Princeton weekend and Graduation

This past weekend and week was filled with Princeton festivities. It was kicked off with Reunions. Princeton sets up all of these big fences all over campus so that people can drink alcohol in each reunion area. My favorite tent was the P'rate Pirate tent, for the 20 year reunion, aka Class of 1985. Thanks for the frozen mango daiquiris! The 40th Reunion tent is always a blast because of the Beatles cover band they get for that class.

It was an exhausting week. We kicked off Scott's graduation with dinner that we made for his parents. We started the Coq au Vin a few days earlier. It was declicious, but I'd add more side dishes next time. Everyone also enjoyed the Mixed Green Salad with strawberry dressing that we had. Monday brought the Dean's Brunch and the Hooding Ceremony. The Hooding occurs in McCarter, and everyone is strictly limited to 3 tickets each. During the Hooding, Chopper arrived early, and we were able to sneak him. The PhD hooding occurs last, so there was plenty of time for him to see Scott get hooded. Scott was also almost the last person to be hooding. Hooray for Sang-il who represented PACM at the Hooding this year. For the post-hooding dinner, we all headed to Triumph in New Hope.

Tuesday, we had Commencement. Despite the earlier predictions of rain for the ceremonies, it was warm and sunny. The Salutatorian's address was in Latin. All the graduates were given the text with appropriate footnotes, so they could laugh and clap in the appropriate places, to make it appear to the audience that they knew Latin. Afterwards, we headed back to Lambertville where Scott's parents were staying at the Bridgestreet House Bed and Breakfast. We tried to do some antiquing, but Tuesday is the day that most of the stores are closed. I'd originally wanted to have a big BBQ/Graduation celebration thing, but decided that Sandrine's Brazilian BBQ on Saturday during Reunions was good enough. I was too tired to organize another big thing.

Wednesday, Scott met Suzanne for lunch and dropped off the wedding present that he had created. Who knew you could reflect Will to spell the word Katina? Scott and I headed back to Lambertville to catch the session at Mitchell's. It was great to see a lot of familiar faces. We've got to work really hard and practice to get ready for Irish Arts Week which is coming up in a month.

Election Reform

The Senate State Government committee met yesterday to consider 21 bills dealing with election reform. That's a record number of bills, but really, most of those were consolidated with Senate Committee substitutes into 12 bills, one of which (no-fault absentee ballots) was held. Included in the bills that we passed out of committee was the bill to mandate the use of a voter-verified paper trail in all voting machines. Most of NJ uses the Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machine which is essentially a big sandwich board with a piece of paper taped onto it that lists the candidates.

In my opinion, the federal government was too slow to issue guidelines for voting machine design and security. The federal Election Assistance Commission is now examining a draft version of recommendations, 3 years after HAVA (the Help America Vote Act) was passed, and only six months before new voting machines have to be in place in the areas that accepted HAVA money.

Karan Casey

On Sunday, I was in Binghamton for the Karan Casey benefit concert. Karan is a friend of the Grady's, two of whom were arrested in a protest of the Iraq war. The protesters soon became known as the St. Patrick's Four. Scott knows John Grady from the session in Ithaca, and he offered up his apartment for people to hang out afterwards a few weeks earlier. Scott hadn't heard from John, so he figured that nothing would happen. (But he bought a lot of beer anyway, just in case.)

After the excellent concert (which also consisted of an art show, a bake sale, a documentary, and a poetry slam), Scott gave John his phone number, address, and crude map, and we rushed home to clean things up and to make pizzas for the party. As these things go, we had no way of knowing if people would come over, if John would call Scott and say "We're heading to... (misc. bar/hotel/place)," or if we would just not hear anything at all and the night would be over. About an hour after the concert, we get a call from John for directions. Two hours after the concert, I look out the window and see heads heading up the stairs for the porch. I inform Scott, who goes down to greet whoever it is. As they come back upstairs, I realize that it's Scott's friend John and Karan Casey and her band. I hadn't really expected anyone but John and the Grady family, but being able to hang out with a famous Irish musician is pretty incredible. As the evening progresses and more pizza, beer, and fantans and rolls are eated (we baked them in the afternoon) more and more people come by. Scott is very excited all evening, especially since he gets to chat with Niall Vallely, another concertina play, and his very first teacher at Irish Arts Week. It was interesting to hear everyone's stories, jokes, and chatter. Most people departed around 3:00 am, but the last few stragglers headed out at 4:30. I think everyone had a great time.

Dinner Party!

I had Mike, Jeffrey, and Regina over for dinner tonight. For the occasion, I prepared a dinner from the Bride and Groom's Menu Cookbook. It was a fancy meal, where I started the prep for dinner 3 or 4 days ahead of time. It also gave me an opportunity to try making yellow cake from scratch. I grabbed a recipe from Cook's Illustrated while at the U-Store.

Here's what we had:
Prosciutto Tortilla Roulades with Dried Fig Jam
Citrus-glazed Roasted Chicken with Ginger Couscous Stuffing
Rhubarb and Strawberry Chutney
Asparagus with Red Onion
Roasted Carrots with Paprika Butter
Cake for dessert w/ ice cream

I made everything, including the ice cream. It was a lot of fun, but also a lot of work.

After dinner, I dropped everyone off at the train station and headed up to Binghamton to catch the Karan Casey concert the next day.

More photos

Now that I'm done with school, I'm going to make a bigger effort to post all of my pictures. I've made a good start with my wedding pictures, honeymoon pictures, and Caille's wedding pictures. Check them out at the Photos page!

Apartment hunting in Pittsburgh

I was in Pittsburgh this weekend for a last-minute trip to do some apartment hunting for August. I got to see my brother and attend a vegetarian potluck with other EPP and CEE students. Check out the Photos page. As you can see, I really like the place on Imperial. While looking in Squirrel Hill, I found a spice shop, a Paint your own pottery place, a yarn shop, and a place that sells bubble tea. Those are some basic things that make me happy. I also had a bowl of matzoh ball soup!

I just realized I forgot to post a "I'm moving to Pittsburgh and going to Carnegie Mellon" message. I'm going to be a 1st year in EPP in the Fall (working towards a PhD), and I'm going to be working on the LEVANT project, Balancing Privacy Rights and Internet Security. It should be really cool.

MLIS!

I handed in my last paper today. I'm done with my Masters in Library and Information Science!

Gmail - The switch?

I've been thinking about switching to Gmail for a few months now. I started seriously considering it once they allowed POP access. I've been reluctant because I really like pine and my own domain. (Yes, I still read my email in a UNIX/text program.) It allows me to delete any junk or spam before downloading it into Eudora every few weeks. With Gmail, it catches all the spam for me. On those rare occasions that it misses something, it's a bit of a thrill to click that "Report Spam" button. These arguments for why a Berkeley professor switched to Gmail are pretty much going to push me over the edge to Gmail.

I, too, have unlimited invites if you'd like a Gmail account.

The Colbert Show

Go Cats! Hooray for NU Alumni!

Excerpted from the NYTimes article...

Mr. Colbert, 40, is best known on "The Daily Show" for his interviews from the road, in which he asks deadpan questions of actual people, some of them newsmakers and others far less well known. He will use that same format on his show, though the interviews will generally be unedited and conducted in a studio setting.

He brings to such endeavors an eclectic background. A graduate of the theater program at Northwestern University, he did improvisational comedy for several years for the famed Second City company in Chicago. But for about a month in the mid-1990's, he was a correspondent for "Good Morning America."