If three years in graduate school has taught me anything, I've learned that I'm not above dumpster diving. No siree.

Last night on my way out of lab, I noticed the base of a marble table sitting in the middle of a large dumpster. Since the building here is constantly under renovation for whatever reason, there's a large dumpster sitting right outside the back doors. This is like a walk-in dumpster with a door that swings open. Like, yay. (I'm trying to defend my un-ghettoness.) Anyway, the door was wide open and lo-and-behold, there was the base of a marble table just sitting there.

I'm not sure why it was there or who threw it out, but these tables are pretty freakin' expensive. Like $1300 expensive (before shipping). I continued home, not giving it too much thought.

Well today, I remembered seeing it. Our lab kinda borrowed* a marble table from another lab for our second microscope setup. If I recover this table, this would cancel out our IOU. It wouldn't matter if it was sitting in a dumpster for a day or so, as long as it's still made of marble and 700-ish pounds, it still should be good. So then I spent half an hour this morning rallying up a small group to exhume it from the portable gaping maw of a landfill.

Since it was just a base I saw, we had to find the slab that fits on top or else it's pretty much useless for lab purposes. About 10 minutes of hunting revealed the location of the tabletop to a storage room in the basement. Fun stuff.

So we've put in a work order to have the heavy-ass table moved out of the dumpster/storage room to the fourth floor. Yep, that was today's adventure.

* = read 'stole'

Wow, it's been a while. Alright, a bit of context: Ever since my buddy AD bought himself a motorcycle, we've been running around the state on the weekends. A week and a half before my trip, he had already ventured out westward. He had stopped by Ann Arbor, MI, then Springfield, IL and Omaha, NE. The plan was to intercept him on the return trip at Ann Arbor.

THE ROUTE!!

So it's 500 miles out and 8 hours away. Crazy, eh?


This was my travel setup. I didn't want to lug a backpack around on the bike all day long so I bungeed down my small duffel bag onto the back of the bike. I gassed up and made my way out.

On the first fourty miles of the journey, a truck four cars ahead of me had a blowout. Its left, front tire was shredded and I was dodging chunks of rubber on the highway. Fun. Already, 8% into the way there the ride was getting interesting.


At the first rest stop, I organized my change for the highway tolls and had a small break.


Oh yeah, GPS in action.

The rest of the journey was pretty much uneventful except for a little car accident 100 miles into the trip.

Alright, with 22 miles left I decided to hit a gas station. I put in my four gallons for the last 250 miles and tried to start her back up... Nothing. Nothing! NOTHING!! The dashboard lights didn't light up or anything. Frustrated, I pushed the bike up to a parking spot. I went in and bought a screwdriver to check out the fuses since it seems like I've blown the main fuse. ... The fuses were all still good. Dammit. I tried push-starting the bike and this managed to get the engine running. However, the idle was unstable. All signs were pointing to the battery.

This all cost me about an hour of fuming and raving when I finally called Matt and AD and asked him to bring the battery off his bike, which he kindly did. I popped in the battery and was so thankful hearing the engine fire up. If it wasn't the battery then I'd have to get towed, which would've sucked.


I finally hit Matt and Sherry's place at 11pm. Two hours after my planned ETA. It turns out everybody was waiting for me to get there so dinner could get started. D'oh.


Matt whipped out a bowl of marinading steaks and we proceeded downstairs.


My visit wouldn't have been complete without the delicious union of fire and flesh.


We spent about an entire hour getting the coals just right.


AD only brought a backpack for his two week excursion, so he had to borrow some of Matt's clothes. Ha!


After all that work getting the coals just right, we needed the grill for a total of 20 minutes. Yay! I'm sure the coals were good for another 2-3 hours or so. Alas, we were out of meat. We stopped caring once we realized it was 1am and were very hungry. With a belly full of seared flesh, we all passed out.


The next day, we went to Angelo's Restaurant for breakfast. As recommended by Brian. It was good stuffs. I'd go back, if it weren't 500 miles away.


Later on in the day, we went hunting for a battery for my bike. I should've replaced the thing a long time ago since I've run it down about 6 times (headlight on) and it was pushing it's 5th year. ::grunt:: At least I didn't find myself stranded somewhere out in Ohio. After hitting two places, we went to the local Kawasaki dealership and they hooked me up. Nice. $60. Damn. Afterwards, we were just criusing around.


Frogs in a Chinese supermarket! Awesome!







We went to downtown for some quality Southern Indian Food. Quality = Expensive

I had me some spicy lamb curry. The 'spicy' part was rather tame. But hell, I grow Habaneros in my backyard. We ran into Kate and Eliana, former Syracuse inhabitants. They seem to be alive. That's good. Yes, definitely. We shared stories, Eliana pined for 'puffy bread' and we all gave the place a 'thumbs up' of approval.

