Dusting this thing off...

so, here we are...5.5 years later.

What brings me back to Blog, Nitin-Style? I recently decided to put together a new homepage for myself.  Nothing too fancy, more like a "web presence" with my resume, links to my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, and a list of links to various blogs I like to read.  If you're curious to see this (pretty boring) website, you can link to it on the right, where it says "Nitin Goel - Home"...pretty creative name, eh?

While putting together the new website, I remembered that I still had this blog floating around in the ether...figured I'd add it to the website and possibly write an occasional post if something comes to mind that can't be covered in the limited space afforded to Facebook status updates.  Maybe I'll start updating this blog at least semi-frequently...but I wouldn't bet money on it.

I guess I might as well provide a quick update for my hordes of readers.  A lot has happened since my last post back in November 2004.  A couple of highlights, below:

• I worked at Aeras for about 3 years, until October 2007.  After Aeras, I spent about 5-6 months as a "Bioprocess Specialist" at Paragon Bioservices, a biotech CRO/CMO in Baltimore.  Then I went to Kramer & Amado, P.C. (an IP law firm in Alexandria), where I worked for about a year doing patent research on various biological, chemical, and medical inventions and technologies.
• I left K&A in August 2009 to go back to school full-time, in the MBA program at the McDonough School of Business, at Georgetown University.  Just finished my first year (of a 2-year program).  Doing an internship at MedImmune (in Gaithersburg) this summer, in the Engineering Business Operations group.
• I bought a house! Actually, a condo (in Gaithersburg).  Or, as it's otherwise known, my Tuscan Villa.  I bought the place in 2006, at which point the market promptly cratered.  I've been here since then (with a roommate the last 2 years).  But I just found out that my roommate is moving out in a month or two, so I will probably rent out the condo and move into the city for at least the next year, until school is over.
• Many of my friends have gotten married and/or had kids.  I used the occasion of my friend Frizzy's wedding in 2007 to embark on my greatest trip of all time, a 3.5 week road trip (by myself) up the Pacific Coast Highway from San Diego to Portland, driving a purple 2008 Cadillac DTS.  I chronicled the trip in a blog, which can be found here.
• I broke my pinkie finger during a game of rec-league kickball during the summer of 2007.  I had to have surgery on the finger; there are still two screws in the first joint.  The finger never quite regained full range of motion and is a little gimpy.
• I got on a pretty big health-kick last year (i.e. the Healthy Nitin Initiative), including a lot of biking and running.  I've kept up pretty well with it (though I haven't yet taken the bike out this year)...ran a couple of 5K's last year, moved up to 5-mile races this year, including a couple of 5-mile trail runs and the 5-mile Crazylegs Classic in Madison, WI.  Planning on running a couple of 10K trail runs and doing some mountain bike trail races later this summer.
• The last time i posted on this blog, Phish had just performed what was supposed to be their last ever concert, at Coventry in Vermont.  After a long hiatus, they decided to get back together and start touring again last year.  I got to see them at Merriweather last summer, on campus at UVA (in Charlottesville) last fall, and down in Miami for their New Year's run this past December.  Looking forward to seeing a couple more shows this summer (and beyond).
• I reached the pinnacle of my fantasy-football career when I led the High Rollers to a coveted UFFL Championship during the 2005-2006 season.  My name will forevermore be on the C. Montgomery Burns Trophy.
• My faithful old Toyota Camry met her demise in 2008, just shy of 300,000 miles; I was rearended while stopped at a red light, totalling the car.  I took advantage of the opportunity to buy a V6 Accord Coupe, which I love very much.

I guess that's the most important stuff (I'm using the word "important" very loosely here)...or at least the stuff that I'm interested in posting on a publicly accessible blog.  A lot has happened since 2004...I'm certainly not the same person I was back then, in a lot of ways.  I'll be back with more, as soon as I think of something interesting to say (again, I'm using the word "interesting" very loosely here).

Quick Hits

My thoughts on some different things that are going on right now:

Sports

Ravens: Still doing their damndest to make my hair turn prematurely gray. But, holding on to a 6-3 record despite the current absence of Ogden, Heap, and a whole bunch of other players, so I can't complain. Running game has been uneven to this point, but Boller is starting to show some promise. Ed Reed is making a strong case for Defensive Player of the Year.

