quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur

I've been really getting into sung masses as of late, especially requiems. Two of my favorites are Brumel's Missa Et ecce terrae motus (which is not a requiem), and of course, Mozart's Requiem Mass in D Minor.

Just today I downloaded Pie Jesu from Faure's requiem. I actually heard it on the South Park episode Lice Capades earlier (which inspired me to hunt it down), but no matter. It's a gorgeous song, and was sung at Princeton's memorial for the event at Virginia Tech this year.

Hope you enjoy!

Note: It turns out you have to be at that university in order to use the links I had posted. Oh well.

The Gym?

I've finally found the motivation to go to the gym sometimes and ride the exercise bike. I've been pretty unhappy with myself for not doing so for a long time.

I found this thread to be very helpful in beginning to get a little fitter:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2522955

If you're not a member of the forum you'll see a lot of ads, but it should still be readable. I think it's pretty good advice.

Arguement for Choice

I saw this posted on a forum I often visit, and found it to be an interesting paper. Enjoy!

http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm

Rhode Island

Note: This is a repost of a previous entry


Well, I had quite a weekend (very long post ahead).

It started right after Friday when I finished up work. An undergrad I met a while ago and I went to dinner, then saw The Bourne Ultimatum. It was...pretty 'Matt Damon' (come on everyone, say it like you want to!). I could literally watch that guy just beat people up for two hours without a single word of dialog or plot. Maybe that could be the next movie.

We went out to a Mexican restaurant, which had very good tacos. Now, as you all know I judge every taco I encounter against the soft-shelled beef taco at Taco Bell, and I have yet to find a superior taco. However, these tacos matched up pretty close...I would give it a 7/10 (where 10 is Taco Bell goodness).

Ironically (now I wish I had that mark!) I've finally retired my menu choice at Taco Bell. It's no longer "five soft beef tacos and a small drink." No no, I'm trying to keep up the momentum of not stuffing myself to death with fast food tacos. Now, it's "two extreme cheesey and beef quesadillas." Perhaps not better for my health, but it certainly marks a whole new chapter in the Taco Bell saga that is my life.

Anyways, so I went out with this girl and had a good time.

On Saturday, I woke up at 7 am and started my long trip up to Rhode Island with Meghan and her boyfriend Luc. For those of you not in the know, Meghan is a graduate student at Princeton with me in the same department, while Luc (who I knew independently of Meghan) is a plasma physicist-in-training. I'd been itching to see Rhode Island (and New England in general) since I'd gotten to Princeton, so we finally made the trip this weekend.

It's about a 4 hour drive if you can avoid the traffic (which we did nicely on the way up). We first went to the University of Rhode Island, which is Meghan's alma mater. It's a very pretty campus up in the hills, with a nice quad in the center surrounded by neo-gothic buildings, along with several construction projects.











I love visiting old universities, so this was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it being Saturday and the summer, everything was closed so I couldn't get a memento. I'll probably order something off of their website once I get paid.

Next, we met with Meghan's sister Martha (a current student at URI) and all drove to Newport. For those of you not in the know, Newport is every stereotype you've ever had about New England. It's absolutely full of old colonial homes, humongous mansions from the gilded age, and really quaint little shops line the cobblestone streets hawking over-priced everything. It's on the island that was originially considered "Rhode Island" but is now called Aquidneck Island (I guess we owe the native Americans something after we stole all their land).

Martha, being the sandwich cook and hostess she is, had prepared a picnic for us which we ate on a little grass lawn in front of the beach. I had my favorite (turkey and swiss) and we had a good time watching people fly kites. It was very New England.











Oh yeah, everything out in RI is marked off with these little stone fences. Like I said, it's very quaint.

Next, we headed out to our main destination, The Breakers:











This is one of the Vanderbilt mansions in Newport, and easily the prettiest. It sits on the shore and served as Cornelius Vanderbilt II's summer cottage. A summer cottage with 65,000 sq ft. It's one of the finest examples of the architecture and interior decor in style during the Gilded Age. No longer owned by the Vanderbilts, it now belongs to the Preservation Society of Newport County.

I had read a book about the Vanderbilt family back in the spring, and was very excited about getting to see this house. Here's the mammoth gate that greats visitors:










I remarked to my friends that it would be awesome to buy some land and use all your money just to build this gate, then have it lead to like a one-bedroom house (maybe someday!).

Meghan and Martha had been here before on school field trips, but it's funny how boring something like this is to kids and then how suddenly awesome it is for us twenty-somethings. We each paid $16 for a guided tour that showcased exactly what money could get you back in the late 1800s. Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures inside the home. However, here are a few shots outside:










After the Breakers, we headed out of Newport and went to the Bellows beach house in Little Compton, a lovely little sea town near Massachusetts. You could actually see Martha's Vinyard from their house. I met Meghan's family, including her grandfather who was a navigator on a B-17 in the European Theatre during WWII and a proud alumnus of Brown University. We had gin and tonics and Vermont cheese on their porch and chatted about random things for a while.

Next, we headed out to a nice little restaurant where the Bellows made reservations (our table even had a print out of the name and time!). The idea of this place was you get your drink (we all had a glass of chianti), then you get some soup, and finally you get a sandwich. All along, a nice little band composed of a lady playing a harp and a guy on recorder serenaded the room. We ate and were merry for a long time, and I met a fellow Princetonian (class of '57) whom we talked with.

To end the day, we drove out to Meghan's home in Pawtucket (pronounced, oddly, as P'tucket) and immediately went to sleep, as it had been a long day.

On Sunday, we got up and ready around 11 am and drove to Swan Point Cemetery, where we went to visit HP Lovecraft's grave. After looking for a few minutes, we finally found it:











I left the nickel on top. Next, we went and visited Meghan's grandmother (wife of the man I met last night) who is buried in the same cemetery.

After all this, we headed into Providence and went to Brown University. I've made it a goal to visit every Ivy League university before I graduate from Princeton, and I've now managed to get half-way there (the list is now Princeton, Yale, Cornell, and Brown). Brown is in the middle of Providence, and is quite an urban campus. However, there is a small quad in the center where we gawked around for a little bit. Like any proper Ivy League school, they have a very pretty gate at the front of the school:










Unlike Princeton's gate, this is closed nearly all year and only opens for freshman entering into the school and for graduates leaving. The campus was mostly composed of red brick buildings with the occasional modern one poking out.

We met up with Meghan's friend Sue who is a Brown alumnus, and she gave us a brief tour. We next ate lunch on the quad there with several of Meghan's friends from URI who stopped by to say hello.

Unfortunately, Brown's bookstore was not yet selling scarves (which I collect from each university I visit). I will either order it off the internet, or pick one up on my way to Harvard this winter (my next planned trip!).

Finally, we traveled back to Pawtucket to drop off Martha and say good-bye to their family (who had been so nice to us). I played a short concert on their piano, and we headed off back to New Jersey. It took us about 5 hours to get back to Princeton.

So all in all it was a great little weekend mini-vacation. I really got the full New England experience, and it's always nice meeting new people. It's going to be a busy week. I'm trying to type up an annotated bibliography of all the papers I've read this summer before my adviser gets here in two weeks. She didn't ask for it, but I need to start writing my first proposition so I can stay in graduate school.

Have a good week everyone!

Justification

I've managed to shy away from the blogosphere megablogtastic blogmania until I realized that making one equals more time wasted on the internet. I currently post in a family blog which has limited readership, so most of my posts will be material from that. Take care!