Oh blog where art thou?

Wow, its been a spell since I blogged. Sorry for the delay!
A quick summary of what's been keeping busy:
a) A trip to Sesame Place with Micah and Emmet's paternal grandparents two weekends ago.
b) A trip to NYC (Queens to be exact) to see M and E's maternal grandparents.
c) Getting ready to teach in the fall quarter which starts September 1- glad it starts before labor day so I can wear white shoes to the first day of class. The current enrollement figures show about 170 students between the online and on campus versions of the course.

I'm a bachelor this week - Roni and the boyz stayed in Queens and I am going back up this coming weekend. No craziness for me though - I'm all about painting the dining room on my nights of potential reckless abandon!

Wednesday Blogging

Greetings All,
It's been a week since I checked in, and I know many of you are curious as to how my talk at JSM went. It went off pretty well, methinks..but giving a better than average talk at a stats conference isn't rocket science.. its like acing a 3rd grade test when you are a sopohmore in college. Most presenters I saw seemed to suscribe to a few age old gems of wisdom on speaking in public:
a) Always look at your shoes instead of the audience
b) be sure to mumble the last 15% of your discussion for each slide in your presentation
c) always better to display your entire paper on a slide, in 10 point font no less..

Anyhow, afterwards I went out to booze it up with a few biostats luminaries including Wes Eddings, Katie Ziegler and Dan Scharfstein. Minneapolis has more Irish bars than any other US city I've been to, including Boston. Some were good, some not so good...the key to choosing an Irish bar - avoid those with overly Irish names - PJ O'Flannagans, Clancy McPatricks etc.. the best Irish bar I went to in Minneapolis was simply called the Local.

I flew back on Northwest Airlines on Thursday - the flight was on time and uneventful..still get a kick out of the fact that Northwests acronym NWA is diplayed all over their fleet. Two words for them -Eazy-muthafucking-E. You know that guy was a real gangsta..although he kinda looked like Donald Duck and sounded more like a Chipmunk than a thug.

It was good to be back with the boyz!!!! I missed them so - here are some recent photos for you to fawn over!

Micah and Amina cutting a rug at Belvedere Square!

Emmet getting busy!

Micah with a butterfly in hand!

So anyway, this weekend was kinda crazy because of aberrant sleep schedules on the parts of Micah and Emmet. However, we did squeeze in some fun, the highlight being a trip to Leakin Park in West Baltimore to ride some mini trains with Rafa, Alex and Amina. This was the coolest thing ever - I would have given up all my piggy bank contents gladly as a young'n to have an opportunity like this! Riding these small trains around the park made me remeber my train enthusiast days, and my dreams of a train running through my basement to transport me all over the city. Micah ate it up and loved it..

On a side note, I notice a lot of "Got Jesus?" shirts around Bmore..the latest takeoff on got milk craze (Got Beer? Got Weed?, etc..will this ever play out?) I'm thinking there's an untapped market for "Got Satan" shirt to give an alternative religion spin on the craze. I'd welcome your comments on this - I think the black metal scene would jump on this. Especially this guy - he definitely doesn't look as evil as he thinks, maybe one of my T's would seal the deal..

Greetings from Minneapolis

I've had a good time here while attending the JSM 2005 meetings.
Aside from attending sessions relating to stats ed, causal inference etc.., I've had some cool experiences:
1) On Monday, my coworker Luu Pham gave me a driving/walking tour of the city including a stop at the The Triple Rock Social Club and culminating in an on foot tour of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus - a beautiful urban university, bisected by a river and whose locale affords an amaxing view of the Minneapolis skyline.
2) a trip to 2021 restaurant in the Walker Art Center for some nouveau Wolfgang Puck certified cuisine.
3) dinner with colleauge Pat Tarwater at Chevy's - we had a great time and he insisted on paying even though it was HIS birthday (he did get a complimentary sombrero and birthday song from the Chevy's staff).

Today I give my talk at 2 pm
this morning I am attending a session on career adcise for statistical educators, and a roundtble luncheon on distance ed prior to speaking.

Tomorrow I return home to Bmore, and although I've enjoyed my trip I miss my family immensly. Roni was kind enough to take some short videos of Micah and Emmet and email them to me.

Hello!

Hi all -as we cruise into the weekend I just wante to send big ups to all you loyal bloggers!
I am excited about this weekend and spending time with the family.
Sunday, I fly out to Minneapolis to attend the big stats conference. I'm actually presenting something on Wednesday afternoon - kind of the "death slot" in terms of attendance. My talk is very non-technical as well, but I may have to throw in some mathematical jargon just to earn the respect of my audience.

I've never been to Minnesota and am looking forward to it! Minneapolis has such a rich and storied musical history from Prince to the Replacements, Husker Du to the Cows.. Oh, and of course the Mary Tyler Moore Show! Since I'll be a bachelor maybe I can get out to a show or two.