Long Overdue

So, it's been something close to eternity since I last updated this little blog-thing - not that you all didn't notice. I mean, with readership like this I'm quite frankly astounded that I only saw 32 articles on CNN about my startling and prolonged absence from the blogosphere. And lets not get into Fox. Those guys were practically having a party! Sorry to bust your bubble, Rupert. I'm back.

So, to keep this from exploding into a long, drawn-out post that nobody will want to read (even more than usual) here's the abridged version of what I probably would have posted in my absence.

Easter Weekend: Overall - Great! Family - Great! Food - Great! Vegas - Hot, but great! Excalibur hotel - Meh. Not bad, but not great. April losing her cellphone - Really not great!

Beer Bike: Not even. The badly-planned and poorly executed rain date for this Rice tradition was turned into Beer Run because of the high winds blowing the puddles all over the track. Lame. The rest of the weekend was Great, though! Saturday after the B.R. had a pool party (heh, i almost typed poop larty! just pretend i'm five.) with fantastic food, a frozen margarita machine, keg-riding, windy temperatures in the fifties, but water temps in the high eighties! a call from some friends had April and I rushing from the pool to downtown in less than an hour to catch a showing of "Wicked" at the Hobby center. Fantastic. Then another party after that made for a busy Saturday. Sunday had a BioE-sponsored trip to see the Houston Aeros minor-league hockey - also fun. All in all a fun-packed weekend.

Typical work week with too many hours spent for the amount of tangible goals accomplished. Gotta stop doing that if I ever want to graduate. Trust me. I really, really do. Really.

Last weekend saw April and I driving up to Corsicana to visit her family. Her parents were in town from their normal abode in Mexico, and I got to meet the rest of her immediate family after we went sailing Saturday morning. (A really light catamaran and 20-30 knot winds make for some fast, nerve-wracking sailing.) I finally got a motorcycle-fix, too, getting to ride Jerry's SV650 along some of the fun back roads while he was on his Valkyrie. Bowling after some tasty dinner at the Old Mexican Inn (OMI to the locals) was fun, but I've literally never bowled worse - which was embarrassing in front of everybody, especially 200+ bowler Eric. Ah well.
Haydon and Peyton were bunches of fun, too, and kept us entertained for much of Sunday. Or was it the other way around? Either way, it was a good weekend, except for April's car needing fixing, but that ended up being a pretty minor fix.

This week has some more Matlab work to be accomplished, with hopefully interesting data analysis results to follow. Thrilling, I'm sure. Pics to follow when I've got a chance.

Cowabunga, Dude!

You've gotta love remakes of your commercialized childhood playthings, especially ones that involve innocuous animals, toxic ooze, ninjas, and the requisite pinch of California surfer slang thrown in for good measure. Well, maybe you don't. There have been a bunch of bungled attempts to squeeze a buck out of my young generation's arguably misplaced sense of nostalgia already, which may have soured your desire for any more stumbling trips down memory lane, led by a myopic, asthmatic, one-legged tour guide. But TMNT was still a fun movie, if exactly what I was expecting - a visually pleasing rehashing of previous "turtle" themes and ideas for the younger, ADD, sorry, ADHD pre-teen crowd. There really isn't much worth writing about - if you were a fan of TMNT in your younger years, then you've probably already seen it and know what I'm talking about. In a similar vein, since they're really starting to pound home the advertising, I hope Transformers doesn't take the same route. With the names and budget behind it, it could be so much more, though that often doesn't mean much.