We got an offer today on our condo. It's just a verbal right now, but we verbally accepted it! That's really exciting. Now comes the waiting for written offers, and the messy part of going through inspections, lots of paperwork, etc. But anyway we're comforted to know that someone likes the hard work we've done for the past 2 years...

That's right, next week we'll officially be Colorado Residents. We have a new address, phone, and outlook.

Stitch has always enjoyed chasing squirrels (a.k.a. skweeerels) and since moving to the 303 he's taken an interest in the rabbits that live in the dry-stacked stone walls around my temporary housing complex. Well, it's now spring, which means bunnies begatting bunnies. Yesterday he was chasing after one of the little guys (maybe half-grown) and another one made a bad choice and turned right at him. Well he got it! I was so shocked that it took me a second to pull him off, and when he hit the ground he got it again. I pulled him back again and the bunny recovered enough to lunge for the wall and was gone. If Stitch hadn't been so shocked at actually catching one, I'm sure we'd have had a dead bunny. But he walked around so proudly for the rest of the evening.. What a stud.

Warm beer is infinitely colder than no beer.
     ~ unknown

Sunken-eyed girl on Delancy Street
Bulletproof glass in the KFC
So, keep the man safe in his paper hat
Keep the wrong hands off the biscuit fortune
     ~ Mike Daughty

Hello dear friends. I've been neglecting you. Severely. My apologies but it's been an interesting few months. And I do say interesting in a makes-me-need-to-pull-my-hair-out kind of way. Oh yes...

We just got back from a sweet vacation though and I couldn't think of a better way to christen my newfound relaxation than by staying up late to surf and blog. Haven't done that in a while. Our friend #1 Fan has a new blog. She writes "I'm your biggest fan" letters to various entities. Check it out.

I'll definitely be writing up a lengthy post on our trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness when i get around to it. Which may mean over Christmas vacation. Who knows? Until then, all my love...

226 days. That's how long it's been since I paid this blog any attention. It's well past feeling neglected now.

What's happened in the past 7+ months? Well, we bought a condo, moved in, visited Portland, fixed the condo up, visited Tennessee, enjoyed the new year, did some good things at work, and are about to leave on a ski trip to Breck.

I put a few photos from a trip to New Braunfels up at: picasaweb.google.com/danetchristensen. You'll see the fire pit we've been working on, cooking dinner over the open flame, and Stitch and I kayaking.

Gotta get ready for the Super Bowl now. Will post again soon.

It's been busy. I'll post some updates soon... But until then, enjoy this joke.

A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the shepherd, "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?" The shepherd looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answers, "Sure. Why not?" The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his AT&T cell phone, surfs to a NASA page on the internet, where he call up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he the feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives a mail on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex formulas. He uploads all of this data via an emailon his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-colour, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the shepherd and says, "You have exactly 1586 sheep." "That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my sheep." Says the shepherd. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then the shepherd says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?" The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?" "You're an Engineer with Schlumberger." says the shepherd. "Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?" "No guessing required." answered the shepherd. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew; to a question I never asked; and you don't know crap about my business... now give me back my dog."

"The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it."- William James
"Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind."- Marston Bates
"The basis of optimism is sheer terror."- Oscar Wilde
"Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow."- Jeff Valdez
These quotes appeared in that order on my personalized Google homepage today. Somehow they seemed to reaffirm my decision to look for work instead of pursuing academia. Read into them your own meaning if you like...

Just ran across this great idea - the fib, an all-American response to the sonnet and haiku. Like those others, it's easy to learn but may take a lifetime to master... So here goes my first try:

Fib
is
poem.
Very Math.
Engineers play too.
Linguistics unusual forte.

"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."- Marilyn Manson

So I can't imagine anything as un-l33t as Google Page Creator. Which is why it's alright in my book. I signed up to test it out about 6 weeks ago, and it's finally open for testing and page-creation. (see here) In about 5 or 6 minutes, with no HTML editing or other web design knowledge necessary, I made a super-simple webpage. This will not catch on with the masses until they add in a lot more versatility. Like being able to drag sections around (like with their personalized homepages) and adding in RSS, photo album, and blogging features. Still, for a novice (MOM) who might be interested in creating a web page, this is a very simple & unscary way to get started.

PS - It's not open to "the public" right now but will be soon enough. Check back later.

