What a Glorious Day (except for the dentist)

[hrj]

It's quite unusual for me to have an official work holiday and not be out of town, or at least thoroughly committed. But since Good Friday ... uh, I mean "Spring Holiday" isn't something I usually plan trips or events around, I'm taking it as a freebie. This is spoiled only slightly by having my tooth filling scheduled smack dab in the middle of the day. (Since I could have taken medical leave off work to do it, it seems a waste to do it on my own time, but that's when the appointment was open.) It's also quite unusual for me to have a day off work on a regular work day for most of the rest of the world, so I took the opportunity to do some errands on campus that I've been meaning to get around to for a while. One was picking up my PhD diploma finally. It seemed silly to have them mail it (at extra cost) and yet it's awkward enough for me to get to the records office on a day and at a time when they're open that I've spent the last two years meaning to get around to it. I also dropped by the alumni association office to straighten out my billing, since they never answered my e-mail inquiry. Then I swung by the linguistics department to say 'hi' and drop off one of the hard-bound copies of my dissertation. (They have a velo-bound copy, but I thought I'd be a little egotistical and donate a nice copy, since the publishing was so cheap.) I also finally got around to dropping off my departmental keys (!) -- another thing that seemed silly to do by mail, and yet ....

Then it was time for novocaine and high-speed drills. The less said the better. But I've also scheduled an appointment for full x-rays in preparation for getting caught up on some tooth maintenance. After all, there's no sense letting that dental coverage go to waste.

After that, I dropped by Berkeley Bowl for, among other groceries, the fixings for the second round of the Beef Jerky Taste Test. This is the "all-hot all-the-time" version, especially for the guy I owe a batch to. I picked up small handfuls of 9 different hot peppers, to which I'll be adding recipes centered around ginger, turmeric, and wasabi just for some variety. Based on the last taste test, the marinade versions were really weakly flavored, so my approach this time will be to puree the peppers and just let the meat sit in the puree for a day then lightly finger-squeegee the excess off before drying. I'll have to rely on the tasters' comments for the results of this one since I'm not about to defile my own taste buds with any of the chilis. Results will be reported here.

Garden Progress: Finished clearing grass out of the squeeze-space. Still need to dig up the roots/runners to try to keep it from coming back.

Comments

Re: Diss binding

[hrj.livejournal.com]

It was the official dissertation publishing service "UMI Dissertation Services". Since they charged a flat rate per dissertation copy (approximately $35) rather than a per-page rate, I got a pretty good deal on my thousand-page opus. I imagine there's a break-even point where a shorter work might be cheaper with a commercial POD service. Of course, the UMI edition is just a bound copy of the official submission format, complete with double-spacing and ugly fonts. So if you wanted something that looks more like a "real book" you'd pretty much have to go commercial.