...there is ONE (and only one) mountain in the area of Wausau, WI.  It's actually quite amazing.  Flatland as far as the i-can-see and all of the sudden BOOM one mountain (which they make into a ski resort).  Funny how the Midwest works.

So here's how it went...
We stayed at Rib Mountain Inn.  12 Materials Science Engineering Ph.D. students in 2 adjoining rooms.

Hot tub in sub-freezing whether was awesomeness.  It was so cold that people's hair froze.  (Nice horns, Minna).

I believe Minna is a bit crazier than me, hard as it is to believe.

Last run of the day...Superstition - double black!  eeeek.

"Well stop thinkin', Johnny, and just doo it." Jon's cold and ready to get down this windy "mountain."

Don't worry, Minna's just taking a short nap.

So...we put Jon in charge of starting the fire.  Getting the logs - check.  Getting some newspaper to start the fire - check.  Starting a flame from I dunno where - check.  Starting the fire - check.  Opening the flue - ... whoops.  Setting off the smoke detectors - check.  Causing all guests to evacuate their rooms - check.  RESULT = smoky room + no fire.  Engineers are so smart!  haha.

Uhhh...don't really know what to say about this (Andres, Nikhil, Kevin).

How many people can we fit in the kitchen?  I think more than this...

Yes, Ruth can catch Marc, even with his "huge guns" adding to his bodyweight!

I think Jason likes Minna...?

Andres was really sleeping in this, I think.

Crazy Eyes and Dani K.  Don't know what's going on here, either.

Oh boy, some more sword fighting.  "Sommmebody's gonna get hurt real bad!"

Zhenxing Feng is THE MAN.  I am proud to say I know this guypersonally, and hopefully he will open a restaurant one day and I can say I experienced his gourmet Chinese cooking first hand, before all y'all did.

It's smoky in here...but I think from Zhenxing's cooking (pre-fireplace incident).

Awwwww.  So fun!   Engineers ARE cool.  Or maybe not, but it doesn't matter anyway.  haha.

It's the year of the Boar.  My mom today on the phone said to me: "It's the year of the Boar.  I hope we don't get bored."

...

Yeah, that's my mom...but I love her!

Coming home March 10th.  I expect to be wearing flip flops, shorts, and tank tops.

Btw, "Trapped in the Closet" is hil-LAR-ious.  It's absolutely absurd.  Better yet is the commentary by R. Kelly, smoking a cigar, sitting in front of a blue screen, with his cigar smoking magically disappearing.  Can't wait for the next 20 chapters!

I just found out that IERF at UCI got taken down!  *tear*  I had so many nice naps in that crappy building!  Every single lecture of BME 50B and about 2/3 of the lectures in BME 50A.  So sad.  That was the most poorly designed building I had ever seen, though, especially acoustically.  I hope they turn it into something nice!

Also, in colloquium a post-doc from UCSB came to speak and just HAD to show us a picture of him at the beach at the end.  OMG...that was torture.  Jon and I both looked at each other and asked why didn't we go there?  So I keep reminding myself that I came here because:
a) being far from home enables me to be more independent
b) being in a vastly different distopian place that is not Irvine is good for me (and everyone in general)
c) enduring the subzero degree weather builds character (sure)
d) I like snow.  So pretty!
e) I like not having a car...eh...iono about this one.
f) I like having the tiniest and coldest room in the world.
g) I like having my snot freeze when I walk outside? (this list just keeps getting worse)
h) I obviously have run out of reasons here.  Or rather, my fingers are too cold to type anything positive..

Brrrrr!

Missing California, but not complaining!

It's 2 a.m. right now in IL, 12 a.m. in Irvine.  Let's take at the slight contrast in weather, just for fun.

(take note of time of day, highs/lows, difference between actual and "feels like" reports)  
  

Notice any differences?

If not, let me spell it out:
-current recorded temperature.  Difference: 54 F
-current feels like temperature.  Difference: 72 F
-lows: Difference - Sunday 44-(-10)=54 F
-highs: Difference- Monday- 82-6 = 76 F

How can there be a 76 degree difference in temperature?!?!  Why did I leave California?!?!

I can't wait for Thursday!  It's gonna be 20F!  Yesssss.

Ew.  IMO, these are NOT COOL.  They're GROSS.  Sick.  Yuck!

http://freshpics.blogspot.com/2007/01/amazing-hand-painting-art.html

edit:
okay they're not that gross and yeah, ok, they're kinda cool...

Remember when we used to write K.I.T. in everyone's yearbook?  What happened to college yearbooks?  I got one for UC Irvine, and I think maybe 5 or 8 friends at most were in it.  I guess it's lame to get senior pictures.  =(.  Anyway, how many people do we really expect to keep in touch with?  It seems quite feasible to keep in touch with the majority of your friends out there now-a-days.  But this form of keeping in touch has been too carelessly reduced to an IM every few months saying "sup?" and then a few lines of convo and then nothing, a phone call every couple weeks to "catch up", or just a comment on MySpace or Facebook or Xanga (for people who still use this thing).  I'm still not sure if I'm okay with all of this.  I still wish I had the time and energy and close proximity to keep in touch with everyone and know what's going on in their lives, to make it seem like I care.  Well, I do still care, but how can I possibly keep track of everyone?  I've had the privilege to become close with a good number of people at one point in time or another.  People have expressed to me how they treasure our companionship and how they can share things with me and how we have that tight bond.  But what am I supposed to do now?  Everyone has their own lives.  Should I still try to be clued in on their lives?  Or should I start narrowing it down to a very select few?  It seemed like over break I "caught up" with several people, but is that how it's going to be indefinitely?  It was tiring, trying to make sure I met up with everyone (although obviously I still didn't), and I was home for 3 freakin weeks!  I'm never going to be home for that length of time ever again.  Through this whole transition, though, I've realized there's only so much I can do and it is up to the other party to make an effort, as well.  Si?

Fun news:
-I went to the ghetto-est bowling alley ever (Skokie Lanes).  You had to get your own shoes, the scoreboard was still an overhead projector (you had to count your own pins!  remember those days?), the ball return was not covered and was only one row thick (meaning if you tried to rotate your ball while it was sitting on the rack it would fall off), beer was $7/pitcher, they didn't have balls under 10 pounds it seemed, and there were...10 lanes at most.
-Mat Sci Hockey is awesome fun but too tiring.  I am in such bad shape and cannot sprint the whole time before the line change.  Thus, I have decided to kick it into gear and go to the gym everyday (or less). 
-I decided to take break dancing with my good asian brothas Harold and Rich.  haha.  I had this weird dream about taking the break dancing class already with Harold and they were teaching us "toprock".  Ok, I have NO clue how to do it or what it really looks like, but in my dream I had a clear picture and instructions from the instructor.  I can even explain it now.  It's just a series of hops: back on your left, front on your right, to the left on left, to the right on right, to the left on left, and to the back on your right.  Haha.  I highly doubt this is anywhere remotely close to the real thing.
-I went to Niagara Falls, the Canadian side!  Sean took me there in 15F snowy weather on a Tuesday afternoon.  Haha.  There was NO ONE there, except for the asian tourists of course.  It was absolutely beautiful.  Snow is so pretty!  =)
-I'm trying to arrange a MatSci ski/snowboard trip.  Hopefully it's a go!
-The MatSci dept. has quirky people.  It's so cool!  It's kinda weird thinking that we're all trying to get this PhD thing and that some of them will be professors, too, and some of them will make it big in the science/engineering world, and I can say that I knew them and went to school with them!  (I don't intend/expect to have a big name in any industry or academic realm, so don't think knowing me will be beneficial).
-I watched "Man Hunt."  A Fritz Lang? film from 1941 about a British man who attempted to assassinate Hitler but caught right before carrying out the act.  The Germans then urged him to sign a statement stating that he was part of the British government trying to kill Hitler.  But he refused, saying he acted on his own behalf, and in fact he wasn't even going to actually pull the trigger, that it was just the chase he was after, the thrill of seeing if you could kill something, but not actually do it.  Fast forwarding the rest of the movie, British guy gets out of a cave and kills German guy with a chromium pin he had bought for his lover who the Germans seized, of which he made a bow and arrow and shot it right through the side of the German man's neck, thus liberating himself and leading him to his quest of being a man of unknown location with the gun and precision to kill Hitler.  Guess he didn't succeed...well, the movie was $4 and was playing at the Block Museum at NU so it was a good experience, especially when the whole crowd was old folks of Evanston.  =)

Back to the Future II is one of my all-time favorite movies.  It's just sooooo cool.  My bro got me it for Christmas but I left it at home.  Doh!  I also left a lot of other things at home - hot water dispenser, CDs, yarn, books, etc.  I don't know if it's worth it to get them shipped here.  It's so expensive living far from home!

I want to start taking pictures of all the meals I cook since I rarely ever cook the same exact meal twice; however, by the time I put the whole meal on my plate, I've already started eating it, even before I make it to the table.  I just can't resist.  Thus, my book will probably never exist...=

Some pictures from Winter Break:

 

Strange how, even though I'm the one doing this whole Ph.D. nothin thing, I can still feel like everyone else has got their lives squared away, like things are finally coming together, that the seemingly endless turmoil of growing up is almost over.  I know this isn't true, but it's just what I've been feeling as of late.

Being home makes me not want to leave home.  It's so comfortable here in Irvine.  We have EVERYTHING materialistic we need.  Don't tell me living in Irvine's bad, because it's NOT.  We are spoiled and don't even know it.  It's great!  ...

Ok, so, what I really meant was...being home makes me re-evaluate my motives and my drive to get this thing done.  It's only been ONE QUARTER.  I'm supposed to do...(4 x 4 + 1 = 17) SEVENTEEN quarters of this.  Real grad school (research aspect) has not yet started for me, but already I'm thinking about how incredibly LONG > 4 years is.  I'm usually always up for a challenge, hence, why I decided to continue this whole higher education thing, but sometimes you just want to stop and see what happens.  See how far into failure you can really go.  Unfortunately, no can do...so I'll never find out.  I'm gonna try this new thing called making the "right" decision, even though it hurts or will be way too painful or means I'll have to be patient.  I don't really know what I mean by this...=o

...I WON $94 playing craps.  =D .  My family is weird.  My mom, imo, is racist and always makes these fobby, asian comments (although she's been here almost 40 years).  She also talks on and on about one subject while my dad perpetually nods his head "uh huh."  Of course I still love them. =D.  Titus has sleep apnea and it's really painful even to hear him try to sleep and gasp for air.  I think he may have to get surgery =(.  I really like Tim's girlfriend and she's supersweet and cute, too.  She bakes pies!  Oooh, that sounds good.  So, in Vegas I walked around a lot by myself and I didn't mind.  I got to think a lot while trying to look old(er) and sophisticated.  The guy at the Christian R. Lassen gallery showed me around and in the cool dimming room where the lights of the seascapes illuminated to the point of unreality (or reality, depending on how you want to interpret the spectacularness).  He also mentioned how I could own an original for ONLY $195,000.  He also gave me his card.  Forget my old list, here's the revised one, what I want to do with my money (which I don't have now, but hopefully someday may own some of my very own green goodness):
-House (in a nice suburb of Orange County)
-Car (I don't know cars so I can't say what kind)
-no trampoline.  perhaps a tumble track
-no pool (community pool only)
-iPod (no, I don't own one now and don't plan to get one.  I don't listen to music because I'm boring.)
-Bang! Card Game - really fun and more fun with lots of people (only $10 so I may just end up getting this before I get the job and money)
-Christian Lassen Illumination Suite (I already own two $5 posters from Hawaii - Harmony and Golden Moments!  haha)

Heaven's Path - (original includes 10 diamonds.  also hidden, the words truth, forgiveness, compassion, love?, 7 hearts, Lassen's name, and 7 something else?, closed gates - on journey to find "enlightenment")

Seeking the Light (turmoil, arduous, treacherous journey)
 
Illumination (yay, made it!  Glory glory Hallelujah!)

Again, each original includes 10 diamonds.  The whole Illumination Suite can be yours for < $600,000 (?) !

"I Celebrate The Day"
Relient K

And with this Christmas wish is missed
The point I could convey
If only I could find the words to say to let You know how much You've touched my life
Because here is where You're finding me, in the exact same place as New Year's eve
And from a lack of my persistency
We're less than half as close as I want to be

And I, I celebrate the day
That You were born to die
So I could one day pray for You to save my life

...I must apologize to Theo, for he was the low scorer of ALL THREE GAMES.  Even in the 10th frame of the last game, he COULD have had it, but nope, I pulled ahead to beat his measly 103 with my wam-bam powerful 105.  So, I'm sorry, Theo, that you're just not too good at very many things.

I'm home and it doesn't feel too weird.  It feels the same because that's just how cool and awesome it is with my friends and family! =0).  Yes, things are different, people have jobs, people have significant others! (so annoying...) haha, but I think we all still can have a good time if we make the effort to get together.  I wonder how long this will last, since people get spouses and then families, and then slowly withdraw into the abyss of their own lives...=(  I guess it's a little different nowadays since the creation and ubiquity of the internet and facebook and myspace and all those good "wholesome" connect-with-people websites.  Does that mean I'm still going to be MySpacing when I'm married with 3 children?  What a strange concept.  I could never imagine my mom on any of those websites, so I wonder if I'll still be doing that when I'm a mother.

I'm itchy!  Eeek.  I think it may have been some sushi in NY that did me in and now I can't stop itching!  Then I take some Benadryl and get drowsy.  I wish I had Claritin...