Happy New Year

Happy New Year! This is my first post of 2008 and I'm happy to report that my resolution of exercising more is going fairly well. Actually, prior to 2008 I never exercised. I learned to use the gym/machines at work and I'm keeping track of my weight.

Other exciting 2008 news: I'm probably going to get knee surgery this year. The doctors tell me that my kneecaps are naturally too high on my legs plus I have very loose ligaments on one side which is what causes my knees to pop out. In order to solve this problem, they're going to cut into me and loosen up one side of my knee and tighten the other to balance out the forces on my kneecap. I have xrays and MRIs I can share soon.

In April, assuming my knee surgery doesn't prevent me, I'm going to be in Florence, Italy for CHI, a conference for human-computer interaction. I'm supposed to do research all over the world this year, but if my knee surgery conflicts I may have to postpone it so I can do the necessary traveling.

The week of February 11, I'll be in NYC.

Carnival is in April, Liz is getting married in September, and hopefully I'll get to go visit Caryl soon.

Overall, it's going to be a busy year!

Sunrise at PHL

Theresa Sobczak

Web lost and found for gloves

This link is terribly long because i'm posting from my phone. It's an article about a website called onecoldhand.com founded by a CMU student to reconnect people with their lost gloves.

http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.google.com%2Fnews%2Furl%3Fsa%3DT%26ct%3Dus%2F5-1-0%26fd%3DR%26url%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fseattletimes.nwsource.com%2Fhtml%2Fnationworld%2F2004088548_gloves23.html%26cid%3D1125279884%26ei%3DWfdxR6vRCp6arAO89PH9Dg

updates

I'm waiting at my doctor's office waiting to be called so I figured i'd update you on what's going on. I'm here at the doctor to see if I really need knee surgery. If you didn't already know I have really bad knees and my kneecaps slip around a lot. I'm hoping to get that fixed now that I have the means/time to do so.
Last week I was in NYC on business. I got to see Dan and Chaitanya from the Phoenix office. My boyfriend John also traveled with me. We were there over a weekend so I went to see my family. A mind-blowing even occurred: my mom said to John 'give me a hug' when she was greeting us. It was very unlike anything I've ever seen my mom do with a current boyfriend.
Tonight is the google holiday party, which should be fun. I'm being cheap and I didn't buy a new dress or anything

Theresa Sobczak

Christmas cards

This year I decided I wanted Christmas cards that would be pretty and spread holiday cheer but also benefit a good cause. While surfin' the 'net I found this website: Cards that Give. There's a gallery of cards so you can choose by design or select a charity. It was a much bigger list than I could find anywhere else, but I don't know how comprehensive it is. I only wish there was a way of finding local charities...but I ended up going with some UNICEF cards anyway.

Celebrity filled work day

As I was walking back to my desk from a talk with Anthony Bourdain I was going to the cafe to get a cookie and lots of Googlers were standing around in groups and kinda looking around in awe. It turns out Goldie Hawn and her long-time boyfriend were here. Someone I don't know just turns to me and says in a stunned voice "...that's Goldie Hawn..." and I say "yeah. wow."

Theresa Sobczak

Halloween

A billion pumpkins appeared outside my office

Theresa Sobczak

Fantasy football hilariousness

My dad's team (Homers) is taking on the the Elks. I'd be intimidated if I were the Elks

Machu Picchu

I got to work this morning and found this article:
Yale to return Peruvian artifacts

I do remember being rather disappointed in Yale when our tour guide in Peru told us that they had the artifacts and refused to give them back. I'm glad that they seemed to have worked things out. Hopefully I'll get to see the exhibit before it returns to Cuzco. If not, I guess I'll just have to take another trip there. :)

Crushes, sororities days, toilets, and hilarity

So yesterday I was in the bathroom IMing my friend on my phone. As I did that I was reminded of happy times from my days as a sorority girl (so long ago). Basically, Caryl had this huge crush on this guy. She was being such a girl about it. She had to pee really badly but was talking to crush boy on AIM and didn't want to miss anything. I think I was in my room and I heard her shouting about how she didn't know what to do. The eventual solution: she took her laptop to the bathroom with her while she peed.

Hilarity!

Pink Floyd album art

Have you ever seen this poster?

Have you ever tried to figure out which album covers are on that thing? Oh yeah, it's easy: Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, Wish You Were Here...maybe you know those. But what about the rest? I don't actually own any albums with cover art, but it was REALLY hard to figure out which (besides Animals and Atom Heart Mother) are there. Seriously internet...

