Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in uw_rocks' LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, December 25th, 2007
5:34 pm	Sick for the holidays Well, I have not really made any entries lately so it was time to change that. So I am back home for the holdays visiting my family for the most part but I needed to go the the hospital this morning since I caught some nasty bug from someone on the airplane I think. It turned out that I had a bad case of strep, but the medication that they gave me has reduceded the pain a lot so I can eat food again. My family moved christmas dinner to tomorrow. I should be in better shape for it tomorow. (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 8th, 2006
1:03 am	Back Home I am back at home at the moment visiting my family right now. I am having an early thanksgiving next week since I am here and I can not come back for the actual event. The trip has had its ups and downs. I have been working on my brothers car since it needs some maintenance. It always seems to break down about a week before I get here. The weather has been pleasant though and I have been doing stuff with my parents. I went ice skating a couple nights ago, and that was fun. I have not done it in years, but it is a little strange to go ice skating now that I have been living in LA, the room felt pretty cold. I guess living in southern California has made me a bit soft temperature wise. We have watched some DVDs and played miniature golf. Also ate some sushi since no one else except my mom likes fish so she really only goes when I am here. We are going up to Mt. Hood on Monday, and that should be interesting. I have never actually managed to go up there even though I lived in Washington for 6 years, and now my parents have lived here for 8 years. It is sort of amazing how time flies. When did I become 24, it really does not seem like all that long ago... There are times though when it does, coming back to Washington normally means a trip up to Seattle at some point to visit people up there. The brings some unpleasing memories up though, some shit hit the fan my senior year of college and for quite some time I was broken inside. I have since put the pieces back together since then, and in some ways I am better now than I was then since I learned from the experience. But every once in awhile when I see something that reminds me of what happened, or when I am actually going back to were it happened I feel an ache, something cold inside. Not that I am trying to be melodramatic. I guess R.E.M says it best with Everybody Hurts When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone, When you're sure you've had enough of this life, well hang on Don't let yourself go, 'cause everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes Sometimes everything is wrong. Now it's time to sing along When your day is night alone, (hold on, hold on) If you feel like letting go, (hold on) When you think you've had too much of this life, well hang on 'Cause everybody hurts. Take comfort in your friends Everybody hurts. Don't throw your hand. Oh, no. Don't throw your hand If you feel like you're alone, no, no, no, you are not alone If you're on your own in this life, the days and nights are long, When you think you've had too much of this life to hang on Well, everybody hurts sometimes, Everybody cries. And everybody hurts sometimes And everybody hurts sometimes. So, hold on, hold on Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on Everybody hurts. You are not alone (Comment on this)
Monday, September 25th, 2006
11:36 pm	Update!!! Wow, it has been a long time since I have updated. Things have been going very busy for me. I have been to Chicago twice, and Japan once since I have wrote those entries. It is easy to understand that I can get pretty busy when something like that happens. There are some other landmarks that have happened. Several friends have moved off to various parts of the world for various reason. One moved to Switzerland to do research at CERN. One moved to Boston to do a MD &PHD program which sounds crazy but is true. I can’t imagine being in school that long, and just an MD is a lot of hours. Lastly, one friend moved down to San Deigo. That is not too far though so I have seen him more often. The primary reason for that move is he was tired of having a long distance relationship with his fiancé. Lets see, some changing in my person life are that I have settled down into my research group pretty well these days. I doubt I will change groups again, which is good since I would like to get my degree at some point. Our group hired a new post doctoral member who is from Australia, which is cool in its own right. You just have to love that accent. We have been getting a long pretty well which is cool. Plus that means in the future I will have a friend in Australia who will let me crash on his couch.  Oh, and another group member is expecting a baby in October. Also, I moved in a new place this summer with two friends. It has gone pretty well so far, and plus I really like the place. We have a huge living room, and nice kitchen. I will probably bring my two cats down at some point, but not right away though. It may not be prudent until I get another pay raise. I have been kept pretty busy the last few weekends. I have been to the Hollywood bowl twice, to see two different concerts. I have played beach volleyball, games, went to a party in Santa Monica, a party at Venice beach, bowling, rollerblading, been to BBQ’s. I am also heading home early next month to visit my family and friend up in Washington. That will be nice; I have not been up there since April. Well, I probably will update a bit more often since I am trying to make a point of it. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 23rd, 2006
12:54 am	Also, I really should update my journal more. The past 20 entries only go back over a year! (Comment on this)
