I finished reading Proposition Player by Bill Willingham (author of the magnificent "FABLES"). The comic was great. The first two chapters were a little slow (specially the second one), but by the third one it picks up and it becomes very funny. The story is about a guy that in a bet, gets 32 souls and then God and the Devil want to bargain to get those souls. It turns out that having souls is what gives them power. I won't say more because it would spoil the fun, but let's say that Egyptian gods, Greek gods and many more are thrown into this humorous tale.

Today, for the first time in my life, I played Dungeons and Dragons. I figured that I am in full fledge mode with comic book reading so I might as well take the next step in geekdom. Actually the real reason is that it sounded like a cool thing to do with other grads. I went to Geoff's house and the players were Geoff (gamemaster), Naomi (paladin dragon thingy), Ralf (halfling rogue), Avram (dwarf), Jared (half-elf cleric) and me (human wizard). At first I was bored out of my mind with the game, but after two hours of playing I got into it. In the last battle of the day (we cut it short after that battle and left the story for another day) I was very excited with it. Doing stealth moves and then managing to defeat the enemies before they could call for backup. I noticed that rolling well makes it much more fun and viceversa. It could become very boring if you never roll something good. I was also introduced to different sorts of die. I had not seen a D20 (icosahedron) or a D10 or a D12 (dodecahedron) or a D4 (tetrahedron) or a D8 (octahedron) but I had seen a D6 (cube or dice). We played from 4pm to 10:20pm. And it stopped because I asked for it, I think it could have gone far longer. It was fun though, I will definitely be ready to continue the adventure.

The other thing I did for the day was eat at Lou's. Lou's is a delicious restaurant in Hanover. They only open in the mornings (close at 3pm) and it is always megafull on weekends, but there's not a long wait for a seat at the counter (there's a long wait for seats at tables or booths), so whenever I go I seat at the counter and today was no exception. I had the Big Green dish, which is 2 eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, home fried (this are super delicious) and 2 pancakes. I love their pancakes. Eating a meal is bliss, so maybe I'll make it a weekly thing again (for a brief period earlier in the year I was going there weekly, maybe it is something that will return).

Yesterday was a very fun day. A lot of things happened:

-I cut my hair. Now it is really short, throughout the day I kept putting my hand on the back of my head trying to grab a pony tail that was not there anymore. The haircut looks good though, I am in awe at the beauty I see everytime I look at the mirror.

-I saw The Happening, the latest Shyamalan movie. I have liked his movie s a lot (Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Village) but I thought the latest one was awful (Lady in the Water). I still went to see this one because the previews looked interesting. I thought the movie was a solid horror movie. I liked it. My mom, sister and Flayz didn't like it though, so on a local (math term) rottentomatoes measure, it would get 25%. I liked it because it was suspenseful and it did give a feeling of horror for the characters, a feeling that there is no escape.

-I gave classes at the Math Olympiad. This was one of the first stages, so there were over 100 students spread in three classrooms. So there would be three of us teaching in each classroom and then rotate (I did not teach to one of the classrooms because I was late, so someone else taught instead of me for the first session). It was funny to teach the same thing back to back but to two different classrooms. I taught them very basic number theory stuff (factorization, sums of consecutives) and some tricks that help out in the exams. I think I did a good job, but maybe I went a little too fast, because everytime I would erase something on the board I would hear someone complain that they hadn't written it down yet (this only happened in the second classroom where I taught).

-I played "Pictionary" and "Guesstures" with my mom, sister, Flayz, Enrique (another Enrique), Helene, Josefina and Julieta (the last 4 are friends of my mom). We divided the teams as young versus old. We, the young ones, won the round of pictionary and the three rounds of Guesstures. Pictionary was very fun, but Guesstures was a whole other level. Not only is it very fun to act the things and get people to guess them (I loved that part) but it was very funny seeing people try to act things and then not pick up the card in time. The face of people seeing the card slip away is priceless. I had fun acting out (successfully) words like piggy, witchcraft, cementery, air and many more.

-I also played Nerds and domino. Nerds is a game I learned in the REU in 2006 when I went to San Antonio for a week to give a talk. When I came back I taught my mom and sister how to play and they loved the game. My sister is very good at it. Last night my mom won with 160 points, my sister was second place with 154, I was third with 147 and Flayz was far behind as he was a beginner. Fun game.

The last two talks were given today. The REU is getting very close to the end. Getting close to having my last meals at Milagrito in a long time. Today I had the Picadillo Plate which I hadn't had before, it was very good.

Instead of playing racquetball I took a long nap. After the nap, I hung out with the REU people at Beazy eating the leftovers (rice, corn, hot dogs) and playing some Ping Pong.

