/home/todd

Twenty-five hours after leaving Corvallis, I’ve finally made it to Florida, site of IUI 2009.  Taking the red-eye in order to sleep on the flight totally and hilariously back-fired; I haven’t fallen asleep since Thursday night.  Instead, I got a haircut in Portland, then wandered about the city for a bit.  The number of shops closing up downtown is a little frightening, it looked an awful lot like Michigan did when I was back over the holidays.  One of my favorite boutiques, Same Underneath, totally cut their inventory to just a handful of relatively tired-looking styles.  Not a good sign.

I got to PDX way ahead of time and got some work done, then boarded a plane on which my legs simply couldn’t get comfortable (that has never happened before, I usually fit just fine into the tiny amount of legroom).  Four restless hours later, I watched the sun rise behind the smudged glass of ATL:

Sunrise in Atlanta

The flight down to Fort Myers was exciting, we got stuck on the runway for an hour when an engine wouldn’t start.  All was well, though, and looking down on gulf-coastal islands made me wish my camera wasn’t stowed in the overhead.  I took a cab ride from a local artist, originally from Italy, who proudly showed me a regional publication with his face on the cover: it was without a doubt the most interesting taxi ride of my life.  Now I’m at the Sundial resort, staying in someone’s condo and searching for vegetarian options from the bar menu.  Also, prepping for tomorrow’s day-long workshop, after which I really need to finish up my presentation.  I’m getting nervous now that I’m here.  But!  This condo has a screened-in porch with a lovely view:

A view from my porch

Friday I leave for IUI 2009, where I’ll be presenting a formative study about end users debugging machine-learned programs.  This will be my first conference presentation, and I’m about equal parts excited and nervous.  At the very least, I should a chance to head out with my camera in sunny Florida.  I’ve hardly even taken it out of its bag this past month, and that needs to change.

I finally finished running participants for our current research study… now to start analyzing the data.  The paper deadline is March 8th, which feels like it’s approaching rudely fast.  But hey, at least we’re still on track.  I’d been worried that bringing in participants would become a 2 or 3-week nightmare like our last study, which would have pushed things way too close to the deadline.

This weekend I bought Henri T. Cat a new scratching board, which he promptly fell in love with.  Maybe now he’ll leave my couch alone.

Also, yesterday I learned that I’ll be going to CHI 2009 in Boston!  First big conference, eep!

A few days ago I was snowed in; now I’m fogged in.  Midwest weather is bizarre.  I don’t think I ever saw this much snow in December during the 25 years I lived in Michigan, and now it’s all about to melt because the temperature has spiked to 60 degrees.  Flooding in December?  What a strange year.

This past week has completely flown by.  I put together a draft of our next research experiment, finished off my holiday shopping, and spent an evening building a collection of family photos to fill a cute little frame my sister found for my grandma.  I’ve met up with Leslie and her sisters and gone out with Colleen and Jon a couple of times, but mostly I’ve stayed home and visited with family.  Christmas was a day-long extravaganza that started with just the immediate family, then migrated to my Aunt’s house to see my dad’s side of the family, and ended with 30+ of my mom’s relatives coming over for dessert and drinks.  I think the photos speak for themselves:

Small

Medium

Huge

I can’t remember the last time we had the whole family together like that… with so many cousins, it seems there’s always at least someone missing (and aside from being home for a couple of weeks each December, for the last couple of years that person has been me).

So now I’m realizing that I leave in less than 48 hours, and sort of wishing that I was staying longer.  There’s no special someone I want to rush back for this year, and visiting with family has been pretty relaxing.  I’m still having plenty of teary moments when something around here reminds of when Twinkle was staying with us, but they’re finally starting to ebb.  Thankfully I didn’t take her to the nearest coffee shop, so I’ve had the ability to retreat there when being around the house has me a little too depressingly nostalgic.  Yesterday I hid out there for a few hours and tore through a book on audio engineering–at least when I get back, I’ll have some fun new recording projects to try in my home studio.

