Ramblings

In September I go back to school - or at least 'school' in the American sense of the word. Not satisfied with only 6 letters after my name - B.Sc. and Ph.D. - I'm going for the full 9 with the addition of an M another B and an A. Yes, that's right kids, for the next 18 months I will be heading back to student town to soak up an MBA at Manchester Business School. No doubt I'll soon be redecorating the apartment with the once obligatory Reservoir Dogs poster, wall hangings, traffic cones and preparing myself for a year of being unwashed and cheap.

Catherine and I lived in California for a little over 4 years. In that time I can probably remember nearly all the individual days that it rained. For example, I remember that it rained on Halloween night 2003. It also rained once in April forcing us to have lunch indoors. It rained one weekend and I took photographs out of the window. Apart from that it was basically either sunny or slightly overcast with a haze. When we left I had forgotten what damp was, clouds were a slightly strange sight, wearing anything other than a T-shirt was for wimps and the worst thing you could say would be that you were a little too hot.

Returning to England, and Manchester in particular, was always going to be a shock. It turns out that Manchester flourished as a cotton town precisely because it was damp; its climate suited the mills. Arriving in April we were treated to glorious sunny days and long evening with new growth of trees and birds singing everywhere. We even had a nest of baby birds near our window; how bad could it be? How wrong could I be. After about two week of this the weather must have noticed that we were back and identified our rain deficit. Like a soggy tax collector it decided we must pay and pay we did. The period from May until now has seen more rain than ever before - or at least since records began in the mid-1700s. It will come as no surprise that it is raining now and that if I were to drive somewhere I would need headlines because the cloud is so dark - yes it is 2pm.

Catherine and I had our first and only New Year's Eve in Los Angeles and spent it very quietly with a home-made chicken curry followed by traditional trifle [deliaonline] and a fairly random movie (The Company of Wolves). Dance music featured only on the ipod during washing up and we were in bed by 1am. Good-bye nightclub - hello middle-age.

Here we are in the interim between Christmas and New Year. I would be at work if it wasn't for the fact that the heating system in our lab has thrown a wobbler and is now heating the room continuously. Last visit it was 35C or a balmy 95F. I am of course at home working on some python code - but this is a minor distraction to catch up with recent news.

Hot Christmas

Heat has been a theme this Christmas, the first spend away from the family home and the first outside of the UK for a long time. We spent Christmas Day cooking the turkey in a kitchen cooled with a fan that we later discovered was hot enough to melt chocolate in the cupboards. Despite this Catherine and I prepared a fairly delicious feast with obligatory Brussels sprouts and greens and more importantly excellent stuffings, roasted parsnips and roast potatoes. Bread sauce sneaked in as a last minute packet job - but other than that everything was 'quite posh'.

Andy and Eilidh stopped in on their way to NZ but were slightly delayed by fog in LHR. A quick jaunt on Santa Monica beach in the glorious sunshine seemed to revive them and hopefully they enjoyed their stay. Jed and Barry's apartment provided luxury accommodation so big thanks to them. Our neighbo(u)r Maria also joined us for dinner and there was much discussion of tea and all things British.

Reverse Presents

Catherine and I experimented with reverse presents but also exchanged a couple of normal gifts too. For those not in the know - a reverse present works as follows: I buy myself a highly desired item (preferably one that I would not normally buy out of shame / guilt), I wrap it, pay for it, and place it under the tree without inspecting it or opening it if possible. The other person does the same. On the day of opening you open the other person's present to satisfy the surprise element - "OMG I'd never have bought you that". You must also feign pleasure and gratitude to the giver upon opening the gift to emulate the traumatic experience of opening an unwanted normal gift. When both parties can fake smile no further, normally about 90 seconds, gifts are switched to the elation of both parties.

With 6 hours to go before Christmas Day 2006 begins in Pacific time I might just be able to sneak under the wire with some warm winter wishes before blogcrastination gets the better of me. Of course having been in LA for almost 4 years now it would be imprudent of me to mention the C-word so I hope you all have a very Happy Winter Solstice.

Netflix, the online DVD rental service, looks like a complete winner on paper and has gained popularity in the last few years. The disks arrive is small red envelopes and can be kept for as long as required or returned the next day with no monthly maximum on most plans. With free shipping it makes sense to turn those babies around and maximize your disks per dollar. Recently we've been getting a little behind and so I decided to cancel - or at least put the account on hold. Despite sending most disks back the next day the stats are quite suprising.

Garmin is a great company. At least that is what they want me to think and at this point I am likely to agree. Ok, so their devices have proprietary maps that cost hundreds of dollars and they don't have any good topo maps of the UK but they certainly know how to keep their customers happy when it comes to service. When my Etrex Legend C colour hand-held GPS developed a nasty rubber skin shedding disease shortly before the 1 year warranty expired I dilly dallied in returning it.

Ajay pointed out that as President of SoPS I could officially take a guilt free holiday this President's Day Monday. Unfortunately, it was my turn to give lab meeting on Tuesday morning so the end of last week was a little frantic. Amy, Greg and I drove up with Riley and arrived at about 2:30am Saturday in an chalet complete with portraits. On arrival Riley immediately ran to the TV and waited expectantly until it was turned on. He clearly enjoys TV and unlike most dogs actually watches things on the screen move around and gets very excited when animals appear. After a slightly lazy start we hit the slopes with fresh powder and more snow falling. Powder, although much more tiring, is great on a snowboard and you really feel like you are floating along. Steep runs are also less intimidating without the scraping sound of the ice and I was much more comfortable on the harder black runs. The double black diamonds at Mammoth (ratings are relative to the rest of the mountain) are still far too steep for my liking and quite frankly give me the heebie-jeebies.