I have been doing some programming on the side to help out the Weber-Fox Lab at Purdue. Yesterday the post doctoral student I have been working with bought me a delicious cake from Vienna Espresso Bar and Bakery. That was very nice of her.

Much delayed photos from Terry's birthday party on October 12th. You can see the many delicious wines that were consumed as well as my dinner and desert. Apparently /var/log/nolandda is turning into a food blog.

Josette makes the excellent point that I neglected to say where this delicious dinner occurred. We ate in a private room that Terry reserved in the back of Morton's Steakhouse in Indianapolis.

One week after Thanksgiving (on November 29th) Sara, Brad, Liz, and I made a trip to Chicago to see Tegan and Sara perform.

I took a half day so we had time to eat dinner beforehand. We stopped in Greektown for dinner at Roditys. We ordered Flaming Saganaki Cheese (Opa!!!) before our meals.

The concert was at the Portage Theater which was a venue none of us were familiar with. It is a nice old theater. You can see the space here.

The surprise of the evening was the opening band, Northern State. I have endured some awful opening bands, and I was expecting mediocre at best. To my amazement they were a lot of fun. The band consists of white girls from suburban Long Island doing a Beastie Boys style hip-hop routine.

After Sara with no 'h' bought a Northern State CD during the intermission Tegan and Sara took the stage promptly. They played for quite a while. It was a great show and well worth the sleep deprivation I suffered the next morning. The set list as best as I can reconstruct it:

• The Con
• Relief Next to Me
• Are You Ten Years Ago
• Burn Your Life Down
• Like O Like H
• Nineteen
• Soil Soil
• Floorplan
• Dark Come Soon
• Monday Monday Monday
• Noises
• Ciry Girl
• Where does the good go
• Speak Slow
• Back In Your Head
• Call It Off

• You Wouldn't Like Me
• I Bet it Stung
• Walking With a Ghost
• Living Room

Also: photos.

OK, these updates are coming in a completely random order now. On October 27th Sara and I braved the cold to watch the dedication of the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering.

Because of Purdue's long history with the space program sixteen astronauts attended the dedication including:

• Neil Armstrong
• John Blaha
• Mark Brown
• Eugene Cernan
• Richard Covey
• Drew Feustel
• Greg Harbaugh
• Michael McCulley
• Gary Payton
• Mark Polansky
• Jerry Ross
• Loren Shriver
• Janice Voss
• Charles Walker
• Don Williams
• David Wolf

It was moving to see so many parents holding their children on their shoulders so they could see the Astronauts.

Gene Cernan, the most recent man on the moon; Dr. France Cordova, Purdue's new President; and Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon spoke.

Christmas 2007 was a great success. This year we spent the majority of the holidays with my family.

The Kinzig Lab has a postdoctoral student named Sam from northern England. She and her fiance, Chris, decided to get married on the 28th in superior court six in the Tippecanoe County Courthouse.

Sara and I attended and acted as witnesses. We also baked cupcakes for the reception that night at O'Bryan's Nine Irish Brothers.