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January 2006 Archives

January 7, 2006

Coming Home

We're back in Bloomington now. Coming home seems to have been a lot easier than it was last year, for some reason. Perhaps because my definition of "where home is" is less complex now. My home is with my wife. That's easy. Just one of the many reasons we did things the way we did.

The rundown of where I've been for the last three weeks:

We spent two days in Indianapolis at Uncle Rich and Jim's place. We chilled, had good Italian food at a local spot, almost completed our Christmas shopping at the Castleton Mall and watched Pirates of the Caribbean. Did you know they're making a sequel? I'm excited for it, though I can't really say why.

We took a taxi (expensive) to the Indy airport and jetted quickly to Atlanta, to find our chauffeur (brother-in-law Ben) waiting. We poked around the Five Points neighborhood and another mall (sensing a theme yet?) before meeting Samantha's pseudo-parents Pete and DJ for dinner. Then off to Statesboro, where we arrived at about 2 am and crashed hardcore.

We spent a week in Statesboro (which is Samantha's hometown, natch), mostly lazing around. We stayed with Samantha's father, Michael, who still occupies the family stronghold, though three of the original five from the family unit are now gone (mom, Cyndi, via divorce, and brother Tim, via his own apartment). Unfortunately Mike and Ben have pretty much turned the place into a bachelor pad (read: dirty). So we spent a little time cleaning up to make ourselves more comfortable. Which it was, thereafter. We were fed well, thanks to a combination of Mike's excellent cooking (mmmm, star biscuits) and the local restaurateurs of Statesboro (check out Holiday Pizza should you, God forbid, find yourself there). All in all, a good visit.

Highlights from Georgia:

  • Birthday party for Ben. Fun people, good occasion... and alcohol flowed freely (though not through me). Good times.
  • Gifts with Samantha's family. The meaning of my marriage hit home in an entirely new way with giving and receiving presents to/from these people, my new family. Really cool.
  • Throwing a frisbee around outside on Christmas Day. Can't do that in Minnesota.
  • Seeing the Narnia flick again with Cyndi.
  • Awesome game of Cranium with fun people.
  • Hanging out with Ben Ellis, UGA grad, grad student at Georgetown and all-around awesome dude.

We drove back to Atlanta and caught our flight back to Indy the next morning. And then jumped in the car (my car's last big trip!) to head to Minnesota for the second half of our trip. Yes, this was kind of a hellish travel day, but so it goes. We crashed in Wisconsin Dells for the night and then made it to Stillwater by noon the next day. For those of you playing along at home, that's 1055 miles in approx. 42 hours. Or a mean speed of 25 mph. But we were sleeping for about 16 of those.

So very quickly we went from light-coat weather to hats-and-gloves, snow-on-the-ground-and-more-coming-tomorrow weather. We spent about a week in Minnesota, too. There, we hung out by the fireplace, read a lot, and assembled a 750 piece puzzle given to us by Cyndi. And ate well, again. Yeah, we're fat now, so what? You are too. Just kidding. We also drove around and saw people quite a bit.

Highlights from Minnesota:

  • The wedding of Kelsay Ludwig and David Parker. A lovely affair hosted by Luther Seminary, where I saw all sorts of old friends and acquaintances. Plenty of Lutheran pomp and cheesy wedding cliches combined. Yet another one of my friends to add to the growing list of "attached" persons...
  • More malls. Rosedale to find a gift for said wedding and the Mall of America with Matt Merkt, just 'cause it's fun to go to the mall with him. Hee.
  • Gifts with my family. Same sentiment as above, but slightly inverted.
  • Went to Cheapo and bought the CDs I didn't get for Christmas. I'm currently addicted to Eddie from Ohio's Quick and Butterfly Boucher's Flutterby.
  • Recording two old-timey radio scripts with the Enclave crew at Peter Pearson's parents' house. Oh my goodness, I can't wait for the mp3's of this.
  • The Science Museum with Josh Dierks. My gosh, I missed that boy.
  • Going to sleep at midnight on New Year's. Okay, so this wasn't a highlight and I'm sorry I missed out on the three (3) party invitations I had. But we were tired, and that's the night we did presents since we were in Georgia on the 24th-25th.
  • Getting my new car! Woot! Well, it's not new, really, but it's newer. It's my family's wedding present -- a 1994 Honda Accord. Champagne-colored, very clean, with all the trimmings and 80,000 fewer miles. I'm totally pumped. It drives like a dream compared to Barry. Alas, poor Barry (I knew him, Horatio) -- who will likely find an ignominious end with whoever shells out $1k for it in MN. He's worth a lot more -- in memories, at least.
  • I also successfully transplanted my new radio from my old car into my new car, and vice versa. Aren't I cool?

