Two weeks ago, twelve of us (known as Team Hummucks) us participated in the first annual Google Puzzle Hunt. Both Microsoft and MIT host events like this, but if you're not familiar with those, it's two days full of solving logic puzzles. Each puzzle/task leads to more puzzles/tasks, and the goal is to find out where some ultimate prize is hidden and find it before all the other teams. Here's one of the puzzles I worked on. (Sadly, it's the only picture I took!) We had to twist up a Rubick's Snake according to some instructions, and eventually the various snake configurations spelled a word:
My personal favorite was the "Mathematician" puzzle. Hopefully the organizers publish the puzzles at some point so I can show you! The instructions for the puzzle simply said "Math is hard! Ego is imaginary! Let's go funballing!" I, of course, had been hoping since I joined Google that I would have some excuse to jump into our ball pit (you know, like the ball pits they have at McDonald's?), and I didn't need any further prompting than "Let's go funballing!". Best of all, there turned out to be crucial clues in the ball pit!
Unfortunately, once we made all the tough logical leaps, I screwed up the math. (Where by "screw up" I mean that not only could I not remember how to find ln -i, but I didn't even think to just enter it into the Google Calculator, which knows the answer.) Ah well, we got there eventually, and finished a respectable 11th out of 21 teams. That's exactly average -- which is not bad considering how many (practically) professional teams of puzzlers were competing. So, I didn't come out feeling like a total retard, which is always great after a weekend of thinking really really hard, and I hope there's another one next year!
Yet another really beautiful and fun wedding, this time in Manhattan Beach, CA. My brother was an usher, and we saw plenty of people that we haven't seen since...well, high school! Both the famous Matt Gould and my 10th grade English teacher, Mr. Hertzog, performed during the ceremony, and we got delicious little mouse-truffles from Burdick's!
Congrats again to you both, and here are some pics!
Words can't even describe how amazing and beautiful and fun the wedding weekend was, so instead, I will share some of my favorite pictures! (Colette has some really nice ones too, especially where mine came out a little blurry or red-eyed.)
There were four days whole days of festivities, and I think each one of them was *individually* bigger than our entire wedding last year, so I definitely tip my hat to the planners -- we are definitely honored to have been a part of so many special events! I mean, Phyllis and Blake were married by Cardinal Cheli, who flew out from Rome, and who brought a personal message from the pope!
Anyways, congrats again guys. (Now...who should get married next so we can have more parties to celebrate?)
For the last week of May, Chris and I worked out of the New York office. The office itself is really nice, with fresh free sushi everyday, and Legos everywhere! The weather was gorgeous, and I got to explore a lot more of the city than on any of my previous trips. Usually New York City intimidates the hell out of me, but having so many familiar people (and familiar California-esque weather) around made it seem much more friendly and fun.
Chris and I managed to time our trip so that it would coincide with the Red Sox's visit to Yankee Stadium. It was our first trip to the Bronx, and we had a really good time. Here's the view from our seats the first day:
And here were our seats from the second day:
Sadly, I think this particular point in history was the start of a depressing losing streak for the Red Sox, but we did get to see them win one game at least!
Other highlights of the trip:
Tons of shopping with Colette and Jinger! Now usually I am not a big shopaholic (and Chris even less so), but Jinger took us to some really cute shops in SoHo, like Mango and Helen Wang. I also discovered how *truly* huge the Macy's is. Wanting to spend a little more time looking at earrings, I told Jinger and Colette that I would meet them "in the dress section" when I was done -- not knowing that there were like three FLOORS of dresses and probably DOZENS of sections!
Caught up with John, Alex and Jing over some delicious meals.
Anti-highlights of the trip:
I got a fishbone stuck in my throat! Lots of you have already heard this story so I won't belabor it, but I ended up walking over to the NYU ER to have it checked out (just to be safe), and that hospital was *gross*. There were only like TWO magazines in the whole waiting room and they were both totally crumpled and water-damaged, splattered with occasional mysterious brown stains. And the bathroom sink was all clogged with dirty used bandaids. And here's the new development to the story: yesterday I got a letter from them saying they'd taken my insurance information incorrectly so they couldn't bill it properly!
I also watched Shrek the Third, which was kind of disappointing. But maybe I would have enjoyed it more without a fishbone in my throat, and also if I hadn't tried to wash down the fishbone before the movie by glugging down a Long Island ice tea. (Yeah, that was probably really dumb.)
In February and March, we watched a lot of tennis! First, we watched the early rounds of the SAP Open in San Jose. Some of the big names we saw were Andy Roddick, Marat Safin, and Andy Murray. Here's a good shot of Roddick from our seats:
It turns out that both Roddick and Safin are terrible sports though. They both threw some awful temper tantrums, full of yelling and racket-chucking. We were definitely cheering for their opponents by the end. I mean, who does that, with a bunch of kids from local tennis clubs watching?
I was more impressed by Sam Querrey, who is Roddick's practice partner, and who came *so* close to beating him! He also gets extra points from me because his name showed up as "S. Querrey" on the board, which allowed me to make lots of bad jokes.
Nonetheless, the SAP Open is kind of a "tune-up" tournament. We were way more excited to see the Pacific Life Open at Indian Wells, CA, which is an ATP Masters tournament where all the stars play. Leading up to this tournament, there was a lot of hype about how Roger Federer (my hero, he's so graceful!) would break the all-time record for consecutive matches won if he was successful at Indian Wells. I'm thinking, this guy has won 41 consecutive matches, and he's won this tournament 3 years in a row -- of course he'll break the record, and I'll be there to watch!
Aside: If you haven't seen Roger Federer play before, you *must* watch this clip of him crushing Andy Roddick. I cheer every time I watch it (YESS!!).
Anyways, silly me. Federer lost in the first round to some guy I'd never heard of before, so we never got to watch him play. :-(
But we had a great time anyways. We got hassled a few times for wearing Red Sox hats to a tennis match (ironically by Yankees fans wearing Yankees hats), but it was HOT -- over a hundred degrees -- so we would have passed out without them. We had pretty good seats, but it was very very sunny:
We definitely had to take plenty of shade breaks. I think we ate (drank?) $50 worth of Fresher's Soft Frozen Lemonades.
The final match between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic was kind of one-sided, since it was Djokovic's first appearance at a final in a Masters event, and he was obviously jittery for the first set, but Nadal is just *amazing* to watch, and it was gratifying to see Djokovic break into the top ten for the first time. (He's like number 4 now and doing really well at Wimbledon.)
Here's me trying to be in the same picture as Nadal, after he won the final:
