This weekend:
- Saw Bowling for Columbine. It is a GREAT documentary about gun control. After talking with Dave Blagg this weekend, I admit it can be heavy handed at times. I will also admit that I am a fierce gun control advocate, so my judgement on the movie is biased. However, I still think it gives the issue depth and thoughtfulness that people on both sides of the issue will benifit from. For myself, it added a lot of dimension to the issue and made it suddenly less simple that I had constructed it, forcing me to rething the whole issue from the ground up. Did not change my overall POV on the issue though. Guns are bad.
- Ate an after-movie snack at Teaism. Great noodle/tea house.
- Had pizza with Blagg.
- Finally met Darren's girlfriend. What a pleasant couple. Had (expensive) but wonderful martinis at the Reef bar.
- Baked chocolate cookies, listened to Erasure and played Bust-a-move with Amy and Dave.
- Ate Dim sum with the above plus John
- Went outlet mall shopping. Not the time for me to be wasting money, but got some steals for things that were missing from my wardrobe. Therefore, partially justified spending.
- Did a bit of homework tonight.

In general, it was a great weekend, but I'm in a horrible of a mood for many reasons not to be stated here. One reason though is a dreading of another week of school. In general, school is great - the subject matter, the intellectual stimulation. Why dread? One thing is probably just the midterm blues. I've just worked my ass off for two weeks straight. I'm not significantly behind with my work (although I have a final 20 pg research paper that I should have started on weeks ago butt have not), at the same time, my level of work is such that it'll be stressful and time consuming anyways but at the same time, I feel that I'm barely doing adequate work for what I and others expect out of me. Another thing is the social environment. While not oppressive, it's rather empty. The third, and hopefully most likely reason is that I just need a vacation. I think I'm a bit homesick (I don't think I've ever been, or ever admitted being homesick ever), but it really would be nice to go back to Dallas for a week or so and just kick back with my family and friends there.

Anyways, this has been an unusually contemplative entry - I generally try to stay a bit deatched from these - dunno why, but probaby because of the random-person-surfing-your-website fear thing. Anyways, oh well.

How nice it is to finally sleep in.

After thursday, my midterm season was finally finished. Whew!

Thursday was halloween! and also my sister's birthday! This year I made Dawn her own website for her birtday. Check it out:
www.dawnhui.com

For halloween, Amy and I were going to do the whole costume thing, but we've been really busy the past month, and never got around to it. Anyways, for halloween, we ended up driving out to a haunted house down in Virginia with our friend Steve. The haunted house thing was deep in the woods in suburban Virginia, and was promising to be really scarry. However, when we got there, and stood in line, apparently the "ghosts" and "spooks" were outside next to us, taking a break, drinking coffee and smoking. Kinda shattered the illusion, but it was still pretty scary... perhaps "startling" is a better word. In that respect it was really well done.

Anyways, last night was "International Sushi Day" so Amy, Ann, and I headed out to Bethesda to eat Sushi there with Steve. Very yummy. Afterwards, we headed across the street to a cute itallian restauraunt and had capuccinos and dessert.

Today Amy is taking me out to lunch and a movie! I'm really excited...

Cool:
Toyota plans all gas-electric vehicles by 2012

Last night I had a freaky nightmare about a sniper - it woke me up at 6am. Upon reflection, I found it a bit humorous about the lack of timeliness of this dream.

Otherwise, last night was a pretty good day. Yesterday was a pretty good day in fact. Mondays are my days "off" (i.e. no class), and I was pretty diligent at getting studying done. Although I only completed about 70% of what I had planned to get done, that's pretty good for me. In any case, I did requisite reading to be relatively engaged in class this morning, made the (correct) assumption that I don't have a quiz in Chiense this morning, got enough studying to be comfortable on my midterm this afternoon, and got a good start on reading a book that has to be done on Thursday.

Since I was so busy, Amy cooked some yummy food last night using the leftover marinade for the bulgogi. Then, afterwards, she baked cream puffs to boot. There was a brief crisis point when we thought the batter wasn't going to make it, but I played hero by vigourously mixing the batter until it de-liquified.

Anyways, here's some way cool links that I got off Garrett's newsletter :
[>>>] A super-super-cool page of databases of skyscrapers of cities, including graphics and all.

[>>>] This is mostly for Amy, but it's the homepage of one of Garrett's friends from Sapient, but it's a cool personal webpage - he's into design, is getting his MFA from Yale, did some Urban Planning stuff, and has a cool portfolio online.

I Surrender