12:48 am	I have been back at my place a couple of days now. It feels good. I enjoy being home and everything, but it is good to have some guilt free alone time. Really, whenever I am having much alone time while I am at home I sorta feel like I am wasting time. Plus, with all my traveling everywhere I had not seen most of my clothes and everything else for basicly a month. Free travel to Japan and Chicago is nice and all, but having them be back to back really takes it out of you. Then to go home a week after you get back. I am happy to not to have to travel anywhere until July (Japan again). My family is going to come down to LA and visit me this summer if everything works out. That will be a nice change of pace! (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 16th, 2006
8:40 pm	Okay, My research trip is over, it actually ended on the 3rd. So I took some time to unwind back in LA for a few days and then I headed home to visit my family for a little more than a week around Easter. That is were I still am actually. I am heading back to LA and will be there to stay, which is nice. I have traveled around so much for work lately it will be nice to be back at my place with my bed and everything. Not to mention the weather. :) Japan was nice though, I have never been to that part of the world and going back again will be fun. (Comment on this)
8:39 pm	This is an entry I ment to put up awhile ago. It was from March 17th, but I didn't have internet then and I sorta forgot about it. I am still in Japan, and that is not going to be changing until the 23rd of March. Then the project moves over to Chicago. I would really prefer to go back home to LA at that point instead of working more. But nothing can be done about that. Once our x-ray beam time started, I have been very busy. The first couple days we worked for about 18 hours both days. Mainly because there were some problems getting everything running correctly. Then my research group broke into two 12 hour shifts. That way we could take data for 24 hours a day for the 9 days of beam time. There were still a few problems that had to be worked out. Since yesterday though, everything is working nicely. That also means that even though I am still working from 7 am to 7 pm, that there is now a lot of down time. That is becuase there is one step we do for each sample that once you start, takes an hour to finish. So really, for every half an hour of work we have an hour of down time. That is the reason I have time to update. My forgein group mates are nice though. At the begning I was told that for them my sence of humor was hard for them to get. I think I have adpated well enough though, since I get laughes with most of my jokes now. Not as much joking around today though, everyone is getting tired. I am also thinking of trying to learn Japanese. If I can learn that language I can learn anything. That will also bring my lanuage total up to 2 1/2. The 1/2 comes from Italian. I used to be able to speak Italian okay, but I have not really spoken in Italian for several years so that is why I get a 1/2. The facility is very large, large enough that there are bikes places at various placing inside the building because you really need to ride a bike if you want to go to the other side of the building in any hurry. This is a electron accelerator so it is shaped like a ring, with a circumferance of about 1/2 a mile. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 14th, 2006
5:48 am	I am in Japan! Hello everyone, it has been awhile since I have updated. This will not be a very long update. Some of you may not now this but I am in Japan right now, and I will be here for another week. I am here doing research at Spring-8 near Osaka. It has been a nice trip, I had a chance to sight see some before the huge work load. A few highlights so far is I went to where the Last Samurai movie was filmed, it is a nice area. I also saw Japan’s best castle and climbed to the top. It is impressive. I have tried various types of food that I have not had a chance to eat before. And yes I ate some sushi; one of the secretaries showed us a nice sushi restaurant. It was good sushi. I have drunk more tea and coffee this past week than I have drunk in months. The people here are so nice, and go out of their way to help you. Plus when ever you show up you are offered tea or coffee. It is a very nice place. I can barely understand most of what people say, but they are patient with me and if they don’t know any English I have been able to get by with hand gestures. I will chat more about this later, but I have 12 hour days for the next several days so I am beat right now. I will try to update more often. (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 7th, 2006
12:57 am	Wow, that was a bit awkward there for a moment. I just got back to my place in LA after being gone back home for 3 weeks. And what do I see, but naked roommate and someone who I assume is his girlfriend who is also naked. They had left the door open to his bedroom. I was polite and all and left the living room until they closed the door then moved my luggage into my room. I don't particularly mind since I doubt this will happen again since they know I am back. It has been quite a while since I have being out dating, I really should try to get out more again. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 26th, 2005
