Let's see...
Saturdays have been interesting. The Saturday before last I was a scorer for a mud volleyball tournament for an all-girls' dorm. An RA I know in Navs invited JT and I to volunteer, and we were much obliged ;-) There was even a good amount of mud wrestling :-P
This past Saturday I went with some Navs to do "hawking" at the football game. This consists of selling concessions in the stands like at any major sporting event, except that this is non-profit(except for tips ^_^). A portion of the proceeds of whatever we sell go to the Navigators, so it's good work, free admission to the game(UofI lost 61-7) and we make some money for our group. Navs also sponsored free dinner for everyone who went hawking. Twas funness.
Meow.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Indianapolis Zoo
The Indianapolis Zoo is cool. Rachel visited Indianapolis with Kathy and Greg last weekend and I decided to make the 2 hour drive to meet them, on very short notice. I even blew off a meeting for a class to go see her :-) Anyway, it wasn't an important meeting, and there was no reason for me specifically to be there.
There was a Polar Bear that did backflips all day cuz it was bored. We ate at the spaghetti factory. All was fun, and this coming weekend Rachel will visit me here in IL :-)
JT(mostly) and I just beat Zork: Grand Inquisitor today. It's an older game that I've kept because it's very entertaining and I could never beat it! But JT used a walkthrough when he got significantly stuck and we got through it in good time :-) Very nice ending and I'm glad I've finally seen it all.
Went to Stratford Park Bible Church this Sunday. The communion service at 9 was quite cool. No pastor or anything, just a lady at the organ and anyone can stand up and tell something God's spoken to them or they can suggest a song that everyone should sing. We also went to the Christian Education class afterwards, which had good interaction and so was interesting.
Good day ^_^ God will save the day, as always!
There was a Polar Bear that did backflips all day cuz it was bored. We ate at the spaghetti factory. All was fun, and this coming weekend Rachel will visit me here in IL :-)
JT(mostly) and I just beat Zork: Grand Inquisitor today. It's an older game that I've kept because it's very entertaining and I could never beat it! But JT used a walkthrough when he got significantly stuck and we got through it in good time :-) Very nice ending and I'm glad I've finally seen it all.
Went to Stratford Park Bible Church this Sunday. The communion service at 9 was quite cool. No pastor or anything, just a lady at the organ and anyone can stand up and tell something God's spoken to them or they can suggest a song that everyone should sing. We also went to the Christian Education class afterwards, which had good interaction and so was interesting.
Good day ^_^ God will save the day, as always!
Monday, September 05, 2005
A Cheese Festival!
For our fun activity on Labor Day, JT and I went to the Arthur, IL Cheese Festival. It was a good time spent with a good friend.
Arthur, IL is home to what seems like about half amish people, and is thus self-titled the home of the Amish. In order to get to downtown Arthur, you have to drive through miles and miles of corn and soybean fields. This made me a bit uncomfortable because I'm so not used to driving through such an expanse of farmland. There are plenty of farms in Maryland, but you couldn't find an area like there is in Central Illinois.
The cheese festival was comprised of a bunch of small tents lining the downtown area of Arthur, and the main source of the cheese was two bakery-type places, specializing in fresh cheese and bread and dessert pastries. They looked verrry good. We walked by all the tents, looking at the mostly-not-cheese vendors. In fact, we should've brought along a couple of girls because they would better appreciate a lot of the decorative arts and crafts/jewelry being sold by most of the people. There were also the standard expensive food vendors. However, there was a "cheese tent" in which a few people were handing out two large slices of excellent cheddar cheese on a sesame seed flatbread.
We chose to eat at a quaint restaurant called The Dutch Oven. I got a fried cod fish sandwich which fried mushrooms, and JT got a tenderloin sandwich with fries. The food was alright, although not overly impressive, just like the restaurant. But the people were friendly, and the prices were right, so it was nice.
We ended up buying some smoked gouda and some muenster(my favorite) after sampling a variety of cheeses available for sale. So we had a novel experience today and we have some good cheese to eat(while it lasts).
>>>I hope I can get all my work done :-P
Arthur, IL is home to what seems like about half amish people, and is thus self-titled the home of the Amish. In order to get to downtown Arthur, you have to drive through miles and miles of corn and soybean fields. This made me a bit uncomfortable because I'm so not used to driving through such an expanse of farmland. There are plenty of farms in Maryland, but you couldn't find an area like there is in Central Illinois.
The cheese festival was comprised of a bunch of small tents lining the downtown area of Arthur, and the main source of the cheese was two bakery-type places, specializing in fresh cheese and bread and dessert pastries. They looked verrry good. We walked by all the tents, looking at the mostly-not-cheese vendors. In fact, we should've brought along a couple of girls because they would better appreciate a lot of the decorative arts and crafts/jewelry being sold by most of the people. There were also the standard expensive food vendors. However, there was a "cheese tent" in which a few people were handing out two large slices of excellent cheddar cheese on a sesame seed flatbread.
We chose to eat at a quaint restaurant called The Dutch Oven. I got a fried cod fish sandwich which fried mushrooms, and JT got a tenderloin sandwich with fries. The food was alright, although not overly impressive, just like the restaurant. But the people were friendly, and the prices were right, so it was nice.
We ended up buying some smoked gouda and some muenster(my favorite) after sampling a variety of cheeses available for sale. So we had a novel experience today and we have some good cheese to eat(while it lasts).
