I finished reading George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows a while ago (beginning of July). The fourth book in the series out of the four books published so far. After finishing I have been reading online forums to look at cool discussions regarding the book from where I discovered things I hadn't noticed on my first read (Loras + Renly, Rhaegar + Lyanna = Jon, among other things). The books are fantastic. The best so far for me is Storm of Words (the third one). The fourth is great even though it restricts to half the world (as the book Martin wrote was so big they had to divide it in two: North and South). It has a multitude of great moments. I loved reading about Pyke, about Oldtown, Bravos and Dorne. It was fun to follow characters like Brienne around and it was interesting to read about Cersei. It is incredible how much worse a person she is than I thought. I always knew she was horrible, but reading in her point of view made me dislike her much more. She is incredibly bad. The ending has quite a bit of cliffhangers, but cliffhangers that made me happy (except for Brienne, although before reading online forums I thought it was no cliffhanger, I figured she was dead). Great book, great series, I want to keep reading.

COMICS:
Amazing Spider-Man #598 Part Four of American Son was a good issue. We find out what happened to Spider-Man and we see the introduction of the American Son. I am hyped about the next issue. It came out yesterday but Marvel hasn't sent it to me yet (argh!).

Amazing Spider-Man Annual #36 A good issue showing a new villain (Raptor?) and showing us a bit of Spider-man's past to understand what was changed with Brand New Day and what wasn't. Not an issue I would recommend. Last year's annual was much more interesting.

Chew #2 The second issue of the series is solid. Not great like the first issue, but I'll definitely give the series a shot for at least five issues. It should be a fun ride. The story is about a dude that when eating something he gets visions of all that has happened to that food before (where it was, how it was killed, or how it was grown, etc.). It is very funny, very strange and quite fun.

Irredeemable #4 The series is getting back on track after a weak third issue. This issue has some cool stuff like seeing how the world leaders cope with this with a scene in the UN, but it also shows us the extent of Plutonian's villainy. He is as cruel as they come.

Buffy #26 The issue was quite cool, I liked the dialogue and it had plenty of funny moments. I am interested in seeing what will happen next, we finally are gearing to more serious storylines that need more than one issue to tell.

Gotham Central The series went for nearly 30 issues and it is finally being published in collections. This collection has the first ten issues. It consists of a two part story by Brubaker + Rucka, a three part story by Brubaker and a five part story by Rucka. I like both authors a lot. The first story was weak but it was good to get us started. It established the feel of the series in terms of artwork (kind of noir from great penciler Michael Lark) and the role of Batman in the story as a background character. The second storyline was a really good detective story, while the third storyline was a really cool story that deals with homosexuality, hispanic hate towards homosexuality (to their own children), a villain framing a cop and other cool things. The third storyline was the best of the three.

Incognegro A really great (albeit short) graphic novel about a black person born with white skin who infiltrates ku kux klan to write stories of the cruelty of it in newspapers. Stories that list people's names etcetera. This has some inspiration in real life events (the idea of incognegro does), however the story is fiction. It follows Incognegro to try to rescue his brother from murder charges (of murdering a white woman). People don't know they are brothers even though they are twins because of one of them has light skin (white) while the other doesn't. Really good book dealing with race, showing a great story about the past in the US, while also being an interesting mystery. The ending was fantastic. Highly recommend it.

Invincible Ultimate Collection #1-#4 and Invincible #48 I recently bought the fourth collection and while reading it, I decided to go back and look at the other three as I didn't remember much besides the main plot of the first collection. I was surprised to see how awesome it was. The comic is fantastic and it gets better with subsequent readings. Anything can happen in this comic and the story takes you to all sorts of wonderful adventures while revealing more and more about Mark Grayson and his friends. I love this comics. I read all of them last weekend and today I read issue #48 after realizing Book 4 ends in issue 47 and Book 5 (comes out in September) starts at issue #49. #48 was cool, but I want to know more as there are so many plot threads. I love how Kirkman (the author) puts in little pieces here and there until a story explodes many issues later and then all of a sudden the other plot develops. It is great how he manages to put in so much in each issue and still manage to make it feel smooth, natural and fun. If you like superheroes at all, you MUST read this book. If you don't like superheroes than it might still be worth the read. They claim to be the Best Super Hero Comic and it might actually be true (at least it is true for me).
I must also comment on the artwork as it is very different from anything I see anywhere. Ryan Ottley does a great job of making beautiful drawings that are very smooth. He manages to make it look great without resorting to too much realism (it is fantasy after all, I don't want it to look real, I want it to look awesome). The drawings are very dynamic and best of all the color palette is just unique. Bill Crabtree might be my favorite colorist, this book looks like no other and at the same time it looks better. Can't praise this book enough.

