a. Thursday:
last final (Thermal) in the morning, fun final.
i. Sat
in the SPS lounge and worked, emails, etc. Went to CENPA and made some
measurements with Ricardo so that I could model them over the summer. The He6
guys were prepping for a run so we couldn’t take any magnetic field data (which
would have required turning off all the coils except the one we wanted to
measure), we could only get the dimensions.
ii. Bought
Ricardo lunch at the 8. His past was pretty crazy—grew up in a really religious
family in Florida, left town after high school to find a different life all the
way across the country, gravitated to physics as an alternate way of explaining
the world. He’s been with his high school sweetheart for like 7 years now, and
they’re both moving to a grad school across the country at the end of the
summer.
iii. Grabbed
a book, Diaspora, for Brandon at the
UW bookstore, got it wrapped. The poor older woman doing the wrapping was
desperate for conversation, did an amazing job.
iv. Ran
over to West Campus to catch a bus out to Golden Gardens, where Jacob had
invited me to hang out. Missed the bus with Jacob on it. On the long bus ride,
got into bizarre conversations with some randos. Started when this dude in
front of me—older guy—struck up a chat. Topics bounced from hacking
computerized cars, to virtual reality, to educational technology as various
people—the bus driver, a guy who worked at Lowe’s—dropped in and out.
v. Golden
Gardens! Hiked down to the beach, found Jacob and his buds goofing off on the
play equipment. We chatted, ate some oranges I’d grabbed at the DM. Eventually,
we got a game of ultimate going. But I had to hustle back after a few points.
Barely caught the homebound 45 in time, downloaded a bunch of Greg Egan short
stories, read all the way back to the UW.
vi. Hustled
to Haggett, took a shower, then Xin, Brandon and I set out for the light rail
station, to celebrate Brandon’s upcoming birthday at the international
district. Managed to coordinate the timing so Brianna could surprise Brandon in
the station.
vii. Caught
up with Brianna on the way down. At the intl district, we wandered around,
picked a whizzy hot pot restaurant called Boiling Point, put in our names, then
stopped in at Uwajimaya. I bought a mango.
viii.
Boiling point was pretty amazing. I ordered a
lamb hot pot; we also got an order of wasabi tofu and some bubble tea. Our hot
pot was served on proprietary Boiling-Point designed individual grills, so that
the soup was literally boiling the entire time we were eating it. Needless to
say, my nonexistent heat tolerance struggled—I had to take stuff out several
minutes in advance of eating it, put it on rice, and let it cool. But it was
pretty great. There was blood rice cake, crazy mushrooms, lamb, noodles, … :D
ix. At
the end of dinner, I gave Brandon Diaspora, and Xin gave him this cute little
Pikachu wearing glasses. I think he was pretty surprised/happy.
x. Returned
to Haggett, met Brandon’s family (mom, and younger sister Emily, an
accomplished cellist with a crazy hairdo). Alternated between reading / working
(setting up the last brunch of the year) and helping Brandon with move-out.
Brandon’s a fun dude to help—always cheerily behind on everything and laughing
at his goofy attempts to, say, clear frost from his freezer with a screwdriver.
When the refrigerator was finally clean, helped him take it to the summer apt
where he and Brianna and Eleanor would be staying. Then we stopped by Mercer to
pick up Brianna’s boxes. A fun evening.
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