This weekend was the Big Game between at Stanford but unfortunately I had a paper to write for my evolution class (on the evolution of obligate pollination mutualisms, like figs and fig wasps, yuccas and yucca moths, and Glochidion trees and Epicephala moths), which I'm trying to use as a way to organize my thoughts as I consider various PhD topics. So I stayed up in Berkeley, where it was pretty quiet. For lunch today I went to Wat Mongkolratanaram, the Thai Buddhist temple on Russell Street, where every Sunday around lunch they have stalls selling Thai food. We arrived a bit late so pretty much dessert was the only thing left, so I ate mangoes and sticky rice for lunch.

Last weekend was a bit more exciting but tiring; I took a wilderness first aid course on Saturday and Sunday taught out near Rodeo Beach in the Marin Headlands. The class went from 8 am to 5 pm both days, so I was pretty exhausted by Sunday night, but I feel a lot better informed going out into the wilderness now. We used fake blood and practiced splinting people's appendages. I got my leg splinted with a ski pole and two ropes, as if my femur had snapped and needed to be kept straight. It was fun seeing my friends' expressions when I got back to Berkeley with fake blood dripping down my face. A lot of the stuff we learned was common sense, but the kind of common sense that you're not likely to think of in an emergency situation unless you'd taken a course like this one.

I tried some adventurous cooking today by trying to make pumpkin soup following a recipie from The Joy of Cooking. Jennifer pointed out that the pumpkin I bought may have been an ornamental one. It was a yellowish stringy goop that tasted like milk, but it was edible.