We went bowling today. When we arrived I immediately went to the "Deal or No Deal" arcade game. I picked my favorite number, 12, and took no deal at any moment. At the end where there was either 8 or 200 and they offered 104 tickets I would have taken it, but the machine didn't have tickets, so I went for the glory and I got it. I played some Pac-Man and then Air-Hockey against Desmond (I won of course).

In bowling I finally did a good job, I bowled 107 in the first game to win my lane, although Tyler and Alyssa got a higher score. On the second game I bowled 129 which was the best between the two lanes, but Tyler's 130 in the first game was the best overall. My sister, her boyfriend Carlos, Poncho and Chepo who are in town for the week went bowling as well. Chepo and Poncho seem to be quite good and were on route to beat me, but once I mentioned what they needed to do to beat me, they missed exactly when it counted. Poncho had to spare in the last frame, first he shot 1 and then his shot for the spare seemed good, but one pin remained up (even though it was moved to a side by other pins). It was funny.

After bowling, we ate some donuts from Krispy Kreme and played Spades. Desmond and I lost miserably but it was very fun, every hand had one of the pairs being set.

Now I am up, probably going to read for a couple of hours before we do Milagrito at 6am. The second to last 6am Milagrito run. I will miss this, but my life will be healthier and quite different for the rest of the year.

I feel great right now.

The day started by going to lunch with Yan, Nathan and Dr. Chapman to Charlie's. Even though Charlie's is apparently a famous restaurant, I hadn't been there before. I ate chicken fingers and they were very good.

After lunch it was time for Yan's talk. His talk was on classical beautiful combinatorics. The talk was very well received by the REU people I asked and I think was very well done, Yan is an excellent speaker.

After lunch I called the tire place to see if my car was ready, the owner pulled a little prank on me by trying to convince me that he sold my car. He picked me up with my car and then I drove him back and paid. I was very happy with the service, it was quality service, friendly service and not expensive. I was glad I met Carlos Lopez.

Jay cooked beans and rice and it was very good, specially the normal dish with sausage. I am not a big fan of sausage, but the combination with red beans works perfectly. He also made the vegetarian equivalent without the sausage and it was good but not great.

After dinner, we headed to the math department to see the Star Wars trilogy. I enjoyed watching "A New Hope" again. During "Empire Strikes Back" I played spades with Jessica, Jay and Desmond. Jessica and I had the game locked and I made a mistake by bidding two instead of one when Jessica bid one, I should have just gone safely and bid one. We still had the game later on, but Desmond and Jay pulled an amazing nil hand to pass us in the last hand. I didn't finish watching Empire Strikes Back because Linnea had a headache and was afraid of the dark, so I walked her back and talked to her for a while so that she could feel better.

I came back for the last hour of "Return of the Jedi" but couldn't see it all because a police officer came in and kicked us out claiming there was a conference at 6am (it was 5:20am). What makes it hard to believe is that a conference would occur at 6am on a Saturday, but then again the military is here this weekend, so maybe it was true.

Went to Milagrito, the crowd had 16 people, all of the REUers (except Linnea because of her headache) plus Yan, Ryan and his wife Jan. I ordered the barbacoa plate because I knew it was a fresh bash. It was incredibly delicious, the pleasure of eating their barbacoa plate is almost impossible to surpass. There were nine tables in the place (yes, at 6am nine tables) and there was only one waitress, so she had a very tough time and missed one or two orders and she was crying out of stress. I tried to make nice comments to her to make her feel better, I hope they worked. Actually, I came back to Milagrito today at 6:30pm (woke up at 5:30pm) and talked to Sandra for a while about it, she told me that the waitress gets very nervous when dealing with a lot of people and that she has ups and downs in terms of how she feels. It was fun talking with Sandra, we talked about several things. In that trip to Milagrito I went with Linnea since she missed out in the morning mainly because of the headache. I had Lengua plate, which was good, and Linnea had her traditional beef enchiladas, which she says were delicious.

After the Milagrito morning run, Alyssa, Jessica and I drove to the airport. The farewell with Jessica was funny and nice, I am glad I parked instead of just leaving her off. Jessica is a great person and I am glad I met her. She's going to India for five weeks to do community service and I wish her the best. Jessica smiles a lot and brought a lot of goodwill into the group.

Not over yet, but here's what has been today so far.
Woke up feeling bruised all over my body, feels good.

Went to Manuel's house and ate dinner with his family at 2pm. Manuel's shoulder is fixed, but he can't move it for two more weeks.

We ate paella for dinner. It was delicious.

We played a board game called "Adigma" for over two hours. It was very fun. If you speak spanish, you should check out Adigma. The website has a thing called Rallies where you have a daily puzzle to solve for two weeks and whoever finishes first wins a prize. I have finished the last three rallies (and some other ones) places somewhere around 3000th. I usually need hints for any stage after stage six.

Right now, I will probably watch a movie with Cesar and Company.
I have to pack and then, I am off to Dartmouth for round two.