August 29
I am just tired. It has been a very nondescript weekend that featured a string of things that all went vaguely wrong. To illustrate: I got my checks for my new Ohio bank account yesterday, which I sorely needed as I had a whole stack of bills that were just weeping to be sent in. It wasn't until I had gotten about halfway through the bills that I noticed that National City Bank had gotten my address wrong on the checks. Bastards! They had left off my apartment number. Not a big thing... but big enough that I plan on calling them tomorrow, bitching them out, and demanding new (free of charge) checks.
Eh. Bleh. A good way of summing up the weekend.
Oh. And I went to the Sites United States Air Force Museum, near the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Eh. Airplanes are cool and all, but not really my thing. I think I would have come away from the museum with a much more favorable impression if I had left when I was starting to lose interest in it. But, as I was with other people...people who possessed the car keys...I was stuck there WELL beyond the "I really don't give a shit anymore and am bored out of my mind" stage. The less said about that the better. It will be a VERY VERY LONG TIME before I want to give the Air Force Museum a second try.
I have also started (yet another) redesign of my site... this current one has been striking me as too busy and too minty fresh for my tastes lately. So I am redoing some of the architecture and going for a much more minimalist feel for the design. And I am going to try out some of that new fangled blogging software... Basically I want to be able to open up this journal to comments from all of my 2.5 readers, and since I don't want to write up a bunch of code for that myself (As if I would even have the time. Ha!) I am looking for some good canned solution that I can just plug in to my design and not have to futz with a lot to make it work AND look good. Becuase there as so many blogs out there ith ugly-ass designs. Currently under consideration are Moveable Type and Word Press. Anyone know of any others they can offer for consideration? I found a neat one called Kubrick, but as it apparently is based off of Word Press, it is out of the running for now. Come on, people... what do you use? Why do you (or don't you) like it? What did you have to do to modify it for your site's design? Talk to me, here...
August 27
First thing this morning I got myself out to Xenia to the BMV testing site and presented myself for the written test of the Ohio Motor Vehicle laws (and signage). Despite the fact that I have never been pulled over, arrested, ticketed, warned, etc ad infinitum, and, in fact, have a completely blemish-free driving record ... I was still required to take the silly test in order to prove that I am capable of responsible driving in this great state of Ohio. Which I passed. Didn't even bother to crack the little booklet of traffic laws that the BMV people gave me way back when I got my car title changed.
Let me tell you, Ohio driver's licenses are very poorly designed - both graphically and usability speaking. They are so crowded with different colors and clip art and bar codes and teeny-tiny text and holograms that it is almost impossible (for me anyway) to find the "useful" stuff. Except the photo - that is front and center. Actually, there are two photos, and they continue my little trend of looking like I am completely and soul-sucking EVIL in official identification. My RE ID badge also has that "I am about to stab you in the back" look. Am I just not photogenic at all, or do I really look like that?
They also took away my MI driver's license. *sniff* I liked that one. Plus I wanted to hang on to it to add it to my collection of expired IDs. I still have my original license (from back when I was 16) around somewhere. And my NY driver's license. And all of my various school and university IDs. I briefly considered saying that I had lost it (the MI license) or that it had been stolen so I could hang on to it, but I eventually discarded that plan on the grounds that it would just end up being a huge pain in the ass and make the whole licensing process excruciatingly painful. (Yes, I can be a packrat. So sue me.)
So, let's see... Ohio driver's license, car title, insurance, plates, bank account, voter registration... I guess I am a 100% official citizen now.
August 23
This is what user testing is. It is sitting in a darkened room with a bunch of other people and peering through a one-way mirror to see what a hapless victim ... er, volunteer ... is doing with the prototype that you worked on. It is a very dark room. After a few users it becomes a battle against fatigue and ennui. Falling asleep would be ill-advised. Doodling is difficult. (remember the dark room) So you are left with a choice between endlessly snacking or endlessly sipping coffee. Guess which path I took. The people who run the conference center certainly made it very easy to follow either option. When we got there in the morning, they had a great breakfast spread. Then we ordered lunch. Then the lunch rubble was cleared away and they brought out the chips and candy. (Aargh!)
