sometimes i have a day in which i'm completely squashed for no apparent reason.
today is one of these days. ben is trying to do anything in his power to make me feel better.
maybe it's the few bites of garlic-noodles i tasted yesterday. dunno. baaaaaaaaa. tomorrow will be better.
...you may manage to hit the barn"!
That's a part of an email i got from my advisor today.
it's a response to my ambitious plans for the next few weeks... i really want to finish one of the projects i'm working on.
next week i'm flying over to Pasadena again, to work with Avishay and hang out with my friends in the Kibbuz. on the 14th, if all goes well with airline tickets etc, i will continue to Mauna Kea, Hawaii, for 2 nights of observations. i really hope all goes well.
think i'm gonna have to work extra hard these next 2 weeks, and at least hit the atmosphere...
expect pretty pictures from Keck :D
On sunday we met a few friends from work for a friendly game of beach volley ball. I even got to play, and managed to hit the ball and even make it go over the net some times. In one game i even didn't make us lose, which is a big deal, considering that the last time i played any type of volley ball was in 7th grade. Everybody had fun, including Cami, which was happy to stay on the automatic "sports" configuration the whole time.
We went to north beach, parking was a bitch, and we decided that maybe next time we would park half way between home and the beach, and continue with rollerblade/running. See how that works out.
here are some pictures: 
Ben and Max in action.
Andrei, in a representative shot.
Chris and Max
Doug, out of focus. it was a quick shot and i didn't have time. 
Ben relaxing after diving head first after a ball and landing in the sand. [note to self: i should blurr out the background in this picture]. at the end of the game he was hatless, shirtless, and covered in 2 mm of sand allover. which he rinsed off in the coooooold lake. brr.
At beer O'clock we continued to Duke of Perth, for some wee heavys and chocolate stout.
I finally got Cami to focus on Black. His coat seems to be too confusing for the focus finder...
Gray, on the other hand, is very photogenic. And like to pose for the camera.
A loud commotion caught our attention -- the dykes of Chicago decided it's a good day to walk proudly. here they march on our street. Cami caught some boobs with the long lens... hmm. if you're underage, or ever had fantasies involving lesbian chicks, please skip the next picture.
And finally, the garden is doing very well. The basil grows like crazy, and the dill isn't as flimsy as it used to be when it was a baby. it's so great having fresh herbs at my fingertips every day :D
[to take this picture, i tried different shooting configurations. After downloading the pics to the computer, i can check the results vs. the list of parameters that were used in the shoot - such as aperture, shutter speed, light measurement scheme, exposure compensation, and more. this helps a lot! i think Cami will make me a better photographer. :)]
I got a new camera, and it is AWESOME. it's a dream come true... I used to have an old fassion Canon EOS10 camera, that ate a lot of film in its days. my dream was to get the same camera, only with a ccd instead of film. And this dream finally came true!
introducing Cami: my new, digital, 10 mega-pixel, SLR camera.
this is a picture of one of Cami's sisters:
I love it. It is compatible with all my old lenses and filters, which saves a lot.
It's amazing how you can improve your amateur photographer skills when you can actually see the picture you take seconds after taking it and not days/months later... i am now in the experimenting phase, so takeing many pictures of random things in different configurations, just to get a good feel of Cami.
did i say i love it already?
We have reasons to believe that Gray is actually a dog in a cat's body.
He sure looks like a cat, and talks like a cat, but he does all sorts of canine things:
- he likes to walk around with his toys in his mouth, kinda like this. The other day he got a part of corn cob and carried it around for an hour.
- he likes to have his tummy scratched
- he greets us at the door
- he comes when we call him
- he pigs out and eats his dinner in big bites, demolishes the plate in two seconds (while Black scrooge takes his time and eventually has to defend his meal when Gray comes looking for more)
we really hope he doesn't start barking. other than that, it's kinda nice :)
Black scrooge is more of a cat. He comes when he wants, he demands being petted - but only when he feels like, he's doing his own thing. It's obviouse he's not the alpha male, probably because he's smaller in size. Last night he finally learned to stand on his own and hissed at Gray when he tried to steal his food. Go Black!
