life in SD

this week was pretty eventful.. i had my first homework assignment due, and nick and i welcomed our third visitor!

jen from fairfax was here for work and we got to meet up for a lovely dinner in the gaslamp district at a yummy italian restaurant

jen.. you’ll have to come back so that we can hang out more!!

so not sure what’s in the plans for this weekend yet, but the past couple weekends have been filled with lots of beaches (school parties on the beach.. wahooo!) and lots of beer. Pics are worth a thousand words, so here’s some pics that worth a couple thousand words:

 

 

Happy weekend everyone!

Riddle me this…

How is it that, back in the day, wayyyy back, like the 1700’s when america was formed, people thought it was cool to be bald and have a ton of curly hair around their head? Even the president of the US of A sported such a ridiculous look of homeless-lookingness.

Exhibit A: John Adams

Would you trust this man to be running a country? I think not. Especially since scissors were invented by then.

-nick

Growing up?

It’s interesting how I am approaching grad school in a completely different way from my four years of undergrad at Penn.  Maybe its because I’m older, or that I actually want my parents to believe that their investment in my education is worthwhile… or maybe its because I’ve done all the crazy partying and skipping class and know how that turns out (not very well)… or maybe its just for me

I actually care about this degree b/c I believe I’m doing something meaningful for myself and that will hopefully help me to do something meaningful in the world.  Who knows.. but it does feel good to actually feel interested in the course materials, and to actually want to wake up for 9:30am class every day.

Then again, its only the 3rd day of school

The Double-Double Theory

no.. i am not talking about in-n-out burgers… i’m referring to the double-double exhaust pipes on cars.

so i know that i’m the type of person that makes decisions based on appearance and other superificial things. for example, i bought my ibook b/c i thought it looked pretty and i really like the whoosh-whoosh of the dock icons when the cursor moves over it and the icons get bigger. yes, i’m aware that there’s other benefits to buying a mac, but it was really the whoosh-whoosh that sealed the deal for me. so for awhile now, ever since i’ve started noticing “nice” cars b/c nick points them out, i’ve been developing the theory that if a car has double-double exhaust pipes.. it must be fast. therefore, the higher the number of exhaust pipes on a car, the faster it goes.

to prove my point, ive gone on a google images research project. here are the results:

let’s start at the beginning.. with the “normal” one exhaust pipe on either the left or right side of the car. most cars fall into this category.. like my little mazda 3i with a 2.0 liter engine. here it is:

pretty standard right? it’s got some zoom zoom.. but no VROOM.. so on the spectrum of car speeds, this is on the low end.

then we move into the double exhaust pipes.. either two exhaust pipes together on one side of the car, or one exhaust pipe each on both sides of the car. i think most would agree that the following cars are faster than the mazda 3 and its peers.

now we get to the cars that made me start this theory to begin with: bmw m5, porsche carrera, maserati, ferrari.. all double-double exhaust pipes. the instigator of this post was the mercedes-benz e55 that we saw on the road today.. i made the observation that its got double-double exhaust pipes.. so it must be fast… we were not disappointed… it goes 0-60mph in 4.3 seconds. apparently one of the fastest cars when it came out in 2004.

BUT there is a corollary to this theory: the one giant exhaust pipe in the middle. for example, the porsche boxster and the lamborghini murcielago lp640:

so in my google search.. i came across something i’ve never seen before: TRIPLE-double exhaust pipes…

what does this mean?!?

California Love

i’m feeling really “california” these days… new cali driver’s license, car registration, license plates… bye bye good ‘ole Maryland!

school doesn’t start until next Thursday… but we’ve been having “Career Management Orientation” these last couple days. it’s a little overwhelming how much time we’ve spent on figuring out our future career, our summer internship, etc. my reason for coming to grad school was so that i could put off making a career decision for another two years! eeks.. i feel behind already

-cindy

Labor

… it’s a holiday (to quote the black eyed peas)…

nick and i had a very productive labor day weekend. our major accomplishment: painting the accent wall in our living room. here’s the end result:

my mom completely freaked out when i told here that we were gonna paint the wall red. since chinese ppl never paint their walls.. she wasn’t quite sure what to expect. but after seeing the picture.. she thinks its pretty cool

on sunday, nick and i went up to anaheim to see my good friend tim (and marc). it’s been 3 years since i last saw tim, so it was good times all around!

-cindy

ROADTRIP!!

So we finally got unlazy and documented our roadtrip across the good ol’ US of A. We managed to survive more than 3,100 miles and 45 hrs in the car with each other w/o any major mishaps. No loss of possessions, car troubles, speeding tickets, or killing each other

Here’s the recap:
DAY 1: We said good-bye to Maryland a little after 8am with one REALLY packed car..

most of the day was spent in pretty familiar territory. We decided that we would take a pic of each state as we crossed into it.. this would prove to be a much harder feat as the trip went on.
Pennsylvania

Ohio – Nick missed the pic when we actually crossed into Ohio, so we had to stop when we crossed from Ohio to Indiana and took this pic from across the highway.

Indiana

Illinois – We spent the night at my brother’s place.. our one “free” night of lodging.. thanks Eric!

Dinner at Thai restaurant in Chicago with my brother, Eric

DAY 2: Our goal was Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We were definitely entering “Nowhere, USA” starting from this day with 70-75mph speed limit roads and lots of nothingness…

Wisconsin

Minnesota – Crossing the Mississippi River!

South Dakota

DAY 3: We left at like 7am since we had to make it to Mt. Rushmore by mid-day (around 370 miles away) and then Cheyenne Wyoming by dinner time (another 290 miles from Mt. Rushmore).

First pic of the day

We had a number of highlights in South Dakota.. including seeing a sign for Laura Ingalls Wilder’s home(!!), a gas refueling stop at 1880 town and also a stop a Wall Drugs. Wall Drugs is a famous drugstore on the Interstate that has billboards all around the world, leading to its store in Wall, SD. The store employs more than half the town’s population!

Mount Rushmore! Definitely pretty awesome and brought back lots of memories of US history classes. We had absolutely no idea that our roadtrip coincided with a HUGE annual bike rally that takes place near Mt. Rushmore.. so we were one of the few tourists there that did not have a Harley and were not wearing leather! But a nice biker dude took this pic for us!

We had to survive a thunderstorm, hailstorm, mudslide and flash flooding (we were really glad we were in a car and not on a harley!) to get out of Mt. Rushmore.. and finally made it to our stop for the night:

Wyoming

DAY 4: This was one of our longest (and most boring) driving days.. there’s not a lot to see in western Wyoming. Our destination for the night was Las Vegas.. wahoo!

Utah

Arizona

Nevada

We got into Vegas pretty late at night.. and checked into our room at Harrah’s. Nick had found a deal in the intarweb for a standard room at $42 a night (incl. tax).. when we checked in, they decided to upgrade us (for no known reason!) to a suite with a jacuzzi!! So our $42 room turned into a HUGE suite… pretty good deal There was no gambling going on… but we did get to watch 3 shows at the Bellagio fountain
Day 5: Finally getting close enough to the coast (and San Diego) to smell the ocean! Our first stop in California was for some yummy In ‘N Out burgers!

Hellooo California

Helloooooo In ‘N Out… so yums     

So that’s the end of it! I think the total is 13 states.. it was a pretty wild ride! But we are all settled in now.. so if you’re ever in the San Diego area, let us know! We love visitors