hot seat

One of the things I really like about the group I'm working with now is that when I'm interviewing job applicants, I can ask them with a straight face to do issue-spotting on hypothetical products such as space elevators and teleportation booths, and it's actually relevant to the skills they would need for the job.

tonight tonight

First bagpipe lesson tonight! Yup.

tiny

My sister gave me a Kindle over two years ago, and it revolutionized my reading life. Since then, I've read over 270 books, some on Kindle, and some from the library. My mom suggested that she would get me a new Kindle for Christmas, and I was ambivalent, since my old one still worked fine, and I didn't think it was necessary, but I decided to just take a look at the new ones. The price for the smallest, simplest Kindle is less than one-third what it cost when my sister got me my first Kindle,  it is almost unbelievably tiny, and the screen contrast is noticeably better. I was seduced, and have been surprised at how a new version of the same device could feel like another (somewhat smaller) revolution for my reading life.

funny pasta

I forgot to mention that on Friday, after a long day that included an eight hour in person negotiation (made worse by the fact that I have a cold), Boyfriend volunteered to make me anything I wanted for dinner (even though he has a cold, too). He made a simple but delicious pasta dish, and picked out a pasta we had never heard of, gigli, partly because he thought the name would make me laugh (remember that movie that no one watched but everyone knew was terrible?), and it actually ended up being quite yummy.

mj

Work bought out a while performance of the Michael Jackson themed Cirque du Soleil show (13,000 seats). The highlights for me were the dancer who had one leg (and did some awesome break dancing with crutches), and the 80 year old guest of someone from my company, probably someone's mom or grandma, who was enjoying the show so much that she was bopping along to the music in her seat the whole time.

how we roll

I have an all day in-person negotiation on Friday, and I asked the business person if she thought it would be OK if my dog sat in on the meeting, since the cleaning lady will be here and I can't leave him home. (He usually comes into work, but for something like an all day meeting, I would usually leave him home). She seemed puzzled that I would even ask. It's a dog office, and our partners will just have to understand.

family day

Saw my sister, two of her kids, my cousin, and her two kids for a quick bite to eat today, and Boyfriend and I are meeting another cousin and his family for dinner.

survivor

Made it to Vegas and back again, and was a little bit overwhelmed by the crowds and the complete gender imbalance in tech. I was glad to be helping even things out, even just a little bit.

Now it's a long weekend, I'm sick, and therefore have a better excuse than usual to stay on my pajamas, watch TV, nap, and read all day. Boyfriend even brought me some pho to speed my recovery.

hello again

It's so good to see our favorite TV shows come on after their mid-season hiatus. It's like seeing old friends after a long time apart. You almost want to ask them what they've been up to, how they've been doing, whether they've lost weight because they look great.

nola

Yay, we booked plane tickets last night to go to New Orleans for a weekend in March to meet up with two of my good friends from college. We'll eat, hang out, see live jazz, and catch up. We were careful to pick a weekend that doesn't fall around Mardi Gras or Spring Break, so we're hoping that we won't have a bunch of college kids puking on our feet.

humor me

It's so great that Boyfriend humors me in some odd things. For example, I am completely incapable of folding fitted sheets by myself, so he not only folds them with me, he even participates in a silly little "medieval sheet folding dance" with me, because it makes me laugh.

walk with me

I'm going to CES in five days, and there are a few things to be excited about already:

1. Gadgets, gadgets, gadgets!!
2. Boyfriend is coming along with me.
3. Hanging out with some of my new engineer and product friends
4. I'm guessing that the Google party at CES will be pretty awesome.
5. I'm going on a photo walk with Eric Cheng (a photographer whose underwater work I've admired for years) to check out the Lytro camera.

sharp

There is something really exciting about talking to someone who is incredibly smart and articulate, and observing how they connect many pieces of knowledge into a coherent mass, even in an area that is outside of their main expertise.

I just watched one of my coworkers (whose background is in engineering and computer science) make an interesting and compelling argument about intellectual property licensing. If I can't be as brilliant as he is, at least I get to witness it.