Day 63 - Day of rest?

As usual, my once-weekly chance to sleep late again fell on Saturday. I had no plans and didn't intend to make any, so there was no reason to get up. After breakfast, some brief blogging, and checking my e-mail, I showered and got dressed, and headed out of Clore. My destination: work, excitingly. Since I'll be missing a day during my final week and it's getting to be crunch time, I wanted to take the chance to get as much done as possible.

I was expecting to find Noa in, but instead found Patro, again. He was working on Matlab homework exercizes as he made some samples, and I just sat and processed images. For five hours. I didn't get up, or eat, or anything except listen to Kenna and measure distances in ImageJ. How I did this I don't know, but, magically, I am again, and hopefully permanently, DONE with all the images I have and plan to use! It's truly wonderful.

Once I arrived at this landmark point, I tore myself away from the screen and left Perlman. I was hungry, and learned that a group was heading out for dinner soon, so I stashed my stuff and chilled for a bit until everyone was back from the gym and showered. David, a Weizmann student, was having a large picnic outside to celebrate having been in Israel for a whole year, so I mingled with Ivonne, Maria Magdalena, Claudia, and Yovav outside and tasted a few of the many cakes which kept appearing among the other food. The picnic was really chill; music was playing as people sprawled on blankets on the lawn in front of Clore or tossed a frisbee (and later an American football, which puzzled me as no Americans were present) around. Claudia took an amazing picture of Maria Magdalena and I both making characteristic "Becca" faces, an image which I hope makes it to facebook.

Soon, though, Maciej, Onur and I joined Tanmay, Clay and Zvonimir at Hertzl Bar. I had a huge craving for meat, so got the hamburger, which is an ambitious undertaking. Onur and Maciej did the same, while the others had puny little sandwiches at the next table. They planned on seeing the Batman movie (again, for Tanmay and Zvonimir, but for the first time for Clay), and so went back to Clore to get ready and such. The three of us lingered a bit over coffee. Maciej and Onur suggested something I'd been contemplating for a while: asking the waitress whether the place had any of the coffee cups and saucers with an image of Hertzl for sale. Unfortunately, we learned they didn't have enough to sell any. Sadness.

After finishing our beverages we headed back to the dorm. I decided not to tag along to see The Dark Knight again, mostly because it was hot out and I didn't feel like walking. Maciej and I hung around at the picnic, which was still in full swing. I got a chance to catch up with Dan about his trip to Portugal with his family, and we had a discussion as to what defines cute (in his words, a large head-to-body size ratio: i.e. an iPod plugged into a TV = cute). During this discussion we also discovered that there was a cooler of liquid nitrogen at this picnic (how dorky and scientist-like). It had to be gotten rid of, so we made frozen treats out of the remainder of the picnic desserts. The frozen chocolate truffle was particularly delicious.

Eventually it got too hot to stay outside, and I kind of needed my computer adapter, which I had lent to Jordan but couldn't get back because neither Jordan nor Joel were around or in their room. When I mentioned this to Dan, though, he reminded me that his room adjoins theirs, so he helped me break in through the bathroom and get it back. I noticed some juggling pins on his floor, and of course made him show me his mad skills. He did the whole under-leg tossing thing, and other fancy stuff, and it turns out he attended a juggling conference here earlier this summer. Very cool. I had him give me some tips for starting out, but pins have always eluded me so after a few minutes and marginal improvement I called it quits.

Newly armed with my adapter, I went back to my room to grab my computer, and hung out in the lobby for a bit, chatting and blogging. Eventually I decided it was bed time, but who else was entering Clore as I went downstairs but Stephen and Ari! I made them come talk to me in my room where the air conditioning was actually effective, and Oren, Joel and Jordan came in and out periodically as Stephen and Ari told me about their weekends in Jerusalem, which had contained a few overlapping events (like Shabbat lunch). We all got tired at around the same time, though, so I kicked them all out and went to bed.