In the last couple of days they served as my models for trying out my new camera (Cami will get it's own post in a little bit, it's pretty awesome). So expect many close-up shots of scroogim in the next few... years.
i'm having some computational difficulties (i.e., my stupid code doesn't do what i want it to do), so i'm taking a break from work. maybe something will hit my stupid brain while i rest it over some fun pictures.
so as you know from the previous posts (i'm pretending now that someone is actually reading this blog), Assaf was in town for a week, and Eran came over from Pasadena for a couple of days, so we took them both around town to the obvious tourist attractions.
Having drinks at the John Hancock tower (see prev. post)
The bridges over the Chicago River opened to let a few tall few through. The traffic stopped for a good half hour on Micigan ave while the road block remained down long time after the bridges flattened down. The pedestrians were very obedient for a while, but at some point gave up and crossed the bridge.
I took a sequence of photos of the bridge opening, if i have enough energy i might make a short movie...
By the "blob" at Millennium park.
Quite different from the wintery scene at the same place, this exhibit at the Millennium Park drew people of all ages to get some wet relief from the hot spring day.
The snaking line to the Shedd aquarium. It starts a little bit to the right of this photo, and ends at the stairs on the top-right side of the picture (see closeup).
Why would people want to spend a nice sunny day waiting in line for 3 hours? beats me. The exhibition is nice and all, but by the time they get in the museum will close!
we didn't plan on museuming that day -- Assaf and I walked down to Meigs Field, a man-made peninsula that used to be an airport for small planes, and was destroyed by the mayor a few years ago. Assaf was especially interested in it because he used to fly in and out of there all the time. in his flight simulator, of course.
The airport is now an open flat field with wild flowers, seems like a piece of nature in the middle of town.
(Those of you with sharp eyes, will notice that the picture above was taken before the spaceship landed on Soldier Field).
 | It's definitely NOT the best coffee in town, but it has to be the one with the best view. |
This is a beach down by the planetarium, but pretty representative. See the guys in the two little boats in the water? their job is to stop people from going any deeper. notice how deep the water is - the guy standing by the boat is only in waist deep...
life guards must be working hard.
Shimon Peres is finally the new president of Israel. I think he should have been nominated years ago, and i believe he will bring back substance into this position. Many people believe that the Israeli presidency is an empty title, where the president has no real power (besides handing out get-out-of-jail pardons). I think it's the man that defines the job, not the other way around. Peres is probably the only one that can do that. Can't wait to see how he does that.
Ynet article [He | En]
Assafh is here for a week! we already started by introducing him to the closest of our favorite breweries last night (he braved the jetlag).
today - duke of perth.
he's actually here for a workshop that we are going to attend at FermiLab, but beer is more important :)
Eran is arriving from Pasadena this afternoon, and we will all have a big pajama party.
scrooge update: the original plan was to have Assaf sleep on the air mattress. to reduce the chances of it being punctured by the scroogim (they might decide that it would be a good place to sharpen their claws...), we put the air mattress on our bed and assaf on the real mattress. hope this works. hope we don't come home at night to a deflated bed. we have a puncture kit, just in case...
last week, i stayed home alone while Ben had to go to some conferences/meetings in Ohio and Ann Arbor. The scroogim were pretty good company, but developed an annoying routine of sleeping all day and then playing and chasing each other all nigth... The architecture of our apartment isn't compatible with just closing a door and staying clear of all the commotion, which resulted in me spending a couple of nights falling in and out of very shallow sleep.
Revenge was inevitable.
Starting the next morning, i made up my mind that the scroogim don't get to sleep if i don't.
Whenever they fell asleep in their favorite corners, i woke them up by calling them, playing with one of their toys, or (my favorite!) clicking on the laser pointer button. The latter is very very soft, but their sharp ears are so tuned to it, that they jump out of sleep and immediately become alert, searching for the red dot on the carpet.
Revenge is so sweet. And a full night of sleep is priceless!
Memorial day weekend. 10-hour drive to Canada. 4 grownups, 6 kids (you decide who gets which title), one yellow dog, two pointy dogs, one hyper dog. one fish named Walter.
here are the pictures with commentary :)
leave more notes here, and i will add them to the photo album!