>>>I hope I can get all my work done :-P
Monday, August 29, 2005
Grad School, Year 2
So starts another year of school at University of Illinois. Here are my classes this semester:
Computational Linguistics
Pragmatics
Elementary Japanese 1
Now, I don't know about you, but this is exactly what I want in a grad school semester. The first is a programming class with a linguistics bent(morphology learning is this semester's topic). The second is a philosophical/theoretical linguistics course. The third is a language course. And guess what, they all count toward my major! Amazing. Really. This is what I came to grad school for :-)
Rachel will be heading to Cincinnati on Sept 1st. She is very excited about where she'll be living and starting at a new school, but she is very sad about leaving all of her friends in Maryland.
I'm enjoying living with JT and Chris, my new roommates and good friends from the past year at U of I. We have pretty similar interests, so it's very cool to live with them.
There is a new guy who joined Navs this year(a freshman) who has a blackbelt in Ryu-Kyu Kempo, which is a style I'm interested in studying. It's what the founder of Shotokan studied before he created Shotokan, supposedly. Ryu-Kyu Kempo has a big emphasis on using ki(chi) to win battles and natural range of motion techniques. We will have our first session together tomorrow.
Computational Linguistics
Pragmatics
Elementary Japanese 1
Now, I don't know about you, but this is exactly what I want in a grad school semester. The first is a programming class with a linguistics bent(morphology learning is this semester's topic). The second is a philosophical/theoretical linguistics course. The third is a language course. And guess what, they all count toward my major! Amazing. Really. This is what I came to grad school for :-)
Rachel will be heading to Cincinnati on Sept 1st. She is very excited about where she'll be living and starting at a new school, but she is very sad about leaving all of her friends in Maryland.
I'm enjoying living with JT and Chris, my new roommates and good friends from the past year at U of I. We have pretty similar interests, so it's very cool to live with them.
There is a new guy who joined Navs this year(a freshman) who has a blackbelt in Ryu-Kyu Kempo, which is a style I'm interested in studying. It's what the founder of Shotokan studied before he created Shotokan, supposedly. Ryu-Kyu Kempo has a big emphasis on using ki(chi) to win battles and natural range of motion techniques. We will have our first session together tomorrow.
Friday, August 05, 2005
World Renown For Romance
My favorite album, which has yet been out of print as long as I've known about it, has just been re-released by the indie label it was originally released under :-)
It's called World Renown For Romance by Denison Marrs.
Needless to say, I've bought the album already. You should too. I'll be friends with you. All your worries will disappear. Really. ^_^
An interesting happening at my undergrad school UMD recently. It's safe to say this would never happen at U of Illinois :-P UMD is right outside of Washington, DC, in one of the highest crime counties(Prince George's Count) in the country(especially in terms of car thefts, more than the entire state of Virginia, supposedly).
It's called World Renown For Romance by Denison Marrs.
Needless to say, I've bought the album already. You should too. I'll be friends with you. All your worries will disappear. Really. ^_^
An interesting happening at my undergrad school UMD recently. It's safe to say this would never happen at U of Illinois :-P UMD is right outside of Washington, DC, in one of the highest crime counties(Prince George's Count) in the country(especially in terms of car thefts, more than the entire state of Virginia, supposedly).
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Cirque du Soleil
Tonight Rachel and I went to see Cirque du Soleil's Varekai show. This was in celebration of our one year anniversary of being together ^_^ I have always wanted to see a Cirque du Soleil show and now we've seen one together! The show was magnificent and fascinating. It was a mix of acrobats, musicians, and comedic performers, all dressed in the finest costumes of their fantasial world. There were many animal-creatures wandering around, odd people making mischief and being part of the story, and a romance. It is a unique circus, with no animals, but with such human athletic and artistic genius. There is live music accompaniment(watched a bagpipe player clown walk past us). If you have appreciation of surreal fantasy art in the form of acrobatics, dance, and theatrics, you must go see this show.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Fatburger
Tonight Matt and I went to Fatburger which is a burger joint from CA. I had been craving a Fatburger for a long time ever since I had one at ASU with Toschi last year. So Matt and I took a drive 25 miles northwest to the town of Rockaway. It was a pretty good town with somewhat historic-looking houses but a generally good atmosphere(as much as you could feel one at 10PM.
So why is Fatburger different from other fast food places? Well, the burgers take longer to cook, so I guess it's not quite as fast as fast can be. Secondly they serve your food to you and the servers are always looking to do things for you, like get you more ketchup for your skinny fries. Yes, skinny fries, as opposed to fat fries, which they also have. Matt and I both got a double Fatburger with cheese and pickle, along with skinny fries and a medium(32 oz.) drink. At less than $20 for the whole thing, it's more expensive than a fast food restaurant, but less so than a more conventional restaurant. Fatburger also claims to use really lean beef which is different, and I appreciate that. Supposedly the 'fat' in their name refers to the size of the burger itself and not how you'll look after eating one of their tasty burgers. They also have many signs all around the restaurant making jokes deriding two main groups: conventional fast food restaurants and vegetarians.
Anyway, it's a fun place and I recommend it to anyone who likes burgers but wants better quality :-)
So why is Fatburger different from other fast food places? Well, the burgers take longer to cook, so I guess it's not quite as fast as fast can be. Secondly they serve your food to you and the servers are always looking to do things for you, like get you more ketchup for your skinny fries. Yes, skinny fries, as opposed to fat fries, which they also have. Matt and I both got a double Fatburger with cheese and pickle, along with skinny fries and a medium(32 oz.) drink. At less than $20 for the whole thing, it's more expensive than a fast food restaurant, but less so than a more conventional restaurant. Fatburger also claims to use really lean beef which is different, and I appreciate that. Supposedly the 'fat' in their name refers to the size of the burger itself and not how you'll look after eating one of their tasty burgers. They also have many signs all around the restaurant making jokes deriding two main groups: conventional fast food restaurants and vegetarians.
Anyway, it's a fun place and I recommend it to anyone who likes burgers but wants better quality :-)
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