Wow, there was no yelling, screaming or airborne thuddifying turkey this year. Typical scooty relatives, but that’s just a given. And I can understand being caught between multiple Thanksgiving dinner get-togethers across multiple families.

I just realized, this entry marks something kinda sorta like the 1-year anniversary of this here bloggg. (All right, probably a little more than that, but I definitely remember a November turkey-related rant in here somewhere. Wow, has it really been a year already? *checks for gray hairs*)

Saw pretty much the entirety of the core gang (though not necessarily all at once) – D* (+T*), F*, the Nando Clan, J*/E*, Da* briefly. F* and I raced on out to Michigan in the puttering Ghettovan to hang out with K* that day and part of the next (haha…ever seen so many obfuscated-by-habit names all in one place? Sorry folks, just the No Effin Drama guarantee). I think the three of us together form some kind of crazy, world-taking-over unholy alliance :-)

Oh yeah, and E* asked me out of the blue if I had ever considered her as more than friends. I must have greeted the question with a brief quizzical-dog look, so she spilled her guts a bit about her feelings for me over the past (couple years? hard to say for sure). Once I recovered from (doubletake, rough measurement of my feelings on the matter, notationally kicking the fact that I live in, you know, Boston, more detailed measurement of emotional state [confirmed previous result]…in the span of less than three seconds, of course…), I confirmed that I enjoyed her company and would have gone out with her if I knew she felt that way. Anyway, as a consolation prize, I think we’re now in some kind of an “If you ever move back to Chicago, and you’re single, and I’m single…” pact. (Didn’t I hear about a movie like that?)

Grr. Only thing is that would still be a little awkward because I’m also good friends with her sister, who has been jonesing for me since time immemorial (feelings which I do not share, unfortunately). (Also because I have this nasty habit of liking people for more than purely physical reasons, which is apparently unheard of this day and age. But that’s a rant from the archives!) (anyone know where I would be able to pick up a six-pack of Shut The Hell Up for my adoring family if I ever took E* up on it?)

QOTD: “I am NOT interested. As in, if I were to take this phone cord and tie it in a big NOT, that’s how interested I am.” – Me, v. telemarketer

Ya, dodged work along with junior-senior-engineer(?) G* to attend a tech seminar on the dsPIC micro/DSP rolled into one. Getting paid to dodge work (w/ blessing) is nice. Not really much to write about this, so this is here mainly for the timestamp. All right, just one bit because it amused me. The dsPIC core innards were described as being a “modified Harvard architecture”, except with no cache, no pipeline, and no separate code/data memories. I guess that in particular doesn’t matter for this chip (the entire memory space, all 2k ~ 8k of it, is essentially on-chip registers, and all fetch in 1 instruction cycle anyway); still, it did kind of sound like it was defeating the purpose of harvard arch, and gave me the inexplicable mental image of someone ordering a Big Mac “hold the cheese, meat, lettuce and bun” :-)

QOTD: “Who in the hell would want four wives? I’ve only got one neck. Where am I going to put the other three pains?” – Seen on profquotes.com

Woohoo! We’ve got to do this every year. Maybe a few times a year.

This weekend myself and some guys from work went on a camping trip in NH (8 of us in total). Just for the hell of it, we (most of us – 2 wussies stayed behind) climbed to the top of Mt. Monadnock, about 3100 feet tall. Great view. We got there just in time to see another hiker bring out a kite and attempt to fly it, and nearly get dragged off the mountain before turning loose (just a *little* too windy). Afterward, a lot of shooting the shit and BBQing, had what was probably the 2nd best steak ever (nothing beats meat cooked on a *real* wood fire – a bed of charcoal bricks just isn’t the same…). And the stars…wow…I was starting to forget what they looked like.

Next morning we got to see Jared *spring* out of his tent, wayyy too energetic and alert for 7AM and the monster hangover he should have been nursing. Turns out he woke up with a good-sized spider crawling on him (its ass, ahem, abdomen was at least the diameter of a nickel), later caught in an empty bag of jerky and passed around just to give everyone the willies.

QOTD: “It’s only six o’clock…if we went to bed now, we could have twelve hours of sheep!” -G*
“Um…you meant sleep, right?” – Everyone else
“I can only do 4 hours of sheep.” -Co*