...How do I not have a Star Trek icon?

[bironic]

I'm bummed that Star Trek: The Experience is closing. A friend just told me last night, and it's closing on Monday. For a crazy few minutes, we talked about the feasibility of getting plane tickets there and back before the semester starts. But of course that would not be the best idea, so here is an in memoriam post about it instead.

DS9 was one of the top two most intense fannish experiences I've ever had (up there with Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and I looked forward to being able to walk down the life-sized replica of a section of the Promenade one day, complete with second level and a full-service Quark's Bar. I've had a few opportunities over the years to go out to Vegas -- the only real attraction of which for me was the Promenade, besides "having been to Las Vegas" -- but I always pushed it back for a more convenient time. I figured the Promenade would still be there. And now it won't be. (To add insult to injury, rumor has it that the larger props and sets will be destroyed when the exhibits are dismantled, as shipping is too expensive.) Alas.

.

In happier news, elynittria drove down today for lunch* and Scrabble, and it was lovely. Two introverts, both alike in dignity, managed to make an entire afternoon of pleasant conversation about work and school and life and fun and film and food and flight and fandom and words and various miscellany. Like I said to her as our time together drew to a close, neither of us ran away screaming, so with luck we'll be able to do this again sometime.

LJ: It can be a wonderful thing.

* At the Miracle of Science Café, where one orders from the periodic table of menu elements. Sometimes I suspect the area around MIT is geekier than MIT itself. elynittria suggests I wait to pass judgment until I know the school better.

.

Snippet of conversation at dinner last night, when nine of us were trying to calculate what we each owed, between food, orientation subsidy, tax and gratuity:

Me: Can't we make the mathematician do this?
Mathematician: No, I do pure maths. We don't work with numbers. Make the economist do it.
Economist: Oh, no. No. We just assign variables to things.

In the end, we all did what any large group does when splitting the check: tossed in some bills and hoped it totaled properly.

Comments

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

Snippet of conversation at dinner last night, when nine of us were trying to calculate what we each owed, between food, orientation subsidy, tax and gratuity:

Me: Can't we make the mathematician do this?
Mathematician: No, I do pure maths. We don't work with numbers. Make the economist do it.
Economist: Oh, no. No. We just assign variables to things.

You needed a bookkeeper! Would've calculated correctly to the penny.

I'm glad elynittria and you got together. : ) It sounds like a very fun time.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

You needed a bookkeeper!

Ah, true. I do not think there are any bookkeepers here -- maybe in the management/finance school...

I'm glad elynittria and you got together.

Me too! I'm just glad she doesn't hate me for having landed two seven-letter words in Scrabble while she was stuck with all vowels. :D

Two LJ-friend visits in one week. Life is good. :)

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

I'm just glad she doesn't hate me for having landed two seven-letter words in Scrabble while she was stuck with all vowels.

Hee! I'm counting on a rematch at some point. You'll still have to keep the score, though, because you're the official MIT student. :D

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Eh, it's good exercise for my math-deprived (and -challenged) brain. :)

See, now I have to reconcile the vague image I had of you behind your LJ name with what you really look like. So strange, no?

[thedeadparrot.livejournal.com]

Me: Can't we make the mathematician do this?
Mathematician: No, I do pure maths. We don't work with numbers. Make the economist do it.
Economist: Oh, no. No. We just assign variables to things.

This is hysterical in just how true it is.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ya! I had a suspicion people here would appreciate it.

[topaz-eyes.livejournal.com]

The Miracle of Science Cafe looks awesome. :-) I'm glad you and elynittria had a good time.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Yeah, that place was cute. The menu was small, but with burgers you get supremely tasty roasted potato wedges.

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

Bwah! Nice 'hook' for a cafe. Glad you guys had fun!

For some reason I usually end up with the tab calculations on any given occasion, although I draw the line at individual totals for more than four people *g*

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Hmph. Your friends clearly only like you for your brain.

:D

p.s. Met a guy this week called Sydney. He is from Sydney. What were his parents thinking?

[bell]

Should I be disapointed that not even a gaggle of MIT students can figure out the owed amount? X3 (One of the handiest functions on my cellphone is my calculator, which I use to figure out stuff like that-- and to calculate the wordcount in my notebooks.)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Eh, but where's the fun in using a calculator?

I think I'll make it an unofficial quest for the year to go to meals with different combinations of people to see if any of them fare better. :)

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

oh shit! that was one of my favorite things in Vegas!

[bironic.livejournal.com]

:( :( :(

Feel free to give a eulogy for it if it'll help.

[blackmare.livejournal.com]

Douglas Adams, in one of his Hitchhiker books, presented the idea of "bistromathics" -- the area of extremely advanced mathematics involved in the calculation of restaurant bills. It was, he wrote, the most subtle and confounding form of math, and those few who truly understood it were able, using its formerly unknown power, to rearrange the very fabric of space and time.

This was definitely a bistromathics problem.

Glad you and elynittria got to meet. I'm hoping, now that I live in Minneapolis, to meet Perspi sometime soon.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

That would be awesome. I expect to hear all about it when -- yep, when *g* -- you two arrange to meet. (Then you'll have met most of the collective, won't you?)

I think Adams is one of the great writers of the 20th century I have yet to experience. He sounds unbelievably clever.

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

My flatmate R went through on the last ride. I'm terribly jealous, and I didn't know what it was until he explained it to me.

To add insult to injury, rumor has it that the larger props and sets will be destroyed when the exhibits are dismantled, as shipping is too expensive.

You'd think there'd be someone out there who'd be willing -- maybe to even pay -- to cart it away.

At the Miracle of Science Café, where one orders from the periodic table of menu elements. Sometimes I suspect the area around MIT is geekier than MIT itself.

Hee! Your posts are like a laundry list of interesting places in my home town that I've never been to (or even known about).