Well, I'm back from Washington DC. My interview at Carnegie went well, I think. Several people were very excited about my seminar talk, so that's a good sign. The bad thing is that three of the five people on the committee were gone, and you know it's always good if the important people can but a face to a name on paper. But I think I met with enough people that will give a "good word" for me to the other committee members. We'll see next month if I did well enough and impressed the right people.

Many of you know I took the red-eye in on Thursday night and the red-eye back on Friday night. I have to admit that it's not that bad, especially if you don't sleep the whole night through on a regular basis. I arrived in DC at 7AM and had a few hours to eat breakfast and get to Carnegie for my talk at 11AM. I got enough sleep on the flight to DC and had a big cup of chai tea latte so I was pretty awake for my talk. I don't think taking the red-eye flight diminished my performance any. By the way, the chai was from a DC bookstore chain named Politics and Prose, and it was weird because it wasn't sweet like Starbuck's chai latte. Instead it was really spicy. It's probably more what chai latte is supposed to taste like. Anyways, I didn't start to crash until about 4PM, which was ok because most of the major interviewing sessions were over by then. By then I was just chatting to a few of the other postdocs until "Beer Time" at 5:30 PM. At 6PM I got a ride to the nearest Metro station and headed back to the airport.

Looking back, I would probably do it again, but maybe upgrade to first class on the longer flights for better sleep. I didn't sleep well on the way home because I couldn't get comfortable, even though I was more tired. But then it didn't matter if I slept well because I was going home. I also recommend a direct nonstop flight for maximum sleep time. Or if nonstop is not available (like in my case) choose a connection that if furthest away from you or your destination. I had a number of possible connections, like Houston or Atlanta, but I decided to go through Las Vegas, even though it was going away from DC at first, because then I would have a nice four hour flight on which to sleep.

Gunner must he hitting his "terrible twos" because he's started acting up big time. It's very sudden because all weekend he was as sweet as can be. But yesterday he peed in the house four times, and it seems mostly because he wasn't getting attention. One of those times was on the bed almost right in my face. Needless to say I was pretty pissed at that. He's also starting to growl when someone wakes him up or messes with his food. I guess he's trying to assert his dominance, but he has no idea what kind of game he's playing. If he's taking it up a notch, I'll take it up two. Get ready for the bitch slap, Gunner!

We took the dogs to Bartlett Lake yesterday. There was barely anybody there, so we let the puppies off the leash. They had a great time, although Gunner thought the water was too cold.

Don't cross the street, but it's OK to ROCK OUT! The cool thing about this crosswalk sign is that they didn't just use electrical tape to block out the two middle fingers. They actually made small triangular plugs to fill in the holes in the mesh!

It's taken me a while (since I don't have much free time), but today as I was grading geology labs I finished the final sound check for my annual "Best of" mixtape. I thought I'd post the track list here. Since I ripped my CD collection to my hard drive this year, I've merged my annual "Best of" and "Downloaded" mixes into one comprehensive list. So this year's "Best of" includes music I've purchased and songs I've downloaded. Because of that, I'm adding the disclaimer that I don't recommend purchasing CDs from all of these artists, only most of them.

Best of 2006
Disc 1

1. Mogwai - Auto Rock
   
2. ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - Life
   
3. Pistolita - Panic
   
4. The Oohlahs - Small Parts
   
5. Silversun Pickups - Lazy Eye
   
6. Built to Spill - Goin' Against Your Mind
   
7. Giant Drag - Wicked Game
   
8. Wolfmother - Mind's Eye
   
9. Brand New - Limousine
   
10. Jesu - Silver
    
11. Moneen - Don't Ever Tell Locke What He Can't Do
    
12. Audioslave - Moth
    
13. Catfish Haven - Madelin
    
14. My Morning Jacket - Mahgeetah (live)
    

Disk 2

1. Band of Horses - The Funeral
   
2. Mew - The Zookeeper's Boy
   
3. Muse - Starlight
   
4. MSTRKRFT - Easy Love
   
5. Mylo - Otto's Journey
   
6. Weird Al Yankovic - White & Nerdy
   
7. Lady Sovereign - Hoodie
   
8. The Sounds - Queen of Apology (Patrick Stump Remix)
   
9. Evermore - It's Too Late
   
10. The Juliana Theory - Into the Dark
    
11. Rodrigo y Gabriela - Diablo Rojo
    
12. Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins - Rise Up With Fists!
    
13. The Blow - Parentheses
    
14. The Grates - Nothing Sir
    
15. The Stills - She's Walking Out
    
16. Ben Folds - Bitches Ain't Shit
    
17. The Dresden Dolls - Sing
    
18. My Chemical Romance - Welcome to the Black Parade
    
19. Pistolita - Beni Accident
    

Oh, and that whole Super Bowl thing...I really didn't see much of it. I was too busy creating the first exam for my geology 101 classes. I didn't realize how long that takes. I don't really care about football that much anyway.

Most horror movies don't scare me that much. They may make me jump out of my seat a few times, but I don't get a deep-seated fear or anything. The last movie that really scared me was Signs, and a lot of that was how well-made the movie was. This weekend Kelly and I rented The Descent, which really freaked both of us out. The monsters don't even show up until halfway through the movie, but when they did, Kelly actually screamed out loud. I would definitely recommend the movie to horror fans, but it does get a bit cliche in the second half of the movie.

I bought a new CD last week from a new band, Ratatat. It's just two guys with electric guitars and a drum machine (no vocals), and it sounds just as cool as you think. You can hear some of their songs on their myspace page.