Summer Grilling

Even though it's been raining a lot over the past month I've still been grilling like it's going out of style. Kristen gave me a fabulous cookbook titled "Mastering the Grill" and I've been getting a ton of ideas from it. At pretty much any given time in the past week, there has been something marinating in the fridge. In any case, I wanted to share a quick and easy recipe for a chicken marinade. Mince some garlic and cilantro and mix it with half a bottle or so of Zesty Italian salad dressing. Pour into a ziplock, add a few chicken breasts, and toss it in the fridge overnight (don't tell Whitney, though). The next day, fire up the grill to high heat, and sear each side of the breasts for about three minutes. Then turn the grill down, and cook until the juices run clear. The result should be juicy and delightful. Give it a try!

Higher Education FAIL

I'm a regular subscriber to FAILBlog. Some of their posts are pretty hilarious. I saw this while driving home the other day. My mother was kind enough to hang out the window and take the photo.

Dental School Woes

I've only just begun to look at the full cost of going to dental school. Temple's tuition runs somewhere in the middle of all of the schools I interviewed at. While it's not nearly as expensive as University of the Pacific (in San Fran), and the fact that becoming a Pennsylvania "resident" is rather difficult (so, no in-state tuition unfortunately) it ends up looking about "average" tuition for an out-of-stater like myself. And, of course, tuition isn't the only thing I'll be spending lots of money on. The cost of living isn't terribly outrageous in Philly, but it's nothin' like the midwest, either.

I've been running spreadsheets for about the last week now, trying to estimate how much money I'm going to need to take out in student loans over the next four years. If you take out too much, you'll be the last person from your class to pay back the loans. If you don't take out enough, you eat Ramen six nights a week, and Mac & Cheese (not the kind with Gruyere) for your fancy meal of the week.

In any case, I'm hoping to have my loans paid off within ten years of graduation, if not sooner, and i'm totally prepared to drive my Camry until the wheels fall off in order to make that happen. Eeek. It sure is scary to see how much it's going to cost me, in sum. $300K, less if I'm smart about it.

The photo is a screenshot of a part of one of the spreadsheets, which shows monthly payments, as well as the fraction of interest and principal balance paid.

A bit of handywork

Two of my three Xbox 360 controllers have been unhappy recently. The buttons on one stopped popping back up after they had been pressed down. The other controller had the misfortune of being the one I was using when I lost my 10th straight game in Halo 3's fiesta double experience playlist a couple of weeks back.

I had two controllers in need of repair, so I bought a special tool online so I could undo the screws that Microsoft uses (tamper resistant Torx, size T8, just in case you care). Long story short, when I was putting the controllers back together, I realized I could mix and match the pieces from the different colored controllers (white and black) to make a unique look.

I was so pleased with the result, I took a couple of photos.

Dental School: Not For Me

So, I've been thinking a lot over the past couple of days. I'm not sure I'm ready to take the plunge and go to dental school quite yet. I guess I've got a few months to decide. Actually, I'm pretty sure that if I don't show up for orientation, then they'll just call the next person on the wait list at that point. That means I have until the 27th of August to decide for sure. It feels so great to finally get this off my chest. Amazing, really!

Spring Cleaning v3

If you can't tell, I'm having a pretty good time here... More photos! This time we have a selective desaturation and an abstract.

U2 Tour Thoughts

So, the other day U2 announced the dates for the first leg of their worldwide tour. I'm really excited. I just wanted to make a quick comment on something I noticed. The tour is sponsored by Blackberry. This is interesting to me because to me it seemed that U2 always had a pretty tight relationship with Apple. I mean, remember when U2 had their own limited edition iPod? Anyway, it's just at thought I had running through my mind.

While we are on the subject of U2. I just wanted you to see how cool the stage set up for this next tour is going to be. Check it out!