bironic

1. This has to be a joke, right? Somerville Designers Are Building Giant 'MegaBots' With Missile-Launching Capabilities

(p.s. It doesn't seem to be a joke)

2. Graahhhr. After all that, I forgot to nominate Vampire Academy for festivids. Well, I guess the fact that no one else did either means there wouldn't have been a request for it anyway.

3. Just returned from Atul Gawande book reading. ♥ Was not super impressed by The Checklist -- could have been an essay rather than a book -- but so far this new one seems important, difficult, clear, moving, illuminating, conversation-starting. *Eddie Izzard voice* Any many other adjectives as well.

4. It's almost the weekend. So looking forward to sleeeep. And more than likely some autumnal domesticity/nesting.

synn has gone. It's too quiet here.

We ate a lot and watched movies, as is tradition. Garlic mashed red potatoes, more latkes, sushi, Fire + Ice and curry were highlights. We also exchanged gifts—in the sense of synn bringing a sack of goodies* and me picking out gifts as we went along—and made it over to the Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard Square and a mall, and played some ping pong and pool.

* Such as: much-needed dish towels, the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix DVD, brownie mix, marzipan, Christopher Hitchens' The Portable Atheist, Natalie Angier's The Canon, plastic ice things in the shape of stars, and three books by Robin Hobb she says I need to read.

Many movies and TV were watched, ( including: )

But of course it wasn't about what we ate or watched, it was about getting to see her after a year and a half apart, when we used to see each other every day, and then after she moved, at least write to each other every day. Five and a half days was wonderful, but hardly enough, especially when we don't know when we'll be able to get together again.

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The day after I got back to Boston and the day before she arrived, I got to see my college friend R. for about 8 hours, which was great. He comes over from London once or twice a year, which is just about the right amount by virtue of being not quite enough—always leaves you wanting more. He's experienced, and is experiencing, some phenomenal things—former Rhodes scholar, ridiculous intellect, cushy job that flies him to other countries every month—and it seriously couldn't happen to a nicer guy. I want to brag about him to you. But he's very down-to-earth, and we passed a lovely day making latkes and talking and ending up at John Harvard's for burgers, where the restaurant was treated to an impromptu Appalachian music jam session from a group of people at one of the larger tables who'd brought their instruments.

He and synn and I were able to get together again over the weekend for dinner, after which we witnessed a moron kid trying to get his SUV out of a snowbank he'd apparently interpreted as a parking space. Screech, lurch, smoke, screech, pause, repeat, while traffic and pedestrians went by, seemingly unaware of the possibility of getting hit by this idiot. Who had an ice cream cone in one hand, on top of everything. Eventually some guys offered to push the back bumper, and he made it out without crashing spectacularly into the expensive-looking car in the actual parking space in front of him.

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I've been reading books a little bit again—Jerome Groopman's How Doctors Think, thanks to elynittria's recommendation more than a year ago, and now an anthology of literary examinations of humanistic medicine called A Life in Medicine, which my sister got me for Hanukkah last year. There was a wonderful poem in it about the intimacy and creepiness of conducting a dissection in gross anatomy lab.

Haven't been online much in the last couple of weeks since the semester ended. Now all I have on my to-do list besides chores and nonessential schoolwork is to finish my tentacle fic, and yet it is not happening. I wish oxoniensis's porn battle were going on right now instead of next month. Short prompts would be right up my alley right now.