Terps football: Blech. The best thing that can be said about Terps football is that it's almost time for...

Terps men's hoops: Going to kick ass and take names this year. Play in the toughest basketball conference in the country...Big Ten? Get that shit out of here. SEC? Don't waste my time. Pac-10? Please. Returning almost everyone from a team that won the ACC Tournament last year, a tournament the Terps had not previously won since 1984. Gilchrist looks to continue showing that he's one of the best guards in the country. Freshman James Gist looking to make a Wilcox-style impact. Strawberry, Ebekwe, Fofana, Garrison, Caner-Medley and the rest all a year older, a year stronger, and a year smarter. It's going to be a long, hard road, but this team looks set to at least maintain their current streak of 11 straight NCAA Tournament appearances, and possibly go deep in this year's tourney. Getting into a game at the Comcast Center will be difficult, but it looks like I'll be able to see the Terps play in Madison, WI, when they go kick the Badgers' collective ass in this year's ACC/Big Ten Challenge.

Orioles: Finished the season strong, and I'm glad they didn't do anything rash like firing The Maz. Need to make a splash in the free agent market for a second consecutive year, preferably with at least one, preferably two strong, consistent starting pitchers. Well positioned to return to the top echelons of the AL East, if they play it smart.

Badgers football: Never really cared about them too much, although I was rooting for them to finish out their potentially undefeated season, if only to annoy my sister, a dedicated Michigan fan. Seeing them lay a big fat egg at MSU, however, it is difficult to muster any sympathy for them.

Badgers men's hoops: well positioned to make a run at the Big Ten title, with or without Devin Harris. But it's Big Ten hoops, so really, who the hell cares? Scratch that, I know one person who does. This one's for her: Go Illini!

Fantasy Football: Thought I was guaranteed at least a playoff spot when I froze Travis Henry AND Fred Taylor, two supposed quality RB's. Henry has been a complete and utter bust, what with the shoddy O-line in Buffalo, and excellent play by Willis McGahee. Taylor's been a little more productive, but not much. Holt and Favre, my other two freezes, have also been erratic, although both are starting to show more productivity and consistency. Draft picks have been uneven as well. McCareins is a major bust, while Roy Williams has been productive, when healthy. Been pleasantly surprised at production from scrubs such as Pittman, Zereoue, J. Morten, and others. Getting solid points from K (Jeff Wilkins) and regular D (Tennessee), but more production from TE (Pollard) would be nice. Two quality wins in the last two weeks have brought them scraping and clawing back to .500, but from now until the end of the season, there's little-to-no margin of error for the High Rollers if they want to make the UFFL playoffs.

Politics

I'm a center-left Democrat, socially liberal/libertarian, fiscally conservative. Not happy to see Bush win re-election. That's all I'm going to say about that. Was happy to see Maryland remain a solidly Blue state, re-electing Mikulski by an easy margin. Also glad to see Dutch Ruppersburger win re-election to represent my district in the US House of Representatives; his daughter was one of the hotter girls in my high school class. Looking forward to 2006, when we can knock that scumbag Bob Ehrlich out of office...regardless of who wins the Dem nomination between Martin O'Malley and that Montgomery County Chief Executive (can't remember his name right now), it should be a cakewalk for the Dems...Ehrlich won't have the luxury of facing an incompetent and unappealing Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (carrying the stench of the Glendening administration) this time. Wish Schaefer would shut his mouth and toddle off to retirement like the cranky old coot that he is.

Music

the new Modest Mouse album is brilliant

so is the new Mos Def album

the new Talib Kweli album is uneven; the good stuff is amazing, but the bad stuff is craptacular

Procrastinatin' Blues

OK, so my earlier determination to update this blog on a more regular basis fell short. But THIS time, I have a renewed vigor, a renewed commitment, if you will, to making this blog the best damn blog that it can be.

For those that are interested, my only excuse for not posting is that my life has been in a state of flux over the last couple of months...as of this past July, I was living in Madison, WI and working at Epic Systems Corporation, a medical software company. At the end of July, I left Epic and moved back to Baltimore, MD, where I grew up. I farted around for awhile: in mid-August, I went to Coventry, VT to witness the final live performance of one of my favorite bands, Phish. I also made a trip back up to Madison at the end of August to hang out with some old friends.