That was the last two days of concept testing.
I did get to hang out with my brother Jeff for a while last night, which was nice. I hadn't seen him since last Christmas. (that is what happens when siblings scatter accross the country) He took me out to a very nice bar on Boyleston (sp?!?) square - which I gather is quite near the BU campus. I thold him that he will have to come and visit me in Dayton sometime so I can treat him in turn. We will see if he actually does... Dayton has nowhere near the hot night-life that Boston does. Still. I suppose that I had better find a good pub there on the off chance that he decides to takle me up on my offer.
I am sitting in the Logan airport right now, waiting for my flight. (I got here way to early and have scads of time) Tomorrow is Pittsburgh, and then home.
I am not a big fan of airports or flying. Sure, I really like the take-off and the landing - but once you get by the rush of power from the engines and the sight of the ground dropping away and the landscape below getting smaller and smaller and further away, being in an airplane is essentially just like being in a Greyhound Bus, only in the air. Getting there is supposed to be half of the fun of a trip, but I think that this wisdom only holds true if you are taking a roadtrip.
Worthy of note: there is a big (and fake) T-Rex skeleton in the Pittsburgh airport on the way to the baggage pick-up.
August 22
I am sitting on my room in the Cambridge Hyatt Regency with the TV playing "5th Element" in the background. My flight went well, once I got past the whole part that involved me going up to the check-in counter at the Dayton airport and being informed that despite the reservations with confirmation codes my company's travel service sent me, no one had ever purchased the tickets....
....gggrrrrrrrr....
But I made it. I am in Boston. And everything will eventually be resolved and/or reimbursed.
So without further ado.... PENNSIC!
By the way, this account of Pennsic is going to be mostly highlights... a lot of stuff went on and I sure as heck can't describe all of it here. And I am pretty sure that you don't want to read about all of it. If you have been to Pennsic before, then you know what it is like. If you haven't you will probably just be confused by all of this. Just a friendly warning.
John and I camped
with Cynnabar again. Cynnabar is (in my opinion) one of the best groups to
camp with - great people, hot showers (yes, they do have a portable shower
system that they rigged up), and a choice location near the merchants and
the battlefield. It was really nice to see people from the barony again, especially
the fencers. And even though I am technically part of another group now (Flaming
Gryphon) I think we will keep camping with Cynnabar.
I
have to give John kudos. Despite all of my hesitations and reservations and
outright doubts, the ring pavilion that he made for us worked very well indeed.
He was right, and I was wrong. It kept us nice and dry even through the torrential
downpours and thunderstorms of Wednesday night and Thursday, which is more
then the yurt we used last year did. (Sorry, Eric.) It was just that the waterproofing
of the yurt was a bit old, and it rained a lot last year, and after a while
everytime a raindrop hit the canvas roof it shook off a fine mist of water
and everything got and stayed damp... but that was last year and this is this
year. The ring pavilion was great. I just have to admit that I was pretty
skeptical at first that something that only had one center pole (and no other
poles!) could possibly stay standing in even the most gentle of winds. The
first day or so I flinched everytime I touched the sides of the tent, certain
that I was about to knock it over. But the tent was great. John was right.
(There he is, setting it up - it went up like a giant umbrella) He even made
a bed for it to raise the futon we slept on off of the ground!
Pennsic war, is, of course a war. So here are the obligatory shots of the heavy fighting. Fencers have battles too, but we can't field nearly as many people as the heavy fighters - who regularily field thousands. Durning Pennsic, the SCA forms the largest unaligned standing army in the world. Which I think is pretty darn nifty. The pictures below are from one of the big field battles (I forget just which one it was) that John and I watched from the sidelines. The first one is the Midrealm line starting to advance. Cynnabar is somewhere in the middle with Iron Lance and House Darkyard (the yellow banner in the middle of the shot) so I was never able to get a good view of what they were doing. You can see the clash and carnage right up close in the second picture. Note to readers: I did not have to zoom my camera to get this - it was about five feet from my nose. And yet I was never worried about getting run over and/or trampled.
