Puerto Rico Part 1

So, I’m back from San Juan, Puerto Rico from the conference and I’m here to blog about it.  It was fun! Day 1, which is the day we left consisted of us in three airports.  It went pretty smoothly, of course people were complaining about having to go through the full body scan, but whatever.  Of course no one will be complaining about increase security once another plane attack happens again.  I was going with my lab PI (aka person in charge of lab I’m in) and the lab’s PhD student. The flight all together took 7hrs I believe, with a stop at Dallas, TX airport in which me and my lab PI looked in disgust at the lack of green in Texas.  Then we talked about how we’d never want to live there.  It’s true, Texas looks like a dry wasteland….that is all.  However, when arriving in Puerto Rico, it was dark and all we could see are the lights and some of the ports.  I was very happy to be able to say, I am in Puerto Rico.

Once we arrived to the airport and found a cab…wait, I wanna say that the cab driver was a cutie Anyways, we told him which hotel but there were two and he seemed like he didn’t know which hotel we wanted to go to.  I think he was messing with us, but on the way there we took the freeway and the main thing that popped out was all the advertisements, everywhere.  I’m sure it’s the equivalent here in the states, but there, the advertisements seem more effective at getting my attention. Especially those Claro ads for the TV, internet and phone package deal.  Eventually we got to the right hotel, and it was very…discoteca(?) it also has a casino in it, so maybe that’s why the hotel was so…in your face.  Very bright with techno music playing and expensive restaurant and bar.  But overall, it was a nice hotel.  After we checked in, it was late so the first thing we did was go to bed.

The next morning we had to sign in to register.  The convention center was nice but the food was expensive.  I just ended up getting cold cereal for $2, but everything was $2…even a plain bagel.  My attempt to get cold cereal particularly Rice Krispies was a feat on it’s own.  I asked for cold cereal and the lady didn’t understand and then I said, frio cereal and she didn’t understand.  Then finally a lady that spoke English got me cold cereal.  After we got everything we needed, we ate and a couple other scientists that my labPI knew came over to talk to her.  We also looked through the schedule to see any talks we wanted to go to.  I didn’t have a preference in the talks I wanted to attend other than the talk my labPI was giving later that day.  Most the talks we went to was about Phosphorous in lakes…I think I learned a lot about phosphorous this whole conference…

Later for lunch we went to the rooftop outdoor pool area for lunch.  Where we first encountered our first but not last time where the service is sloooow.  We waits well over 45min for food.  Partially because the cook was late.  Also, partially because they only had one waitress. Nonetheless my Reuben sandwich was good…little cold…but good.  We also encountered these cute little birds.  One in particular was really cute, then I looked at the photos I took of it and now I think the bird looks evil…and ready to attack at any moment

Then later we went to more talks.  Then for dinner we went downtown for dinner at La Raices in Old San Juan which was crowded.  We were meeting with another scientist and his wife.  The wait was 20 min and it was still light out so we walked around and went to some stores.  The restaurant was nice, the staff were dressed as maidens and whatever the guys were supposed to be…anyways, and it was packed because it was Valentine’s Day.  I had one of the best cooked Salmon ever, and they put strawberry sauce on it which I wasn’t particularly fond of on it’s own, but it went well with the salmon.  Another thing throughout my stops this whole trip is that I’m not fond of the mashed potatoes with crushed plantain(?)…they always served too much of it when only a small amount was needed to fill you up.  I however do indeed love plantain on it’s own. Anyways, after the restaurant, we rode back to the hotel.

The next day we didn’t really go to the conference….instead we asked the hotel concierge about places to go in Old San Juan for breakfast…and we didn’t go to any of her suggested spots, we were too hungry so we went to the first place we saw with was CafiCultura…hands down the best place to eat in Old San Juan.   I had the Cafi Coco and a croissant breakfast sandwich and it was all to DIE FOR!

Ahem, so on with the day from when we got to Old San Juan.  My favorite thing about Old San Juan for this trip were the beautiful buildings and architecture.

On the way to searching for a breakfast spot I saw the above artist station.  There’s a guy that makes things out of leaves.  During my trips to Old San Juan I’ve only seen him in the evenings, so I wonder if he just leaves his stuff out there all day til he comes to work.  I guess he doesn’t have to worry about people stealing his leaves.  Eventually that’s when we picked CafiCultura.  After that we wondered around the city til we were ready to take the trolly…so we could take a ride around the city.