What else have I been up to...I've managed to catch two Orioles games at Camden Yards since I returned, another activity I missed very much while I was in Wisconsin. I bought a season ticket for University of Maryland Terrapins Football, have been to every home game so far this year...also got a chance to go see the Kansas City Chiefs come play (and, unfortunately, beat) the Baltimore Ravens on Monday Night Football. Other than those sorts of things, I've mainly just been re-acquainting myself with the Baltimore-DC area, and getting back in touch with old friends who I haven't talked to in a long time.

I just recently started working at Aeras, a nonprofit biotech organization in Rockville. I'm a Research Associate working in Process Development. The commute from Timonium (where I live, in northern Baltimore County) to Rockville (Montgomery County) is kicking my ass for the time being, but hopefully I'll be moving down to Bethesda sooner rather than later.

Some more random personal info about me, for those that care (which is to say, nobody): born in Minneapolis, but essentially grew up in Baltimore (from the age of 6 onwards)...went to University of Maryland College Park for undergrad, earned B.S. in Cell, Molecular Biology & Genetics; and B.A. in Philosophy. Grad school was University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I earned an M.S. in Genetics.

Phew!

OK, so I'm back...it's been a long time since I posted my first post to this blog (to the Sports Blonde's eternal consternation and exasperation)...but now I'm back, and better than ever! Actually, it would be more honest to say that I'm back, and about as mediocre as always, but "better than ever" sounded snappier.

I shall do as the SB, and naval-gaze a bit...what am i trying to accomplish with this blog? not sure really, there are many things that interest me, especially politics, sports, and music...so I will definitely be commenting on all three topics as appropriate...unlike the SB, i shall also post insipid commentary on the everyday doings of my rather-more-boring-than-average life from time to time...right now i have an audience of exactly one (myself excluded), i guess there's a half decent chance that could expand or change as time goes on, but for now i'm not writing to a large audience. if you don't already know who i am most of this probably won't make sense to you...

where have i been for the last 5-6 weeks? i just moved from Madison, WI (where i lived for four years), to the land where i grew up, lovely Baltimore, MD. That, along with chronic laziness, explains the lack of posting after the first post. Hopefully, that won't last. Incidentally, the first post only makes sense in light of the fact that this blog was originally called MiscellanyBlog...I changed it when i realized that a) "MiscellanyBlog" sounds needlessly pretentious; and b) there are already numerous blogs out there that combine in some form or another the words "miscellany" and "blog"...oh well, late to the party as always, i guess...so i went ahead and changed the blog title to incorporate yet another Inside Joke that very few (if any) of you will ever understand, which is just the way i like it...see what i'm aiming for here? by maintaining the air of exclusivity around this blog, i'm hoping to actually make it all the more attractive to the great unwashed masses...it's rather like that episode of "South Park" where Cartman uses his aunt's inheritance to buy a local amusement park, from which he decides to exclude everyone else so that he may enjoy the rides in solitude. This, naturally, makes people want to go to the amusement park even more; the upshot is that Cartman unwittingly transforms a once-failing business into a cash cow...and that is the sort of obscure, pointless, meandering lackwit commentary you can expect from this blog as time marches on...that, and (as you may have already noticed) horrific punctuation and a complete disregard for grammatical norms involving capitalization, etc.

so that's the closest I'm going to get to a "statement of purpose"...also on the dock, keep an eye out for the occassional "interesting word of the day", as well as my reactions to postings on other blogs, especially the aforementioned SportsBlonde blog, the work of my blogging partner-in-crime, resident Crank, and Hatcher of Hare-Brained Schemes. That's all for this post, in the next couple of posts (over the next few days), I'll ruminate on some of the more significant events of the past 5-6 weeks, mostly for my own damn benefit.

First Post

Welcome to MiscellanyBlog, I'm your host, P.Nitty.
 
In case you were wondering:
(from www.m-w.com)
Main Entry: mis·cel·la·ny
Etymology: probably modification of French miscellanées, plural, from Latin miscellanea
1) a: plural : separate writings collected in one volume b : a collection of writings on various subjects
2 : a mixture of various things

I'm not going to post too much more right now, just wanted to fire this sucker up and take it for a test drive.  In the meantime, check out the Sports Blonde's new blog (of course, the Sports Blonde is the only other person who knows that this blog exists, but never mind that)