Matter, Energy, and Life of Michaela A. Castello.

Category: Long Reads

Stories that take a bit longer to get through.

  • First Day (The Spanish Improves)

    We woke up early this morning and started the day with breakfast at McDonald’s, causing me to break a multi-year streak of not eating at the place. Oh, the sacrifices we make, right? My sleeping spot by the air vent worked well enough. Rachel and the other ladies, however, got woken up by Mike snoring.…

  • We Made It!

    We got in to the place we’ll be calling home base for the next few nights about an hour ago. I found a spot next to one of the working air conditioners, which rocks for me. Rachel decided to cast her lot with the other ladies in our party but it remains to be seen…

  • Graduation Season

    Last weekend I flew back to Maryland for Mark’s high school graduation. I apologize if I didn’t get to visit you; there’s only so much time to visit people on a short trip. Perhaps over Christmas we’ll be able to stay for a bit longer and be able to have leisurely visits with more people.…

  • Six Figure Checks? Seriously?

    Looks like Matthew Inman, the guy behind one of my favorite webcomic sites, The Oatmeal, has started whining about content aggregators. You know, those sites that compulsively gobble whatever they can find on the internet and spew it back with all kinds of advertising. I used to run into these all the time when googling…

  • Inside the PhD Program

    Somehow I managed to sleep for twelve hours last night. I thought I’d take a “short nap” at around 8 PM, and basically ended up waking at 8 AM this morning. Huh. Oh, also it’s Rapture Day. Having made a similar mistake more than a hundred years ago, Seventh-Day Adventists know what to do. Anyway,…

  • By the Corporations, For the Corporations

    Remember how Comcast and NBC were merging, and there was all kinds of controversy about it? I’m still not entirely sure what I think the deal itself, except that Comcast has a maddening monopoly on internet access in some areas (including where we used to live in Baltimore) and NBC is one of the hemorrhaging…

  • The Wise Man’s Fear

    I first heard about The Name of the Wind from a post on Penny Arcade, and I was quickly impressed. Perhaps more telling is that I excitedly shared it with Rachel and she was impressed, reading it at a pace at least double mine as is her fashion. A while back I finally finished reading…

  • Easter Weekend

    Easter Weekend

    In the past, Easter has been a rather quiet holiday for Rachel and me. Since we usually spend the “major” holidays with our parents and siblings, Easter became the holiday we spent having dinner by ourselves or with a friend or two. This year we had a bit more excitement over Easter weekend, beginning with…