As promised, here are pictures of the Bahai Gardens. Enjoy!

Day 40 - ...which made up for almost everything

Another newsflash/shoutout: congrats, Dad, on your first comment! Voila, you get a tag too!

Work today was actually strangely productive. I plotted things and am beginning to actually be able to make SigmaPlot do what I want, which is a plus. I plotted and did regressions and sent some of them to Professor Wagner, and was very busy all morning. Lunch was spent with everyone at San Martin, and was made particularly interesting when Jordan started a movement to grab the leftover ice creams from a cooler behind some barriers in the lunchroom to set aside that part for a summer program to eat in. Clay and I, being the big ice cream fans we are, followed suit, but we all discovered rather soon why these were left over: they were basically cola popsicles, and were inedible. Clay and I therefore resolved to make up for it tonight with some real ice cream.

The afternoon was spent contemplating my data further and checking out various hilarious links and e-mails with Noa as she waited for her sample to cure in the oven. She left when this was over, at about which time I remembered that it was Perlman cookie/snack time (4:30 on Thursdays). I went up to the 6th floor to grab Dan, and we chilled for a few minutes before walking down. The food was actually not so great, but we hung out and were soon joined by the other Dan (who also works on the 6th floor...and who no longer can really be "Dan with the hair" because he just got a haircut that makes him almost look like a normal person!). We chatted for a half hour, then returned to work.

For some reason I thought this would be a good time to try to plot my data in 3D (!). I'm sure this will be a great way to look at the data, once I figure it out, but for now there is something going seriously awry with the mesh plot and there are these odd peaks I can't seem to trace, so I struggled with this until around 6:15 before realizing I was meeting Clay in 15 minutes! I therefore headed out and changed into shorts before finding Clay in the lobby. Dan would meet us there, so we headed out.

Our destination: the four-flavor falafel place. Now, you may ask, what flavors of falafel could you possibly want or need, besides original? Well, I don't know how to explicitly answer this because I am not really sure what the four flavors are, except that I'm sure original is one of them, and that one other one was spicy, and another was sort of greenish in color. What I can say is that I got a mixture of all of them, as did Clay and Daniel once he arrived, and that all were scrumptious. After we were done eating we backtracked a bit to Benny's, Clay's favorite ice cream place (which he talks about all the time), for frozen treats. I was pleasantly surprised; I got cookies and cream and a milk/white/dark chocolate mixture and both were excellent.

After sitting for a bit we headed home so I could change for climbing. I headed to the main gate, where I met and sat with Tamar and Michal to wait for Nitzan. We went to the top-roping place, and Tamar and I belayed each other on some top-roping routes. After a bit Nitzan gave me a refresher on lead belaying and supervised me as another friend climbed. I also tried the yellow lead route again, and managed to not only reach but hold on to the last hold for about three seconds. There was not chance I could clip in, though, so I came down. I then belayed Nitzan on lead for what he referred to as a "stupidly hard" route, which was a success (in that he is still alive), and we all rested and ate some pretzels before heading over to the bouldering area.

Nitzan and I constructed a pretty fun problem, and Tamar somehow came across a tee shirt which she gave to me which has both Hebrew and climbing on it! Soon after we all decided we were tired, and so headed out, but the trip home was a much happier one than Tuesday. I don't know that I will be so anxious to return to Performance Rock, despite my loyalty to bouldering. But we'll see.

When I returned to Clore, I found Ari, Dan, Zvonimir, Rachel, and Asaf in the lobby getting ready to watch a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother. I put in a load of laundry and went across the street with Ari to buy some snacks, and then we watched the pilot and second episode, which were very amusing! I definitely want to see some more. By this time it was very late, so I switched my clothing to the dryer, chatted with Asaf, retrieved and folded it, and went to bed.

Since you've been photo-starved, here are a few random shots from the past week:

Yovav and his beautifully-decorated cast (/etc)

Views from the foot of the accelerator: