beefy experiment

Last night I may have committed husband abuse, though I can assure you it was unintentional. Let me explain. Lately I've been trying to become more efficient in my use of time and dishes in the kitchen, the former because we get home so late on weeknights; the latter because we don't have a dishwasher.

On Monday I made a beef and mushroom dish served over rotini pasta. It was tasty, and I had made a large pot so we would have leftovers. Rather than put the extra beef in one container and the pasta in another (as most would do), I weighed out my portion (4oz meat, 1c pasta) and stored it in one container. I stuffed all the rest in a second.

So last night, thinking about time and dish conservation, and more importantly having a desire to avoid wasting or saving a partial meal, I efficiently dumped the two containers into two bowls. Brent's had a full half-pound of beef and two cups of noodles (2x the recommended serving), I realized while serving, though I didn't mention it at the time. During dinner I gloated about getting a home-cooked meal on the table in less than 15 minutes, but as we all know, pride always leads to a fall.

Shortly after the meal (during which Brent impressed me by consuming all of it), Brent looked alarmed and began to moan about being extremely full. I told him how I may have served him more than usual in an attempt to avoid inefficiency, and he got this accusatory look on his face and said, "YOU MADE ME OVEREAT!" Laughing at the absurdity of MAKING someone eat (that only happens in movies like "Seven"), I tried to brush it off by saying a few extra pounds might not be a bad thing for him.

Well, the upshot is, I had to eat dessert solo because Brent was so stuffed, and he suffered the rest of the evening. Sorry, Brent!

Tiger Tale

Tiger Woods and company were in San Diego this past weekend for the Buick Invitational. I went to the tournament on Saturday with a buddy and felt pretty good about being able to stand 15 feet away from The Man himself as he teed off on 18.



That is, until Kat told me that she was lifting weights with him at her gym a few days earlier!

OK - Here's the story. Kat's fitness center is literally right next to Torrey Pines, where the tournament was held. Kat was running on the treadmill, and very much "in the zone," as she puts it.

A rather familiar-looking, lighter-complected black man walked in, and started using the lat machine, not 5 feet from her. He was doing low weights but high reps... more like stretching that would be useful for... A GOLFER! The fitness center staff later confirmed that this was an actual Tiger-sighting.

But as Kat told me, she was too "in the zone" to do the obvious thing, which would be to rush over like a crazed paparazi and start snapping photos and asking him to sign anything and everything in her posession.

Nonetheless, it was an exciting brush with greatness... on Tiger's part, of course. I'd say Kat's steely focus definitely rubbed off on him, as he was able to win the tournament by a good 8 shots or so. *grin*

Dilemmas and Distractions

Psst...Brent is thinking about shutting down the blog. Seems our readership is down, and Blogger's Guilt really isn't fun, especially because blogging should be a leisure activity in the first place. If you'd like to see it continue, please post a comment. Thanks! :) That's my shameless plug.

And now for a different kind of plug. I am curious whether anyone has ideas about how to maintain politeness while avoiding distractions in the office. I'm in a big room with 5-6 other people, and I really need focused time to write my code. Lately I have resorted to blasting classical music through earplugs (yes, that's right: I wear silicone earplugs and put the headphones over them). For a while I was doing that without playing the music, because I found that people would still talk to me if I had just the earplugs in, since they couldn't see them. The earphones also keep me warm, an added bonus. My most recent problem is that when people talk to me, I have to surreptitiously remove the hot pink earplug at the same time as the earphones. Usually that's easy, but yesterday one of them got stuck in my hair, and the whole thing was just really awkward. So I thought about those industrial style earmuffs, but sheesh, they're huge. Any thoughts?

Clone Wars

San Diego is aflutter about a recent announcement from a small biotech about the cloning of a human embryo from adult skin cells.

Pro/Con/Right/Wrong - Hard to say... It does serve as a reminder of the amazing things that scientists are doing, right here in our town. Pretty cool.

Cloned Human Embryo Created From Skin Cells
ScienceDaily (Jan. 18, 2008) — Stemagen, a privately held embryonic stem cell research company, announced January 17 it has become the first in the world to create, and meticulously document, a cloned human embryo using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT).

Bio-Rad - Scientists for Better PCR

Bio-Rad - Scientists for Better PCR

Just watch... You won't regret it.

My Favorite Snack

I recently discovered Pop-Secret's 100-kcal bag of microwave popcorn. The kettle corn variety is the perfect afternoon snack, even though the popping sound and the occasional burnt-popcorn smell must be distracting to my labmates. (After many repetitions, I have found that popcorn left unattended ALWAYS burns, even if you cook it for less time than it usually takes when you're standing there watching it.) The main other disadvantage* to this snack, besides distracting others, is two fold: a) it is harder to type with one hand, since the other hand remains busy transporting light and fluffy kernels from bag to face, and b) the real and perceived gross-ness factor about touching your keyboard after consuming. Nevertheless, these detractors are easily dismissed when compared to guilt-free tastiness factor.

I would like to contrast this variety of popcorn with some recent info about movie popcorn found in the Hungry Girl column on weightwatchers.com:

"If you're used to popcorn being a better-for-you option, you'll probably fall out of your chair when you find out the stats on the movie theater version. A large size with butter packs in around 1500 calories and 130 grams of fat. That's a POINTS® value around 40 and almost two days worth of POINTS values for many people—ouch! Opt for the smallest one, leave off the butter and it'll still set you back around 500 calories and 25 grams of fat (POINTS value around 11). It doesn't seem worth it at all...So sneak in some microwave-popped bags—or just chomp on it at home, because movie theater popcorn + you = larger pants (sad, but likely true)."

Whoa. For those of you unfamiliar with the Points program at WW, I get 24 points a day, where the 100-kcal pack of Pop-Secret kettle corn is 2 points. Don't say I didn't warn you!

* A lesser-known but serious side-effect from eating too much popcorn is Popcorn Lung disease.

One week ...

One week into the new school year at UCSD, and already I am buried under a mountain of case studies, HBS articles, and things to do. Somehow I had this notion that going back to school was going to be a nice, relaxing way to enjoy a couple of years. What exactly was I thinking?

In better news, our good friends Gord and Lis very recently delivered a happy, healthy baby girl. We got to go over and visit little Madeline Emma just a few days after she was born. I love pictures of Kat holding babies ~



So that is life and all. Pretty much Babies and B-School around here. Hope life is treating you well in your part of the world. Cheers!

End of the Day

This is ridiculous! I have spent a good 8-10 hours from Christmas to the present trying to solve my grandmother Omie's bridge problem. I've even written a schnazzy algorithm to do it using Matlab, but it's going to be crunching all night and I'm not convinced I'll arrive at a solution that meets the criteria. I'm thus opening it up to whoever else deems him/herself worthy or bored enough to solve it:

There are 28 bridge teams that meet in groups of 4 (at 7 houses) over a span of 8 meetings. There seems to be an uproar in New Braunfels, TX, because too many teams keep playing teams they have already played. The goal is to set up a schedule such that each team has minimal repeats.

Sounds easy, right? It's not. Say team 1 plays teams 2, 3, and 4 at the first meeting. Then you have teams 5-28 to work with for the remaining 7 meetings. But team 2 now can't play team 3 or 4 ever again, in an ideal world. I've gotten to the point where I have around 300 schedules that work so that the average team plays only 6 other teams twice (and no team repeats more than once). Now I'm optimizing those schedules by rearranging the meetings (random permutations) so that none of the repeated teams play in consecutive meetings. I don't think it's possible to avoid repeats at all - a mean of 5.3 teams is the lowest I could routinely get after thousands of random trials.

If you have Matlab and you want my code, email me. :) I would love some help!

New Look for the New Year

Hi friends! Happy New Year! 2008 is shaping up to be a fun and exciting year. Elections, Olympics, a new Spears baby... Who could ask for anything more?

I added a new little widget to the blog, over on the right hand side. You can enter your email address to get automatic emails of new posts. Its a nice way keep up to date if you don't use a feedreader like Google Reader or something.

Ok, when we last left our Californians, they were heading to Arkansas for a Thompson Family Christmas. The week in Fayetteville was very relaxing and enjoyable. I have to say the time was dominated by either a) Eating wonderful food, or b) Watching to see what cute thing the 1.5 year old nephew would do next.

Here's what you would have seen:









What nerds do for New Years has been a subject of much debate for years. This year, we have shown conclusively that they have more fun than cool people. Witness, the merriment that ensued with the ol' "Post-it on the Forehead, Guess who I am" game. For the record, I was the first person to ask the right yes/no questions to narrow down my guess to "William Wilberforce"



Seriously, our friends Dinah and Raffie hosted us and a friend, Ann, from England for a most enjoyable soiree. The year is shaping up well. We'd love to hear about what you did for New Year's, too!

Best Christmas Present Ever

Our family is celebrating the arrival of the first grandchild. My sister and brother-in-law welcomed John Alexander into the world after some considerable effort and beckoning.

He was born at 3:58 p.m. on Dec. 20, a solid 9lbs 6.5 oz and 20.5 inches in length.

Life is truly the greatest gift.

The Applegate's 2007 Christmas Letter

Hey Friends,

We've gone high-tech/low-cost on our Christmas Letter this year. Like Radioheads new album, we are online only.

Please click this link to access our 2007 Christmas Letter

Perhaps when I get a job someday, we can send out those fancy cards again! :-)

Merry Christmas to all. Please keep in touch!

Brent

Passing the time...

Kat, here. One thing's for sure. When you have mono, you have a lot of time on your hands.
Feel the pace of my day for a moment: First, you wake up about two hours later than you normally do. You get up just in time to have breakfast with your husband before he runs out the door.

You then decide to embark on reading multiple pages of Matthew Henry's gi-normous commentary to try to understand one of Jesus's more difficult parables, but it makes your eyes hurt and so you just sit for a while on the couch. It's ok to just sit. Then you wander into the kitchen for a snack and are pleased to find you still have a much more civilized appetite than normal: half a banana will do.

Let's go check our email. You actually sit down and type several longish emails, because it's only 11:30am, after all, and you still have much time in the day. You check the New York Times for the headlines and read the good science stories, and then you check out the Scripps News & Views (normally you just skim, but today you read--intently--all the articles).

Your husband calls at 12:30pm on his lunch break. You still haven't done anything on your mono-approved to-do list, but hey, you're supposed to be resting. You then suppose that yes, it is time for lunch, so you fix half a sandwich and some soup and start a movie. But you can't actually finish it when there's so much to do!

So you start typing up your travel journal from your August trip to Uganda. It could be a great Christmas gift to your dad and grandparents--basically the only folks who will actually read it. And it's been on the to-do list for weeks. Well, soon your back hurts from resting so much, so you take a walk. And you see this! A frightening sight at first, but you're now getting used to the idea that your neighbor is probably a professional yard man, not a crazy out trying to intimidate the neighborhood with his wide array of torture devices. The air is crisp, the day long, and you've learned how to handle not being...busy. What a gift this holiday season!

Mono-Vision

First, my apologies for the appalling lack of recent content on our blog. I can only offer two excuses:



1. Brent has been mono-focused on his first round of Final Exams in 6 years. Accounting on Monday summed up nicely, but Econ on wednesday appears to have had the supply of knowledge unequal to the demand of the test. Final exam for Quant is this afternoon...



2. Kat has been mono-ridden. Her tiredness, headaches, and sore throat were finally diagnosed as mononucleosis. :-( Not good, but at least we know what she has. Say a prayer for renewed health and lifted spirits, if you have a chance.



More to come... Merry Christmas!

B

December Showers

So I entitle this post as such, for two good reasons.

1. It rained this weekend - hard - for like the first time in 10 years or something. OK, not exactly that long but its been a LOOOOONG time. We had to rummage around to find an umbrella, and honest to pete, I had to actually blow the dust off of it before using it (However this could be a function of my housecleaning abilities... Hmmmm?)

2. Kat attended a Baby Shower for our dearest friends, Gordon and Lis



Now, thankfully, this wasn't one of those "couple's showers" that an increasing number of weak-willed husbands are getting talked into. As the ad campaign pounded into our heads, "Just say NO!"

I went with Kat just to pick Gordon up so we could go hiking, in order to allow the ladies to do... whatever the heck it is that ladies do for 3+ hours at a baby shower. Gord was delayed for a bit, and I was the only male present for a very terrifying 15 minutes. I finally elected to go out to their garage, just to feel a sense of solidarity with the paint cans, tools, and other such manly items.

When it was all said and done, Gordon and I went on a great hike, and Kat enjoyed the shower immensely. She praised "the attention to detail, beauty of the mom-to-be, and the individualized attention 'showered' on each guest." That and the cheese. Mmmmmmm...

*********************************************
One week from final exams for me... Here we go!

Thanksgiving Times Two

So it's now official. The only thing better than Thanksgiving is... TWO THANKSGIVINGS! I am seriously considering observing the Canadian version next year, in the interest of determining whether three could be even better!

After our church's annual grid-iron struggle, aka The Turkey Bowl, wound up with yet another suspiciously scored tie, we went over to our good friend's, the Clementis, for Thanksgiving lunch. Turkey, dressing, green bean casserole, and all that good stuff.

