A Ball and Bacon Plus Basketball and Bamboo

• A Ball: I went to the Grad Ball this past weekend and had much fun. Dancing was good, especially when they played Nirvana at the end. A few pictures are up on Flickr. Like all good graduate student outings, moratoriums on nerd talk would last for only twenty minutes or so before being broken and reissued. At least we only discussed progress on problem sets and not details on how to do them… The one sad thing about the dance was how long the drinks line was. I think I spent almost as much time in line waiting for my two free drinks as dancing. I definitely got both of my drinks at once so that I didn’t have to wait in line again. I’m already thinking about solutions for next year….
• Bacon: I don’t eat bacon at all, and I’m always amused by how strongly people feel about it. We found a little room away from the dancing that had bacon wrapped scallops. Wrapping other types of meat in bacon always seems a little excessive to me (and reminds me happily of certain people in Bloomington). The best was the friend who commented that they were more excited about the bacon then the scallop…I was also introduced to the concept of bacon gin (although it could apply to any alcohol) over the weekend. The process involves soaking rendered bacon fat in gin for a day or so at room temperature then refrigerating (possibly freezing also) the gin so that the fat will congeal and can be sieved out. You then have gin that smells like bacon, and I can only presume also tastes like it – I smelled some but didn’t try any. This leads to fun things like bacon martinis.
• Basketball: I didn’t actually watch very much of the final games in the tournament at all. I watched the first half of UCLA and Memphis – I wasn’t surprised that UCLA lost given the terrible ball handling I saw. I sat down to watch the final game and decided to go to bed at half time – it was already 10:30 and I had to be up early the next day. I did hear all about the game that night though, when I got a phone call around midnight to discuss the exciting end to the game – the overtime and Memphis’s free throw shooting (or lack thereof) coming back to haunt them. I’m not sure I was entirely lucid during that phone call, but I appreciated it. Something really needs to change with the final game – for it to end that late for the East Coast on a weeknight is a little ridiculous.
• Bamboo: I don’t really have anything to say about bamboo – I just thought I could use a fourth “B” for alliterative purposes. Plus, this is a reminder to myself as the end of the semester hecticness is beginning to start that it’s always good to laugh at life.