Bah! And I was gearing up for at LEAST a delay in the morning. Ah well. Bitch bitch bitch.
Posted on January 15, 2004 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Finally got the Christmas pictures up in the gallery. Have fun looking at people you probably don't know!
Posted on January 15, 2004 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Saturday night, we went to a Tet party at Ryan and Huyen's place. Sarah and I don't tend to be extremely social, so it was nice getting out and hanging out with people, even if we didn't know most of them.
The food was delicious and we had a great time. My pictures came out O.K. I wish I had taken more of them, but I didn't want to intrude and blind people with my flash of doom. I'm glad we went. And we got to pretend that everything Huyen touched was Vietnamese.
Now we just have to grow half a brain and figure out how to drive to Eden ourselves, so we can find some of the "fruit whose name can ne'er be mentioned", since Sarah liked it so much.
Pictures from the shindig are here.
Posted on January 19, 2004 2:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
One nice used DVD find I made recently was WWII in Color. I caught part of the end of a similar show narrated by Martin Sheen on PBS when it aired, but then I forgot to look to see if it had come out on DVD. I was lucky to find this, which I've read is a much better documentary.
The bits I saw in the PBS version gave a fresh perspective on the war. Something about the black and white footage always seems a little fake. It FEELS like a movie. But this feels so much more real when you see it. I haven't watched all of it yet, but what I saw was rather graphic, as well, and I hear the battle scenes can be pretty graphic.
I'd recommend this to anyone, though maybe the faint of heart should look away during certain scenes. Especially with the glut of WWII PC and console games out these days, sometimes it's easy to forget what it was really like.
Posted on January 21, 2004 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Remember... January 23rd is National Pie Day. So... remember to eat a pie. Or somethin'.
Posted on January 21, 2004 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)