Mishaps and other haps

I played so much World of Warcraft today … so much …

We put a couple of movies in, we ordered some pizza.

But really, we played a lot of World of Warcraft.

I was experiencing some lag yesterday. Headache. Maybe a little achy, too. A bit down in the emotional areas. So I called in and stayed home from work. Slept until noon. I really needed that. There have been nights that I didn’t sleep so well in the past week. But everything is fine and well and good. I expect it’s just one of those things that happens now and then.

After playing some WoW for a bit in the evening, PhysOrg and I went out to Cold Stone for ice cream. We discovered that they have ORANGE DREAMSICLE at the moment, so I had this flavor mixed with pie crust, IN A WAFFLE BOWL which really hit the spot.

PhysOrg pointed out that the orange dreamsicle was the wrong color, as it was all whiteish, rather than orangeish or swirled. It could easily be mistaken for oh, say, cake batter or vanilla or cheesecake or sweet cream or white chocolate or any of Cold Stone’s other white flavors. But we still thought it was tasty.

PhysOrg had Birthday Cake Remix, since cake batter has returned to the regular line-up.

Cold Stone also has cotton candy ice cream right now. I sampled this and it was tasty, but not as tasty as orange dreamsicle.

We stopped by World Cost, which has recently moved to the Greenway Station shopping center, and picked up the following necessities:
–XXXX hot sauce
–Haribou gummy bears
–a bottle opener

Back at home, we camped in front of the cable for the rest of the evening and watched Heathers (my selection) and Kung Fu Hustle (Inle’s selection). OMG! Kung Fu Hustle! Watch this movie! I laughed my ass off! Love you, Landlady!

Just thought I should respond to something that was posted somewhere out in the blog world today:

It’s not the worst thing in the world to disappoint people.

It’s not even the worst thing in the world to disappoint yourself.

God, it’s a fact of life and people and you will get over being disappointed.

The worst thing is when you don’t allow yourself breaks, when your life is so dictated by “never screw up” and you’ve bowed to the demands of others for so long that you can’t even grasp or properly communicate what you want or how you feel.

It doesn’t make you “stronger” to be chronically unhappy with a situation, unless somehow out of that unhappiness you seize the opportunity for change.

(Without even trying?)

It would make a good book title.

Seriously, though, have you guys been reading about Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard student who wrote a novel last year about the long, hard, well-rounded road to being admitted into an Ivy League school?

A week or two ago, when I first read about her, everything was peachy. Her first book had just come out, part of a deal with her publisher to write two novels … for which she had received a $500,000 advance.

Over the weekend, there were questions about her novel’s similarities to work by another author. Viswanathan claimed it was accidental and her publisher promised substantial revisions of the next edition of the book. As of this morning, the other author’s publisher is pretty much flat-out calling her a plagiarist.

If the publisher follows through with legal action, there goes any possibility for a career in writing … and Harvard could also take disciplinary action. Could she be kicked out of college for plagiarism if it did not occur as part of her coursework? Possibly, as the bad press blemishes the school’s reputation and demonstrates lack of integrity on her part.

Are there legal precedents for this kind of action? I have no idea.

I am the little sleep begger that shuffles down the stairs in her Felix the Cat pajamas and socks because she can’t fall back to sleep in her own bed.

Brrr … it cooled down overnight.

My roommate just left all energized after waking up early and rollerblading. She has been on a “get healthier” kick for a couple of weeks now and it seems to be going well. This morning she reported that she has lost some weight and she had a very happy aura as she left for her game.

It looks like today is going to be a good day for running errands and catching up on things at home. It’s a beautiful day!

Matt and Liz came to visit yesterday as we were finishing up a Sunken Temple run (yay, warrior quest completed!). Matt has a tradition of watching Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments this time of year. We all watched it at PhysOrg’s place and played a game of Apples to Apples afterwards. I particularly enjoyed the parting of Moses’ hair.

Stitch, who thought we were gaming Saturday afternoon, hung out for a while, too. He brought over a COOLER of frozen baked goods, most of which ended up in PhysOrg’s freezer to be baked at a later date. Just as a side note, I have done very little from-scratch baking for several months now because Stitch has been bringing all sorts of pre-made things on Saturdays. It’s helpful to have friends who work at places that make/sell tasty things.

Hey, but the best news yesterday: In about a year, not two, but FOUR of our friends will be moving to the Madison area.

The Farmers’ Market (on the Square) starts tomorrow, which happens to be Earth Day. I always forget when Earth Day is and therefore miss it by a day or two, but I seem to have caught it ahead of time this year.

I should consider going downtown tomorrow morning. Guild events are scheduled for 10:30 on Saturday morning and friends are coming into town for a small movie party Saturday afternoon … but we’ll see … sometimes I am motivated to wake up early and do things.

If you happen to be in the DeForest area this weekend, I highly recommend stopping by the high school to see “Noises Off.” I think they have another evening performance tonight (7 PM) and on Saturday.

We went last night and I laughed until I was in pain. I can’t remember the last time I laughed that much.

This article posted on Ars Technica barely caught my attention today, but once I realized what it was about, I was sucked in.

I guess it didn’t dawn on me that much of the scepticism directed by science studies (touching on history, philosophy, & sociology) at the authority and objectivity of science came out of the field of sociology. This is probably something I knew at one point and forgot– or maybe it didn’t quite crystallize as Conscious Knowledge for me when I was immersed knee-deep in it. I’m not sure.

It’s a really small thing that I absorbed without fully processing and critiquing it, I guess.

Anyway, it is interesting now that some of the players in science studies are embracing Intelligent Design as the new tool to poke at scientific objectivity. As the article points out, it’s not a very good tool. But it’s interesting that this “theory” that seems like such a contrived tool to me would be picked up by scholars.

John Timmer, the author of the article, seems to also be a bit dumbfounded that Steve Fuller, who has pretty solid credentials on paper, would tow this line. It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in a science studies program right about now …

I’m actually pretty impressed with Timmer, as he seems to be more acquainted with this field than I would have expected a writer for Ars to be (I guess I view it as more of a tech news website than a science-related news site).

April is flying by and things are pretty good. I could use a massage, particularly in the area of my left shoulder, but other than that, no complaints.

Last week was the first full week of really nice, warm weather we’ve had this year. On Sunday it rained on and off during the day (mixed with a few snowflakes) and today we’re back to “chilly”, but at least we got in that one week.

Easter weekend was good. I missed instancing on Saturday morning because I needed to do laundry and run an errand before gaming. We had our usual afternoon/evening game and went out to dinner.

Sunday I went to brunch with PhysOrg and his family (and their future in-laws) at the Madison Club. A good time was had by all and we visited for a while downtown after brunch. PhysOrg is enjoying having a nephew quite a bit and people prod him about this every once in a while. His current claim is that he is only good with “well-behaved babies.” It’s hard to argue with this because Andrew is one of the most mild-mannered, good natured babies I have ever spent time around.

We were home by 5:30 or so and spent the rest of the evening playing WoW. Started running Dire Maul with our mains, but the server crashed and the dungeon reset, so we switched over to some of our alts and started running Wailing Caverns around 9:00. Oh, yes, I was up too late … but it was a good run.