This morning I was browsing around on MySpace and ran across the profile of an old acquaintance - JJ Mitchell, a family friend a few years older than me. He always seemed to me like the cool, friendly, good-looking guy I aspired to be. Sometime when I was in college, I heard that he had been in a motorcycle accident that left him in a brief coma. When he came out of it he had complete amnesia (if I recall correctly). Now he looks completely normal, happy, and cool again. But I wonder if I could add him as my MySpace "friend" - would he recognize my name? Is he anything like the guy I knew in the late 80's and early 90's? Is he still a good breakdancer and does he still show off by flexing his biceps at random times? In short, what identity does he share with his old personality?

How would you deal with waking up as a 20-year-old who doesn't know how to talk, who your parents are, or even what the idea of "parent" entails... Encountering JJ's site made me want to see a documentary profiled on NPR a few weeks back - Unknown White Male. A guy wakes up with no identification and no memory - total retrograde amnesia. Imagine learning what foods taste like as an adult, diving into the ocean without knowing if you can swim, meeting old girlfriends. I wonder how I would be different.

Wow, a month has gone by. It's interesting how life happens. One day you're bored in high school, and the next you're working for thousands of dollars an hour, and you don't know how you got there. Okay not thousands. But tens at least...

So yesterday I went home ill with a little stomach bug, and I was having all these hallucinations and such - deep thoughts that I wanted to write about here. But suddenly I completely forgot what I was thinking about. Don't you hate that? Brain farts suck. So instead of insightful poigniancy, you get to hear me rambling about brain farts.

Speaking of farts - Stitch has been developing some severe gas over the past few months. I think it's a new hobby of his. Making smelly wind. Come to think of it, this is probably why he's been so smelly: He has also begun to eat poop. I can't think of anything more disgusting, but his not-so-keen sense of smell is tuned in to the neighbor-dogs' doodie. We now call him our little bottom feeder.

It's my first weekend as a working stiff. The week was great - very busy with more than enough interesting work for me to tackle. I've learned a lot so far, and feel like it's going to be a good fit. On Friday morning, though I woke up with whiplash-like symptoms. I don't know how I got them - probably just slept with my head turned around 180° or something. It's been killing me all weekend, hopefully it'll settle down soon.

In a rush of excitement and energy, I have been applying to jobs far and wide in the past month. It's been a strange process since most of the companies have online application systems, through which I have found it difficult to be considered. Of course, I am an excellent candidate and it only took a few interviews to find an amazing offer from my soon-to-be new employer, Atec. In addition to more typical MechE work, I will spend part of my time finding new opportunities in micro/nano for the company to explore. Not what I expected since I am young and inexperienced, but it's a challenge that thrills me.

I've been watching this fantastic CBS show, Love Monkey. I'm not sure what it is - Tom Cavanagh's brilliance, the ladies' good looks, the musicality, or the overall poignancy. But something is just amazing about it. Tom was great in Ed but better here. "Wayne," or Teddy Geiger, pulls all the stops out too - the only problem is that he seems too similar to John Mayer, stylistically, musically, and particularly in his appearance. Too bad for him, he's talented.

Also in my last few days of "freedom" I've been doing a bit of woodwork. I've never built tables before but it's a little trickier than I expected. 2 tables in 4 days. Hmm.

I was watching this Bruce Lee documentary the other day, and something he said struck me.

"Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend."

An interesting thought on life...

Here's a brief update on what's been happening since i wrote last, over a month ago. I went to Berkeley to present and submit my dissertation. Everything went well, particularly because Sarah surprised me by flying out there to attend my presentation! I was getting set up and here she comes, just walking down the hall with my mom. We spent the day together, and it was really nice to have the support of my family. My dad was funny the next day when he showed me off to all of his work friends. So now I'm Dr. Dane. woo!

Sarah and I took Stitck to NM for the holidays, staying with my parents. We got to see pretty much everyone, including Sarah's immediate family since they had rented a cabin at Angelfire. We skiied for half a day, but only 3 runs were open with man-made snow since the real stuff stayed farther north. My uncle recently got engaged, and we caught him for dinner before he flew to PA to spend time with his fiancee. Visiting Santa Fe is always nice at Christmas time, but mostly we enjoyed seeing all of our family.

Returning to H-town for New Year's, we said arevoir to Mel, the plastic surgeon who lived with us for the past few months. He returned to New Orleans to complete his fellowship back at Tulane. New Year's eve was spent at a crazy and fun party in downtown. There was an open bar (top shelf!) and live band. And go-go dancers too! About 25 of our friends all attended so it got a little crazy, but never too wild. (yeah, too bad...)

A mere 3 days later, Sarah was at the hospital for surgery rotations in the county hospital's emergency room. Hasn't killed her yet, though last night was the first night shift of the many she will see. I'm back on the job hunt. Where that will take me, I know not yet. But it's an exciting world of possiblities. If only I could find a cup or bottle to "be water." Hopefully it's not a urinal.