Studying

I'm studying for my upcoming tests. I went to noah's grandmother's cousins 65th Wedding Anniversary. It was pretty nice.
Food was great, I enjoyed the curried chicken liver, salmon cream cheese roll twists, shrimp, spanikopita (phillo with spinach) and meat balls. (that was the finger food appetizers)
Dessert was tasty.
Noah is doing laundry now.

Canceled

My classes all ended up being canceled, and Bard lost the internet until about 3pm today.

Stupid Bard

Well its snowing, it is totally blizzardy out there and I haven't gotten any class canceled emails yet this morning.

It is already snowing and has snowed more than the last time class was canceled, and Justus doesn't know how to use a computer (last time, he tried to fax us...) to tell us he won't make it to class.

So I'm off to class to see if we still have it. I wonder if my econ teacher will show up. I guess we'll see. Ugh stupid snow, there's so much of it.

All classes at UAlbany were canceled. Lucky Noah, probably still sleeping, and when he wakes up he'll probably go downstairs and make a cup of tea and snuggle in a blanket and watch tv.

Cadbury Egg

So I am about to eat a cadbury egg (chocolate egg with white fondant inside). Noah left one in my purse.

I went to my classes this morning and handed in a paper I wrote on The Death of Ivan Ilyich. It's a pretty sad story about a guy who lives his life trying to impress people he thinks are important. He is a selfish opportunist who seeks to advance his life and is always trying to make more money. His wife is selfish and his relationships with other people are shallow. He is dying by the end of the novella and reaches an epiphany, realizing that he lived his life the wrong way. His peasant servant Gerasim helps him realize this, as Gerasim is cheerful and bright, and offers him true compassion. Gerasim is a realist and doesn't pretend that Ivan will get better when he knows Ivan is dying, and he just comforts him in his last days. Ivan feels sorry for his wife and son who will continue living a life of falsity, as he escapes from his own.

What else, we are reading some short stories by a french author by the name of Guy de Maupassant. We haven't gotten in depth discussing yet.

Economics is still pretty intiuitive though now we are getting into some stuff I will need to memorize. CS classes aren't much fun, though hardware is more interesting than algorithms. Eek. I have exams coming up in about a week in both classes, that should be interesting. So I guess now I'll work on studying for my CS classes.

The weekend was wonderful, as always. Noah and I made chicken tenders and they turned out fantastic.

I find out about summer programs: Berkeley mid March, Texas end of March, IBM April 1st or before, and the other one in California not sure

New Haircut

They did a good job with my 30$ haircut. :)

Valentines Day

pictured above: Chocolate Truffle Mousse Cake with Raspberry Coulis

Well, I could write a whole essay critique of the food at dinner on Valentines day, but overall it was a lovely dinner and I had a wonderful time. Noah's mom and her boyfriend Andy also went to the same restaurant, and finished their meal right when we finished. They enjoyed it a lot too.
Some pictures.

Amuse Bouche- taste from the chef (crabmeat, mashed potatoes, cracker)

Escargot (snails in puff pastries) (appetizer)
Chef’s Specialty Sautéed Snails with Garlic-Shallot Herbs Butter & Pastis with puffed pastry hat

Shrimp with special sauce (appetizer)
Tiger Shrimp Bouquet served with french aged cognac cocktail sauce

Australian Filet Mignon & Shrimp Kebab with Shallot Sauce, served with Gratin Dauphinois and Vegetable

Date!

Noah and I went on a dinner and movie date! We saw Broken Embraces (Los Abrazos Rotos) and it was excellent :)
We had dinner at a japanese Hibachi house but we got a table (not hibachi) and got some great sushi.
:)

For the weekend, I have to work on a java homework assignment, I have to read 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and write a short paper, and do some annoyingly impossible CS homework.
I started working on the java, and surprisingly its not too bad (granted I copied a lot of standard code).

Laughing is the BEST medicine :)

We laugh a lot :)

OldPhotos

This is a picture of me possibly taken in 8th grade, I recently discovered it on facebook and couldn't quite recognize myself. There were two more, of myself and Ian. It's amazing how much people can change so quickly. Not that Ian was any good freshman year, he was a pretty screwed up kid, but he has declined further and further into the realm of stupidity to the point where we just don't talk anymore. What is weird is, I didn't recognize myself. I looked at it for 5 minutes saying, is that really me?

Abi's mouse

As we were leaving my algorithms class today, we were all half tired and half bored
and as we get up, i see a little nose poke out of Abi's coat
so we get out of the classroom and I asked him about it
and looked in his pocket
and there was a little mouse!
a little white mouse with tan spots, very cute, sitting in his pocket the whole time
hehe
it made my day

Karl Rabeder has it right.

News Article I just read:

Karl Rabeder grew up poor and thought that life would be wonderful if he had money. But when he got rich, Karl discovered that he was unhappy … so he decided to give away every penny of his £3 million fortune:

"My idea is to have nothing left. Absolutely nothing," he told The Daily Telegraph. "Money is counterproductive – it prevents happiness to come."

Instead, he will move out of his luxury Alpine retreat into a small wooden hut in the mountains or a simple bedsit in Innsbruck.

His entire proceeds are going to charities he set up in Central and Latin America, but he will not even take a salary from these.

"For a long time I believed that more wealth and luxury automatically meant more happiness," he said. "I come from a very poor family where the rules were to work more to achieve more material things, and I applied this for many years," said Mr Rabeder.

But over time, he had another, conflicting feeling.

"More and more I heard the words: ‘Stop what you are doing now – all this luxury and consumerism – and start your real life’," he said. "I had the feeling I was working as a slave for things that I did not wish for or need. I have the feeling that there are lot of people doing the same thing."

Snow Day!

One of my classes was canceled today, Microeconomics.
The other one may or may not have been canceled, but the teacher is bad with email or electronics and doesn't know how to inform us. I'll go to class in the chance that he is there. It's nice to have 1 out of 2 off.

Leaves me more time to do CS homework. Yay.

Correction: both classes canceled! I went to my first class but the teacher didn't show up and we left after 15 minutes.

Home

It was nice to go home for the weekend, it went by so fast too!
Noah and I went to my dad's birthday celebration at a Russian restaurant, we had a TON of food and I met my cousin Karina who is pretty cool. She is in marketing and works for a company that helps big websites like Target, Best Buy, etc market their products to people in the most effective ways online. They do a lot of user experience studies and stuff like that.

What else, I have a lot of complicated and super math heavy homework this week.

We finished reading Candide, it was enjoyable. Economics is simple so far, very logical.

What else, it's almost Valentines day! Noah and I have reservations at a fantastic french restaurant where we went last year. They have the same valentines day menu but if it's as delicious as it was last year, I don't have a problem with that.

Other than that, just doing my homework.

CardioKick

I went to cardio kickboxing today, and it was really difficult.
I was wiped out after 20 minutes (it's an hour long class) so I took a little break, did 5 more minutes or so, and then left.

After the gym I went to this little cooking thing the Rabbi does, there were only 6 or 7 people there but it was fun. We made challah, chocolate mousse, and chili for tomorrow (shabbat).

Tango

I went to Tango tonight, this beginner tango class at bard. It was okay, except there were way too many people so you had to be careful where you walked. Also, my back hurt from standing up straight for so long.

Also, Happy Birthday Dad!

What else is new today, not too much I guess. I found out I have a slight anemia and might need a little more iron in my diet, I also need a lot more Vitamin D so my doctor prescribed me some and I'll have to pick it up from the local CVS hopefully later this week.

James also sent me a cool book about different places to drink tea in new york city.

I like Candide by Voltaire, it is witty and easy to read.