It was awfully sad to leave TSG at the airport. And it's always so much funt at her (adopted) Aunt's. It's back to work down here -- but the countdown is on.

It's 80 days until we get married.

Well folks, I'm back in California and the basil is doing well. The tomatoes had all gone to bud, so I spent a few minutes gently picking them off and kindly informing the plants that now is not the time for succulent, mouth-watering tomatoes. Now is the time to grow big and strong, so that when August comes there will be many, many juicy tomatoes.

I let the little Jalepeno pepper plant bloom, though, and now little peppers are forming at the base of the buds. They are only about half an inch long right now, but they should grow to five or six times that.

I've been thinking about "no product" living. We are now so used to commercial entities taking interest in all the vagaries of our daily lives that it seems unthinkable how people live 80, 100, or 180 years ago.

People making their own soap, their own clothes, growing their own food, building their own homes, making their own tools for their gardens.

It seems like everyone these days has a commercial interest in everything. There is a product marketed for EVERYTHING. Advertising campaigns relentlessly pound us with the ideas that if we are not buying these things, and if we do not NEED these things, we are backward, inept, and impotent.

In reality, it is just the reverse.

We don't need to BUY what we eat, what we garden with, what we live in, even what we power our homes or vehicles with. There is no one reason for the way our lives are set up today, just many small reasons, which are the many small, greedy visions of those who produce and convince us to buy, what we purportedly NEED.

Now we work to make money to buy things which we would have had of ourselves and our own resources... if we did not work to make money.

This is a destructive cycle, a catch-22. Spinning around in it reduces quality of life, both for individuals and society as a whole.

TSG's back at work... I stopped by for dinner, then it was back on the road, war-driving for my next wi-fi hotspot. I found one outside a closed coffee bar, and I'm back at the web design.

So TSG had to go to work today at 4ish... I wandered down the street to this coffee house to do some web design/coding...

But it turned out that, this particular afternoon, it WASN'T a WiFi hotspot (as it advertised). So, a few hours of intesive networking (and cursing Apple Airport Extreme) it is now again a wireless hotspot.

Your Comuter Genius strikes again!

Right now I'm sitting just beyond security in PDX, working frenetically on a website that I'm going to have to show results on very soon.

Today was a full day at the office, then a brief headlong dash for the airporter, followed by car pursuit of said airporter (a successful chase, with NailinCoffin at the wheel). But we landed here, safe and sound, despite what the pilot called "severe" turbulence.

TSG and I have been apart from each other for fifteen entire, heart-wrenching days, and in minutes, minutes, ladies and gentlemen, those just outside this terminal will witness a homecoming scene.

Yesterday I got a call from work just as I was about to head to work (8:30am) and that triggered a more or less relaxed, and more or less un-productive day of rest, recuperation, and sometimes work at home. However, it was necessary for sanity, and for the continued and improved performance of TheGenius.

At work I now have the GeniusCave (tm), which happens to be the ONLY office that has a door which closes. It became my de facto office when I (cunningly?) appropriated an entire wall for my rack of shiny new servers. The current running joke about the GeniusCave has something to do with the fact that I never have the florescent overhead lights on, just my one incandescent bulb, and my window shades up, so that my two little house plants can live.

Yesterday I also planted my Basil plants, one some kind of blue basil; the other a Genovese. Also, my last cherry tomato plant went into the last pot, and I fertilized some of the other guys, and rearranged the watering system to boot.

The basil plants weren't going to fit in the pots -- especially because they grow to five feet, and then are supposed to be trimmed back to three -- so I planted them in the ground. I gave them lots of organic potting soil, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

For now, I'm with (almost) my love in sunny (almost) Portland. Cheers.

Well,

Yesteday we shirked our responsibilities, grabbed a flat of beer and headed to the beach.

Getting the beer was practically the ONLY thing we did right.

To be continued...

So we took care of the irrigation in the front yard on saturday...

But I've still got to crawl under the car and fix the oil leak, and I've got to pot the plants in the back yard and fertilize everything.

We dashed out to the coffee shop in San Rafael, saw TSG's Auntie C. NailinCoffin, RR, and I got embroiled in a debate about Relativity and high-level physics.

Afterwards, we headed up to Boyd Park in San Rafael and played some frisbee golf (that we just made up, not on a course). Some of the shots were nearly-vertical. We worked our way deep into the park, till we came out into public lands behind the park. We hiked up the hill a little ways and admired the view (I need a camera!).