So now we are back, and there is one more semester staring us in the face. It will be busy -- what with the job search, planning for the wedding-esque event (on June 10, lest you need reminding) and my internship at DePauw -- but it will be a good one. We are looking forward to it.

That's all. Will try to post more. I always say that. Time for bed, I think. Peace, and Happy New Year. May it be a good one.

January 16, 2006

Resolutions and Related Nonsense

It's not really a New Year's resolution, because if I call it that, it will suffer the curse of most resolutions and not get fulfilled. I want to post more often, so I pseudo-resolve to post some funny/thoughtful/interesting link at least once every other day. (Ideally every day, but let's not get too ambitious here.) Hopefully just logging in and posting the link will get me to also add content about my life (supposedly the purpose of this site -- shocking, I know).

So here's the link, courtesy of David and the funny folks at McSweeney's. Relevant, eh?

My semester is off to a roaring start. I have spent 16 (of an eventual 150 total) hours at my internship at DePauw so far and I'm already swamped. I have three science professors I have projects going with, one pretty sizeable, along with ongoing bibliographic instruction and possibly collection development responsibility. And there's a Women in Science project to work on in Archives if I have any time left over. Whew. It's totally what I was looking for, though. So it'll be good.

Oh, and I'm taking a class, too. It's L651, Evaluation of Library Resources and Services. My last required class and the only one I'll take from Tom Nisonger, owner of the best beard and ugliest suitcoat and one of the best reputations in SLIS.

Other news of note:

  • We went to a game party hosted by Tracy and Susan on Saturday night. We played Apples to Apples (which Samantha won!), a short game of Trivial Pursuit and a fun game of Cranium. Good times -- clearly this kind of thing needs to occur more often.
  • We saw Mari do her fiddlin' thang at Encore Cafe (twice now!) on Friday and went to The Vid (the coolest dive bar in Bloomington) where we saw more slizzards. I think it's becoming a SLIS hangout.
  • We are working on the invite list for our wedding party in June. Keep an eye out for an e-mail in the near future.
  • We made homecooked meals almost all week. Go us.

So now we're going to have pizza with Samantha's work friend Andrew and his fiancee Katy and watch The Muppets Take Manhattan. Woot. Peace all, and talk atcha again soon.

January 18, 2006

Unlikely Crossovers

I bet you never though you'd see these two franchises crossover. Well, you were wrong. I really don't know what I think about this. It seems like one of those things that sounded really great in theory.

I forgot to report on my first session of L401 instruction last week. After some fairly last-minute and hasty preparation, it actually went really well. I filled the time perfectly and there were no major technical problems (just a few minor ones, probably because I didn't prepare quite as thoroughly as that would have required). Their homework is starting to trickle in... I teach my next session tomorrow. And I really will start working on my PowerPoint a little sooner. Really! Like, tonight, during work. Yeah.

We saw Munich on Sunday with David and Jon. Wow, that was depressing. It was effective in that heavy handed Spielbergian fashion, but I'm not sure it was worth the immense downer. I'd see Mystic River again before this.