Pennsic is all about the fencing for John and I, and we spent the bulk of our time there on the field in the fencing lists. With the exception of some tournaments and melees that overlapped with others and the ones that were washed out by the thunderstorms on Thursday, we fought in every battle. I like getting to meet and fight with people from all over the world from different kingdoms. Turns out that I am a better fencer then I thought I was, but I am still nowhere near the level of people like Martin and Max and Marco. I will get there one of these days... The high point of the fencing for me has to be the last day we were there when I participated in the Ladies Rapier Tournament. I made it all of the way to the final round - second place. Yay! John didn't fence at all that last day, he just lurked on the sidelines of the lists with my camera and tried to get some good pictures of me fighting. I think that some of them came out very well. (For the curious, I won the fight shown below.) I could probably saw a lot more about the fencing at Pennsic - like about how I did really well in the Aethelmark Tournament as well, and how the team that John and I were on made it all of the the way to the sami-finals in the Atlantian 5-man Tournament, or how it was complete (yet controlled) chaos at the broken field battle and the storming of La Rochelle... but really, how many times and in how many ways can I say that it was a blast and great fun and that I can't wait to do it again?
We
don't do a lot of parties at Pennsic, because by the time most parties really
get going - well after dark - John and I are getting really really sleepy
from a long day of fighting and are about ready to go to bed. But we did go
to the Known World Party at the Midrealm Royal encampment on Thursday, shortly
after Midrealm Court. During court Max, who has been the Midrealm rapier marshal
for about forever stepped down - so Marco and Martin arranged for as many
of the Midrealm fencers to be there as possible to form an arch of swords
for Max when he stepped down off of the dias. It was wonderful to see just
how many fencers showed up to honor Max. We were literally standing shoulder
to shoulder all of the way from the dias and way out into the courtyard. (By
the way, the picture here is if the huge, functional fountain that was cast
from resin and that was displayed in the Midrealm Royal encampment. It was
just really cool. People kept tossing change into it for good luck. And it
was not the only really cool thing like this either... people really go ALL
OUT on their encampments. As great as I think Cynnabar is, it is really quite
a modest camp when you compare it to places like Casa Dibardici (sp?), Shadowclans,
the Royals, and a lot more. )
Some nice things at Pennsic: I got to see two of my friends recieve awards. Dirk was knighted. John and I hung out at his vigil and got to see him to give him the "you will be a great knight" pep talk, though we didn't see the actual ceremony (which was held at an ungoodly early hour when we were still asleep). Captain Craith (aka Groupie) was inducted into the order of the Bronze Ring (sort of like the Midreal equavilent of knighthood for Rapier fighters). They got him at the Known World Party and held a little mini court to honor him since he (like the rest of the fencers) had ditched the official Midrealm court as soon as we had finished honoring Max. It was funny - John and I were at Cynnabar getting ready for the Known World party when Blaize (a bronze ring/marshal) ran up and wanted to know where Groupie was. We said that he was probably at his camp and dug out a Pennsic map to figure out where that was, whereupon he raced off again. A couple of minutes later, Groupie walked into camp and wanted to know who it was who had raced out of Cynnabar past him. Hee hee. Poor Blaize... Anyway, the awards couldn't have been given to more deserving people. I also got to see Midair perform and MC some fabulous stand-up comedy ("Whose Line Doth It Be?") and juggling shows. I was hoping to get to spend time with him then I did, but he is a peer of the realm and pretty heavily involved with the Coxcomb Academy at Pennsic, so I only got to see him in passing a couple of times. I will just have to catch him next time I am visiting in Ann Arbor.
August 21
Okay, I am back now...
