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I finally made chicken rice soup, after having seen Angie make it.  Samantha started cooking brown rice before I made it to her place, and I came with rotisserie chicken, carrots, celery, and chicken broth.  She chopped, and I picked all the meat off the chicken.  We put all the broth into the pot, which wasn’t enough, so I substituted with Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.  It made it a little saltier and added some small goodies like noodles.  Thanks for letting me watch you make it Angie!

All in all it was a great soup, but as Samantha put it, it wasn’t soup.  There was very little broth and TONS of chicken and veggies.

My dad really came through with presents this year, as he got us all iPhones and switched us away from Sprint (in 10 years, we never had any service in the house).  I’m looking for good apps and I like these so far: Facebook, maps, fake-a-call, cheap gas, GTLogin, mycokerewards, pic2shop (barcode scanning), pubmed, shazam, who called?, bump, and wikipedia.  I like but haven’t tried ustream, yelp, opentable, pandora.  Any other suggestions?  I like my games too!

We took some fun pictures the yesterday.  One picture with our phones.  Jeff–please upload the originals on here!

Family photos

Because James and Cady moved up to NYC, I bought the first cheap ticket I could to visit them.  I left Friday night.

Of course I wanted to see everyone else (Ateaya was too busy, boo!).  My aunt and uncle picked me up at the airport, and we had dinner at the 2nd Ave. Deli (which isn’t on 2nd anymore).  Best pastrami ever!  And matzoh ball soup.  After we caught up with each other, they dropped me off at James’s and Cady’s.

As I said when I walked in, I was surprised at how good their place was, especially for NYC.  They’re doing really well for themselves.  The next day James had to go study or walk around in circles in school or something, so I went downtown with Cady to her spa treatment.  But first I realized it was pretty much in the lower east side, so it was a perfect time to have a bagel.  When she went inside for the spa thing I just walked around town.

And when she came out, Arianne was there, cool!  I hadn’t seen her since trivia night like 3 years ago maybe.  We all walked around a lot, had coffee.  And when James was done walking in circles in school he came too.  I think it’s just fun hanging out and seeing everything on the street there.

Pretty soon it was 7pm and time to meet Maryanne for her birthday dinner.  Clarence and his friends showed up and we had a table of ten.  A really great place too, Paprika.  I got to catch up with Maryanne, Clarence, Shu, and meet all the Ku/Lio gang.  Fun.

After that, my cousin Amy had a cool party and I got to see her new place and have a glass of wine with her.  Buuut it was midnight soon enough and I had to go back to sleep at James’s and Cady’s.

The next day (Sunday), we ate pizza.  Pizza is really awesome there and I have no idea why no one can make it as good here.  I would have been ashamed if I didn’t consume some, and I had taco-flavored pizza and then a veggie supreme.

After engorging myself there, I headed downtown to The Restaurant because hey it’s really awesome and I got to spend more time with Amy, and even some with Jill.  Joe made this awesome french toast with bananas on top, with the most amazing syrup.  If you are in NYC, you HAVE to go there!

Anyway, that was my amazing 2 day trip, trying to see everyone and do everything.  Until next time…

I previously bought and framed a Madness poster from Despair.com.

Well, I bought 3 more on a sale a couple of months back or so, and I finally framed them today.  I just need to put them up.  Karen told me that I need some kind of theme to my apartment and I am slowly getting it…

England 2009

Sorry, but I don’t know how to say “don’t import this to Facebook,” so you’ll get a repeat basically on your newsfeed.

I will be going to a conference in Cambridge, UK called Applied Bioinformatics and Public Health Microbiology 2009 starting next week.  First time I’ll have been outside of North America.  Fortunately for me, I have a good grant that will pay for the trip (plus, SGA and College of Sciences will be helping me).  Also I’ll be giving a 15 minute talk that I should practice on this week.

Anyway, this is what the blog is for.  I’ll try to give you guys updates on what is going on next week while I am outside of my calling area.  Thanks for everyone’s suggestions on what to do while I’m there.  I think I have an idea of what I’ll be doing some of the time because of everyone’s suggestions but I’ll be mostly winging it.  Wish me luck.

I’m just starting off a series I’ve meant to get to for a while, The Big Bang Theory.  So far I am 1/2 of the way through, and I have so many opinions about it.  It’s outrageous because it’s about a total hotty nitwit who moves across the hallway from these unbelievably geeky nerds.  All of my other opinions involve me taking a deeper look at myself, so I just won’t put it into writing.

Thanks Maryanne for getting it for me!  And the hilariously put “Happy early belated birthday!”  Sorry I didn’t see it right away when you were here…

James came really close to beating me in racquetball yesterday.  I had to sprain his ankle to stop him.  The final score: 22-20.