It’s amazing how even in the crummiest, most annoying days, there are lots of happy moments. Today was kind of a crummy, annoying day, but that’s ok.
It started out well enough, with a nice breakfast, RIAI work, messaging friends, etc. I skipped basketball, did more work, took an hour to write a little personal essay. I went on a really nice run, which made me feel pretty good. The weather was stormy but the city of Zürich and all its lights blinked brightly against the gray background. A beautiful city, really. I’m leaving so soon…
After that, let’s see. I did (wow, actually maybe today wasn’t so bad!) a solid bit of more work. Then I decided to cook lentils. I’d never done that before. So I followed the directions on the side of the spice box that I’d gotten from the Indian food store. The lentils were supposed to take 1.5 hours to cook(!) so after I put the full half-kilo in the pot and set them on a simmer, I decided to go to the Freies Tanzen. I got in one dance, an unfamiliar style to unfamiliar music, and decided to go mind my &(&%(&@)) lentils. But even that wasn’t so bad–I met a guy from Randomized Algorithms there.
I hung out downstairs waiting for the lentils to boil, chatted a bit with Mia and Anna. The lentils boiled, and I rather exhaustedly prepped first some onion, then some sausage, to go with it. My habaneros were missing (some GAR-bage!! what had I done with them?!). But fortunately the Indian spice mix was a bit spicy. The lentils were actually pretty good. I read some more Ribbonfarm, something about questioning the assumptions about how you learn, with an extended analogy to Japanese automaking.
I grabbed Anna and challenged some dudes to foosball. We lost, but then I played a bunch of intense one-on-one games. Even in my bla-exhausted state, I lost only one game. That helped a bit. I put away the lentils and went upstairs. I started watching a little Spirited Away, which I’d never seen in full. What a weird movie!
Rap, rap! I had a fateful knock on my door. It was Anna–apparently my number was up for kitchen cleaning–alone. I had thought I was done forever with that game. Snap! I put on some blues, took a thematic sip of bourbon, and headed down to the kitchen. I went nuts. Every optimization technique in the book got thrown at a mass of dirty dishes and grimy counters. Juggling like a madman, I broke an old bowl on the floor, cleaned up the fragments, started wiping the counter–whoops! A rogue fragment had jumped up on the counter, and apparently hit an artery in my hand. This was too much. I got it bandaged and went back to cleaning, hair wild, eyes popping out, roughly unshaved, the madman of Culmann kitchen. In not too long–I did optimize well :) the tedious, persnickety work was done, and I headed upstairs, reopened my wound and stuffed it with soap, then rebandaged and got ready to hit the hay.