Sara's MAE
Topic: Work/School
Today I went to Sara's Major Area Exam. First time I'd ever been to one of those. When Allan did his last summer, I was 100 miles away, tending to a 3-week-old baby! :) So I had a pretty good excuse not to attend ;-) The only other time I've ever been to one of these degree-related presentations was Mike's MS thesis defense 2 years ago.

The snacks were terrific-- Sara was a sweetheart and served homemade treats-- lemon bars, chocolate mousse cake and tiramisu! Mmmmmm... :-9

Lab party
Topic: R&R
Today, Memorial Day, was the annual iLab party at Matthew's house. He lives right at the edge of where Goleta turns into Santa Barbara, in a gated community. And his house was gigantic! Plenty of room for a 4-person family, in fact, I half-expected to see a maid or butler, the house was so big. Well, maybe that was an exaggeration, but it was definitely a big, airy, roomy and beautiful house.

The Turks have a pool table in their dining room, and most of us hung around there all afternoon, playing game after game of pool :-) They also had a trampoline with a surrounding safety net, too bad I didn't get a chance to hop on it :-D

All in all, a nice afternoon. Good food-- especially the desserts, since several of us brought cookies and cakes and whatnot, I was stuffed for the rest of the night!

Neat party at the geekhouse
Mood:  party time!
Topic: R&R
Tonight was the neat party at the geekhouse. The premise is basically: everyone brings a bottle of liquor, and then we all sit around and drink the alcohol straight. (I guess calling it a "straight party" makes it sound like it means "not gay party" :-P)

About half the attendees were UCSB people, the other half was Steve and Jason's friends from undergrad. We remained pretty much divided the entire evening :-|

Alcohol straight is too strong for me, so I ended up eating snacks and drinking water. I think I had about two swallows of liquor total all evening. At least there was no question about which of us was driving home!

The evening ended up with a little relaxing in the hot tub, where Allan promptly proved Steve's claim that getting into a hot tub drunk makes you even more inebriated, and where we learned that plastic cigarette lighters dropped into water will float.

Anyway, here's some pictures of the evening's festivities:

http://whistler.cs.ucsb.edu/linpha/third_stage_album.php?prev_path=albums%2FUCSB%2FNeat+Party+May+2005&name=Neat+Party+May+2005&first_name=UCSB

Todd's first birthday
Mood:  special
Now Playing: any birthday song, of course!
Topic: Family
Todd turned one year old yesterday, so we celebrated his birthday today. More info in his baby diary:

https://helly.tripod.com/blog

and of course, pictures at:

http://whistler.cs.ucsb.edu/linpha/forth_stage_album.php?prev_path=albums%2FTodd%2FPostnatal%2FFirst_Birthday&name=First_Birthday&first_name=Todd&sec_name=Postnatal

CS Spring BBQ
Mood:  on fire
Topic: R&R
The pseudo-annual CS spring barbecue took place today. The fall one is definitely annual, and I guess if there's money enough in the pot come Spring, we can have a spring BBQ :-)

This past Fall the big craze was on a water balloon toss that degraded into a free-for-all, with Giovanni being the instigator (and he quickly turned into the primary target!).

So of course, there was a nice big tub full of water balloons ready for another showdown at this BBQ! Pictures of the ensuing melee are posted:

http://whistler.cs.ucsb.edu/linpha/third_stage_album.php?prev_path=albums%2FUCSB%2FSpring+05+BBQ&name=Spring+05+BBQ&first_name=UCSB