This morning I biked with Chrisil. The plan was to go to a path on a mountain, to use our mountain bikes to the fullest. We realized that the climbs are super tough (seemingly impossible), so we had to walk several portions. The way down was super fun (and scary), bouncing all over the place and skidding and going super fast.
After we were back at the bottom, it was in a park, so we biked around to see what the park had to offer. The park had a nice pond and then while biking we reached a point where we couldn't cross on the bike because of the pond, but there were two logs to cross on foot. I jokingly grabbed my bike and started walking the logs. Immediately I came back, but I was thinking about whether it was possible to cross those long logs standing up. One of them was wide and it looked easy to cross except for the end where part of it was a little submerged and hence theoretically slippery. I decided to try to cross that log without the bike (as a test run). It is not hard to figure out that I fell. I fell into the pond. Me and Chrisil laughed a lot. Surprisingly, the pond wasn't freezing (I guess the adrenaline helped me not feel it so cold) and the sun had come up, so being wet wasn't as bad.
I came back to the math department, showered and then grabbed the free lunch given at the university in honor of Convocation (tomorrow is the first day of classes).

In the evening, Yuliia and I went biking. Since she used one of my bikes, she wasn't used to it and didn't have that much fun, but I had a lot of fun biking with her.

At night I tried to duplicate a sandwich that Mary makes for me whenever I go to Mexico. Without avocado, it was certain it wouldn't be as good, but I think I did a pretty good job.

I finished reading Runaways volume 3. So I have officially read the three main series that Brian K. Vaughan has written. I have said before that I like his style and I'll repeat it once more. I love his books. In volume 3, the first story arc was superb, it was fantastic. There were two more story arcs, one was okay and the other one was good. I guess it didn't end up with a strong story arc, but it was pretty good.

Final Crisis #1,2,3 I am not a fan of Grant Morrison's writing, but I had already bought this when I thought I would like his writing. I'll continue the series as several interesting things are going on, but I must admit that he writes really weird stuff (I like weird, but not so much his kind of weird). The story seems way more deep than Marvel's Secret Invasion, which is a very good thing, but for some reason I've had more fun reading Secret Invasion.

Went to watch a couple of movies at a Drive-In (I had never done this before). I wasn't interested in either movie but it sounded fun to watch them at a drive-in. Here are the reviews:

The House Bunny I didn't like it. Most of the jokes were not funny and the ones that were funny, Yuliia couldn't understand as they referred to pop culture (i.e. making note of tv shows like American Idol). In any case, the plot was quite dumb and although Anna Faris does a good job with her performance, the movie is not worth watching (unless it is to see it at a drive-in for the first time in your life).

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 I liked it a lot. I haven't watched the first one, but this movie made me want to watch it. I was interested in the four storylines and thought the movie was well made. Maybe it just felt very good after not seeing a good movie in a while (Righteous Kill and House Bunny are the latest movies I've seen and they were far from good).

In comics, I finally read volume two of Runaways. Runaways is written by my favorite author Brian K. Vaughan, but for some reason I hadn't read volume two yet (even though I own it since May), I guess I was saving it knowing I am running out of things to read by him. The comic did not disappoint. It introduced a cool new character and the story arc about his introduction was excellent. There was a funny storyline that followed that arc, involving extraterrestial weddings and then a fun story arc at the end that had some nice Spidey moments. Runaways is quite a good comic and I enjoy it a lot.

I cooked a bit this weekend and I was very proud of an omelet I made (with cheese and tomatoes) and a tomato salad I prepared. Yuliia made some delicious french toast too (which I think I know how to do now).

Friday night I went to see Yuliia and we cooked Vareniki for Tim and Janet (Yuliia's hosts). Rebecca (Tim and Janet's niece) and a hiker were there for dinner too. Tim is a big hiking fan and in one of his hikes met a person doing the Appalachian trail and gave her his number in case she got in trouble on the hike. When she was near Vermont, there was a big thunderstorm and called to see if Tim could help. By coincidence it happened on the same night that Yuliia had decided to cook dinner for them. We had practiced Vareniki during the week and felt ready to do it for them. The meal was wonderful, Vareniki, delicious recently-grown corn, scrumptious tomatoes and salad. It was cool to listen to the talk about hiking, it was very interesting.