We passed on the pies, knowing that we had an hour and a half drive up to LA for Thanksgiving dinner with Kat's great-aunt Ginny. Thanksgiving round two did not disappoint. Good times with family we don't get to see all that often.


Ginny was as superb of a hostess as ever...

At some time past 9 pm, after ingesting some 5-lbs of turkey throughout the day, I drank a strong cup of coffee, said a prayer, and we hit the road. I did fine through LA, which was merciful to us for a change. Kat had to spell me halfway home, though. I was BEAT!

I just barely noticed Kat as she slid smoothly out at 5 the next morning towards the "Black Friday" sales. You'll have to consult her yourself to find out what she was able to score. I love this holiday!

What's in a name?

A professor from my program was involved with this research - Pretty tantalizing stuff, though not a drop-dead connection. Still, I can't complain about being a B-rent, A-pplegate!

Psychologists in marketing at Yale and the University of California, San Diego studying the unconscious influence of names say a preference for our own names and initials — the "name-letter effect" — can have some negative consequences.
Students whose names begin with C or D get lower grades than those whose names begin with A or B; major league baseball players whose first or last names began with K (the strikeout-signifying letter) are significantly more likely to strike out, according to the report published in the December issue of Psychological Science.

Save

Lindsey's Visit

(Preface: I know, I know, I'm way overdue to be writing a blog post. It's my first one! To honor my husband's faithful blogging, I back up the blog each month (using the scrapbooking tool in Mozilla Firefox), but I never write on it. Why? My reservations about writing publicly have been two-fold: 1) it takes time and effort and could conceivably come back to haunt us and/or embarrass ourselves or others, and 2) it feels presumptuous to assume that good people will spend their time reading what I have to say. But, Brent has convinced me over the last few months that I should no longer be just a spectator on a blog that bears my name.)

Here goes, then... My good friend Lindsey came to visit from Dallas last weekend, and we had a fantastic time. While Brent was playing Robin Hood at the Men's Retreat, Lindsey and I took in the sights and sounds of San Diego. On Friday I picked her up mid-day (woo hoo! half a day off) and went to Coronado Island to walk around the Hotel Del and have lunch. Then we bumped up the coast to Del Mar for some coffee at sunset, and then even further up to Solana Beach for boutique shopping.

Saturday we enjoyed walking on Torrey Pines Beach (except for a washed up dead seal), lunching at Old Town, driving around posh La Jolla, and going on a harbor cruise. The latter was probably the highlight for us both, because the Star of India, 144 years old this year, was out sailing. It only goes out a couple of times a year, and it was great to see it with its sails up on the high seas. I half expected cannons to start firing at us and pirates to appear, raising their hooks in defiance! The evening was complete with an enthusiastic viewing of the X-Files movie (VHS, no less). Sigh...David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson will always have a special place in my heart.

On Sunday after church, Brent, Lindsey, and I ventured down to Balboa Park to attend the free Spreckels Organ concert. It's the world's largest outdoor instrument - over 4,500 pipes! You can even walk around inside it and see historic photos and the inner workings. It was a nice time, if a bit overcast and cool. Strange to hear Gershwin played on an organ, though.

Ready, Set, RETREAT!!!

NCPC had a men's retreat this weekend. The topic was "The Fear of Man versus the Fear of God." I thought this a particularly good topic, especially since it seemed to really be on target with all the guys I talked to. That, plus we shot a lot of arrows and had a lot of fun. Here are some pics:


John says, "Now which end is the business end~"


No foam Javelina's were left standing at the end of the day


No, I can't really add too much about this one...

Snippets...

of the not-so-secret lives of Brent and Kathryn...

Brent is...
tired from digging a trench at Church on Saturday morning,

feeling a little queesy about his accounting midterm on Monday morning,

excited to be going on a men's retreat for church this next weekend,

still a bit puzzled about how to compete in a contest this week at school for who can deliver the best elevator pitch... Hmmmmm?

Kat is...
amazed at the outpouring of relief efforts after the fires at the center she helped at on Saturday

attending a neuroscience conference these next few days

reuniting with old friends who are in town

looking forward to her friend Lindsay's visit

Resumption of Normalcy

Normalcy is restoring to Southern California...

Our schools have resumed, and my first midterm is today at 10. 6+ years since I last had to take such a test, I find myself feeling... too old for this stuff! But I digress...

Our community is rallying well together. FEMA has camped out on what used to be our Ultimate Frisbee field near work, and our church is getting involved in the relief effort. Its really neat to see how community and government at all levels can come together to lend a hand to those in need.

Now... I need to do some last minute "cramming!" :-)