pics from this weekend. We went to Vancouver again. This time it was a different group. Lots of fun. On Sunday night of the last two weekends I've been so exhausted that I've *slept in on Monday morning*. I'm using the week to recover from the weekend, which isn't necessarily a bad thing :) .

A funny story about last weekend: Six of us headed up to Mt. Si. The last time I went was with Pat, so he drove. But we took the bus. The bus ride was about 1 1/2 hours and we had one transfer and it was all covered by our flex pass. We headed to the town of North Bend where according to this site was a 20 minute walk to the base of the hill.

We arrived in the town and waited for Dan to get some pizza. We chatted with the pizza guy and he thought that the base was kind of far. And no, he wouldn't deliver the pizza to the base of the hill.

We were right next to the "tourism bureau". The lady behind the counter said that she would drive us, but she didn't have her car. Well is there a taxi service in this town? She didn't think so. There was one number in the phone book. When I called they said there were "no taxis all day". They gave me a Seattle taxi number. They said it would take 1 1/2 hours to get there.

We were about 5 miles from the base (which isn't that far, but a pretty long pre-hike). So we started walking. About 10 minutes into our walk we passed a highschool volleyball team who were having a car wash. I offered the girls $20 to drop us at the base of the hill. They piled us all into a van and drove us to the base. So we made it! We hiked up and ran down and it was a great time. On the way out, we asked the first two cars leaving the lot for rides to North Bend (and got them).

Another small story: On Sunday, Dan, Jon and I went sailing on Jon's boat. All day we talked about how we wanted big crabs for dinner. We went to one restaurant (didn't have them), but they called another restaurant (Harbor Lights) that had big crabs. We drove there and ordered three crabs. The manager came over and told us they were out of crabs. We were genuinely upset. But they did have "crab legs" which were much more expensive than the crabs. Dan asked if we could get the legs for the price of the crabs (which they did) and we gorged on them. It was very, very good.

If I bought fresh crabs from Pike Place Market, would anyone know how to cook them?

pics from this weekend (there are some good stories... post will follow).

I'm going to a Le Tigre show tonight!! (I know you're all jealous... or maybe just Maeve).

I've been watching the Canadian currency everyday and it depresses me to no end. How high could it possibly go?

Canadian vs. American difference #1:

Asking "Where are you really from". On Friday we met up with a couple American interns. One of the guys, Kartik, had a strong Indian accent. Upon meeting him an American intern immediately asked him where he was from (India or Pakistan?) and how long he'd been in the States. Later in the night we met up with another American intern who immediately asked the exact same questions. I think as Canadians, we're much more likely to ask in conversation things like, "Where did you get your undergrad?... Were you born near there?"

Is this a polite Canadian thing? It's not like Kartik was bothered, and it was a natural conversation starter. But at least one Canadian here of Asian descent has been asked if she knows English more than once (and one time after speaking a paragraph of English).

Here's my fall schedule:

Spanish 101
CO 442 - Graph Theory
CS 446 - Algorithms
CS 454 - Distributed Systems
WS 205 - Gender, Culture and Technology (tentative because I signed up for this solely based on the name and am waiting for the prof to send me an outline/blurb of what the class is about)

This means that I've given up the "Formal Languages" dream and will take Crypto, Databases and Networks in the Winter.

What should I take? Networks or Formal Languages?? My appointment's tomorrow and I'm completely conflicted.