On Saturday morning after having breakfast with the same people as I had had dinner the night before, Tim told us that I could hang around the farm during the day with Yuliia, helping her with her job. So during the day I did things like cutting lazy lettuce, mezcaline, putting the things in bags, cleaning buckets, riding around a Gator (really cool farm mobile), weeding and other things. Also observing while Yuliia and others worked getting peppers, cucumbers, zuchini, squash, gourdes, munchskins and other things. My main contribution to Yuliia's work was to help her whenever she needed to carry heavy stuff (like gourdes) and taking lots of pictures of her working (which she had wanted for some time but hadn't asked me about it).

The day at the farm was quite a unique experience for me. It was interesting seeing all the things that get done. Organizing how to move the work around must have been one of the early problems in the farm, work seems to be very efficient, I can only imagine how many hours of thought process went into it. It was also nice to see food growing and the work behind it. It was a very cool experience.

Tuesday I met with my advisor and he suggested a couple of papers to read, a problem to try out and we talked about a conference we're attending in three weeks. I was very happy to be thinking math again and that the meeting went so smoothly. I like my advisor a lot.

The day started by picking up Ralf, Sara (Ralf's sister that came from Germany to tour around) and Giulio. We went to Montpelier. Montpelier had some Sculptcycle exhibition around town, that is 20 sculptures done with bicycles. We saw them, saw the state capitol building (a very nice building, much smaller than the one in Austin) and then ate at a cafe shop run by the New England Culinary Institute.

After Montpelier, we went to Waterbury to go to the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream factory. The tour of the factory only costs $3 and they even give you a scoop of ice cream (Ben and Jerry's ice cream is expensive). The tour was pretty cool. I like seeing success stories (like that of Ben and Jerry) and it was interesting to see the huge machines that make all this ice cream. Yuliia is a big fan of their ice cream so it was nice to go.

After Montpelier we drove through Stowe and headed towards Mt. Mansfield (a mountain that has a resemblance to a face looked from the side) and went to the top on a gondola. We did a little hiking around the top outside trails as we didn't find trails and it was pretty fun and slippery. I had a great time and shared some beautiful moments with Yuliia.

I drove people back to their respective houses and then Yuliia and I came to my house and cooked Vareniki, a popular Ukrainian dish. Yuliia taught me how to do them (to those who speak Spanish, Vareniki are similar to empanadas). It was fun to cook them and they turned out to be delicious.

After food we watched half of Spider-Man. We had to wake up early for Yuliia's work the next day so we couldn't finish it.

The next morning, I had my alarm clock at 4:45am to wake up and prepare breakfast for Yuliia, but I woke up at 6:28am (my alarm didn't wake me up), she works at 7am and it usually takes me 33 minutes to drive to her work, so we ran out (in pijamas) and drove to her work as fast as I could (I got there in 27 minutes). It was very funny, we were laughing most of the way, aware of the problems of having the alarm at arm's length making it possible to turn it off before you wake up. After dropping her off, 30 minutes later (when my phone got signal again) I get a call from Yuliia telling me that the farm had delayed the starting time to 8am that day. Our efforts were in vain, it made the story even funnier in my opinion.

Thursday, Yuliia and I just hung out. Ate some more Vareniki, some soup and just joked around. The last week has been really good. Tonight and tomorrow night there's salsa dancing, so it looks like the trend of great days will continue.

Saturday Yuliia and I cooked crepes. It was very fun and they turned out to be tasty. The other thing I did on Saturday was read Invincible volume 2. The comic is awesome, I enjoyed it a great deal even though the volume is all about subplots that will eventually get revealed. I am looking forward to getting answers to the questions.

On Sunday, Yuliia and I went to watch Vicky Cristina Barcelona the latest Woody Allen film. The movie is very good. Much better than Scoop but not quite as good as Match Point (although very different from both). A lot of interesting things happen in the movie that made me think. I really liked the journey of Vicky's character, Cristina isn't as interesting, I am also starting to find Scarlett Johansson to be less attractive than I previously thought. I thought the actress that played Vicky was prettier. Maybe the characters change the way I see the actresses as I definitely liked Vicky more than Cristina. Although the movie is about them, I think Penelope Cruz steals the show with her portrayal of María Elena. It was awesome. A movie well worth watching.

Monday morning I made crepes for Yuliia and at night we went to yoga. I hadn't done yoga before. I was surprised that a lot of the things that are done in yoga are done in stretching exercises in sports. A lot of the exercises were very hard for me, but some not so much. It was fun to do a shoulder stand and a headstand (although in the head stand I needed someone to help me). Fun stuff, although I don't get as relaxed as other people seem too. I definitely enjoy sports or biking more than yoga, although I suspect if I go more to yoga I would enjoy it more and start feeling the relaxation more.