8:17 pm	Lets see, I am heading back to LA now that thanksgiving is over. At the moment I am waiting at the airport because my flight back to LA is delayed 3 hours. At least PDX has free wireless internet so I can kill some time online. Delays in airports are pretty annoying when you are traveling alone. Thanksgiving was good though, I saw my two cats who are living at home at the moment and they are both doing well. I will be bringing them to LA next year when I get a place that alows cats. We had some of the standard thanksgiving fare: turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberries and pumpkin pie. I made somegthing different this year though, some mashed sweet potatoes that I made a little spicey. I saw it on the food network last month. Everyone but my dad liked it, but he doesn't really like spicey food. He tried one bite and said he didn't want to be tortured on thanksgiving. :p. I got a few things at the post thanksgiving sales. Bought my dad his x-mas present. I got a pair of pants and my mom gave me a souviner that she got from hawaii. My dad also gave my a LED belt buckle that you can enter messages to be displayed. Not something you wear every day, or at least not something I would wear everyday. :) That is the highlight of what happened. Trips home are better now that I have my laptop. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 8th, 2005
5:48 pm	Good news, my father is feeling better and hopes to be out of the hospital today. And he said no reason for me to come home early. (Comment on this)
12:00 am	My dad is in the hospital because of a heart attack, he is stable but I pray he stay that way. :( Current Mood: sad (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 27th, 2005
10:14 pm	Long time no post Hello all, It has been awhile since I have posted. Various reasons including my comperhesive test which I had to study for all summer, which I passed by the way! Worst case that means I can't leave here without my Masters in Physics now. :) The other reason is that my computer died this month so I didn't really find much time to come on and write. Things are turning up. The quarter at school is going rather well, tooke some time to get back into the grind of things. Oh, I am also a Discussion section TA now, talking to classes of around 50 students for an hour at a time is something that would have used to give me nightmares. I was one of those kids who hated giving a 15 minute presentation and I take pride in the fact that I am able to talk in front of a good sized group of people for so long without really getting nervous. Though it does help that I have to have my back to the class while I write on the board though. Halloween is almost here and I still have not gathered my costume materials. I am thinking I will go as a mobster for the party I am going to on Saterday. But dang, while I don't really feel that a frat would have worked out for me as well as what I did do. I have to admit seeing all those college girls in their skimpy costumes while I walked home from the gym was pretty darn distacting. (They were walking to their frat parties) And people do tend to wear less in LA, now that I can complain. I have been single too long now. Later. Current Mood: sweaty Current Music: None, since I have not loaded my mp3 file back on yet. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 28th, 2005
7:32 pm	Let’s see. What have I been up to the past few weeks? It has been a busy time for me. A couple of weeks ago one of my friends who was working at CERN in Switzerland got back after he had been working there for a month. I got some chocolate out of the deal since I picked him up from the Airport. I would have picked him up even without the promise of chocolate.  I have been killing some time with him instead of studying for the comprehensive test I have coming up in September. We have done things such as watch movies, play games, play racquetball and the like. Work has been going pretty well the past couple of weeks. It has been keeping me busy. I am still not sure I want to work with this group after the summer is over but it is a decision I will put off until after my test is over. Mainly I have been working on the computers developing tools to track microscopic particles and it has been challenging but I am starting to see some good results. Today was fun if long, because I got to make some of the micro particles myself. It basically works by making a very thin coat of polymer on a silicon wafer and then cutting out the particles with light, and washing away the non cut parts. The fun part was I got to use a Clean room, which is one of those rooms that you see people wearing white suits and stuff over their head and feet and stuff like that. That is mainly what I have been up too, sorry for not saying much for awhile. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 18th, 2005
2:28 pm	Hey, I have not updated fot awhile. So what have I been up to. For one, I broke my ankle and have been walking around on crutches the past few weeks. However they are going to come off june 1st. Which I am tottaly ready for. I look forward to being able to wear two shoes as well as to be able to take a normal shower. Sans plastic bags around my leg. The edown side is that my sock selction will once again be cut in half. But that is something I am willing to live with ;). School has been going well for the most part, it seems like I might have the stuff to get a Ph.D. in physics afterall. Though I still get funny looks from people when I first tell them what I study. LA has been interesting, though I think I have gotten used to it down here. Funny to think I have been living in LA for about 9 months now. Time sure flys sometimes. Oh, something funny I had at a bar last weekend was some Monty Python Holy Grail Ale. Imported from England, very funny. Even tempered by burning witches. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 6th, 2005
