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

Category: Life

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

  • Happy Birthday, Rachel!

    Today is Rachel’s birthday, which also means we’ve been married exactly thirteen months. Happy birthday, princess! <3

  • Life is an MMO

    More accurately, “at this point in my life it often feels like I am trapped in a MMO.” I’ve gotten the the point where I’m past all of the early levels, so no more easy battles. At the same time, I’m not yet at the high levels, where you get to experience all of the…

  • Happy Birthday, Du

    My little brother Mark turns seventeen today. Seventeen! It doesn’t seem that long ago that the two of us were creating our massive Lego setups in the basement. Yet here we are, growing up and hurtling through life like rockets at escape velocity. For a while the five-year difference between us seemed more like a…

  • Graduated Yet?

    Even though I walked across the stage at the beginning of what is now last month, I still haven’t actually graduated. I more or less fell into a trap of my own making, because at the beginning of the semester I decided I wanted to get credit for my research internship again. This involves a…

  • To Arr is Pirate

    The voting results are in and the Swedish Pirate Party has gotten at least one seat, probably two, in the European Parliament. You’ve really got to hand it to these guys: they’ve done a lot of work to get to this point. In only three years they’ve gone from a startup political party established groups…

  • Farewell to an Old Friend

    Farewell to an Old Friend

    At long last, the good ol’ 1984 Toyota Tercel has been retired from the Castello household. It’s been through quite a lot over the years, from getting me through my driving test to hauling massive quantities of stuff to and from residences on the UMBC campus. The past year has been pretty difficult for it:…

  • Terminator Sacrificed for Dollhouse

    As a follow-up to my previous post, Dollhouse’s companion show, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, has been canceled instead. According mouthpiece Kevin Reilly,  “It was not an either or [with Dollhouse]…ultimately, we made the bet on Dollhouse, so that’s it for [Sarah Connor]…” Of course, that’s doublespeak for “We had a choice between two failing…

  • Why Cancelling Dollhouse Might Not Have Been Such a Bad Thing

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m almost as happy Dollhouse got picked up for another season as are the acolytes of Joss Whedonism. It had some real downers (I’m not sure I could really accept the “blind girl with camera eyes infiltrating a cult for ATF and FBI” plotline), but I think all but the querulous…