While wondering before catching the trolley we stopped by an awesome antique shop and I get an antique book. It’s 1949 “La Gran Aldea”.  The book had a lot of character so I decided to buy it, plus I’ve heard about this book before so I thought it’d be a great addition to my antique book collection.  After that, we explored a small church and I sat in the *confessional*…very nice…now I know why the confessional is popular.

So eventually we got on the trolley and randomly decided to stop by the Fort museum.  Oh, Oh! I have more pictures!

After the Fort walked to the other Fort museum.  This post is way too long, I’ll just stop here and continue with part 2 next.  I hope you enjoyed the pictures, I tried to get good shots.  See you next time

Walking On Garbage And Posting Signs

That’s the industrialized part of Detroit as we were leaving last Tuesday morning.  We were going to meet up with others so that we can go around posting signs along the Detroit river about advising people on what fish they should and shouldn’t eat, due to contamination.  Normally, the bottom feeders such as catfish are the ones you don’t want to eat.

So the first location we went to go put up signs was probably the second worst.  The first worst place was the last location and I didn’t get many pictures…more on that later.  So at the first place it was near the bridge to Canada (?) I guess…or possibly a bridge to Nowhere, but I’m not sure.

I did manage to get those urban decay photos I wanted.  This area of Detroit is really bad.  There’s so many closed business and dangerous areas.  When I finally got the chance to learn how to post the signs about fish consumption, some guy came over and said people aren’t going to pay attention to those signs.  He suggested we just toss them into the water….of course, we didn’t though.  He’s probably right though.  I doubt many will pay attention, fish and fishing is extremely important here and telling people what and what they should eat is hard to do.  But, it’s necessary for people’s health.

Anyways, the Michigan state worker showed us how to post the signs and he was impressed by my quick metal cutting ability.  Then the lab manager said that means she might be able to beat us up lol.  Next, our stop was at Belle Isle.  It was a nice day to be there.  Belle Isle is the big city park of Detroit.  It’s an island and you can easily see Canada.

Ummm…I have no idea what most of these buildings are.  Pretty sure one of them is the planetarium (?) and one is lighthouse.  So parts of Belle Isle was seriously trashed over the holiday weekend.  The next place we went to go post signs, I think I found a bottle of urine.  At least it looked like urine and when I was kicking it, the lady with us said, “you don’t wanna know what’s in that“.

I didn’t take a picture of that bottle ….OR DID I?!

That’s me in the picture btw lol After that, the people which is me, students and the lab manager put up a sign by ourselves without the Michigan state people.  When we got there, there was no good place to post the sign except on a light pole.  I’m pretty sure we weren’t supposed to do that but oh well.  When we started to put on the sign, found out SOMEONE put on the metal bracket wrong.  Of course, in blame game, I point out that the lab manager put it on wrong.  Which technically he did and even acknowledged it.  Then the rest of the day when putting on the brackets, he double checked with me to see if he’s doing it right lol.

After Belle Isle we stopped  in another place, which was a slightly nicer slice of Detroit with big houses and nice park area.  It was a pretty nice nature habitat and park area that we went to.  We were all hungry so as we were putting up the signs we were talking about our favorite type of meats.  I pointed out that I actually don’t like catfish or chicken.  A girl in our lab is from Dubai and she apparently loves chicken and sushi.  Another weird girl that talks a lot said she likes turkey and chicken.  The other adults said they like catfish, hate deer and love salmon…but I think we all loved salmon.

After posting the signs at Belle Isle, we stopped for some lunch at McDonald’s.  After complaining about how I don’t like chicken, I ended up getting the chicken sandwich at McDonald’s I think I just got it only because others got it.  Anyways, it taste good only cause I soaked it in a lot of packets of ketchup.  The last place we stopped was the dirtiest place.  The only glimmer of hope was this migrating bird which was outgoing enough to approach us and we gave it some food.

After we left there I felt like something was in my eye.  I kept scratching at my eye, then it felt like I had a bump on my eye that kept rubbing against my eyelid whenever I blinked.  Luckily, this all happened towards the end of the trip when we were on our way back to school.  I also managed to drive home with one eye.

