5K and Siri

Ever since I acquired a student teacher, I've been in complete bliss.  I'll go into more detail about that another time, but the short version is that with her taking over so much of my grading, I actually have a life on Saturdays and Sundays.  Friday afternoon was the first time in five-and-a-half years that I left work completely empty-handed.  It felt awesome. 

On Saturday morning, Clint's mom and sister talked me into running with them.  They're training for a 5K Run taking place in April, and they've been trying to convince me to sign up for it too.  I said "no," but I told them I'd go ahead and train with them.*  I don't mind the extra exercise, but I don't want to have to worry about getting up at the break of dawn on a Saturday for the event itself.  So they came to my house on Saturday morning and we walked from my house to my work.  Once there, we ran around the track eight times (two miles), and then we walked back home.  All in all, it ended up being three miles of walking/running.  They sort of tricked me, because I thought that we were going to lap the track four times, not eight.  After we finished our laps, they acted all innocent about it, saying, "Oh, we didn't tell you that we planned to practice the whole 5K?"  My legs have been throbbing for two days since.

Saturday afternoon we went out for sushi with Clint's family for his birthday.  His real birthday is actually tomorrow, but Saturday was the only day that everyone was free.  The place we went to was way off the beaten-path and had incredibly delicious food and a really nice atmosphere.  We're definitely going back soon.  On Sunday morning we went shopping, and that's when I fell in love with this:    

This is the recently-released iPhone 4S.  My Droid is over two years old now and is starting to freeze up, and Clint's having similar issues with his, so we decided that it was time to browse around for a new phone.  I played around with a lot of different phones in the Verizon store, and this one was by far the one I loved the most.  What made it stand out was the fact that it has Siri, which is something you can't appreciate until you've actually experienced it.  Me and this iPhone conversed with each other for twenty minutes, talking about local restaurants, the weather, etc.  We also texted people (with my voice alone--never touched the keypad), looked up stuff on Google images, and so on.  She--IT--understood every command I issued.  It was amazing.  I told her (it) "Remind me in two minutes to wash my hair," and she said "Okay.  I will remind you to wash your hair."  Two minutes later, the phone buzzed with a reminder that said: "Wash your hair."  I must be old-school, 'cause this was like Star Trek technology.  Of course I guess nowadays Star Trek is actually old-school.

Here's a quick clip from Big Bang Theory that shows the way Siri interacts with the phone user:

 
Of course, in the actual episode, Raj ends up developing romantic feelings for Siri, and is looked upon very strangely by all his friends when he starts dating a phone app.

Despite my infatuation with this phone, I was going to wait a month or two before actually buying it, but as dumb luck would have it, I won a Super Bowl pool at my work.  My coworkers passed around a table that consisted of 100 squares, and it cost $5 a square to participate.  I bought one square, and I remember when I chose the one that I did, "T" (the one running the pool) looked at me skeptically and said, "You do know how this works, right?"  Each square had a score assigned to it, and mine was Giants 9, Patriots 0.  That seemed like an odd one to me too, but there wasn't a lot of squares left to choose from.  Four people total win; once for the quarter, the half, the third quarter, and the end of the game.  Well by the end of the first quarter, the score was 9 to O (Giants), so I won the first quarter.  By halftime, the score was 10 to 9 (Patriots), but once you reach 9, the numbers start from 0 again (the 1 is dropped), so I won AGAIN.  Overall I ended up winning $200, and everyone at my work made it clear that I'm buying them pizza this week.  Last night, in light of my winnings, Clint got online and ordered me the iPhone.  I told him I'll be the guinea pig; if after a few weeks we both still like it, he'll get himself one too.  I also ordered this cover: 

I love the classy look of the iPhone covers.

I have more I could blabber on about, but I have an early staff meeting tomorrow morning, so I better try to get some sleep.

*Right after finishing this post, I signed up for that damn 5K in April.  *defeated sigh*