Quite a nomadic spring break. The travel itinerary was Santa Barbara to SF to San Jose to SF to San Jose to Santa Barbara to San Diego to LA and then back to Santa Barbara. First up, the 2005 West Coast Conference of Music Theory and Analysis (WCCMTA site) where I did an unscripted presentation on a paper titled "Parsimonious Cycle, the Hyper-Octatonic System, and Group-Theoretic Potentials of the Octatonic Scale." Yeah, don't ask me to explain that. UCSB was "representing" though, with fellow grad Gordon Root also presenting, and our distinguished Prof. van den Toorn as the keynote speaker. Not much else to say except that:

quite an impressive spread!

Saturday night was spent indulging in food and TV. Food at Santa Ramen. T introduced me to the place a while back. It's a bit off of the downtown San Mateo area at 8th and B. It's all Chinese people in there now but the Ramen is supposedly quite authentic and I loooooove it. Made a fool of myself since I said "hai" to the first question the waitress asked me in English so I proceeded to try to order in Japanese, which was fine. Then the waitress asks me if I want something to drink or tea and I panic and just say "hai" again. Thank god they didn't think I was patronizing them (which I wasn't trying to do!). Sunday I picked up J at the airport and accompanied her on her whirlwind tour of apartments (she's just moving to SF). Went back down to San Jose and stayed at M's place. Back up to SF for more apartments Sunday and then to:

I LOVE Ikea. Such a sucker for it. M and I spent some quality time and I lusted after various things for my hypothetical future apartment that I don't have yet. Spent Tuesday morning helping M move some stuff and drove back to SB Tuesday afternoon/night. Wednesday/Thursday spent organizing the current place, taking care of errands, and errata.

Can I just rant for a bit? You don't have a choice. WHAT IS WRONG WITH DRIVERS IN CALIFORNIA ON ROUTE 5?!!! I can understand traffic in LA but in between LA and San Diego? When there are no accidents? Or cops?!! I'll be zooming along at 75-80 (with cars passing me left and right!) and then the entire flow will slow down to 20mph. And this will go on for 20 minutes with no apparent reason and then speed up again. WTF?!!! In my frustration, I took to following nice cars. SL500, AMG SL55, Carrera, etc. all over the place. Even thought I saw an SLR McLaren on the road for a brief second before I realized it was a viper (picture above).

Got down to SD Friday afternoon around 2 to visit K. Went down to downtown La Jolla and walked around the beach and looked at the big fat ocean critters :) La Jolla is pretty, and a bit like SB in some ways. Problem is there's nothing outside SB and there's, you know, San Diego outside La Jolla. Looked at the sunset, got some food, and saw a movie with K and then Saturday is a drive back up to SB.

More inexplicable traffic craziness on the 5 though the roadster above was a happy sight. Got up to LA eventually and met up with S (back from a Caribbean vacation) briefly for lunch. Had my first California Pizza Kitchen meal. Pretty good. Said goodbye to S and got back on the free way one last time to come home to SB.

So the vacation wasn't exactly relaxing. Still very tired.