Belated Thanks

I wanted to thank you for my Christmas presents. I've put both the Henckels knives and Emeril pots and pans to good use, and with little delay. In particular, this little guy has been invaluable:
From cutting potatoes to onions to soy meats to opening packages, I've found no other knife that is its equal. Good for everything.

I've put it to work tonight cooking some Miso Soup. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I also have an excellent recipes for Vegetarian Moussaka--but I'll save that to make the next time I come home.

Happy MLK (Jr.) Day!

I know, I know. The actual day of celebration is tomorrow. But, Irene gave the sermon at her church today and the theme (complete with jazz band!) was MLK. And it was a very good sermon.
I'd attempt to summarize, but I wouldn't do it justice.

I was also happy to hear that you managed to rent out the Asheville place...though it is a bit unfortunate that it happened when you were intending to stay there! Was it the fault of the realty? I think you mentioned over the phone that you had to move places several times. Sounds taxing. Hopefully you still enjoyed the weekend.

Official GRE Scores

I received my finalized, official GRE scores in the mail yesterday. As I mentioned before, my verbal was significantly higher than my math. What I hadn't realized was that, apparently, the opposite is true for most test takers so in terms of how I did percentage-wise the difference is even more exaggerated.

Effectively, it's two A's (verbal and essay) and a F (math).

Aren't either of you good at math? How did I end up so bad at math?

Mother Amy

So why is it that Uncle's are always referred to by their connection and their name (e.g. Uncle Chris)? Why no Father Chris or Gramps Roger? Maybe I heard some Granna Linda's, but that's it. Not that I'm complaining about being remembered, or anything, but seriously.

It's always Uncle Joe, or Uncle Scott, or Uncle Something-or-Another. What is it about Uncle's that requires an extra level of categorization?

Pictures of the New Place

Alright, alright. The post below was a bit heavy. How about this? I finally got around to taking and posting a few pictures of my new place in Boston (Somerville, actually). Take a look.


Why don't you come up and see (it) sometime?

John Lennon & Barack Obama

On Sunday Irene and I were discussing something or another and the life and work of John Lennon came up. I remembered that Lennon was shot in 1980, but the rest of the details of his death eluded me. For the record, Lennon was shot on December 8 by Mark David Chapman. For the conspiracy buffs, besides being known by all three of his names, Chapman was carrying a paperback copy of The Catcher and the Rye.

More seriously, thinking of Lennon's assassination brought to mind the cavalcade of high profile deaths that occurred in the 1960's:

John F. Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963.
Martin Luther King Jr. was shot by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968.
Robert F. Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan on June 6, 1968.

Not to mention lesser known political figures:

Malcolm X was shot and killed by a number of members of the Nation of Islam on February 21, 1965.
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, members of the Black Panther Party, were killed on December 4, 1969, apparently by FBI Officers.

I've often wondered what effect a series of killing like this has on the national consciousness. There must be a slew of books and dissertations on the subject; suffice it to say, if you couple the death of many young, loved political figures (albeit of significantly different views) with the disillusionment that followed Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War, disgust and/or apathy would be obvious possible effects.

And now, we have a young political candidate who has people more excited--especially young people--then they have been for some time, if at all. Has the nation sufficiently recovered from the psychological scars it received from the deaths above to believe in another young, promising politician? Is it simply that a new generation has come of age who doesn't suffer from the memories of turbulent 60's? Will Barack end up as another politician who initially garnered excitement and support but ultimately failed to transform that support into electoral success and so was forgotten by history?

Big questions, but this post is too long already.

Post-Holiday Rundown

Well that was a busy couple of days. After I left Maryland on Friday I went to work for six or seven hours, went home, and continued studying for the GRE. I got a brisk six hour nap, got up, and started studying for the GRE again. Then, from 1:30pm to around 5pm I faced the GRE monster. More on that below. Afterwards, Irene and I saw a movie called The Savages--which, incidentally, I highly recommend--and then called it a night. Sunday was all errands, including going back to the office to pick up all my stuff, Monday was a morning in the office and then a trip to New York for New Year's Eve, Tuesday was recovering from New Years Eve, Wednesday was a horrid back on the Fung Wah, and today is ... today.

How lucky I am to live such an eventful life. I could write a post on any of the sentences above. My guess would be that you're most interested in is the GRE.

My feel about the GRE is that I did well enough, and could have done better with more than two or three days preparation, but not well enough to tell you my actual score (which you find out immediately after the test). Suffice it to say, I did better on the verbal section than the math section, and perhaps best of all on the essay section. The test itself was surprisingly brief and I thought the way the time was apportioned was odd. The test started with essays of 45 minutes and 30 minutes and then moves on to either a 30 minute verbal section and a 38 minute math section with one experimental section thrown into the mix. And that's it. It might be less surprising if the essays weren't generally understood to be worthless. So why spend half the test on them? Why not. This is a standardized test: logical consistency is for the questions, not for the layout.

The trip back was eight hours and included a broken down bus. That's what Irene and I get for taking the Fung Wah. I'd be more bummed, but the Iowa Caucuses are turning out to be pretty interesting.