Lilacs

One of the things I really love about spring is the lilacs. They are coming into full bloom here in Minnesota and there are millions of them in our neighborhood, so that for about a week every May it smells like lilacs everywhere you go, even when you're just in the alley dropping off the garbage. We even have some right by our bedroom window and if I venture to open the window and it's slightly breezy sometimes I can smell them in our apartment. You have to act fast though, they stick around only long enough for you to get a feeling for how great they are and then they're gone until next year!

Lilacs taste good, too. Don't ask me how I know this. Gilatto (a delectable frozen dessert, we have a store here in Minneapolis) has a 'lilac' flavored ice cream but it's not quite as strong as I'd like, although it's good.

The Celebration Plans

As the Big Thesis Defense and Graduation loom nearer, and I can put some distance between now and The Big Stressful Spring I just dealt with, I feel ready to start making plans for The Big Graduation Celebration that is in order for the weekend after my graduation (which is May 19). My mom is thinking about coming up to celebrate with me, and just now I had the bright (or not-so-bright) idea of having a backyard BBQ afterwards to celebrate, although our yard isn't too terribly huge and neither is our apt so I'm still working out the details. The weekend after is Memorial Day weekend, and we already have plans to head back home to do some more celebrating with one of my little brothers, who is graduating from high school that weekend (two of my brothers are graduating high school this year). I feel a little burned out on Planning Things, so I'm trying to keep things simple but I think some sort of celebration would help make things official and important. Plus, I love spring BBQs.

Beer and brats and chips, yum! I love spring.

The Google Bomb Bombed

If you do a Google search for "Super Awesome PhD Advisor," what comes up at the top is MY BLOG. Gah!

Maybe eventually with enough links we'll get it to point instead to my advisor's website.

Google Bomb in Action

For my thesis defense, I want to say, "If you look up "Super Awesome PhD Advisor" on Google, my boss will be at the top" so I am going to put this google bomb (see below) into effect starting right here, right now. To help me out, go to the link a few times, or better yet, create the same link on your own blog.

My boss, the Super Awesome PhD Advisor, is going to love it.

The Google Bomb

The Google Bomb, according to Wickipedia, is a certain attempt to influence the page rankings that come up on Google through linking certain words to specific websites (some think that "Google Bomb" should more appropriately be called "Link Bomb").

Here's how it works: Google's search algorithm takes into account the specific words that are used to link to certain pages, so that if a bunch of different people use, say, the phrase "more evil than Satan" to link to Microsoft, then when you type this phrase into the Google search engine, Microsoft will come up. More recently this phrase has been used to link to articles about this Google Bomb phenomenon, so now those articles will come up instead.

The most interesting, and most recently buzzed about, Google Bomb is that for the phrase Miserable Failure, which happens to lead you straight to a biography of George W. Bush.

More Hot Yoga

Now that the thesis is getting done, and the housework has been tackled, I finally felt like some hot yoga was in order. I cruised on out on Sunday morning to my favorite Uptown Bikram studio and revisited the good old times (1.5 hr long yoga class in a 105F room with 50% humidity). This time there were no guys wearing the Big Silver Underpants, no Dangerously Nauseated Dudes, or Precariously Off-Balance Big Fat Men to entertain me, which was both disappointing and a bit of a relief. I had to instead entertain myself which isn't too hard when I'm sweating like a pig (except pigs don't sweat so I'm really sweating like a huge football player in a step aerobics class, and believe me, that gets sweaty). When I sweat that much, my hands slip right off my limbs when I try to grab them, the sweat goes up my nose and gets in my eyes, my towel gets soaked, and my feet slip on the floor. I have to concentrate just to do the basic things we're supposed to be doing without totally screwing it up because I'm so sweaty. And every chance I'm not falling over or trying not to fall over, I am scrambling to drink water because I'm getting totally dehydrated. I don't really know how people do that class on a daily basis - you would have to drink gallons of water to replenish what you lost (or maybe you just start sweating less eventually?).

But for some reason I still love it and was thrilled to be back and plan to go again as soon as I can. I'm addicted.

Stinky bathroom

When a bathroom gets stunk up, and the stink isn't ventilated away, where does it eventually go? If it diffuses, then does that mean that rooms near (or far) from the bathroom eventually get a little of the stink, except it's at too low of a level to be detected as a stink? And does that mean that the whole world actually stinks a little, it's just that the stink gets concentrated sometimes and that's when some unfortunate person has to suffer from it?

What a stinky problem.