Samantha is going to sing with the Chamber Singers this semester, we think. If Gerry ever finds time to listen to her. I suckered her in with the literature we're doing (Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky). Hee. We had rehearsal last night -- things are sounding surprisingly good already. I'm sure it's because she was singing.

It snowed yesterday. Looks like winter again around here.

Do my posts need an ending? Maybe not. Let's find out.

January 20, 2006

More Geekery

Sorry for more Transformers links, but I would be remiss as an obsessive fan if I didn't post this. It is widely being circulated as leaked test footage from the upcoming live action movie. However, several sources say that it's fake, which seems to be the prevailing opinion, seeing as the movie hasn't even been greenlighted yet. *shrug* It's still cool looking.

My second 401 session went well. They may even be learning something. I'll have to grade their homework and let you know.

Tomorrow is Samantha's first fencing tournament in about a year and a half, and my first fencing tournament ever. No, I won't be fencing -- just tagging along. But wish her luck.

I wish I had a laptop.

Pitchers and catchers report to spring training in under six weeks.

That is all.

January 23, 2006

Info Vis Art

Here's an interesting and rather beautiful way of looking at texts. I haven't explored this in great detail yet, but it's fun watching it "read" the text and watching the interrelations that appear and disappear.

The fencing tournament went well, I think. Samantha did about as well as could be hoped for after a year and a half. I did a lot of reading. On book six of the Wheel o' Time series and my interest is starting to flag. It really is kind of the same thing over and over... yes, I know the Aiel are fierce and hardy... oh, look, Nynaeve is angry and do you think she'll tug at her braid? Hey, look, she did... sigh. But I'm sticking in there.

I've already got my grading done for 401. If you know me at all, this should be impressive almost to the point of being shocking. *shrug* What can I say? I guess I felt like I have a lot to get done in the next couple days and I needed to knock some of it out.

I had a garlic cheeseburger at Marvin's today in Greencastle (where DePauw is and where I'm doing my internship, if you're a slacker like David and haven't read my blog in weeks). Yes you read that right. No, I don't know why you didn't think of that before. Probably for the same reason I didn't. It was about as awesome as I figured it would be.

If my default Terminal window on a Mac OS X is black background, neon green font, am I allowed to call it "pimped out"?

January 25, 2006

Blonde Joke

I'm not a big one for blonde jokes, but this one was too good not to pass along.

So you know how Google takes into account the words that one uses to link to things when it ranks its pages? (If you didn't know that, well, now you do, and it helps explain how people exploit Google for things like the miserable failure trick.) And you know how people use the words "here" or "click here" to link to things a lot? That just made me think... what's the top Google results for "here"?

What I found was unsurprising. In other news...

Eek, last 401 session tomorrow. I have barely received any of the homework from my students yet. Slackers!

Does anybody have any experience applying for federal jobs? There's a couple at the Patent and Trademark Office that are looking interesting to me, but the process also looks unusual and kind of scary...

I have a performance of French choir and organ music with the Bloomington chapter of the AGO this weekend. Come on out to St. Thomas Lutheran at 5 pm on Sunday if you're into such things. It's interesting rep to say the least.

January 27, 2006

Wishful Thinking

Why does blood turn brown when it dries?
Why do the tears well up in your eyes?
Why didn't I learn to ride my bike
When it was warm and sunny outside?

The Ditty Bops ask questions I am hard pressed to answer. They're awful cute, though. Just what I need -- another folksy sweet-harmony-singin' duo... ahh, who am I kidding? It's on the wishlist now.

Man, and they'll be at Merlefest... I need to find a way to go to this.

My 401 teaching is over. The last class didn't quite run as I had intended, but I think I facilitated enough learning for them to do okay in the rest of the course. Well, I suppose I should grade the homework and see... whee.

Okay. Better do some reading for class.

About January 2006

This page contains all entries posted to This Side of Lost in January 2006. They are listed from oldest to newest.

December 2005 is the previous archive.

February 2006 is the next archive.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

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