(It's Relics)

Not a fan of London

I feel like I shouldn't judge London because I really didn't get out to see much of the city. All I did was work, sit in my hotel, and go out to eat. None of those was particularly fun like it was in Madrid. Madrid was a beautiful city that I look forward to returning to someday. London I could take or leave. Everything is super expensive here! Not only is everything super expensive - it's not even that good! I'm willing to pay lots of money for good food. It makes me angry to pay lots of money for really shitty food. London was all right as a city, but I didn't find anything really exciting or interesting about it. It's cute, I guess. Basically, I'm not impressed. And I'm happy to going back to Mountain View today.

Food!

All I can think about is food. I haven't had tasty food in a long time it feels like. I can't wait to get back to the States and chow down on some mexican. I'll be so happy!
So it turns out I someone contracted (is that the right word for this) salmonella in Madrid. I guess it's a lot worse than I thought both from having experienced its fury on my body and by having everyone reacting in a very very shocked way when they hear that's what I had. I have no idea how I got it, just that it was miserable.
Now that I can finally eat again I really really want something tasty in my mouth. And, just as a piece of advice, when you want something tasty in your mouth, do not send your mouth to London. I'm sure there's good food around here somewhere, but (shhh, don't tell anyone I said this) even the Google cafe isn't all that good here(!!!!). I don't think it's that the food is bad, I think it's just that British taste is bad. I've found few people who disagree with me on that, so far.

¡Buenos Dias Princesa!

Last night I was flipping through my Spanish tv for the first time and I found Life is Beautiful (one of my favorites) en español. I found it funny that Guido's phrase for his wife had been turned into "¡Buenos Dias Princesa!" I don't know what I expected, but I thought it was funny. I even considered temporarily changing the name of my blog while I'm in Spain.

Armpits

So when I was taking Spanish in high school my friends and I once discovered a picture of a female with a raised arm pointing to something in the distance. This young woman had very hairy armpits. Our Spanish teacher explained that women don't groom their armpit hair in Spain. This was very shocking news.

Since I've arrived in Madrid, I've been carefully peeking at women's armpits to see if my Spanish teacher was right. So far I have only encountered 1 pair of hairy armpits. However, it seems that Spanish women keep their armpits pretty well hidden. I've also only seen one pair of shaven armpits.

I'll report back with the conclusion to this study at a later time.

(and in case you were wondering, yes, I do occasionally feel weird for trying to spot armpit hair on the streets and the metro of Madrid)

Day 2 in Madrid

So this morning I went into the office and finally found the kitchen. It's not that hard to find, it's just that I wasn't looking before. It was awesome. Apparently Spaniards have a thing for orange juice because there was a fantastic orange juicer in the kitchen. It looked like this:


So a coworker explained to me that Spaniards consider the country to be the orange country and they drink oj all day, not just ask breakfast. It's even considered a dessert!
Did you know they make white chocolate Toblerone? Because I didn't until I saw it in the kitchen at work today.

Another observation about Madrid: there are no ads on the metro trains. Where there are normally ads there are just blank spots or big maps of all of the other metro lines.

Subway cheese

While browsin the net and trying to stay awake at what Madrid wants me to think is 4:30 PM, I found this cartoon

I think you should listen to this cartoon's message, as it's a powerful one.
By the way, that was found on The Consumerist

Welcome to Madrid

There are a few things I've learned about Madrid in the short time I've been here (5 hours).
- I thought they don't believe in street signs, but it's just that they don't believe in street signs on the STREET. They're instead high up on buildings.
- Buying metro tickets is very confusing. I still don't know why I had to buy a suplemento. Do you? Exactly. That's as much as I know.
- The dollar sucks against the Euro!

About my hotel:
- There's no iron! I have to pay someone 5 euros to iron a shirt for me. I think it'll be cheaper for me to just purchase an iron and throw it away at the end of the trip. I'll let you know what I end up doing.
- I found a nice little window in my bathtub. Story and annotated pictures to come later.
- My room includes one of the very first hair driers ever produced. I attempted to use it and decided that it would take approximately 35 minutes to dry my hair using it. (again, a picture to come)
- I think I have a bidet in my bathroom but I'm scared of it because I don't know how to use it.

Kwik-e-mart

So in case you haven't heard, some 7-elevens were converted into
Kwik-e-marts to promote the Simpsons movie. One of them happens to be
in my town, so check it out. My favorite parts were the old dude in the
freezer (trying to freeze himself into the future), the pink sprinkled
donuts, and the cashier saying "thank you, come again"