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

Category: Life

Short (and long) reads extracted from my personal life.

  • Conventional Foolery

    Ever since Ubisoft decided that forcing users to constantly “phone home” over the internet was a great way to stop unauthorized sharing of their games, the tired old DRM debate has been experiencing yet another flareup. I was rather disappointed with the treatment the issue got by a few of the webcomics I follow: While…

  • Three Out of Four

    I had my third of four med school interviews at Penn State University today and I left quite impressed. I felt like everybody there was really going out of their way to make the interviewees feel welcome, an attitude that sets a positive atmosphere right from the start. Both PSU and LLU structured their interview…

  • In Memoriam

    In Memoriam

    Four years ago today my cat James (named after the character in Ursula K. LeGuin’s Catwings) died at ten years old. Death is an integral part of life and while there isn’t much cause for sadness years and years later, I like to look back over the experiences I had while he was a part…

  • Project 52

    I am not one to make New Year’s resolutions, but I did make a commitment to Project 52 back in January. Like a lot of other people I was sick of wanting to update my site, only to put it off until the interesting bit I planned to write about was no longer relevant. My…

  • RPG Origins

    When I was a kid I was told that role-playing games were the first ominous step toward declaring allegiance to Satan himself, and,  being young and naïve, I embraced the whole sordid tale. Instead of playing Dungeons and Dragons or Baldur’s Gate, I spent a lot of time outside having rollicking adventures as an audacious…

  • Mmm… Delicious Homemade Manicotti

    Made this tonight; sadly, Rachel is trapped at work and can’t enjoy it with me.

  • Returned Envelope

    The Flyleaf show I went to last November definitely rates as one of my top concert experiences. At the time I got a picture with Lacey Sturm (née Mosley) and an autographed iPod. But after getting the picture printed out at Walgreen’s I decided that the only thing cooler than a picture with Lacey would…

  • Snowmageddon!

    Snowmageddon!

    Wow. Baltimore got 26” of snow, and here on the edges of the city I think we got closer to 30”. This is definitely the biggest snow I’ve seen in Maryland in my life, and when you add it to the other 1-2′ snow we got a few weeks ago, and all of the “normal”…