I’ve somehow managed to hardly blog at all during the past few weeks. I don’t have a great excuse other than I’ve been pretty busy (but hey who isn’t). Here’s a quick recap of the last few weeks:

  1. Rasika visited San Francisco early in January and Erin stayed with me the next weekend
  2. I had my first ever surgery - a cyst removal from my face
  3. Last week, I was in Redmond/Seattle for work/play for about five days. I finally got to see the Redmond campus (it really is as huge as everyone told me) and got to hang out with Andy, Erika, Nabeeha, and Diana.
  4. During my last day in Redmond, I had to go to the emergency room because a pimple that I scratched started bleeding uncontrollably (I’m talking massive amounts of blood loss - glasses of blood) for about 45 minutes. I lost so much blood that I had a horrible headache and had multiple large blood stains on my sweater. According to the ER, I’m fine (no iron deficiency, platelets look good, etc). They think I may have ruptured a vein or capillary. I’m going to try to get an appointment with my dermatologist this week just to make sure that this incident wasn’t related to my cyst removal.
  5. I found out on Friday that a paper I co-wrote with Lada based on my thesis got accepted to ICWSM
  6. I had a little get-together at my place last night, the first since moving to the Bay Area
  7. I’ve been working out with a trainer 5 days a week. On most days, I have to be at the gym by 6 a.m. Factoring in hitting snooze, actually waking up, petting Mulder, getting ready, eating breakfast, and the twenty minute commute to the gym, I actually have to set my alarm for about 5 a.m. And that means that I should be in bed by 9. I’m up way past my bedtime.
  8. #7 has left very few hours in the day for other things, hence the lack of blogging
  9. #7 has also meant a pretty high (well, for me at least) step count average for January - 10,762
  10. #7 also meant having to get a V02 test and a heart rate monitor so now I know exactly how hard I should be working out
  11. I finally started and finished a new painting . . . the first in four years, said painting will be at a small art exhibit for young Arab-American artists next weekend. I’ll post more details when I get them.

It looks like February and March are going to be just as busy as January. Hopefully, I’ll do a better job updating my blog. If I don’t, look to my Flickr stream and step blog for the latest.