Urban Myths #1 This series didn't survive after one issue even though the issue was quite fun. The story lives in Greek Mythology world full of minotaurs and other crazy beasts. There are drugs that put you in a coma that permit you to go to Hades. The Sun comes up because Apollo brings it up (I really liked this scene). The main character is the son of Medusa how inherits her powers, so he puts on a mask and works as a detective. Pretty cool issue, I enjoyed it.

Captain America: The Man with no Face I absolutely love Brubaker's Captain America, but this trade is not that good. It is solid, it is a quick, fun read, but it is nowhere near the greatness of the first 42 issues. Hopefully the story will pick up, I guess the main thing I had been liking about Cap was how Brubaker developed this long story that needed 42 issues. Now that it ended I wonder how he will continue. His Daredevil has gone through slumps in my opinion, maybe it is time for Cap to go through slumps too. Maybe I am just getting tired of reading too many superhero comics.

The House of They I bought this not knowing it was a children's book. Nevertheless it was fun, although too quick a read. Essentially it is just 40 paragraphs and it cost $15, so not worth the price, but I guess 10-15 years from now when I have little kids at a reading age, I can show them this to help teach them to not follow authority blindly. The book has a great message and it was entertaining, but I definitely won't recommend it to people that don't have kids.

MOVIES:
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince The movie was great. I liked that the movie didn't try to follow the book piece by piece, adding a scene (for example a Muggle waitress hitting on Harry) and cutting out things (such as too much Ginny-Harry moments or too many Voldemort memories). The movie essentially focused on Harry, Hermione, Ron and Dumbledore. Any other character had almost no screen time. The Ron-Lavender scenes were great, the Slughorn scenes were also cool and Dumbledore just kicked butt. I really enjoyed the movie, I thought they made many good decisions. Books can cover way more characters than movies, and it was a wise decision to keep the narrative to as few characters as possible.

Borat I loved this movie when I first saw it, but it is not as good upon reviewing. I laughed a lot, but nearly as much as last time. Yuliia liked the movie even though she didn't laugh that much. She just found interesting the use of real people for the jokes and what Sacha Baron Cohen was capable of doing.

Bruno I loved this movie. I laughed so hard. Yuliia, who didn't laugh much at Borat, was hysterical in this movie, laughing all the time. The movie had many really funny scenes and it had some kind of narrative (although not a great one) to keep the story going. I've read about people complaining that the movie shows homophobes in a much better light than non-homophobes, but I think it casts a light on hidden hate people have for homosexuals, the wrestling scene being a great example of this. The main reason I liked this movie was that it made me laugh a lot.

Sin Nombre This movie was filmed in Mexico, being the directorial debut of Cary Fukunaga, an American director. The movie was very good. I think the characters were very real and the story was very interesting. It shows the desperation of many people and how a young boy can be bad because he was taught that way. I liked the movie and it was very thought provoking. It was engaging. Great movie.

Ice Age 3 The first half of this movie was not good at all, but it resuscitated in the second half with the introduction of Buck, a really funny dude. The second half was funny and it made it become not a waste of time. My mom and Yuliia liked it more than I did, my mom even liking the first half.

Public Enemies The latest movie by Michael Mann with performances by Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. The movie was quite good. Yuliia absolutely loved it and kept mentioning tidbits about it days later. I am happy that she loved it because this gives me a good excuse to show her Michael Mann movies like Heat and Manhunter. I liked the movie but I didn't love it. I think the story of John Dillinger is movie worthy, but somehow I think the movie could have been better.

In the last three days I've spent a lot of time doing math. I worked on writing my results on Burgess. What I wrote was fine except that there's still much more to do. I also gave classes all three days. The class on Tuesday was a special lecture where I covered four cool problems somewhat related to probability but not something covered in the syllabus. I enjoyed the class pretty much, it was fun preparing for it. Probability is a really cool class to give, I have lots of fun with this class.

