I’m working in the ci-taay, we went to Pret for luuunch, Pret tastes so gooood. Ooh, ooh, ooh. I had a sandwich comprised of poached salmon, baby spinach, whisper thin slices of cucumber and a touch of dill dressing; the combination was fresh and delightful. I also enjoyed a small cup of butternut squash soup and bought a little piece of carrot cake for a late afternoon snack. I wish we had Pret in Connecticut. Pret, you are so fabulous.

Any friend of cheese is a friend of mine. This week I got to spend a few days in Madison interviewing students at Univ of Wisconsin for software engineering jobs at TheCompanyIWorkFor. I structured my interviews very differently than the ones I conducted last week at Michigan and it was a lot easier on me. It gave me a lot more time and thought energy to listen and evaluate the candidates above and beyond the questions I had them work through.
Then there’s the fun stuff. Madison is a really great town to hang out in. We ate some good food, I got to take my cousins out to dinner and I even got to see Kerstin, my roommate from freshman year at Michigan. It’s nice having friends about while you’re away from home. I bought Wisconsin shirts for me and Jeremie. It feels fairly sacreligious, being a Michigan grad and all, but I just love Bucky the Badger. Oy, he’s a cutie.

Greetings from Ann Arbor. I have a nice room with a fatty king bed and free wireless. Not too shabby. The trip in was uneventful, which is just how I like it, and since we got to town it’s been jam packed with activity. I met Lani for a brief coffee at Felix, we had our infosession, dinner at Palio and then a drink at Ashleys with Erin. I should get to sleep as we have a full day of interviews tomorrow but I’m hearing what sounds like dirty noises from the room next to mine so I think I’ll watch some of the tv I have on my laptop for a bit until that stops.

Ann Arbor has a lot more chain places than when I was here last. Triste.

Jeremie and I waited in line at our polling place for an hour and twenty minutes this morning and everything in me says the time was absolutely worth it. I think voting is extremely important. Every time I hear people talk about how their vote doesn’t matter I die a little inside.

The reason the lines were so long in Stamford was that they put 10 questions on the ballot (city stuff) and most people had not seen the questions before they stepped in the polls. Consequently, people took much longer to vote than they usually do because they had to read those darned questions. Ah well.

If you haven’t gone to vote yet, grab a cup of coffee and go get in line. You’ll get a sticker.

I’m back from a brief jaunt to Paris with my Mom and a wonderful time was had by all. The weather was great so we walked almost everywhere and saw lots of things we hadn’t seen before. We took a day trip to Giverny to see Claude Monet’s home and his famous gardens, visited a very interesting museum that I had read about in the New York Times a few months back (Musee Nissim de Camondo) and hit up a smattering of kitchen shops, patisseries and tea shops. I have a nice selection of macarons from Laduree to keep me company but I’m eating my way through them quite quickly. Ah, well. I’ll just have to go back.

It never feels like fall until I go apple picking. Yesterday afternoon Jeremie and I headed out with Sarah, Chris and Justin to an orchard in NY state not too far from the Newburgh-Beacon bridge. The drive was amazing. This has got to be prime leaf-peeper time. The orchard had a funny system. You drive your own car into the orchard and you fill up bags with apples. You pay by the bag instead of the pound. We were pretty sure we were getting the short end of the stick but when I got home I jumped on the scale with the apples and found that we had 21.5 lbs of apples. Divided out, the price came to around 50 cents/lb which is pretty darn cheep.
We had cider donuts. Cider donuts taste good. Kettle corn tastes good too. My stomach is not very fond of kettle corn and cider donuts together.

picking pictures: in the gallery.

If you find it, let me know.

The past week has been too f-ked up for words.

my left index finger has a message for you: Wusthof Santoku knives are sharp!

*&% f^#@ing da&%it. Ow, ow, ow. Typing difficult. I quit.

I have a very bad habit of finding out about really cool things, like concerts, just a little too late.

Case in point: “Oh! Wouldn’t it be really cool to go see Mike Doughty play at Fez on October 16? Yes! It would indeed be really cool.” So, I call and they’re sold out. This is the state of my luck and pretty much why I haven’t been to a concert in like a year. Seriously. This has got to end.

Whenever I wear a white shirt to work I manage to spill coffee all over my front. I should get a prize.