It was a beautiful day.

I have MonitorBrain. And that's one stage worse than ComputerEyes.

You know it's friday when...

...you see the first beers of the weekend in the fridge, waiting... for five o'clock.

My weekend (recreation) to-do list:

+ Fix irrigation in front yard.

+ Plant my two new basil plants and the new tomato plant and fertilize

+ Crawl under the car and find/fix the oil leak

+ ??? There WAS something else ???

Weekend work:

+ My current web design project

Wow, I forgot to eat lunch.

- Hectic.

- Narrowly avoided the CHP motorcycle cop on the way to work this morning.

- Adjusted the tire pressure in the car; alignment feels alright now.

Last night we partied in the city with The Random Englishman and PilgrimoftheAbsolute. We hit up a crazy crepe place for dinner and then ended up in a smoky bar for drinks, afterwards. 'Twas an excellant time, and I had gotten in a little Genius Nap (tm) after I got home from work, so I was feeling better.

I still feel almost continually sleep-deprived though, and I also feel like I am still coming out of a severe coffee addiction... But I don't think that that makes sense or is what is really happening, but maybe... I feel like I'm underwater all the time, and lights are too bright.

Sleep and water, that's what I need. My two cure-alls. I hear they even cure cancer.

Know any of these guys? 'Cause we're trying to get some of 'em to play at our wedding reception.

What am I? Where am I doing? What??! Where's my TO-DO list??!

Fairfax Lumber had a whole slough of new tomato plants and basil plants as well. I couldn't decide between several of the basil plants, so I bought two of them. They all smelt SO good. The new tomato plant is a red pear cherry tomato plant. AND I bought some organic fertilizer, so I'm pretty sure that my ENTIRE operation could be CERTIFIED ORGANIC.

So TSG gets off her evening shift at about 11:00 pm... And being the loving fiancee that she is, she calls when she gets home (sometimes even before she gets home).

And, because I go to bed these days as close to 8 pm as possible, she usually wakes me between midnight and one am. Then we chat for a bit, and we both go to sleep.

However, we started talking about stressful-planning and work-type things,and I found myself lying awake an hour and a half after crawling back into bed, breathing exercises and all.

SO, I've got these web design plans for a current site I'm supposed to do floating around in my brain, and a snazzy illuminated keyboard, so I'm all set to work.

It just means that tomorro's GONNA BE ROUGH at work. Maybe I'll work from home.

+ we found an AWESOME band for our wedding reception

- they want $1500!

= perhaps we should find a non-name-brand artist who HASN'T released FOUR cds

Oakland airport has a "Park and call" area. Now what a good idea! You can stay for 30 minutes, and you can call and then when your person pops out of the terminal, you pop down and pick 'em up.

The Genius thought of this long ago.

I've become as strange mix of computer-hippy and eco-geek.

So I love computers and computing power and processors and stuff but balk at the energy consumption of a 400-watt PSU. Or even a 250-watt one...

Solar-powered, zero-enviromental impact computing, that's what I want.

And those little wireless toys with the ridiculous Li-ion batteries. They should be solar too, like those little calculators that we all had at some point or other.

Having not drunk coffee or black tea since the massive doses we ingested during OUR LAST FINALS WEEK EVER in college, even one cup of Chai latte (that I made myself, thank you very much, from Tazo bought at Costco) gives me the jitters.

Well, not really the jitters, but kind of a little hyper-nervous-shakiness. The pre-jitters. Or something.

Back to work.

To Portland, round trip:


Airplane: $158 / 2 hrs

Greyhound: $116 / 18 hrs

Amtrak: $168 / 17 hrs

Car: ~$200 / 10 hrs


I really want to go see TSG in Portland this weekend. But I might have to go next weekend instead.

So I drove the ol' Silver Bullet up to work today, got here, and checked the fluids.

(You have to wait until the thing gets hot to check ATF and PS, so...)

Everything was looking good, except that the oil was low (not good, because the leaking fluid SMELLS like oil when it burns), and that the coolant, which LOOKED like it was fine was actually bone dry. The level that I thought I was checking was actually coolant-colored sludge on the side of the tank. So I absolutely have to get more today. AND the transmission fluid was WAY OVER the full line.

Of course, that was when I realized that (a) the car was on a slanting hill, and (b) I definitely wasn't awake.

So now I've got a cup of Chai and am sitting in front of the computer...

Ready to do mind-numbing web server administration...

I'm thinking about joining here...

BUT, I've gotta save money for the big day. So maybe not right now...

I went to bed at 8:56 pm last night, tried to get up at 6:00 am, succeeded at 7:15 am, and was at work by 8:24 am.

I feel MUCH better.

Sunday night, even though I had to get up for work I stayed up till almost two shuffling stuff in my room. Having not been in one place very long since Africa, my "worldlies" have been scattered and augmented strangely... So now it's a matter of sorting them all out, and throwing them all out.

I've started piles in various parts of my room: car stuff here, computers over there, music equiptment here, and so on.

- Being back in Marin, close to http://kernel.org/

- WedDAV

Things I am excited about right now:

- My Tomatoes

- Biodiesel

- Flush-free toilets

- openSUSE 10.1

My tomatoes are doing really well!

My private theory is that plants just want to grow, so if we get out of their way and let them... and love them... they will!

(are the hippie police gone yet? is it safe to come out?)

I've gotta hurry up and purchase and put the last (planned) cherry tomato (or maybe pear tomato, those are good) plant in the ground, 'cause it's getting late in the season. Although it did just start to get warm, so it might still be okay. And I want to get a basil plant, and some tomato food/fertilizer stuff.

But even the chili plant and the bell pepper plant look like they are doing well. It's almost time to break out the tomato cages.

Back to the grind...

Silver's still smoking something, when she gets warmed up. Fluid levels continue to be fine, but I found a little hose (belongs to the EGR system, maybe?) that was off, so I reconnected it. I've GOTTA put her up on blocks and check out the underbelly.

My dad heard this on the radio years ago, and he wrote down the questions on a scrap of paper, which he gave to me.

Being the packrat that I am used to be, I kept it. Now I am sharing it with you, because I think it's interesting.

Good luck.

It's easy.

The Random Englishman is posting again...

Hope he doesn't mind if I give you a link to his latest alleycat post...

And how many TAC library books do YOU still have?

I have had a crappy DVD burner. It just toasted four DVD-R's and a CD-R. I threw them in the garbage. Then I threw the DVD burner in there, too.

Next time I'm buying a Plextor. And a SATA one at that.

Cardboard.

I'm on a semi-permanent search for the inventions that have changed the way mankind lives because I have a hypothesis that, well, there aren't any.

But. I was just in the garage breaking down our inordinately large stock of boxes. Big boxes, little boxes, boxes of great strength and large crunch-test numbers, wine boxes, and so on.

And I realized that cardboard is maybe one of the least appreciated inventions. It is one of the most ubiquitous (how that word is overused in computing circles!) and adaptable substances ever.

Everything comes in cardboard, or its wealker brother, paperboard. Our shoes: cardboard. Our backpacks: cardboard. Our luggage: cardboard. I once even built myself a cardboard house for shelter from a storm, but that's a different story.

And then, this morning, I got to thinking about cardboard. It's kindof like our society. You know, tacky. You wouldn't use cardboard if you wanted to look nice. It's ultimately weak. Yeah, it might get your record collection from here to Omaha via UPS, but you're not going to WANT to build a house of it (trust me, I KNOW). It's not a "survival tool" that any sane person would consider using in an emergency. I don't have any in my car. It wouldn't go in my patented Bachelor Survival Kit (tm), whereas something like Duct tape would (and is).

Yup. It's a great image of our society. Cardboard. Tacky, weak. Non-surviving. Ubiquitous. That's my cranky Sunday morning thought.

I can't understand this website 'cause it's in Japanese, but they sure as hell stole my picture of my camera!!!

I a . l . m . o . s . t feel like a blogger again...

I have moved my personal Maximum Sleep In Time (tm) to 8:00am from 10:00am.

This means that I get out of bed if I wake up at or near (or after) 8am, as a general rule.

I haven't cruised my own blogroll for a while, so I just spent a few minutes, relaxing, seeing what everyone is up to... It's good to relax a bit on a Saturday; it doesn't seem like I've done that for a while.

Anyways, Koobs is coming back from Europe. Acidman is still alive, Nevermore never posts any more, Seldom Sober's got some more past love documentaries, and Nail in Coffin's got a new look.

And Clara (a.k.a. TSG) actually posted lately!

I think I might put a drop-shadow on the border of my blog-thingy... Just to stay one ahead of the competition... Also, I need to write a new shopping cart app, so if anyone needs one, let me know.

I wonder how long it will be until all the homeless dudes have websites with Paypal "Donate" buttons on them...

Or maybe they'll take those rfid credit cards that are getting popular... Just wave your keys at them as you pass by...

'Twas a hectic week.

So now it's a lazy Saturday decompression day.

I've got a few irrigation thingies to fix in the front yard, and I've gotta put the car up on blocks and see what this oil leak is all about.

We just finished putting Da'moose's computer together and moving it upstairs.

The downstairs room still looks like a train wreck. It looks like maybe six people moved in, instead of NailinCoffin and I moving back from SoCal, which is what really happened.

- Yesterday we planted three tomato plants, a butter-nut squash plant, a bell pepper plant, a chile plant, a cucumber plant, and some oregano.

- Today TSG left for Oregon.

- Today I started full-time employment.

- Yesterday was the feast day of St. Isidore the Farmer, and of his wife, St. Maria. We had an engagement blessing at St. Rita's, where it was also St. Rita's feast day.

Well, TSG left about an hour and a half ago... I'm already on my second beer...

Ginger beer, that is.

I'm back at work in 'The Office,' where I'll be doing database work and so forth for about two-thirds of the Summer, at least. Meanwhile, TSG is purusing a job on an essential oils farm in Oregon, painfully far away... Sigh...

This is crazy.

Free calling (US/Canada) internet to any phone.

That's amazing.

And now the job search begins in earnest...

Not really, because TSG and I both have jobs lined up, but not long-term jobs. And we also have to find a place to live after we get married...

I did some work on the irrigation systems here at home yesterday, and I think we might go and get some plants and do some gardening together in an hour or so.

And we never have to go back to Southern California (if we don't want to).

WE'RE COLLEGE GRADUATES!!!

Yesterday we "borrowed" the three C boys and went on a hike with them. Their ages are 9, 6, and 4, and we hiked more than two miles. We spotted a pair of deer, one buck one doe, squirrels, cows far off in the distance, and all sorts of bugs, bees, and insects. We also saw a red-tailed hawk a close range, and a few other small hawks, as well as buzzards and turkey vultures. After we reached The Painter's Shack, we collected a few good sword sticks and waged war on the brambles and thistles and each other on the way down.

Went to visit some friends last night... They live on the university campus of CSU Channel Islands, which, incidentally, is quite nice...

The cactus-covered hills and red, chiseled and pock-marked rock give the land a true feeling of southern California.

I'm moving out of southern California for the last time a week from tomorrow.

Right now it is time for my last two classes of my college career, and, true to form, I am sitting in the coffee shop in Santa Paula, crusin' blogs.

I feel that this is a more fitting end to my college career than actually attending those classes. This way, my college career ended this morning on a bright note with Mr. Collins and Einstein.

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

TSG, on the other hand, has had her last two consecutive classes at La Cabaña. I'm about to go join them over there, because it's "more of a party than a class," as her prof just remarked.

We are skipping out on our college graduation.

When we mention this to people (our friends) we generally get one of two reactions:

(1) Right on!

or

(2) No! You can't do that!

I think most of our parents didn't go to theirs', and we certainly don't feel any obligation to the school, or even really to our current class (excepting certain members, whom we love).

And we feel that getting our diplomas from Mimi (on next Thursday!) is even more symbolic than getting them from the dean.

Spending money on increasing efficiency of current energy use is seven times more efficient (i.e. seven times more returns per dollar) than spending that money on nuclear power development or building.

My last TAC Seminar EVER is in 45 minutes... The Phaedrus...

And now I'm back at my favorite (and the only) WiFi-enabled coffee shop in Santa Paula, contemplating my soon-to-be-executed "last move out of southern California," which is scheduled ten days hence.

Wow, it was a whirlwind weekend in San Fran. I think we counted 16 people over for dinner on Saturday night, and the connections and relations and so on between all of them was staggeringly complex.

I was introducing my Kenyan former roommate's mother to my fiancee's father's brother-in-law. Seriously. And that was only the beginning of the mayhem.

It was great crowd and a great time.

Been up north, just about to head down south. Two weeks less two days and we're college grads!@

Tomorrow we head north (again) for (another) party in San Francisco.

Last weekend we left here at 4am, arrived in Santa Clara - at the INCREDIBLY beautiful Santa Clara mission - attended the wedding, the reception, and so on, and then headed back down here, arriving at 10pm.

This weekend will be a little more sane, though we are taking an almost full load of stuff (after trying to throw out or give away most of it)...

We had the faculty/staff vs. senior class softball game yesterday, and us, the senior class, won for the first time in nine years, thanks mostly to the leadership of one TONK.

We played seven innings in the on-and-off-rain, and then had hamburgers and then burned our thesis drafts in a fifty-gallon metal drum...

I did not know...

...that they were different words.

I keep having lots of Bloggable Thoughts (tm), but usually I'm nowhere near a computer. One of these is:

I've always thought that if you need to know something, all you have to do is go to daily mass, and you'll know.

Yesterday was like a record day in terms of people asking me to do thing for them. Something like 18 people asked me for seperate things, all day long. And it continues today! Several of the things I actually receieved compensation for, so that was good, but I said "OK" to too many things! Like my mother says, "No" is a complete sentence.

TSG and I went for a long, romantic walk this morning... We were going to go for a short, romantic jog, but we stopped to smell the flowers.

There were orange ones, and yellow ones (on three different bushes and plants), pink and white ones, purple and white ones, and some pale blue ones.

On the way down the final hill, we gathered bouquets of sage, lavender, and some other sweet-smelling herbs to hang and dry in our room.

We saw a squirel, a bunny, a mole (dead), lots of quail, other birds... A ripe avocado that TSG stepped on... And we made baby footprints (with our hands) in the mud along the side of the trail...

We've already been back here TOO LONG. Aaugh.

My very sunburned back turned into a very itchy and red back for a night or two, but it's better now. And I have a leg up on my California friends for the Suntan '06 season.

We are back from Florida, and back to work, although we don't have classes (UGH!) till tomorrow. It's okay though, by the time we realize that we are back it will be the weekend.

I got my tax return (federal) on 4/14, the day BEFORE tax day!

Florida here is not too hot or humid, - it's just enough to make you want to go swimming all the time. However, it being only April 17th, I can imagine that the summers here must get terrible.

And I feel that the in-laws have fully accepted me into their family. I won't say how I know this just yet, but...

Now that all the split ends are off my hair, it curls better!

We went to a coffee shop here in Pensacola... It's called Bad Ass Coffee Company, but it's not a funkycoolhipindependent coffee place, but a franchise... Ah, well, it had good coffee, okay sandwiches, and a terrible big-screen tv showing an awful gameshow.

But the company (we brought) was AWESOME.

I GOT A HAIRCUT TODAY!

Actually, I got MOST of them cut...

Spellcheck in Thunderbird just corrected my spelling of "Y'all."

We.Are.In.Florida.

I really don't feel like a student.

Of course, that's not really a NEW feeling...

I've been working, remotely, on computers all day. I read Edward Abbey until late in the night, and slept in this morning. We went visiting friends in town, bringing them coffee, and we rushed back for my class, which was canceled. I think we're still kind of getting caught up from sleep-dep on the weekend, and we're getting ready for our Florida adventure tomorrow.

I'm trying to find some time to get both me and TSG up here for a few days...

I'm thinking right after school, when she and I drive up to my folks house, and then when she continues on to Oregon that I will go with her, and we could spend a day or two at Mt. Tabor on the way up.

I've also got lots of relatives and friends that I haven't spent time with at all recently...

We hung out in Tehachapi all weekend with a big group of friends and their family. Every night we stayed up late chatting and socializing, and all day we played with the kids, mostly a 4yo and a 2yo and their 10-month-old baby sister, who goes by either "Baby Sister" or "Princess."

Good times.

And we are ready to get away from all the rain for a few days. We're preparing to make the most of the sun in Florida, although the last time we went their they had a hurricane, just for us. So we'll see...

Off to visit the B's for the weekend!

The snow has stayed on Topa Topa for four or five days! Despite all this newfound California sun!

I ordered two books and a cd from Amazon on Feb 18th.

I have received ONE of those books.

How can this company stay in business?

I like it as a marketplace for the used book vendors... THEY deliver their books and such ASAP, 'cause their reputation depends on it.

Amazon is good for finding rare things, but they stink as far as getting them to you.

I have quietly been assembling a smörgåsbord of climbing gear.

I sold a hard drive on ebay a while back, and I let the paypal payment just fester in my account while I searched and searched for good deals on climbing gear.

In fact, I searched so much that it would have been better financially to WORK all that time and simply buy, flat-out, mindlessly, top-of-the-line gear. Oh well. Now I have items with character.

I have an olive print chalk bag, some 7-year-old ex-rental climbing shoes, and a Singing Rock harness.

And I oh-so-want a Black Diamond ATC Belay Device. An a D Carabiner, also for belaying.

AND we've already had almost TWO sunny days in a row! We may actually get to go climbing this month!

I went to work right after class, so I didn't even realize TODAY IS FRIDAY! Woo-hoo!

I've gotta start working out more than once every 2.5 weeks, 'cause then when I do work out, I'm sore for 5 days...

Anyways, TSG and I finally got all her parents' stuff moved out of the storage unit and in the moving truck so that it can all be shipped to their new (Florida) address. Sweet.

Tomorrow, after class, we are going up into the mountains to visit some friends. We are taking the little truck because, unfortunately, the Silver Bullet has a problematic steering rack. I am researching and ordering a new one and hopefully I can install it by Eastertide, so my brother can drive home in it.

Four more days of class and we'll be in Florida for almost a week.

Fourteen more days of class and we'll be college grads, and we won't ever have to come back to this infernal place. I can't wait.

Tribute to Paul Smith, Iraq War Medal of Honor Recipient

I had a whirlwind trip up to San Francisco... put in 16+ hours of work, turned around and headed down.

TSG's defense was yesterday, Stevo's today. They both passed, which is all we care about right now.

Only 16 days of class left.

We'll be in Florida for a week, starting next Wednesday, getting an early start on our summer tans.

I'm up in Marin County working on a few server installs...

Including some nice 64-bit machines...

Anyone need a new used laptop?

It's actually pretty fast and peppy and that sort of thing... And it's a tough one.

19 days of class left, after today...

TSG and I discovered a 5:30 pm mass in the area that WE DON'T HAVE TO WEAR A DRESS TO. So we have been going there the last few days, instead of to campus. The mass is said in English, which is nice, and by a nice old Irish (we think) priest who dispenses with the whole affair in about 29 minutes. And then they all say evening prayer, or like last night, stations of the cross in Spanish.

It's raining like the dickens here!

We read Eliot's The Wasteland last night for seminar...

22 days of class left after today...

Someone at the coffee house that I'm at is playing Halflife on his laptop...

I saw my first HUMMINGBIRD of Spring today. I know other people have seen them around in the last week or so, but this was the first time I saw one.

I had my thesis "defense" yesterday, and it went well.

Now I just have to show up for enough classes to pass... and I'm done.

Thesis defenses start(ed) today.

Mine is the day after tomorrow.

I need to write a preceses of about 250 words, sort of a caveat emptor for those tutors elected to read and attack -- the opposite of defend -- my thesis.

I'm thinking that it'll be something like a description of how my thesis really only pertains to natural theology, the realm of philosophy as it deals with God, not the realm of Faith. Because I can envision it being attacked on those grounds...

Incidentally, here is my thesis, for what it's worth. I don't think I'm terribly impressed or satisfied by what it turned out to be, but I think that it will do.

I was going to write a big long tirade about how Chase bank (affiliated with Amazon for their VISA card) charged me a horrendous late fee when it was Amazon's fault for not reversing the charges on a non-shipped order fast enough, but when I called up the bank, the first thing they did was waive the fee, before I even had a chance to complain... The conversation went something like this:

I was a little bit stunned. I was ready to cancel the whole card, and ready to be fuming angry at them, and then...

It's a good customer service trick they got going there...

And probably good financially, too. Many people probably just pay the thing, and the ones who don't get endeared to the whole system so that they can have their money sucked out of them later, like a thin-skinned tourist in Kisumu...

Up at Crashbox's working on some website stuff...

...uh-huh...

TSG and I get a lot of comments about looking like brother and sister...

-from my TSG

We graduate two months from today!!!

Man, it's a relief to have that blessed thesis done.

TSG's mother found this a while ago. We were going to conduct our own road tests, when we were going cross country last summer, but we never bothered.

Whew! Theses are DONE as of 11:45 pm last night. The party went till almost 3 am, I'm told. TSG and I left at 1:20 am, and the Dean was still there when WE left.

(I didn't dump any ice water on him this year, though I thought about it.)

So now, life gets better and better.

Automotive report: I put a new battery in TSG's truck today; one of the cells tested as dead and I was only getting 11 or so volts, and each time I tried to crank the engine, it scuddered. So now it's much better, and it has a new, much tinier battery.

Now I've got a lot of computer work to do, and some websites to design, and some money to earn, CAUSE WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!!!