Leslie and I are off on a years-delayed road trip celebrating the end of the semester and the start of the summer. Pictures are in the usual place.

Well, yesterday I ticked off the last thing I had to do to get my SIGGRAPH paper all submitted. I’m sure you all are crazy about the idea of reading the freshly posted preprint which you can get here.

I’m not sort of heading in to the end of the semester, working hard on a couple of class projects, but mostly just living the beautiful life of a grad student. Les and I went last weekend to check out a couple of possible spots for the wedding in the area, nothing concrete nailed down, but I think the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden is high in the running. There’s serveral other random beautiful places in the Berkeley hills we’ve been looking at.

Plans for the summer are vague but are sure to include me forking over huge sums of money to learn how to paraglide (no, it’s not actually the thing at the resort where they drag you behind a motorboat), a years-delayed roadtrip with Leslie up to Canada, and who knows, maybe even a jaunt to Africa if finances allow. What it won’t involve is any sort of job, save research, which I’m quite excited about.

Let’s see… there’s been a bit going on recently other than getting engaged. I found out a few days after I got back from belize that our SIGGRAPH paper submission was accepted at the conference, which was a bit of a surprise but definitely welcome news. This paper is a lot like the one we did last year except we have stuff moving around and interacting with the smoke. You can check out our videos, including a more playful one that will be showing in the SIGGRAPH animation theatre here.

It’s finally stopped raining in the last few days here. I know it’s a tad absurd to ever complain about the weather in northern california, but for the last month I think we have surpassed Seattle both in total amount of rain and number of rainy days. I feel kind of ripped off by this but it’s taken only a couple days of gorgeous sunshine and weather in the 60’s to make me satisfied again. I know that by the middle of the perfect summer I’ll be yearning for a cloud or two.

These days I’ve been mostly working on getting the final version of our SIGGRAPH paper ready and working on semester projects, and my master’s thesis, which I’ll hopefully file before the end of this semester. The summer is a great yawning emptiness ahead of me as I have no scheduled job for the summer, which I think is a first since I was of legal age to work.

I proposed to Leslie on a sea kayak in Belize:

She said yes! I gave her a token ring and we’ll shop for the real thing together. Tentative date is early next spring, somewhere in northern California.

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Comments

amy — 2006-04-02 13:31:48

you guys are really too cute. kudos for putting together such a romantic proposal!

bryan — 2006-04-02 15:37:49

the primary was that the place be memorable… i didn’t plan for how difficult it would be to kneel in a kayak.

kristin — 2006-04-02 21:32:45

Congrats on having one of the most adorable engagement photos of all time… and, of course, on the engagement as well :)

After what was probably the best layover of our lives in Dallas with Leslie’s parents, including two great meals, Cameron and Matt, and Murphy, we left on Sunday for Belize. We got extra early to the airport, which was deserted, ended up all seated together in an exit row, and watched Pride and Prejudice for the three hour flight. Then we had a painless run through immigration and customs, and quick taxi ride to Belize City where we caught a water taxi to Caye Caulker. The ride took maybe 30 minutes, with nice, dramatic clouds everywhere. We were greeted on the island by Amanda, whose house we’re staying in. The island is so beautiful, laid back, perfect. The motto: Go Slow.

Check out the gallery for all the pics from the first day. Today we’re heading out for our first day of diving, the camera is all prepped and ready to go. We’ll probably upload those pics tonight while we sleep.

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Comments

lisa the ant — 2006-03-29 16:27:03

fyi, Belize is the cover story in April’s “Divers Training” mag. :o) Pink canoes are certainly memorable vehicles. So happy!!!!!!!!!!!!! e

bryan — 2006-04-02 10:03:28

the canoe, maybe. but look at that water :)