Unprodigal Daughter

I get the question all the time: "Do you study anything at all over there?" Apparently I give the impression of being, well, anything but studious. Hm, hm, I do study sometimes, I'm supposed to do it right now actually :-D.

Do I sleep during lectures?	Yes
Do I always come 10 minutes late?	Yes
Do I postpone things until the day before deadline?	Yes
Do I get easily distracted?	Yes
Do I fail courses?	No

In fact, a bad grade for me is a B. I might sound like a lazy couch potato, but this is how my brain ticks, I need a little bit of pressure, hence the postponing until the deadline, I like to be awake at night and not in the morning, but hey, it works!

Bailamos

Every Monday there is a salsa class in the Jewish temple. Turtle and I went there to try it out. I had no idea what to wear, should I put on a dress or heels? I settled for my Converses. Converses always work, when climbing snowy mountains and when dancing salsa.

The guys outnumbered the girls, so they had to take turns, because the steps are different. It was challenging, keeping count while spinning around, and it didn't help that the instructors were a bit unorganized. My more seasoned dance partner wasn't exactly impressed with my footwork and repeatedly asked if it was time to rotate partners. It was fun. Let's dance!

Here Comes the Sun

The sky cleared up and everybody's mood improved dramatically. The bus drivers are nice, the skaters smile at you in the street, and once again this is the best of all possible worlds.

The storm turned the sandy beach into a moon landscape...

Father visited the worst week of the year, it rained all the time. We went downtown, it started raining, we walked home from the recCen, it started raining, I left him at the airport, it stopped raining.

It was Saturday morning, usually I show no life sign before noon on weekends, but on the way home from the airport I went to the recCen to run for a while. I discovered that there are actually people, not only awake at this unholy hour, but exercising! Lunes.

After dad left I did a make-over. I removed my dreads. Combed them out. I lost so much hair in the process, there was a red ball of hair in the trash. It looked like a dead guinea pig. Still, the hair left on my head is long, voluminous and brownish red. The transformation wasn't exactly turning a bum into a bombshell, but not far from it. With the new hair style I donned my boots and headed for the parties. High heels are the kill a vibrating Saturday night in Isla Vista (it will kill you).

New old looks.

Dysfunctional Family

Father is here. So much for the safety distance of 8 000 km from my dysfunctional family.

Did I mention that my father works within computer science? Well, naturally he had opinions about the courses I'm taking, they are not thorough enough, the literature is out of date, the programming language course teaches improper use of typecasts. And yeah, I should start doing something meaningful and innovative, because when I turn 26 it will be too late. OK, it's cool that the guy in the office next to his got the Turing award, but let me play around in Scratch and be happy, at least I didn't have to start my career programming on punched cards.

He has strong opinions about a lot of other things too. Don't microwave food. Don't drink milk. Don't drink anything else for that matter. And he was charmed by my beautiful roommates with perfect skin and well-combed hair and asked how it was that I had sprawling hair and bags under my eyes. No one can pep talk quite like my parents.

Well. If I ever find a person who wants to mate with me, despite my bad skin and tangled hair, I'll make sure to teach my children the proper use of typecasts during our daily dinner conversations.

Have You Ever Seen the Rain?

There's a storm raging in the coastal regions of Santa Barbara this week. In my opinion it's not too bad, there's a lot of rain, but rain doesn't hurt. It's the water in the street that sucks, because it soaks through the shoes and makes the feet wet. With 31 rainy days annually you might think that tilting streets were more common, but now the water is collected in the walkways instead of running away. People skip classes, classes are canceled and the misery is widespread. All I really want is to hibernate until spring, but as of now, a hot cup of tea will do.

I just hope that the storm won't interfere with flight traffic tomorrow when Father is arriving.

Outside Davidson Library, usually a crowded plaza, but now a deserted bird pool

Amish Paradise

When being abroad I've become addicted to technology. I'm always online and logged onto Skype, Facebook, Google Wave and Gmail. When my iPod dies I get apathetic. And what am I supposed to do when the credits run out on the phone? Of course, I wasn't technologically impaired before, but I didn't check my email everyday, and almost never used Facebook, but now I've gotten a few new favorites on the web. I use Wikipedia random pages as start page in my browser and Urban Dictionary gives me the definitions of expressions that are unheard off in conventional dictionaries. You can't go by without knowing what the following means: munchies, rolling, legit, tivo, Freebirds, or why not o<|:{>.

That What Friends Are For

New year. New courses. Same old Expressos. We had a lot of catching up to do, gossiping and bullshitting. Last Tuesday, a combination of Expressos, shots and a trimmer, resulted in a remarkable change in Eddie's complexion. Instead of the long lush loin mane, he woke up the next morning with uneven strands of hair sprawling from his head. We could fix most of it, but he still looks like a mafioso.

I'm actually stoked about the courses I'm taking this quarter. It's Machine Learning, which is another AI-course, Programming Languages, a course where you analyze the differences between languages, when to use which language and so on, Translation of Programming Languages, a course were we'll build our own compiler and, finally, an econ class, Climate Change, about the economic aspects of global warming and how to solve the problems.

I love being back in Santa Barbara! The weather is warm like a Swedish summer, except it's sunny all the time and not rainy. Even thought I had so much fun during the winter break, I've missed the Expressos. It's great just having friends spontaneously coming over for tea, wine or dinner, and watch the sun set over the sea from Soleil's garden. We go to the movies, we plan weekend trips and some (not me) are making trips in the weekends ... We live, we love, we laugh.