Eventually I decided I needed to go to the ER.  When we got there, the lady put some cool yellow dye on my eye and did a brief swipe of the black light to see where the injury was. In the end, all she told me to do was take so eyedrops.  So, we headed over to the local Rite Aid and got my prescription eyedrops.  During the wait for the eyedrops I shopped around the store and got assorted colors of nail polish and lip gloss.  Anyways, so that was my day in the field working in the city of Detroit.  It wasn’t that bad, it was actually fun.

I wanted to blog about my other days but I have too many pictures and crap so I have to create another post fast, before I forget what happened!  Toodles!

Busy, Busy, and Busy

I didn’t know what to name this post but I have been technically busy.  Only finding a little time to blog, be on twitter, even too busy to subconsciously create awkward moments and make fun of people.  So, the last time I posted about my life was Sept. 13th, my birthday!  I just got my hair done, the guy wanted to cut my hair that I spent 22 years growing and then I cried but once he cut it I was ok.  Then we just went out to eat.  And, I got The Sims 3.

Since I had The Sims 3 that meant I need to upgrade my old computer with a new graphics card and memory.  I’m not new to graphics cards or what kind I needed.  I already installed an ATI Radeon 7000 which is beyond out dated.  I needed a new one, checked the graphics card requirements for the game and then called around to various stores.  I hate talking to people of customer service nature so I did go online before actually calling.  Walmart has graphics cards, so while I was at school I called Walmart transferred over to the electronic department and some guy answered that sounded like a fat hill billy type mechanic that doesn’t know what the hell a computer is much less what PC components are.

So I say in my nice voice, “Do you carry PCI graphic cards?”.

He goes, “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about”.

I say, “Graphic cards”.

He goes, “What?”.

I say, “Graphic cards”.

He goes, “What?”.

I say, “GRAPHICS CARDS!! Cards for computers also may be called, Video Cards”.

*he hangs up on me*

I called again later to have a competent woman answer the phone and she said they don’t carry them in the stores anymore.  I called Staples and asked if they had a PCI graphics card and he said “yes” so I go there to find out the idiot can’t differentiate between PCI and PCI-e which can’t go on my computer.  I will acknowledged that PCIs are a little harder to find as newer computers have PCI-e or AGP.  So, I went to Best Buy, they only had only PCI card geForce 8400.  It installed correctly and at one point actually worked but my monitor was going black and I didn’t care to bother trying to get fixes for it online so I took the graphics card back and got my damn $100 back.

Then, I went to computer lovers paradise (in deep echoing voice) MICRO CENTER.  They have everything, I only heard of it but have never been and it’s far away from me but a mile down the street from where I work.  I go in and ask for the graphics card department, so many to chose from that I was just standing there.  I got the cheapest graphic card that met The Sims 3 requirement which was e-GeForce FX 5200, the only problem was the it only had a DVI connector and not a VGA.  I asked a guy to look up the product or a VGA adapter so we went to the store computer and the graphics card came with a VGA adapter but it doesn’t say that on the box!  Anyways, so I was happy and since it was late I had to run off to work but I forgot to buy some memory.

After work, I opened up the computer and inserted the graphics card.  To make the game run faster, til I did the memory upgrade I just changed my Virtual Memory settings for XP.  I was able to just play, the building a house part of the Sims game but the characters wouldn’t move cause I didn’t have enough memory.

The next day before work I headed over to MICRO CENTER.  The crowd at the store was definitely different from when I first went.  The first time I went at 8:30PM and there were normal, just want a new digital camera or computer accessory type people.  The second time I went there were geeks almost everywhere.  I can tell because geeks know geeks when they see em.  But, these people had apparel on too, like some guy was wearing a Linux Rules shirt, another was wearing a shirt with a picture of Windows Desktop lol.  The second time I was there just to buy the memory.  I knew I needed DDR (PC 3200) and wanted at least 1GB of memory.  They had a sale and the value version of a memory card was cheaper but with a memory card, I didn’t want cheap I wanted a reliable name brand so I got the Kingston.

I got hit on by some guy in the store that thought it was nice when a girl talks about computers in detail.  I said, “oh, thanks” and then slowly drifted away lol.  My BF said the same thing but he doesn’t know $hit about computers.   Anyway, when I got home I put in the memory, cleaned the inside of the computer.  You wouldn’t believe how much dust accumulated.  I didn’t notice when I first inserted the graphics card but behind the fan there was a ton of dust that looked like it should be studied in a lab.  For the hell of it I took off the face of the tower and cleaned that too.

After that, I turned on the computer and now my PC is running faster than my moms new Vista Laptop.  And The Sims 3 is playing perfectly and fast!  I don’t know why I didn’t do this a long time ago.  And in the spirit of pricing, the graphics card and memory upgrade only cost $88!

Now, on to school oooooo for some reason I dont feel like blogging about this but I will say that my last lab in aquatic ecology was fun.  This time we worked in the lab instead of the field and we created Lake Models.  It was a lake stratification model.  It was very fun, something I could definitely see me doing in the future.  First we set up the model by adding thermometers at different depths to the sides of the tank.  Then we added water and ice to the tank til it reached 4 degrees.  We measured the temperature at each depth at different time intervals.  Then we added wind to simulate…WIND.  And we took the same measurements.  After that we added methylene blue to view the epilimnion.  It was very cool.  We measured the time it took for a wave to reach the other side of the tank (lake).  Then we mixed the water to “turn over” and took the temperature measurements, the desired result, is that the temperatures at every depth be pretty much the same and that is what happened in our lake model.  I worked with cool lab partners so there wasn’t any problem and everyone was participating…which is actually rare.   Well, that was the highlight of school this week.

The only reason I’m blogging right now and this early is because I’m not going to class today.  I only have one class and it’s math.  I went to the dentist this morning and even though I still had plenty of time to drive to school I just decided not to go.  Now I’m at home, I’ll probably play The Sims, blog, do some school work but right now, since I can’t have a cheeseburger, I’ll drive over to Boston Market to get so decent food that will help fill my caloric requirement.  I’ll be back to proofread this post later, hopefully this new grammar and spell checker for wordpress has done a sufficient job at pointing out my errors.  Bye!

Something To Read: Lampreys, Caves, and Shrinking Fish

Just a wrap up of the latest articles that you might find worth reading.

Researchers found that embryos of sea lampreys discard millions of their DNA units.  The lamprey is basically a living fossil and I’m not just typing that because it’s the popular thing to type!  This could give insight into the genetic evolutionary history of vertebrates living now and those extinct.  Jeramiah Smith, the main author of the research say the discarded DNA is most likely DNA that were to become body parts.  If this is found to be true then the next question is whether scientist can find out what some of those discarded DNA would actually code for?  That would definitely be a major help to evolutionary biologist and taxonomists.

Apparently, ants are more rational than humans.  Great, another claim to fame for the ant population!!

Doesn’t this cave look huge…

Biggest cave in the world. Pic via. National Geographic

This cave is located in Vietnam.  It’s the biggest cave in the world….until we find a cave bigger then this one.  It looks amazing in this picture.  Caves are great, they’re booming with invertebrates, microscopic organisms, and minerals.  If you’ve been lucky to see the movie Caves at an IMAX theater then you can imagine how cool this would have looked on an IMAX screen.

Looks like humans are at quite the disadvantage when the earth further warms.  We’ll most likely die from not only the heat but starvation.  A study shows that fish are actually shrinking due to rising water temperatures.  Yeah, that’s why I threw in the starvation because that means less meat on the fish!  That means that I’ll have to buy two salmons just to get a full meal…ok, I may be overreacting but this could be our future.  This is classic, smaller organisms more likely then not survive dramatic changes to earths temperature and disasters.  Fish shrinking is more proof of adaptation behavior in organisms.  Unfortunately, humans have only gotten fatter bigger, we’re doomed!  Nonetheless, this is very cool news.  But we really need to get this global warming thing under control because the good fish is too expensive for me to buy more then what I get now.