John and I got back from Pennsic last night, and we already have all of our laundry (with the exception of some pieces of my garb that prefer to be handwashed) done!
In a half hour my folks will arrive to give me a dresser so that I don't have to leave all of my clothes in piles on the bedroom floor anymore.
Tomorrow I fly out to Boston for concept testing of a project I am working on.
So I don't have time now to do much more then wave hi to all 2.5 of my readers and promise that I will write a more detailed account of Pennsic (with pictures) while I am in the air tomorrow. But in brief... PENNSIC WAS AWESOME!
August 13
Happy Friday the 13th, y'all.
In honor of that fact, and the fact that tonight John is showing up with a fully loaded SUV so that we may happily go to Pennsic tomorrow and spend the next week in SCA bliss (and far from computers) I offer you the following totally random soundbites from the past couple of days.
The supply cabinet at RE is locked - padlocked in fact. And the key is hanging on the front of the cabinet right next to the lock. At which point you gotta wonder... why the lock? Is there some kind of hight requirement for the supply cabinet (like there is for rollercoasters) where you are only worthy of the supplies if you can reach the key? The only people they are keeping out are two-foot tall gnomes. And the gnomes can probably go find a chair to stand on...
I was laying on the couch the other night watching Iron Chef while starting to fall asleep, and I could swear that I heard Chairman Kaga say "...and the theme ingredient is ... LONG PIG!" At which point I decided it was past time to go to bed already.
Last night around sunset is was just gorgeous out - perfect weather. The sky was this unusual shade of electric blue, everything had this sort of reddish-gold halo around it from the setting sun, and there was a rainbow-striped hot-air balloon floating around above.
When most people put bills in their wallets, they organize it by denomination. When I put money into my wallet, I sometimes like to organize it by series first, and then by denomination. (For the uninformed, the series number is the year that the bill in question was issued. Look for the tiny print - the year - on either side of the picture of the dead president on the front.)
I do believe in fairies! The Blue Fairy of purchasing (who looked a lot like a skinny IT guy who got really embarrassed and started to stutter when I crawled under my desk and started plugging stuff in... so I had to go and refresh my coffee and leave him alone for a little bit to make him feel better) has finially heard my heartfelt pleas and has delivered my workstation so that at least I can be a REAL employee!
Thank you and good night! See you all again in a week or so.
August 10
I know that I am going to need to find friends here - eventually the unpacking and settling in period will be over and I will need to become "social". In that spirit I went with Sarah to her bellydance class last night. And I had (unsurprisingly) a great time. I haven't really done much bellydance at all since Cornell, so I was a little surprised at how much I remembered. There were several local SCA members (also unsurprisingly) at the class, and I got to schmooze a little bit with them before and after. Stuff like bellydance does tend to attract the artsy, SCA, renn faire types... I think that I may end up signing up for regular classes.
I also emailed the local fencing marshal about practices... according to her, practices are on a temporary hiatus (see John! I told you they would be!) during Pennsic, and that when they resume at the end of August, they will be moving from Tuesdays to Mondays. Which I will start to attend, of course. After Pennsic.
Update on the PSC Intranet: I thought it was done and settled and ready to push live, I honestly did. But now, according to Michael, the Infocore group has decided that it really just can't be put live until the navigation has drop-downs. Argh! *tears out hair* You know, there was a time and a place for making this kind of decision, and that time was waay back when I was first coding up the nav and php includes - not now right at the end. This essentially means that I will have to scrap all of the CSS and php code for the top level and re-do it all. I have some ideas, and (hopefully) it won't take too long... but it does involve a complete trashing of the existing code since the best (only) way I am really familiar with of handling drop-downs in CSS involves setting them up as <ul> initially, and right now the top level nav is displayed in table cells (the better to assure standard appearance accross the widest variety of browsers). Eh. *shrug* That will be my project tonight... I know that I don't have to do this coding, and maybe it is a sign of my overachieving type A little heart that I am, but... well... I have put in a lot of work on that project, and I really want to see it through to the end. Same goes for the redesign of the external PSC site, but since I have been working on that project (off and on) for the past two years, I have little hope that THAT project will ever get off the ground.
