I came up with a new design for the piano bench – you can check it out here. The basic plan is to use two of the nice big pieces of birdseye maple from the original design in a new way, while keeping it simple enough that I can finish the bench in a reasonable amount of time. T-minus a little more than two months ’til the graduate school application is due.

I’m actually kind of glad I have a frisbee game tomorrow evening during the presidential debate. I know if I were home that I’d watch, but I’d get really angry and probably throw things at the TV, and that’d not be good.

Last night, Rif, Anna, Danielle and I checked out the new Indian restaurant in Harvard Square, Tamarind Bay. It definitely breaks out of the typical Indian restaurant mold, and ought to be pretty successful.

It took over the location from Casa Mexico, and they’ve really squeezed about as many tables into the basement space as possible. In fact, our tables were separated by a pole, though there was no “obstructed view” discount. After we navigated to our seats, there was plenty of room.

A quick look at the menu lets you know pretty quickly this isn’t your ordinary curry house. They claim (and we believed them) each dish is cooked to order, rather than in large batches. Anna’s stewed black lentils were almost chocolatey, like an Indian mole sauce. My fish-of-the-day coconut curry was delicate and flavorful, and Danielle’s “raw banana dumplings” were tasty, though we couldn’t really discern any banana flavor. Rif’s vegetarian dish was a little spicier than we liked, but good none the less.

The service was hit-or-miss – they brought our check without offering dessert, and when we inquired after the banana pancakes, we were told they were out. However, all the food arrived at the same time, my beer was cold, and overall they were quite nice.

The prices are pretty reasonable – entrees run $10-$20. Though it might be more expensive than your neighborhood Indian take-out place, this isn’t your neighborhood Indian take-out place. Recommended for when you’re in the mood for really good, different Indian food.

Last night we went out to Chez Henri for Matt’s birthday (happy birthday, Matt!). Boy is that place great! The bartender mixes drinks perfectly, and the food is always top-notch.

Full from dinner, I somehow managed to get myself over to Medford for a late-night (under-the-lights) frisbee game – it was probably good to work off all those calories as quickly as possible. It was a busy week, exercise-wise, but I have a few days off as I’m not playing frisbee this weekend. I am, however, having craft day on Sunday.

It’s about time for John Kerry to do something. I’m not sure it counts, or if it’s enough, but he made a stellar speech about Iraq at NYU recently – check it out here.

The hype about Kerry right after he won the nomination was that he was no Al Gore. Unfortunately, it seems to not quite be true – his personality really hasn’t shown through in the past few months, and his campaign hasn’t taken any sort of offensive position in the race. Analysts of all sorts have said in recent weeks that unless Kerry does something (instead of just reacting to Bush and the media), it doesn’t look good. So what are you waiting for, man?

Yesterday’s trip to the Apple store was a success, and I’m now happily running the GIMP at home.

Nature published (online, at least) the responses of Bush and Kerry to 15 science-related questions. While I was hoping for some interesting answers, those posted just reinforce the fact that the Bush campaign has its head in the sand and the Kerry campaign gives the boring answer without really taking a hard position on any particular issue. It’s gonna be a damn close election, I think.

Speaking of close elections, the Tuesday Democratic primary for the Massachusetts State Representative in Somerville/Medford came down to about 120 votes! I’m glad Sciortino won – he ran on a platform of equal rights (among other things), in contrast to Ciampa, who voted in favor of a Massachusetts constitutional ammendment to ban gay marriage.

I really enjoyed this fascinating article from the Times about a psychology experiment performed on the subway. That’s my kind of science…

I also got a kick out of this (well annotated) collection of bad high school senior portraits. Good stuff.

Finally, here’s one of the best of the pictures I took recently in Ithaca – check it out. Still haven’t gotten the medium format pictures printed or scanned any better, but I will soon.

Good news: the light leak in the Rolleiflex is completely gone! Apparently, the detective work paid off and it was exactly as I suspected (the second red window on the bottom of the camera). The pictures from Ithaca look spectacular!

Zona did a great job with the development, and the four hour turnaround time is much better than the five days the place in Davis Square takes. It’s tempting to find a local darkroom where I could make my own prints from the negatives, but I think that’s more than I want to get into right now.

Unfortunately, I didn’t actually get prints made (Zona wanted another three days to do that, and I was impatient), and my negative scanner doesn’t scan medium format negatives, so the only images I have are from putting the negatives on a flatbed scanner. Gross as they are, you can see them here, and at least get a sense that they’re better than before.

[ A note to the nice band I took pictures of at the Ithaca Farmers Market: I’ll probably get some prints made eventually. If you want copies, drop me an email with a mailing address. And the scanned in version above really doesn’t do the pictures that include you justice – they look great! ]

It was a whirlwind weekend of weddings, among other things. Both my cousin Rebekah and college housemate Amanda were married on Sunday afternoon (at about the same time, not to each other, about 300 miles apart). I spent the better part of the weekend in Ithaca, swimming under waterfalls, visiting the Farmers Market, and touring lower Cayuga Lake.

I took a bunch of pictures at the market (and elsewhere along the way) with the old camera – those photos should be up here in a few days. I’m hopeful the light leak issue has been solved.

On Sunday, I made my way back to Boston for wedding numero deux, and en route discovered a great restaurant in West Stockbridge, MA called The Village Oven.

It’s likely to be a busy frisbee week as both Fall Hat League and Fall Club League start up. I haven’t exercised enough lately, so I’m pretty excited.

Matt updated his website recently to add a (very funny) summary of emails he’s received in response to his text-only Where’s Waldo page. Check it out here.

Matt and I discovered that not only did the Thirsty Scholar recently raise its prices, the food quality took a nose dive since we’d eaten there last. Too bad, really – it was one of the last bars with cheap, decent food. Cue the “back in my day” comments… now.