Week Tastic

A long week, and not enough sleep. A familiar refrain. But it was an exciting week in a lot of ways.

I finally purchased the hardware I was promising myself for my education, and the two books I ordered arrived. I'll be reading out of Graphics Gems for awhile I think. I'm actually fairly excited to begin work on implementing some of the algorithms and developing a system to use. It will take awhile, but I have some time, I think.

I'm guessing that it'll all arrive on Tuesday—three-day shipping from Newegg is super-fantastico. (I know someone is laughing at that.)

And after a healthy round of emails this week (wait for it), I'm really going to Kenya this summer. The boss okay'ed two weeks of a vay-kay from 7/31-8/15, R reserved me a ticket, and now all I have to do is to get some immunizations. Yellow fever is the only one that's really required (mostly to get back into the country), but I'll probably get Hep A and others. L recommended that I buy doxycyclene there OTC since it's incredibly cheap and will work as effectively as the expensive anti-malarials I can buy here. The weather is supposed to be fantastic (chilly in the mornings and evenings; probably within my prime temperature range: 45-75 during the day). I am really excited to go.

I'll stop over in Dubai for a few hours. Dubai is pretty incredible, they say, and I've seen some wicked awesome pictures. There's a hotel there built in the middle of the ocean that runs about $7k a night. The trip to the lobby costs $60.

And, as it happens, the dates correspond nicely to E's schedule; she'll be travelling back on the 15th with me en route to JBU. We'll stop over in Hamburg, so I'll email A and see if she wants to hang out for a little while. I'm not sure how long the layover is, though, so it may not work out. I haven't seen her in probably four years, maybe a little longer. When I moved out at the end of sophomore year, she cried and said, "He makes me feel like a mom." (I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not.)

So I'll also pick up the 55-200 for my camera, and a bag probably. Since J is getting married in May, I'll make sure to have it for that; plenty of time to practice, anyway.

If you want a postcard, make sure I have your address. (Those of you who see me regularly, just write it down; those of you who don't, please email me—don't leave it in a blog comment for the rest of the world to see.) I'll happily send plenty of them—the exchange rate is pretty favorable.


Other highlights of the week included breaking into C's car (she locked her keys in the trunk), being asked to do more private lessons (in exchange, possibly, for some frequent flier miles—this might could work in my favor to visit other places) for a really good group of people, and almost beating Dragon Warrior II. K and I also resumed our lessons today, which is good.

I'm still working on the composition; I'll hopefully get a rough view of it done today. Layer masks make me warm and fuzzy on the inside.