tales from the good life, pt 1
back from ithaca. When i return, it'll be to live there for a semester.
I haven't written since the disc tourney. Let me summarize: I've moved out of Clay St. I have completed all requirements for my CS degree, and only have 12 hours left on my english degree. I've got a passport, plane tickets, and almost a visa for my trip to China, which i am incredibly psyched about.
Finals week was absolute hell, but i wrote some good papers. My computer vision class was particularly enjoyable; the final was a very open ended assignment: given one camera, one mountain goat, and one apparatus for the goat to walk across, explain how to recreate the positions of the goats' footfalls across the terrain. Very fun. Then, our final project, on using a webcam to watch a game and make a record of it as it was played, was modestly successful. I'll put the code and the papers up online sometime, if i can. I netted a 3.28, 0.12 off deans list, darn.
we got go-club t-shirts. The snazzy design can be found here
Packed up, said goodbye, moved home. Drove up to Ithaca with Laura the next day. The time up there was awesome, as usual. We went salsa dancing, to farmers market, swimming in the gorge (way too cold) with jonah and L, and the best beer ever (dead guy ale) at the chapter house. (Interesting aside: people who discuss interesting things when drunk and people who don't). Looked into getting a job at ithaca bakery. We went kayaking, too, up & around Cayuga Lake, with some of Laura's fellow kayak instructors, and i managed to keep up passably well, although i was unwilling to do any of the water rolls etc. I went to sleep, and i woke up and my head was shaved. The clever construction of the prior sentence hides my total complicity in the shaven-ness. We went to a toga party, everyone calling each other citizen, etc. We saw star wars on opening night with a host of raving fankids and we (laura, laura and i) felt marvelously out of place but had a great deal of fun anyway -- should we have been laughing at the love scenes? We saw the new house, which is amazing, and I met all the people i'll be living with next fall. I helped move out john simeone. We went to Just a Taste, a phenomenal tapas restaurant. Many stories in few sentences. I keep giving them short shrift.
Remarkable thing: All persons forced to endure my blues-harp tweedling actually provided unprovoked positive encouragement. And! I can get almost all of diggin' my potato now, and i have yet to be asked to stop. Whether that is due to the unwillingness of my friends to poop on joy remains to be seen. End of remarkable thing.
There's nothing in the way between me and China. I'm a little scared but mostly incredibly excited. this whole thing is like falling off a cliff. this summer is going to be unlike anything i've ever done before, and i'm a little nervous. Getting my head shaved is kind of a prep step too, (although rubbing the fuzz on top is now the biggest obstacle to my concentration :). Then i'm living with Laura and working a Real Job, although that will probably feel like a summer job, but i'll be living where i've wanted to live for three years now. It's all a little much. I feel like i have as many friends in ithaca as i do in bburg, which is very nice.
Between Laura-Galen, Laura-Laura, Laura-Laura's boyfriend, and our friend john, we'll be on the east coast (Hurricane island, Maine), west coast (L.A.), China, London, and Siberia, working six jobs, an unpaid internship, studying go like it's going out of style, studying an undisclosed aspect of the forests of the Russian Steppe from deep in the woods, and teaching sailing and kayaking to kids on an isolated island. People!
And since i may not find time to write another entry between now & departure, I should solicit some addressess: I intend to keep a trip journal, probably by hand and probably with explicit go-details. If anyone out there wants tales from the far side of the world, i'll send them to the addresses they provide by any means they choose.
UPDATE: guess i should screen comments! right.
I haven't written since the disc tourney. Let me summarize: I've moved out of Clay St. I have completed all requirements for my CS degree, and only have 12 hours left on my english degree. I've got a passport, plane tickets, and almost a visa for my trip to China, which i am incredibly psyched about.
Finals week was absolute hell, but i wrote some good papers. My computer vision class was particularly enjoyable; the final was a very open ended assignment: given one camera, one mountain goat, and one apparatus for the goat to walk across, explain how to recreate the positions of the goats' footfalls across the terrain. Very fun. Then, our final project, on using a webcam to watch a game and make a record of it as it was played, was modestly successful. I'll put the code and the papers up online sometime, if i can. I netted a 3.28, 0.12 off deans list, darn.
we got go-club t-shirts. The snazzy design can be found here
Packed up, said goodbye, moved home. Drove up to Ithaca with Laura the next day. The time up there was awesome, as usual. We went salsa dancing, to farmers market, swimming in the gorge (way too cold) with jonah and L, and the best beer ever (dead guy ale) at the chapter house. (Interesting aside: people who discuss interesting things when drunk and people who don't). Looked into getting a job at ithaca bakery. We went kayaking, too, up & around Cayuga Lake, with some of Laura's fellow kayak instructors, and i managed to keep up passably well, although i was unwilling to do any of the water rolls etc. I went to sleep, and i woke up and my head was shaved. The clever construction of the prior sentence hides my total complicity in the shaven-ness. We went to a toga party, everyone calling each other citizen, etc. We saw star wars on opening night with a host of raving fankids and we (laura, laura and i) felt marvelously out of place but had a great deal of fun anyway -- should we have been laughing at the love scenes? We saw the new house, which is amazing, and I met all the people i'll be living with next fall. I helped move out john simeone. We went to Just a Taste, a phenomenal tapas restaurant. Many stories in few sentences. I keep giving them short shrift.
Remarkable thing: All persons forced to endure my blues-harp tweedling actually provided unprovoked positive encouragement. And! I can get almost all of diggin' my potato now, and i have yet to be asked to stop. Whether that is due to the unwillingness of my friends to poop on joy remains to be seen. End of remarkable thing.
There's nothing in the way between me and China. I'm a little scared but mostly incredibly excited. this whole thing is like falling off a cliff. this summer is going to be unlike anything i've ever done before, and i'm a little nervous. Getting my head shaved is kind of a prep step too, (although rubbing the fuzz on top is now the biggest obstacle to my concentration :). Then i'm living with Laura and working a Real Job, although that will probably feel like a summer job, but i'll be living where i've wanted to live for three years now. It's all a little much. I feel like i have as many friends in ithaca as i do in bburg, which is very nice.
Between Laura-Galen, Laura-Laura, Laura-Laura's boyfriend, and our friend john, we'll be on the east coast (Hurricane island, Maine), west coast (L.A.), China, London, and Siberia, working six jobs, an unpaid internship, studying go like it's going out of style, studying an undisclosed aspect of the forests of the Russian Steppe from deep in the woods, and teaching sailing and kayaking to kids on an isolated island. People!
And since i may not find time to write another entry between now & departure, I should solicit some addressess: I intend to keep a trip journal, probably by hand and probably with explicit go-details. If anyone out there wants tales from the far side of the world, i'll send them to the addresses they provide by any means they choose.
UPDATE: guess i should screen comments! right.