okay, sorry, that’s all I got.  Bye *waves*

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My Camping Trip

Damnit, I can never think of unique blog post titles lol.  Well, I’m back from my camping trip and ready to blog about it! Yay, for all you people reading…not really. We only stayed for 4 days and I took pictures too.  I took pictures of me before I left for camping but none of myself during camping.  Others took pictures of me on their cameras which I’m assuming I’ll be getting soon!
Day 1 was ok.  We didn’t do much except eat and talk and take walks.  We got there at around 1PM-ish.  It was a 45 minute ride yet, some people! like to take forever to leave their house.  And my friend lost her keys which we spent forever looking for and never found.  She has a way to get back in her house so we forgot about looking for keys and just left.  On the way there we realized we were taking the long way which is why the ride was an extra 10 minutes long.  While on the road I tried to take some “on the way there” pictures.  Mostly pictures of cars, electrical pole thingys and grass.
When we did get there, we were reminded of why we all love out homes…because they aren’t as small as this cabin we had to stay in.  The first thing I noticed was that we were way out of the ordinary at these campgrounds.  I felt like I was in the backwoods or with the lake placid people.  I took a picture of one weirdo but deleted it not thinking I was going to write a blog post…that probably wouldn’t be nice anyways.  Luckily, as the day went by more normal looking people came to the campground.  The first thing the others did was check for spiders and complain about bugs all I wanted to do was claim the top bunk.  I tried my best to get one of those macro-y shots.  There was a dead ladybug on my bunk-bed.  I think I took 15 pictures and only got 2 mediocre shots of it.  I kind of figured out the trick to doing macro and that is…keeping the camera still! and I think macro only works if you’re zoomed in on your camera at a certain point. Also, these giant black caterpillars kept popping up out of nowhere.  I took a picture of one outside of our cabin that was in a web.

After we got in and settled, we left back out to the market so that we can have something to cook.  SOMEONE was being annoying, luckily none of the possible annoyers know I have this blog.  We went into Family Dollar to go pick up something cheap to eat.  When I got there I went straight to the snack isle where I got two bags of chips, some LemonHeads and Hot Tamales and some coke (the cola).  My friend got a pack of water bottles.  We were all buying our stuff together and she was taking all day to decide what to get.  Then after she decided, we’re about to walk out of the door and she thought of something else to buy.  I actually don’t like to shop at all for anything unless I have to.  We also decided to go to the market to pick up some meat (the edible kind lol. Sorry ).  Anyways, while everyone was putting stuff in the car I went into the market by myself because I refuse to waste time and be un-efficient.  I was awkwardly buying stuff as always.  I really didn’t know what I wanted except bread and tuna fish.  I was kind of wondering the isles for something good.  While in there I think the store manager looked at me weird and I think he was kind of following me around.  I don’t know what thats about, never happened to me before but this is what I mean by backwoods people.  Apparently they aren’t used to modern folk lol…just kidding.  So, after receiving an evil look from the manager-douche, I went to the cash register where this old guy was ringing people up.  I hate when old people work at the cash register.  This guy was crazy slow handling everything.  He even handed me the money in an uber slow way.  I swear my hand was out waiting for the money for more than 5 seconds, which is a long time if you think about it.  At least the guy was happy and smiling though.  When we finally got back, we cooked.  Then we took a walk down to the fishing/canoeing area.  Basically, that was day one of camping.
Day 2 was more activity oriented. First, someone! woke everyone up early.  She said, wanna go take a shower.  Everyone said “ok”, I stayed to sleep some more, and yes, eventually I took a shower!  While they were away, I woke up and took some pictures of myself on webcam, I never really taken a picture of me in the morning before…don’t worry, I look fabulously mediocre/decent in the photos.  So, none of them realized how early they woke up until they got back and someone said, “what time is it?”.  Then they had the, “I can’t believe I woke up this damn early” kind of replies.  For breakfast we had eggs and bacon.  I had mine with bread, cause to me, nearly everything tastes good/better in sandwich form.  Later on we went to  rent out canoes.  The horra! of canoeing with people who think they can canoe and in reality cannot.  Eventually,  we were led in circles and taking forever.  Meanwhile theres another person sitting in the middle of the canoe.  I later got  tired and wanted to take some pictures, so I switched seats and sat in the middle.  Some of these pictures may seems repetitive, but I kind of like seeing the water, trees, and Swans from different angles.  Later we went canoeing again and I canoed from the front with a different person canoeing in the back and things went ten times better.

