Okay so this is going to reveal me to be an even bigger dork than previously thought, but I find this news seriously exciting:

Scientists photograph giant squid

Thanks to my sister for sending that to me. Next is the Loch Ness Monster!

Edit: Looks like Architeuthis has a big brother: the colossal squid. COOL!

Friday night Rahul, Yar, and Maureen came over to my apartment to hang out. Chillax, if you will. First I had the distinct pleasure of watching the tape of a very small and very cute young Yar win Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Do it Rockapella!! Afterwards, we watched The Neverending Story, the latest in our series of 80s movies that somehow passed Yar by. I enjoyed it despite the constant running commentary from Yar and Rahul.

Saturday morning I had a good Dish run with Buddy, Florence, and May Ling, followed by lunch at the Creamery. That night was a party at Matt's place.

Sunday evening I playtested Bang 12, which was fun, but I revealed myself as mostly useless in solving the puzzles. But I ate Skittles like a pro.

I've been rockclimbing pretty regularly with peeps from work, so I bought my own shoes and harness last week. It's a lot of fun, but my arms are pretty dead today.

The other exciting occurance of last week is that I finally broke down and got an iPod. It's a black 4GB iPod Nano (review coming later). On the back I had engraved:

This has elicited mostly stunned "Really??" reactions from people, which I didn't expect. I'm not sure why people find it so surprising that I actually got that engraved, but maybe that's because I live inside my head, and have learned to know what to expect.

I've been listening to a lot of NPR podcasts on my iPod, and I've enjoyed them a lot, but I've also come to understand why people might hate NPR. It's kind of amazing how pretentious one can sound just reading the day's news.

Finally: The other day I glanced at the movie poster for 50 Cent's new movie Get Rich or Die Tryin' on the Apple movie trailers website, but I misread the title as "Getrich Dietrin" and thought it was some new indie German flick.

I was watching the Ozomatli: Live at the Fillmore DVD last night, which was filmed during the concert I attended last year. Most of the footage was of the band, but at the end when they went out to the crowd, hey lookee! It's me!

This morning as I was getting ready to take Enzo on his walk, I saw that a ginormous spider had built an equally ginormous web inside my apartment. After freaking out and pacing around for a couple minutes (it was far too big to squish), I did the only thing I could think of: I caught it. After snapping a couple pictures of it, I brought it outside, where it eventually crawled away to freedom.

And that, Mr. Manager, is why I was late to work this morning.

Last night I finally went through an American rite of passage -- my first baseball game! Matt, Peter, Cheryl and I saw the Giants get completely creamed by the Dodgers. As you can see from this picture, we had a really good view despite being out in the bleachers. I somewhat arbitrarily chose #39, Todd Linden as my favorite player, after yelling "Go #39! (Who's #39?)". He's a switch-hitter (hee hee!) outfielder, and he did make a nice diving catch last night. Besides watching the game, I participated in America's other pastime: overeating. I had a polish sausage, garlic fries (which I'm pretty sure I can still taste), nachos, and cotton candy. I had a lot of fun at the game, despite everyone's assurances that I would be bored. Next up, Peter wants to take us to a pro football game. Whee!

So I have a pretty poor memory, and as a result, I forgot to post about a couple things over the past couple weeks.

First:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DOMI!

Domi is now a full quarter-century old! Your walker is in the mail.

Second, I forgot to mention that on the 1st May Ling, Walter, Buddy, Jess, Babs and I went to see Wicked in San Francisco and I really liked it. The music was not super-memorable, but the story was fantastic, and the singers were amazing.

On a related note, who do you suppose invented the practice of slowing raising one's arms on the last note of a song in a musical? I think we should try doing that in normal speech. It would certainly make meetings at work more interesting.

Another Labor Day long weekend come and gone. (It was Labor Day, right? For some reason I always get Labor Day and Memorial Day mixed up.) Friday night Buddy and Rahul and I saw The 40 Year Old Virgin which was pretty funny. Saturday morning I took Babs to the aiport, then met May Ling at the Creamery for brunch. Then it was errands for the rest of the day until meeting Yar, John and Rahul for dinner at The-Restaurant-Formerly-Known-As-Swagats for the tried-and-true Indian buffet, despite (or perhaps because of?) Rahul's objections.

Sunday morning May Ling and I went horse back riding at Sea Horse Ranch in Half Moon Bay. The last time I went horse back riding was when I was really young, and I had a massive allergic reaction, so I was a little wary, but it turns out my horse allergy seems to have gone away. It was fun, but about half way through the ride, my horse tried to ditch me. We were walking along the beach, when my horse suddenly lied down. It started to lean to one side, and I was afraid it was going to roll over onto my leg, so I hopped off. Once I got off, the horse got up and ran away. One of the guides ran after it and brought it back, and I got back on. I still don't know why my horse did that, but a coworker hypothesized over IM: "you're too heavy, fatty" Yes. Yes I am. That afternoon it was the usual sports in the park with friends, then we found ourselves back at the Creamery for dinner.

Monday, Peter and I threw together carefully planned out a Labor Day barbecue. Huge props to Peter for doing all the actual grilling and stuff. I'm just the idea person -- I leave implementation to other people. Management here I come! Good food, good friends, and bad (on my part) volleyball added up to a nice afternoon.

I keep reading articles and watching news reports on the situation in New Orleans and it's really heartbreaking. Buddy signed up to volunteer with the Red Cross in New Orleans (he hasn't heard back from them yet) and I've been considering the idea on and off myself. I'm not sure whether donations are more important right now, or whether they need on-site support, but it's very easy to feel helpless in a situation like this.

Now for something completely different. If you ever needed proof that American English is different than British English, look no further than this Australian article:

...Yeah.

Images like these, which have been plastered all over the news, leave me pretty much speechless. It's difficult to wrap your head around the magnitude of this disaster, especially with articles like this. The Superdome is where my marathon began and ended. But instead of being a place of celebration, it's been turned into a place where people are now struggling for survival. New Orleans remains near and dear to me after only a single visit; I can't imagine what the residents of the city are feeling. Hopefully help is coming soon.

OMG.

That is all.