Oh UCLA, what I would do for you ...

Registering for this statistics class at Middlesex has been a logistical nightmare. I drove down there after work yesterday to apply as a part-time student & register for the class, and they told me I had to get signed off on the class (since it's an internet section) by the math department, which closed at 5 pm. So I got up extra early this morning to drive into work (a good thing, too--because of the transit strike, the whole area is probably on gridlock alert today) in order to leave early & get down there before they close this afternoon.

All this would have been in vain, however, had I not called the math department and found out that I needed permission from the instructor to take the class, too. I e-mailed the instructor and called to make sure she would get back to me before the end of the day. Her voicemail said she would be out of town until January 17! Darn. Then I got an automatic reply to my e-mail saying she would be offline from Dec. 20 - Jan. 3. Double darn. Fortunately, 20 minutes later she replied saying she would be happy to have me in the class. :) Now I just have to get down there before 4:30 pm and take care of the remaining obstacles. Phew. I hope all this work now will save me the trouble of going there every week from January to April.

Echoing GeioseeFroggie's last post, I, too, am waiting out the last day before vacation starts. Like her, I might also get a yummy lunch today. The reps from one of our vendors is taking a bunch of us to the Italian restaurant across the street. Whether I'll be able to go is contingent on the service tech, who is supposed to come in & fix the instrument I blogged about 2 weeks ago. I won't be too disappointed if I can't go, though, 'cuz Lord knows I've been eating like there's no tomorrow. Let's see, Saturday Aki fed me a yummy lunch consisting of:

Spinach salad with tomatoes, chickpeas, and her own homemade balsamic vinaigrette
A yummy "leftover" homemade German potato salad sandwich
Spicy pumpkin black bean soup

Afterwards, we went to Wegmans for a free wine-and-cheese-tasting held in the Wegmans wine shop. They had a chardonnay, 2 types of Bordeaux (a red and a white), and a port. I could smell the fumes coming off of the port. It was 20% alcohol & sweeter than the others. The cheese platter contained 6 types, but we could only identify 4-5 (there were no labels). There was Havarti, Swiss, American, an unidentified one that tasted like the cheese from Aki's cafeteria, and a hard Italian cheese that could have been Parmesan. It was a tasty prelude to the free samples we got in the store proper. We got an appetizer of cream cheese and port wine jelly smeared on a Carr's wheat cracker, and then we got prime rib! Yum-O. I heart prime rib. It wasn't raw and bloody, either. It looked like regular roast beef but was absolutely scrumptious. Hurray for free samples!

Tomorrow I will be leaving for lovely LA. Some ideas for what we will do:

See the canals on Venice Beach
Watch a movie at the Arclight Theater
Walk along Rodeo Drive
Eat, of course!