On Tuesday I went to a swing dance class. It is the third I go to. Yuliia and I are getting good at it. I think our salsa knowledge help us learn the dance quicker than other students, but then again it might just be my ego talking.

Two action packed weeks have elapsed and I am too lazy to write it all down so I will write a quick summary.
-Have been having fun teaching probability. I think the class has been going well, albeit a little slow. Having 35 students is harder than having 21. I decided not to hire graders because I don't trust them, so I have a lot of grading to do.
-Have been reading lots of books, watching lots of movies, at some point I'll post reviews.
-I went to Montreal for a weekend. Had a lot of fun. Biked around the town, walked around the town and ate good food. I was impressed with the Basilica of Notre Dame, but mainly I was happy to see my mom.
-Rode 50 miles for the Prouty event (3200 bikers) to support cancer research. I did it in a mountain bike because my road bike was out of air and for some reason the pump wasn't working. It wasn't that hard, but I rode very slowly, it took me more than 5 hours.
-Played basketball, it was awesome.
-Had a really nice birthday. The best part was going to dinner with Yuliia and enjoying a nice steak, wine and a nice dessert. I have reached a quarter century.
-Have been teaching salsa and I have been taking swing classes. It is quite fun.
-I moved to a new apartment(beginning of the month). It took a lot of work and then a lot, but fortunately a couple of friends helped me out and we were able to do it in under five hours. However buying stuff for the place and ordering around took a long time (although Yuliia did almost all of the work).
-Life is good

COMICS
This time I read a bit more comics since I finished "A Storm of Swords" and hadn't bought "A Feast for Crows" yet:

Amazing Spider-Man #595-597 by Joe Kelly. This arc is called "American Son". It will be a five part miniseries. These three issues are the first three parts. The first issue has a really good ending. The second issue was really good, specially the Fantastic Four inclusion, it was just brilliantly done. The third issue reveals a lot and has a crazy cliffhanger at the end. I really want to read the fourth issue already. In theory it already came out, but I usually get it by mail a little late, which for some time bugged me very much (since I would receive it before the newspaper people before and now I don't), but it is not something worthy of being annoyed. In any case, I am glad Spider-man is an almost weekly comic so I can find out fast.

Punisher MAX Vol.5 This comic consists of two storylins: "Long Cold Dark" which was good but not great. It had an interesting premise and story, but it just had too much over the top action. The Barracuda-Punisher fight lasts about three issues and that is just too much. However the story was solid. The second storyline was "Valley Forge, Valley Forge" which was awesome. Definitely top 5 (which would be top half) of the Punisher stories, without analyzing heavily, I think I would place it in third (the first two are clearly "Slavers" and "Up is Down, Black is White"). It uses images from Vietnam to tell a story, it also uses prose in parts which I don't recall seeing in a Marvel comic. But the idea of having Delta force go after Castle is pretty cool. I liked it a lot. I like finding out about crazy criminals a la "Slavers" but this was a pretty good Punisher story, a story that depends on his character every step of the way, it explains us who he is. Really good.

I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly. This is a comic published by Image Comics (the biggest "Indie" company). The comic has very strange art for American comics, but it was great. The story was just really good. It reminds me of Pan's Labyrinth in how it mixes fantasy and reality. It started slow and almost boring, but by the third issue it grabbed momentum. The whole thing with the monster in the upper floor became interesting by the third issue and the reveal was just very satisfying. Very good comic.

BOOKS:
A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin. This is the third book in the Song of Ice and Fire series. It is the best so far. It is so complex, it is so ambitious. I can believe it. This book is a tour-de-force as people like to say. I can believe how he can juggle so many characters and make everyone so interesting. The growth of Daenerys and Jon has been great. The characters have changed so much, but in such natural ways.
I enjoy Tyrion very much, he's wit is awesome. Martin is fantastic in being able to become each character per chapter.
It was cool to have Jaime in a point of view. It was great to get to see his angle and emphatize with him. He is not the monster he seemed. I also enjoyed getting to know more about Beric Dondarrion, Mance Rayder and other cool characters.
The book made me go from excitement (Arya seeing Harwyn) to despair (Red Wedding). The red Wedding was so sad. I am still in shock. I am two thirds into the fourth book (which is also a thousand page monster) and I still think of the red wedding.
Really good book and one that felt more like it ended. The other two books felt too much like "To be continued" at the end, but this felt like it could actually be an ending (although an ending with many things left open).
Loved it.

On Monday, I started the day eating Choco Krispis, knowing I wouldn't be able to eat them in a while. After the breakfast we went to my dad's office to get work done on Yuliia's teeth. From there we went to El Paso to do some last day errands. We had lunch with Maribel, my mom and my uncle. We ate at a Lebanese restaurant and the food was great. Yuliia and I shared a huge Chicken Shawarma, it was delicious.
Later we went to watch Year One at the movie theater. The movie was terrible. I laughed a few times but most of the laughs were forced or out of pity for the movie. It was just very bad (although the story was kind of good).
After the movie we went to Juárez to host the Abel project graduation party. I had a good time. It ended early and so my mom, Yuliia, Emmanuel and me played Nerds. Yuliia dominated and the other three of us tied for second place with 112 points (although I could have had 109, there was a controversial decision). Yuliia and I went to the roof to look at the sky and then it was time for bed.

We woke up early on Tuesday to make it to our flight. We got there on time. The flights went without trouble. One of the legs of the flight was long enough that they had one of those things were you can pick which movie you want to see. This meant distraction from "A Song of Ice and Fire", but it was cool. I won a Backgammon game, finished a Sudoku game, watched about 30 minutes of A Beautiful Mind and about 10 minutes of "30 Rock" episode.
We arrived at Manchester a little after midnight (due to a delay in Newark) and got home at 2am. It was good to be home.

On Wednesday we watched Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets. The movie is pretty good. Not great, but fun. Not much else happened Wednesday.

On Friday the day started by going to Dartmouth to drop off Yuliia in her Spanish class. Later I taught my first lecture for Probability. I think the lecture was okay, but a lot of the interaction planned with the group had to be canceled because the class was so large. There were 38 students in the classroom. I guess homework grading will take a Herculean effort, but the lectures will be very fun to plan. The first lecture was pretty easy stuff, but there will be lots of cool problems to try later on.

At night, Yuliia and I went to watch Taking of Pellham 123 which was pretty good. I liked it and Yuliia liked it very much. The surprising thing was that even though there was a 10 minute line to buy tickets, Yuliia and I ended up being the only two people watching Pellham. I think the movie has some flaws but it is definitely very entertaining.

When we got home after a little card playing, we watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azcaban. Prisoner of Azcaban is where the books start being very good. I have a soft spot for this book and it was great that they had Alfonso Cuarón direct the movie. I think the movie is much better than the previous two (part of it is that the book is also better). I enjoyed it and it got me excited. I am looking forward to the sixth movie, although I think Yuliia and I won't watch the fourth and fifth yet as she's currently reading the books and she hasn't read those two in English yet (she read them in Russian a while ago).

On Saturday we went shopping. While Yuliia looked for clothes, shoes and other Summer items, I read a lot. After that we came home and watched Fanboys which wasn't great. The movie has its funny parts and the story flows smoothly, but there just isn't much there. Not a movie I would recommend.
Haven't done much besides playing a little poker (first time in two months). I played a 5-card draw tournament. I know very little about five card draw but I felt like playing so I played. I played terrible, but I had fun.

On Saturday, I didn't end up going to my uncle`s house because there was such a long line. Instead, Maribel, Yuliia and I went to watch my mom dance. Many groups performed little numbers in the university theater. It was cool for Yuliia to watch the traditional Mexican dances. Besides the folk dances, a group danced belly dance and my mom's group danced`tango.
After that we went home and played many board games. Cuban domino, Nerds, Marrana. Marrana was super funny as we did a "Ratonera" for punishment to the losers. A Ratonera is where a person passes between the legs of everybody and gets spanked (everybody forms in a line to deal the punishment). It was hilarious, Yuliia couldn't stop laughing even though she was the one that lost. We played all night till 4am. Really fun.

On Sunday we woke up late, watched a bit of TV, ate pancakes and then went to my father's house to celebrate Father's Day. He cooked some steaks at the grill. There was tasty potato, Rajas (cheese with jalapeño), nopales and other things. Very tasty, I had a good time. I also learned how to do some card tricks.
At night there was Nerds again and this time I was last place.

Today will be a long day full of activities because it is my last day in Juàrez. Should be fun.

The flight to come to Mexico was at Thursday (June 11) at 6:10am, which meant leaving the house at aout 3:30am. We left the house at the right time, but I hadn´t planned for gasoline stations being closed at night (I am still used to the 24 hour service of El Paso). I knew of a stop that had "24 hour" service and I knew I had enough gas to get there, but when I got there it was closed. They would open at 5am and it was 4:40am, I was already in reserves and the airport was still almost 40 miles away. I had to gamble and keep going instead of waiting 20 minutes, as I would miss the flight by staying. 20 miles later, after a lot of stress not knowing if we would make it, we got to an open gasoline station (it was past 5am). Then we made it to the airport at 5:30am and got on the plane in time. Smooth flying from there.
Once in El Paso, we went for lunch and then went towatch The Hangover again. Hilarious, I couldn´t stop laughing again. Really good comedy. At night we went salsa dancing and had a lot of fun.

On Friday we chilled out and at night layed a lot of Rockband, I was specially happy to sing "Parabola" by Tool. I also played "Nerds". Nerds has been kind of a daily thing as we all love to play it. It was funny to see how into it Yuliia got.

On Saturday I watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer´s Stone with Yuliia. It was fun to watch it again after so many years. The movie is not great, but it is not bad. Right after the movie I went to give a talk at the university (UACJ). I did a poor job with the talk, it has the potential to be a very good 80 minute talk for high school students but I botched it by under preparing. After the talks I had fun talking with David, Diana and Marcelino.

On Sunday morning, we watched Hot Rod, a mediocre comedy. I thought it would be good even with the bad reviews because the main performers are the guys that made the Jizz in my Pants music video, which is absolutely hilarious, however the movie wasn´t vergy good and although we laughed quite a bit, the movie just wasn´t good.
In the evening we went to El Paso to go celebrate my uncle´s birthday. We had a nice dinner and a fun conversation. Yuliia is getting used to my uncle´s dark humor and had a really good time. I also read a very interesting article from the Wall Street Journal about "El Chapo", the main drug lord behind the wave of violence.

On Monday we went to El Paso to watch Up again. It wasn´t as good on second viewing to me, but I think that is because I just saw it and the power of the emotional scenes just goes away if they are so fresh in the mind. Yuliia likes it even more on second viewing, the same with my sister, so there´s also the possibility that I just wasn´t in the mood, wanting to read more of Storm of Swords.

On Tuesday I went to El Paso to meet with David. We got together at 4pm. The plan was to try to invent problems for problem writing competition in Mexico. Of course, most of what we did was talk about random things and David even played poker for a while. Discussing fantasy baseball, math, olympiad, Abel, travel and other things. I invented a not so cool problem and a really cool one (although now I found an easier solution, I still like the problem very much), the special part about the cool one is that I finished solving it while I was walking across the border on my way back home. I got home at 11:30pm and it was Nerds time (as it has been essentially every night).

On Wednesday we went to El Paso to watch Más que Amor, Frenesí (Not Love, Just Frenzy) a 1996 Spanish movie. It was being shown at a café called Fellini. The movie was very chaotic and it seemed to try to hard to be Almodovar. In the end, I decided I liked it, as I enjoyed the second half of the movie (or maybe just the last third) and in the defense of the first half, we arrived 10 minutes late so maybe we missed too much.
After the movie we went to Flayz´s apartment and played Nerds. It was pretty crazy to play with six people.

On Thursday we went to see my father at the dentist. They checked up on Yuliia. When we came back home I took Eddy for a walk (my German Shepherd) and then I danced a little salsa in my mom´s class, trying to help one of her students learn how to turn. At night we went to the VIP theaters (really awesome big leather seats that recline) to watch The Proposal the romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. I had a good time enjoying my crepe, laughing alongside Yuliia, my sister and my mom (mostly, as the other Enrique and Emmanuel didn´t laugh that much). The movie is not bad and it entertained while making me laugh enough times. The plot was weak and it had very illogical parts, but it wasn´t bad.

On Friday I went to the dentist in the morning to accompany Yuliia and maybe get my teeth cleaned too. After they finished treating Yuliia we waited two hours to see if theywould treat me, but fortunately for my dad, his employees (and him) were very busy all day, so no time to treat me. After that, I came home, ate a nice meal (not as good as the previous day with chiles rellenos) and then I went to the university to give a class for the olympiad kids. I taught them some basic number theory, mainly congruences. I even had a digression about the Gregorian calendar, I had a lot of fun.
After the class, I went for ice cream with David, Omar and Perrito and we had a fun conversation. I came home and at night some friends of my mom´s, Maribel, Yuliia and I played Nerds (6 handed again) and then Flabbergast (this time 7 people), a game where you act out things and your team has to guess. It was very fun. To end the day we played Cuban Domino, a game called "Tren" (Train).
It was a very fun night.

Today I woke up around Noon and went to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned. Now I wrote this and later I will TeX up my Burgess results, the problems I invented for the math olympiad and then I will go have a good time with my uncle and maybe at night Salsa. Tomorrow will be time to have dinner with my father and enjoy Father´s Day.

I am having a really good time in Mexico. I feel a little guilty over my lack of progress with my research, but I am confident it will be back on track once I am in New Hampshire. I also have to prepare the outline of the Summer class I am teaching. The website should be up on Wednesday.

Life is good.

Yuliia and I moved things around the apartment to make it look nicer and then we went hiking. We went to Mount Cardigan. Yuliia and I hadn't gone hiking except for Ai Petri in Ukraine, but that almost doesn't count as the gondola takes you essentially all the way up. Hiking was very fun, the view from the top of Cardigan is amazing. We ate some tasty sandwiches once we reached the top and enjoyed the view before we came back to the apartment. When we came back we started watching JCVD but stopped because Yuliia was not liking it at all, and I wasn't getting into it either. We switched to watch Happy-Go-Lucky which I didn't like that much. Yuliia liked it and it was an interesting movie. I liked the main character and I liked some scenes, but I wasn't that interested in the movie, it just didn't hook me in.

On Sunday we went to Dartmouth to watch the French Open final (I don't have an antenna on the TV or cable). The match was boring but it was nice seeing Federer finally win the French. He definitely deserved it. After that, we went to Lou's to have a big breakfast (I felt like pancakes) and then we went to buy a videogame Guitar Hero: World Tour it was tough between Rock Band 2 and World Tour, but I figured it would be good to try World Tour, specially because it had some songs I like more (it has three Tool songs and it has Freak on a Leash). We played for about two hours, the most fun was singing Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi as I would bring the microphone next to Yuliia and we would both scream "Whoa...We're halfway there. Whoooooa ..." Pretty fun. It was also fun to sing "Beat It" by Michael Jackson. "Freak on a Leash" wasn't as fun to sing as I thought it would be, mainly because Yuliia didn't seem to like the song.

On Monday I went to meet my advisor Carl to talk more about Burgess. Now I understand everything in the proof very well and I have a pretty good bound, but there is still room for improvement. Today we mostly discussed Booker's method. It seems like his proof is faulty. It is strange that the proof assumes the character is quadratic (not stated in the theorem) while something mentioned in the hypothesis of the theorem (d = 1 mod 4) is never used in the proof. We also noticed how one of the numbers is in a very limited range in the proof, so my explicit constants do amount to something as they cover a much wider range and don't have the faulty part about assuming quadratic characters (although in his defense, the estimate he does is used in an problem where he has that the character is quadratic). Cool stuff.
After the meeting I did lots of errands, changing cell phone, helping Yuliia fill out some immigration paper work, helping Yuliia cook, writing emails about the class I am teaching. I also played Guitar Hero III with Yuliia. I didn't know the cooperative mode had different videos. It was cool. Yuliia and I are close to passing it in Medium (she plays guitar in Medium while I do bass in Hard).

Life is Good.