When we arrived back on land, as always, theres an ambulance there because theres a snake nearby.  This happened last time we came to this park except a guy from the tent next to us killed (beheaded) the snake.  You aren’t supposed to do that, so he was fine $2,500 (Yikes!).  This time the snake was safe and just taken to a new location.  On the way back from the water area, I discovered a hidden trail that lead back to our cabin.  Unfortunately, I was the only one daring enough to go through there.  The trail didn’t even look remotely scary but I guess they were scared of bugs and insects.  I’ve been walking through forest ever since I was little so I’m used bumping into spider webs and branches.  Sadly, while on the trail the batteries on my camera went out and I was only able to get a few photos.  Even after taking the photos, I arrived to the cabin early and yelled, “SHORT CUT!”.  Afterwards, everyone took a break and I laid down to sort out all these photos which I’m showing here and the rest on Flickr.  For dinner we had ribs and corn.  I’m not a big meat eater but I LOVE corn.
Day 3 was interesting, since it was Sunday many people started leaving the campgrounds.  Also, it was raining in the morning but if eventually warmed up.  This day we went fishing.  I ended up having to share a fishing pole because I left mine at home.  They thought the fishing pole was broke so everyone, except me decided to go to Meijer to buy another one.  When they got back, they found that I had “fixed” the fishing pole.  I wasn’t broken, it’s just the crank was unscrewed.  There wasn’t a lot in terms of fishing or fished out there to be caught, so I didn’t fish much.  Instead I decided to take pictures.  By this time I discovered I like taking pictures.  My macro-y shots were getting better.  While by the lake we saw these weird looking jellyfish(?) We saw them floating in the water when we canoed the previous day.

We gave a little girl on the pier fishing some corn to put on her hook.  The first time she throws the line out there she causes a 14 inch pregnant bass.  Though, we had to pull the fish in for her cause she was too small.  They were going to keep the fish to eat since it was of legal size.  They decided to keep it in water, go back to show off to everyone and since it was pregnant they decided to put it back in the water, which I thought was rather nice of them.  Later on we went canoeing again but not for long as the winds made it difficult to do so.  After that, we hung out by our cabin we left out to go to the store where I bought Duracell batteries this time and the batteries even came with a free miniature screwdriver (WIN!!).  They seem to last longer with my camera.  When we got back, I took pictures of insects and random things.

Day 4 was leaving day.  Everyone slept in till 11 AM, I woke up earlier and just laid in my bed staring out the window.  We had to be out of the cabin by 1PM.  I decided not to wake everyone up early because they would be moving slow.  By everyone waking up late, they’ll move faster to get out the door.  A little cynical of me, but it worked.  Not like I wanted to leave, but I don’t like when people are slow moving LOL.  When I got home I was welcomed by happy cats who didn’t even eat a lot of food while we were gone and my turtles.  I was also welcomed by a new issue of Scientific American in the mail.  I’ll read it later.
So, that was my camping trip.  It was very fun and relaxing and I hope to do it again before the summer ends, but I doubt it.  Also, luckily for everyone I did not run into any lion, tigers, and bears.  The only scary thing was these giant mating dragonflies that kept making noises when I came around.  Seems like the internet has been dull since I left, correlation(?) Ha! Just kidding.  I also noticed more then a few  people decided to blog while I was gone, couldn’t wait til I got back, now  feel soooo left behind.  If I don’t comment on everyones blog it’s because theres too many blogs that I must catch up on!  Anyways, my Google Reader is still packed with unread material so I better get on that.  The whole collection of my pictures, all 200 of them will be on Flickr.  Apparently, 200 pictures in the limit so none of my other Flickr sets are available for viewing only the camping pictures.  I’ll be transferring the old pictures to my “secret” Facebook account maybe, as well as the pictures of me…maybe!  Oh, and I wasn’t able to get a picture of the sunrise or sunset but I got this one picture of sun.  I was going to lighten up the picture, but I don’t feel like it lol.  Hope everyone has a Happy Memorial Day!

No Water Spots!!

I was going to title it “No WATA Spots” but I don’t think most would correlate “wata” with “water”.  Anyways, this is another obsession of mine.  I hate water spots on dishes.  Early this morning I went to someones house and there were water spots on everything.  He handed me a dish with a water spot on it.  So, I was forced to eat off the plate.  I’m not quite rude enough to re-clean the dish.  Water spots aren’t dangerous or anything.  In fact its just a result of hard water with mineral deposits left behind in the form of little white spots.  Unfortunately, I have a problem with said mineral watery spots.  They make the dish look less desirable to eat on.  Also, sometimes I can never be sure its a water spot depending on the visibility of that “water spot”.  I did in fact survive eating off the water spot-y dish.  Nonetheless I was not very pleased.  I think people should take into account people like me who are rather picky about these things.  I’m not a clean freak, but I like to eat and drink out of spotless dishes.  Ok, enough with this randomness, I just felt I had to say something about this growing epidemic.