August 8
Updates on beoming officially an "Ohioan":
To officially become an Ohioan, I need not only a job and a residency in Ohio
(check on both counts) but I also need all of my car stuff - title, tags,
licence, registration, and insurance - changed over to meet special Ohio standards
as well. Apparently there is an unofficial grace period of 30 days (or 60
days, depending on who you ask) to get all of this taken care of, otherwise
the nice state troopers or police will get pissy with you if they pull you
over for something, and find out that you have lived in Ohio for months and
STILL not bothered to be a good little Ohioan and update your automotive paperwork.
Yep. So. I have the insurance... that part was easy. I just had my agent in
Ann Arbor recommend someone here and faxed down my info, I went in to their
office, signed some papers, and that was that.
This Saturday my Big Goal of the day was to get my title and plates. So I went to the Title Office, and found out that in order to convert my Michigan title to an Ohio title, I need an inspection. Do they do that at the Title Office? No, but they do inspections next door at the DVM. So I went next door to the DMV, stood in line, and got my car "inspected". Then I went back to the Title Office with the little paper that proved that the DMV had inspected me. The Title Office did some paper shuffling for a bit, and then gave me a temporary title (the real one will arrive in the mail in a few weeks) and sent me back next door to the DMV so I could prove to them that I have an Ohio title for my car and thus can get Ohio plates. *rolls eyes* Geeze.
One of the things that John and I wanted to do this weekend when he came down to visit was to start to explore Dayton and the surrounding areas in search of neat places, fun stuff to do, and all around cool and interesting stuff. (Read: civilization, or, something kind of like the cultural extravaganza that is Ann Arbor.) Sarah has heard from another person at work that the Oregon District in SE Dayton was "really cool", and the website that I found on the Oregon District seemed to back that up, so John and I went to check it out. Alas, the website and the co-worker were a bit misleading. Or maybe our expectations were just too high. Either way, the Oregon District was a bit of a disapointment... it was a nice enough old residential area, and some of the architecture was indeed quite cool, but as far as it being the bustling cultural hotspot... uh-uh. The economic aspect of the area (shops, galleries, restaurants, etc) seemed to be rather crumbling. We did see one restaurant the looked like it could be quite nice (but it wasn't open in the afternoon when we went) and there was a pretty decent used bookshop, but other then that... *shrug*.
I guess that the co-worker has lower standards of "really cool" then I do. Our excursion to downtown Dayton didn't last long. In less then an hour and a half, John and I were back in Centerville, just in time for a late lunch.
Some other time, when the weather is more dreary and rainy and less completely beautiful outside, we will check out the Art Institute and the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Museum. I have high hopes for the Wright-Patterson... everyone who I have talked to who has mentioned it - from Douglas to my Dad - has had good things to say about it. Plus, it is the second best (outside of the Smithsonian, or course) avaition museum in the country.
But since the werather WAS so nice today, we went to the Cox Arboritum. I would actually put it on par with the Matthei Bottanical Gardens in Ann Arbor.Really nice building complex, pretty good trails, lakes with fish and turtles and bullfrogs, a butterfly house... The butterfly house was my favorite bit, I think. They had both butterflies and caterpillers there (all kinds of both - and all native to Ohio). I was surprised how HUGE some of the caterpillers got. I am used to thinking of caterpillers as small little things, but they had some varieties there that would grow up to five inches long.
