Random thoughts at a late-ish hour

Just had an urge to write something. We had a big food + friends and family event at my house again. There was a ton of food. Turkey, ribs, veggies, pizza, sushie, fruit, and a ton of other stuff. People dropped by throughout the day and we had a big crowd around early evening. One of my friends from Stanford dropped by for a while too.

Not many of my friends from MIT have visited my family in Oakland. I guess it was hard since people are from all over the place. But I didn't really have very many friends visiting during high school either. I think it makes a difference though, once you've visited someone at their parent's home, somewhere where they tend to be more relaxed and act like themselves. This reminds me of a comment that international students made in the book, "My Freshmen Year". Many of them said that Americans seem distant and never ask about how things are at home. There seems to be a separation of live - outside life and inside life. Somehow they don't mix. Or at least, they don't have to mix. Is this healthy? I feel like there are people who I've spent a lot of time with but don't feel like I really know on a deeper level. Something to think about, I guess.

Going off an unrelated topic, I watched Sherlock Holmes today. I've never been into the stories so I didn't know what to expect. I thought it was a pretty interesting movie in that there was suspense and had some intellectual value. I watched The Princess and the Frog the other day and that was pure brain-dead entertainment. Anyway, I bought a really nice collector's edition of "Great Cases of Sherlock Holmes" many years ago at the Bookmark Bookstore. For those of you who like bookstores, the Bookmark Bookstore is one that you have to check out if you're ever in the Oakland area. It's a little second hand bookstore near downtown Oakland. It sells books for really cheap and the benefits go to the Oakland Libraries. They have 2 sales a year (April and October) where books are discounted even more. You can come away with an armload of books for $10. Anyway, all this is to announce that I have one more book I want to read in the next week of break.

I think I might try to go running on Monday provided that it's not raining. I'm hoping my knee is healed now. Even my shin splints have all gone away, I think. I've been feeling shin splints since the second week of starting to train seriously so this is good news. I need to burn some of this turkey calories and get feel the endorphins again!