I was kind of hoping to have a chance to try snowboarding with my little brother Kyle while I was home, but I had research to work on when I first got back, and now the weather has turned all warm.  At the very least, I got to take some cool photos of him on a couple of homemade jumps in our backyard.

Kyle pulling a 180

Amazing how time flies when you’re traveling.  Suddenly it’s Friday, yet part of my head is still back on Sunday-time, getting excited for the week nearly over.  In fairness, it was a pretty awesome week (sort of).  After making up my mind to ask a severely cute barista on a date (but not now, I’ll do it later!), I went to run some errands, sort of hoping to bump into her at the Co-Op (which has happened before).  So I’m nearly done with my shopping, trying to pick out a case of beer, when all of a sudden there’s her familiar voice… but it’s asking if she can help me find anything, sir, and I do a double-take before realizing it’s really her.  Chalk one up for two sort of awkward senses of humor.  After some babbling on my part, I must have eventually gotten English words out in the right order, because she seemed excited at the prospect of dinner the next night.

So we went out for drinks and some dinner and chatted for a few hours.  I was pretty shocked by how closely our personalities seemed to match, my thoughts constantly oscillating between that and things like, “OMG her smile is so cute!”… so yeah.  It seemed to go well, and I was in a pretty good mood.

The next night the two of us went to a party my friends were hosting.  She seemed a bit more distant this time, though it may have been the overwhelming numbers of new people… I usually get pretty shy in that sort of situation, too.  Less ambiguous was when, on the ride home, she said that she wasn’t really looking a relationship at this point in her life.  Fair enough (and possibly open to interpretation, but I think it was her way of saying she wasn’t interested).  We hugged and parted ways for a couple of weeks (I flew back to Detroit the next morning), but I’m still hoping to hang out with her some more (and maybe even meet her friends!) when I get back to town.

Wednesday was a busy day of shuffling from Corvallis to Portland to Minneapolis to Detroit to Rochester Hills, and combined with the time-loss flying from the west to east coast, was over before I even knew what was happening.  At least I scored a fantastic martini to pass the time in MSP.

And today… today has been weird.  The last time I was home, I was introducing it all to Twinkle.  I’m still catching myself looking around for her when I head upstairs, or wondering if she’d like a cup of tea, too.  I’d finally gotten over this in Corvallis; I didn’t realize I’d have to do it all  again in Detroit.  On the upside, my mom took me and Kyle shopping for the evening and I snagged a fabulous old-school Detroit Tigers t-shirt and some new Doc Martins.  Still searching for that ever-elusive pea-coat (the one that will actually fit me) but there’s plenty more time to continue that adventure over the next week and a half…

I just made an inquiry with STA Travel, asking if there’s any affordable way to get from PDX or a nearby airport to Melbourne, Australia anytime in January. Hopefully they’ll have good news for me.

After much nudging from Twinkle, I finally applied for a passport last week.  The post office said to expect it in 6 weeks, but it arrived today.  The photo’s pretty horrid, but not as bad as one of my friend’s–his passport makes him look like Mr. Potato head.  So hurray!  I’m trying to plan a trip to Melbourne to visit Twinkle sometime in January.  Airfare isn’t nearly as bad after the holidays are over, though I’d dearly like to see her for New Years.  In the meantime, I’m putting the finishing touches on a care package of essentials she can’t seem to find there, including good coffee and Q-tips.  Go figure.

Last night I tried my hand at cooking Masoor Dal.  I couldn’t find any fresh Coriander so I used the dried spice instead, and my knowledge regarding mangoes seems woefully inadequate–maybe I just got the wrong variety, but the flavor didn’t work in the dish at all.  It was still edible, but nothing special.  I’ll have to try it again after hitting the Indian grocer on 9th.  This was my first try cooking with ghee, however, and that was amazing… Twinkle’s a big fan of buttery richness in her food, and I think she’ll really like replacing the butter with ghee for added richness in some dishes.  Speaking of, I snagged a lovely Indian cookbook at the bookstore for $3, Rice, Spice, and All Things Nice.  I think it’s time to go look through it for dinner ideas!