Comics:
Amazing Spider-Man #592-593-594 592-593 is a story called 24/7 by Mark Waid. It was enjoyable. It had a good villain and plenty of laughs. It was about Spidey being Spidey for a full week without sleep doing lots of good things to make JJJ mad (JJJ is now Mayor). 594 is the start of "American Son", which will be a five issue mini-series by Joe Kelly. The issue wasquite cool, had a pretty big reveal and it is gearing up to be intense as Spidey seems serious about taking out Norman Osborn.

Irredeemable #2-3 The series by Mark Waid started great. I loved the first two issues, but the third one was kind of lame. It didn't have enough in it, but I forgive it as it I am used to reading trade paperbacks and not single issues. I like what it is happening, but I am a little worried that it is using too much comic book archtypes. It seems like it could get to being generic soon.

Buffy Season 8 #25 Pretty good issue explaining a lot about Dawn going through those transformations. The last five issues haven't been great in terms of arc, but have been pretty good in terms of funny stories. This one was also funny, although the funniest had to be the Vampy Cat, that was hilarious. I am looking forward to more arc driven plots to come our way though.

Chew #1 by John Layman. I decided to try something new and try this new series (since I was happy with my decision of trying Irredeemable, I've been trying a couple of new series). The first issue convinced me to keep buying for a bit. We'll see how far I go, so far I will plan on buying at least two more issues. The main premise seems like it could bring good issues and funny ones too. I liked it.

Unwritten #1 This issue was great. I won't continue buying the series because I prefer reading in trades and with this series I am certain that it will be compiled in trade paperbacks later on (Vertigo almost always does and this series has the look of a winner all over it). Great premise, great storytelling, I want to know what happens.

BOOKS
I haven't read many comics because I have been reading the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin:

A Game of Thrones The first book in the series, it kicks off with a really interesting prologue that doesn't seem to be talked about in the book until much later. The story is just very entertaining and complex, there are just too many characters, but it is told in a superb way. I really like how the book switches in different perspectives every chapter taking you from one character to another to tell the story from a different set of emotions, plus allowing the reader to see what is going on in far away places. I love the structure. This book was full of surprises and the character development is incredible. Loved it.

A Clash of Kings As good as the first book, it almost feels like it is just a continuation, it seems like the series will be one long book. A lot of really cool things happened in this book and I keep being amazed at how the author can juggle so many characters and so many situations. I just have to say, I love Tyrion, he's a really fun character to read about. With some characters I have a love/hate relationship, but I feel close to nearly all of them (Theon would be the exception).

Currently I am a quarter of the way through on Storm of Swords and I am loving it.

On Monday Yuliia and I moved. It was much harder work that I thought it would be. I started moving things at 3pm and we ended at 10:30pm (although we did take a one hour break). When we finished we rushed off to Applebees to get a pretty awesome dessert called Mile High Cream Pie, which was delicious.

On Tuesday I went to school for the last day of classes and then went shopping with Yulichka (things for the new apartment). Besides that, I did a lot of reading.

On Wednesday, I had my meeting with Carl and talked about the Burgess bound. Good progress has been happening of lately, I am excited about it. The meeting was pretty cool. Again, Yuliia and I did more shopping at night.

Thursday was a pretty awesome day. I went to teach a class to Hartford High School. The math teacher invited Dartmouth to send a grad student to give a class and I volunteered. It was very fun. I started out by showing Pascal's identity in two ways, algebraically and combinatorially. Then showing that the sum of the n-th row of Pascal's triangle is 2^n by using the Binomial theorem, but also giving a combinatorial argument. They seemed to enjoy it. Then I gave them some examples of counting things and gave them the task of counting the different poker hands. They really got into the project and were very enthusiastic. The class was a success, I was very happy. Yuliia took some cool pictures (Dartmouth asked me to take pictures).
After the class, the apartment manager helped me pick up a kitchen table (as I don't have a truck) and then Yuliia and I built it. It took two hours, much more than I thought it would. At night, Yuliia and I went dancing and I enjoyed it very much.

Today (Friday), I had another meeting with Carl and it was cool. We finally figured out why Booker used something to range through primes when it seemed unnecessary. Also, I was happy to understand Weil's bound better. In the afternoon I ate a really good meal that Yuliia cooked (chicken with a mushroom sauce) and then we went to watch Hangover which is absolutely hilarious. Yuliia and I couldn't stop laughing, it is really good.