Today I joined the UCSB excursion club. The first thing I signed up for was skydiving.

By the Way

It's time to wrap up this road trip.

National Parks we've visited
Sequoia
Yosemite
Redwood
Crater Lake
Mount Rainer

Strange wake-ups

On the parking lot to a deaf school when an airplane roared over the roof. If you're not deaf when starting the school you'll be when the eardrums are blown out.

Early in the morning, on the summit of Crater Lake, when a ranger knocked on the window asking us to "Step out of the car".

In a muddy road, between Portland and Seattle, I wake of yelling from outside. When Hippie stepped out in the morning there was a bear carcass just outside the door.

On the menu
Sushi. (The dead bear night)

Christmas dinner.

Many a "spartan" breakfasts consisting of french toast, pancakes, cereal, muesli, eggs, honey melon, grape fruit and coffee/tea. At once.

In digits
Distance: 2 753.0 miles
Gallons of gasoline: ca 175
Gallons of wine: ?????

One-liners

Too bad we only have one kind of sushi.
- Hippie in the middle of nowhere.

I'm sure Maj did all the work while [Hippie] started on some difficult technical problem that he didn't solve anyway.
- Blackjack's comment about the Christmas dinner. (Someone had started the project of fixing the backseat speakers...)

Sorry.
- Hippie when someone asked if he had some.

Inga konstigheter.
- Hippie

Yo moma said...
- Everyone all the time

If you tell me to go in one direction I should go the opposite way.
- Hippie on my sense of direction

You should get up on time, so that you can get to work on time, so that you can finish on time, so that you can come home on time, so that you can go to bed on time, so that you can get up on time...
- Hippie philosophizing on the newly discovered natural law that none of us ever arrived on time.

When I'm around you, I actually feel normal.
- uttered by both Hippie and me during the trip, aimed at each other.

The stores are closed. We have no food. Don't come over yet.
- Me in a text to Angel, five hours before midnight on New Year's Eve

Happy New Year

We went snowboarding the 31st. Hippie and I had promised to make Angel and his younger brother a New Year's dinner, but when we got back from the skiing, all the stores were closed. Panic. Eventually we found a Chinese grocery store, all vegetarian products. Our problem solving skills were challenged when rewriting the entire menu in five minutes. Then the four of us cooked a three course dinner, clam chowder, filled peppers and mango parfait. After emptying three bottles of wine we walked through the rain to a party to celebrate the arrival of a new decade. Five o'clock in the morning we got home. When logging into Facebook we made a discovery!

Background:
Blackjack and Raingirl had gotten engaged on Christmas day, but neither Hippie or I had noticed the rings on their fingers and was clueless before they posted it on Facebook (noone of us are observant eg it took us 4 days to notice that McConaughey's apartment has a washing machine, when Angel mentioned it). And yesterday we read on FB that one more of our friends was engaged, the Deer. Oh, dear.

Rise and Fall

Aaaaaaaooouuuch! Pain is all around. I can't move my arms. I can't bend my knees. I just wanna lay down. My muscles fail, but my head is clear. It's time to pay the tribute for two days of snowboarding.

We went skiing, but I, curious or stupid, always wanting to learn something new, went for a snowboard instead. Skateboard, surfboard and now snowboard. This is the lesson I've learned:

Snowboarding lesson

1. Regular or goofy.
"Are you regular or goofy?" the guy in the ski rental asked. I was dumbfounded. Say what? "Is this the first time you snowboard?" Nodding. "Do you skate, which foot do you have forward?" Ah, the left, which makes me a regular.

2. Carrying the board.
It's easy to distinguish between experienced skiers and rookies, just looking on how they carry their skis. The same goes for snowboarders, I suppose. I carried it under one arm, resting the underarm towards the binding. I looked like a complete idiot.

3. Getting on and off the lift.
Getting on the lift is fairly easy, if it's a chair lift at least. With the front foot in the binding you limb into position and just sit down. To get off the lift on the other hand is more difficult. The loose foot is placed between the bindings, as far back as possible and then you stand up and glide down the slope. The first 10 times you fall and they stop the lift.

4. Getting started.
Sitting on the top, the back foot is fastened and it's time to get into standing position. Sitting on the butt and getting up when it's impossible to bend the ankles and when the board starts gliding as soon as the balance point is changed, is f?cking hard. I kinda figured out to to it after trial and error, twisting my body and pushing with one hand, but it was NOT graceful. Many times I just flipped over to face the ground and get up from a kneeling position instead.

5. Turning.
The weight should always, always, always be on the front leg. The board should be tilted so that when facing downhill, you stand on your heels, when facing uphill you stand on your toes, but always, always, always with most of the weight on the front leg. The back leg should be "free" to steer with, swinging back and forth, changing weight fro heels to toes, toes to heels, with bent knees. Do you get it?

6. Stopping.
There are several ways to stop:
- Turning the board perpendicularly to the slope.
- Putting the weight on the downhill edge and falling on the face.
- Loosing balance and crash on the knees, adding bruises to the already yellow and blue skin.
- Crashing into other skiers, snowboarders or solid static objects.

7. Be brave.
Don't be a pussy. It will hurt when falling. There will be snow up your nose, just spit it out, and keep on going.