1:16 pm	Lets see, time for a update about what I have been up to recently. First off I was home for most of the spring break, for some of you who don't remember where that is it is Vancouver, WA. I had a good time and I played with my cat while I was home. It is too bad that he can not live down here yet, but soon. I got to play around with some cooking while I was at home, I tried to make some cream puffs from scratch however that did not work out quite the way I hoped it would. I made some really good pan fried chicken though. Yum. Also ate a few chocolate covered strawberries O_o. Oh, I also made some bread, and a nice Frittata. I like cooking more at home since there are more tools to cook with there. I also visited one of my friends up near Seattle for a couple days, which involved playing some games. I then came back to LA, and proceeded to spend the weekend in Las Vegas. It was fun, though I did not get a chance to see any of the shows. Some other time, Vegas is very flashy and has a lot of stuff to do. One of the cool things is I got to pet a shark and a stingray. Very cool. I also went and saw Hoover dam. In the end I was only behind 20 bucks from the blackjack tables, but I will try that again sometime. I lost more money by locking myself out of my car by accident on the way to Vegas than I did in Vegas which is bad timing on my part, haven't locked myself out in years. Now I am in the process of starting up the new quarter of school and enjoying some actually sunny weather in CA. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 12th, 2005
1:56 am	It has been a busy week, other than a large amount of school work that I had to plow through, there were also perspective grad students visiting the campus this week. It was fun having the department pay me for some food and what not, but I have to say it was tiring. I don't know, maybe it is just me but being very extroverted for a prolonged period of time really tires me out. I did get a chance to go to the beach as well as venice beach, which I have not been to in awhile. Had to come back and do homework though :(. That does reminds me, there is a letter I need to write up soon, to close some loose ends. If only just for me, it has been something I have been putting off for quite some time. Oh well, just gotta do whatca got to do. I don't even know why I write on here some of the time giving my rate of comments. Laters (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 9th, 2005
11:56 pm	I watched Ladder 49 tonight. Good movie, even if it has one of those sad endings that will stay with you awhile. My eyes are actually a little damp around the edges. Things have been going pretty well over lately, excpet for one friend betraying me out of the blue. I don't really want to talk about it, but you know who you are. The quarter is winding down, and I for one know I need a break. So it is a good thing that spring break is coming again, my classes have really wore me out. But I do feel like I have a much deeper understanding now than when I was a undergraduate. (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 13th, 2005
11:32 pm	So, am hanging out on my friends computer. Just messing around a little bit before I head to bed. I am catching my plane back to LA tomorrow (monday) and while this visit has been fun, would have been nice not to have a midterm on tuesday. :( Oh well, also got some freezing rain here tonight. Something I don't miss, having water fall out of the sky and freeze when it hits the ground. Will miss my kitty Dante, he is still cute since he comes in and curls up on my chest or next to me and sleeps with me. He just comes running into my bedroom when I start getting ready to sleep. :) I am going to try and find a place that alows pets next year. Will see how that goes. (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 5th, 2005
5:54 pm	So what have I been up to. Well, for the past week I was pretty sick and could barely talk. Got a bad case of strep throat. It is mostly gone now, and it sure is nice to be able to eat food and everything again. Although on the plus side I did lose 5 pounds during the week. Not that I would want to get that sick again too often. My ears hurt bad enough at times when I swallowed that I almost wanted to cry at points! Couldn't even sleep with Nightquil. First time that has failed. I have met a few new people this week and hung out more with some people I hadn't seen too much last month. I also helped a friend move into a new place in Pasadena. It is still weird to be surrounded by all this city, it is sorta mind boggling when you think about it. I suppose can also make a guy feel insignificant at times since there are so many people just here. Most of the time I don't really think about it though since I am busy in my own little world. :) LA has been a good place for the most part, and I can't really complain about the weather. Oh, I did end up buying Tivo this week. Which is sweet! I really should have got it earlier, it is so nice just being able to come back at random times and watch the shows I like instead of surfing around and settling on something. :) Oh, something else that happened is that someone broke a water main on Thursday so my part of LA had to boil water for two days. It wasn't that big of an inconvenience most of the time, just ended up having to buy a bottle of water when I was TAing since I normally need to stop at the drinking fountain between sections but that was not an option. I also had to remember to take water with me to the gym. But at least the gym was less crowded. :) Lets see, what else. Valentines day is coming up next weekend. I guess my subconscious knew and that is why my orthodontist appointment ended up being on Valentines day which means I will be home over that weekend. Which reminds me of an ironic story. I originally had the flight and appointment scheduled a week earlier but found out I was going to have a midterm on the Tuesday, but this week my Professor moved the midterm to a week later, so I find it Ironic anyway. But, I am very close now and can have my braces off any appointment now, which will make me happy. Which is why I am I flying up there since they are all paid off up there, ironic that it turns out to be cheaper to fly make every 6 weeks or so than find a new person down here. :) And isn't ironic that I used the word ironic four times in the last few sentances. ;) (Comment on this)