I've been home for well over 48 hours, so it's about time I write something about what I've been up to since the end of May. I've been fairly busy too.

On May 30, Holroyd, Isabelle, Kinga, Ray, Wes, and I went hiking up Old Rag Mountain, about an hour North of Charlottesville. It was fairly intense, but the view was amazing (see pictures). We took about six hours to get up the mountain and back down, at which point we made up for lost calories at IHOP. Thanks to Wes for dinner and a clear demonstration of his organizational prowess.

The following week marked an even more epic event; I submitted the abstract for my paper on bug reports. More importantly, Isabelle and I made bitterballen around the same time; I believe there may be some kind of reward structure going on here. Either way, they were delicious :-p My only complaint is that I ate too many.

June also saw the start of our lease for the new house (that's Blake, Karolina, Krasi, Sosa, and I). Among our initial 'concerns' was the fact that the previous tenants' stuff was still all over the place when we got our keys. We produced a sizable list of complaints about the house shortly after that. The walls and ceiling in my bedroom desperately needed to be fixed up and painted, and I had a rather ancient AC unit blocking one of my windows. I initially just moved my stuff so I could rent out my old apartment, and finally moved in after San Diego:

Isabelle, Kristen, and I traveled to San Diego on June 10th. We drove to DC, stopping at IKEA on our way to the airport. The Swedish meatballs were delicious, and I picked up a lamp for my new room. After IKEA we flew directly to San Diego for the 2007 Federated Computing Research Conference (FCRC). I attended PLDI (Programming Language Design and Implementation), which had a bunch of interesting presentations. UVA had a solid 15 or so people in attendance at the various conferences, so we had plenty of entertainment outside of the presentations and its (occasionally somewhat nerdy) attendees. Dr. Soffa invited everyone out to dinner on Tuesday, which was tasty and highly entertaining. I sat next to Adam Meyerson.

My paper was due on the 12th, so my last couple of days in Virginia had consisted mostly of running experiments, making minor adjustments, and rerunning them. A single run would take a good 10 hours, so the process was somewhat hectic. By the time we were on the plane to San Diego, though, I had most of the paper finished and ready to go. I had submitted a draft version on Saturday, before we left. I did the final version on Monday from the hotel and submitted at 11pm, a solid 5 hours before the deadline.

I was quite pleased. 8-) After that, being in the foreign lands (i.e. California) was much less stressful. We did a bunch of stuff during the afternoons, after the conferences had ended for the day. We made trips to the harbor region and had dinner in the gas light district during the week. PLDI ended on Wednesday, leaving me two days for Extreme Relaxation. On Friday, we visited the moderately amazing San Diego Zoo, where we saw pandas, koalas, and a million other types of critter. We flew back to DC on Saturday, June 16.

Back in Charlottesville, it was about time for me to get my new room in order. I took two afternoons to paint the walls and ceiling, with help from Krasi and Isabelle. I picked 'pale orange' for the walls, which could be described more accurately as 'bright yellow.' The ceiling got an extra coat of white, which it needed desperately, and the loft and random details got some baby blue-related color. The walls needed a lot of hole-filling, so I got to practice my spackling skills as well. After a couple of days of airing the place out, I finally put in my newly donated bed and... well... no other furniture.

July saw two non-work related events: sushi night with Wes and the rest of the Weimer Research Group (WRG) on July 2nd, and a shared birthday party for Blake and I on Friday the 13th. The home-made sushi was delicious, and as it turns out I'm not so good at playing Taboo after so much as half a drink. The birthday parties were hilarious, and I had a lot of tasty mojito-style drinks before running off to play Capture The Flag for a few hours. I was completely exhausted when I got back from that, so after another glass or two (of water) I went straight to bed.

On that note, it's about time I got a haircut... Cheers 8-)