After dinner, we wandered around downtown for some Ice Cream and settled at a Ben & Jerry's.


Sherry trusted Matt with her leftover Chicken Masala. Note: Swinging the bag around would cause the styrofoam takeout box to shift. Yeah, it pooped itself. He ended up giving the leftovers to a bum, to Sherry's dismay.






ICE CREAM!! The girls stayed inside and enjoyed their ice creams while Matt, AD and I hung around outside... until the bums started swarming.





I had to say 'goodnight' to the bike on the way back. AD was leaving early the next morning for Syracuse. I was planning on sleeping in a bit. Matt, Sherry and I stayed up playing Fluxx and watching episodes of Venture Bros. Season 3 in the DVR. Good times. It was already somewhere past 3am, when I passed out.

The next morning (which was really noonish), we had a filling breakfast of steak and eggs over rice. Good stuff. We fed Monkee our steak fats. Yum. And I was promply on my way back to Syracuse.


The ride back wasn't very interesting. I ran into two heavy patches of traffic that delayed me a total of two hours. ::grunt:: In Ohio, I got bored and started playing with the bungee cords behind me that were tying down my luggage. I was playing with the one on the left side and then suddenly it went slack. Shit... I pulled over and saw that I had lost a bungee cord while the other was barely hanging on. D'oh. I took the next exit and hit three gas stations before I found a minimart that had bungee cables. ::grunt:: Over the course of the trip, night had fallen. I was in no real rush to get back so I was following traffic in the right lane. I would notice that cars passing in the left lane would tend to slow down as they caught up to me. I guess not too many people have seen GPS receivers taped on a sportsbike before.

Well, that was the weekend trip in a nutshell. Good times.

I know I've been horrible with doing anything with this thing. I haven't touched it in months. This sounds very similar to the previous post, doesn't it?

It's gotten to the point where updating this thing not just feels like a chore, but I actually hate the prospect of typing up my thoughts. Yet, I don't want to get rid of this website. It's definitely a set of conflicting feelings. I guess the only way I can explain it to myself is that I don't really want to remember anything from here, but want to keep the memories I've made back in Seattle. Something akin to selective memory.

It's been over a year since I've become sickeningly miserable in this town. I've come to hate it. The only things I'd like to keep are the few, trustable friends I've made. That's pretty much it. Everything else could be easily forgotten with no desire to reminisce.

Things haven't been too interesting these past couple of months. I've fallen into a predictable, repetitive lifestyle. Of course, there are fleeting moments when things stray past the ordinary such as a stroll through a local art gallery located in an abandoned factory or a modestly-themed Halloween party, both events being rather recent.

I've been grossly indulging in two of my hobbies: videogames and cooking. Usually at the same time. Lately, I've been making pizza from scratch (flour, yeast, tomato paste and whatnot). It's surprisingly simple, it's just a matter of having all of the ingredients. I should try it when I get back to Seattle.


Despite my New Year's Resolution to try to keep in touch with friends back in Seattle, I've totally fallen off the map. I guess I don't really want to spoil their fun by droning on how depressing things are over here. But lately, the reason worlds have collided once more is due to the release of Halo 3, surprisingly. Now that more and more of the Seattle clan is picking up 360s, we run into each other on LIVE every once in a while and results in the exchange of words.

Sometimes, I wish I didn't have to become so pessimistic.

So it seems the better food I make, the less leftovers I get to eat afterwards. This observation comes from the occasional grilling sessions that go down at my domicile. I've been fiddling around with my chicken grilling technique since I totally sucked at it before I bought the grill.

Maybe I should talk about the grill.

So, about a month and some change ago, the landlord and I split the purchase of a grill. It's cheap and sexy, just the way I like it. This also means I'm not squatting over the portable tailgate grills that I've been using anymore. I've graduated, baby. Of course, I'll have to leave the grill once I move out of my apartment but I'm comfortable living where I am. And $80 for the unlimited use of the grill in the backyard is a pretty sweet deal.

The reason I couldn't make chicken right was from a traumatic experience. I grilled chicken once, many years ago and it was still pink after we cut into it. Ever since then, the chicken that's been coming off my grill has been charred black beyond recognition. Since getting the grill, I've been throwing chicken on about once a week or so tweaking the fire and the timing. So for chicken thighs: lowest heat x 15-20 minutes per side = perfect chicken. Still juicy without any pink. Good stuff.

How I prep the thighs:
Marinade:
Italian dressing with three to five habanero chilies thrown into the bottle.
Duration:
One overnight in the fridge.

The grill burns off a lot of the heat the habaneros would provide. There's a little bit of heat in the aftertaste, nothing really overwhelming.

Well the last time I made this, there was no chicken left over for me the next day. I think I had 18 thighs divided amongst four of us. That's a lot of consumed chicken per capita.