And it turned out the the Arboritum was a lot closer to my apartment then I originally thought. I had first seen the sign for it on 75, so we got on 75 north, got off the exit the the sigh indicated, and drove for a way to get there. On the way back, I said that I wanted to try taking the road that the Arboritum was on, because I thought that it might connect up with Springborough Pike (the road right off of 75 near my apartment). Turned out that not only did it connect, we were only about a mile from familiar territory. D'oh! John was right when he said "everything is located off that road!" (St. Rte. 725)
August 6
A couple of years ago - almost three years now - I got the idea that I wanted to have a fish tank. Sarah had an overfull tank at the time (her swordtails had just had babies) so she happily donated some fish to the cause. That first male swordtail she gave me was one of the longest lived tropical freshwater fish I ever owned. He lived through three different apartments and two moves and outlasted every other fish in that first batch. Until last night. I had noticed that his breathing had become rather labored in the past couple of days, and when I got home yesterday afternoon, he was flopped on his side on the bottom of the tank. Every so often he would make an attempt to swim, but wasn't always upright when he did so. So I pulled him out of the tank and euthanized him in the freezer before giving him the traditional burial at sea.
I think it was that last move that did him in. Too much stress. But he had lived a long (three years) and full (for a fish in a 10-gallon tank) life.
Epitaph for a pet fish.
August 5
I have pretty much given up on the idea of biking to work in the mornings. Even if I could get myself together in the mornings in order to be out the door by 7:30ish for the roughly half-hour bike ride to work (a near impossibility...and it doesn't seem to matter how early I get up, I always end up running out the door at the last minute) the past couple of days have been so hot and humid that walking out my door in the morning has been like stepping into a sauna. Do I want to bike to work through air almost thick enough to drown in? No, I do not.
So I have confined my bike trips to the evening when it is (marginally) cooler and less humid. There are only a few places that I know the routes to well enough to bike to around here - and one of those is work. So, yes, I have been known to hop on my trusty Trek 4500 of an evening and bike out to work, and then turn around and bike right back home. And, yes, I am aware of just how lame that sounds. I am still learning my way around here, so be patient with me!
On the whole, Centerville is a less "interesting" a place then Ann Arbor. I think that very few places are as interesting and dynamic as Ann Arbor to tell you the truth - small town life meets the high tech and cultural advantages of a major research university - but it isn't bad. My apartment is a couple of blocks from "Historic Downtown Centerville", home of "the largest collection of old stone buildings in Ohio". I am not sure what that means. Sure, there are a couple of neat-looking old stone buildings, but it is not as though all of "Historic Downtown Centerville" (tm) is entirely comprised of ancient fieldstone structures. So if this is the largest collection of such buildings in Ohio, then I would say that "Historic Downtown Centerville" (tm) is really reaching for some sort of a distinguishing feature. Or maybe I am missing something. But I don't want to sound like I am belittling the place, because I am not. It is just that I keep compairing it to Ann Arbor in my mind. There are some nice places - a good coffee house, an ice cream shoppe, and some restaurants (which I have yet to try out), but no neat little shops and galleries and bookstores. I miss the shops and galleries and bookstores. And I miss how bike-friendly Ann Arbor was. I haven't seen ANY bike racks here, and it is sometimes a little tricky finding something to lock my bike to.
This is very much a developing area, so everything is pretty spread out and there are lots of strip-mall areas. Most of the roads are four lanes with the little grassy divider down the middle, and have 45-50mph speed limits. So no biking in the street for me. As much as I normally hate biking on the sidewalk, I think that I would hate being run down even more, so the sidewalk it is. And it is not as though there are a lot of other bikers or pedestrians on the sidewalks to watch out for. I have seen a couple of joggers in the evening, but that is it. Apparently it is like L.A. here - everyone drives, no one walks (or bikes). Basically the whole area (subdevelopments and all) looks like it was cut from a cornfield a couple of years ago. And maybe it was... it is kinda like the outskirts of Saline that way. You really don't have very far to go before you are driving or biking along next to some farmer's field.
August 2
As first days go, it really wasn't bad. And first days are not supposed to go perfectly smoothly, so today was pretty much what I expected it to be. I expected to be doing a lot of reading documentation to get familiar with the ongoing projects that I will probably be working on. And I did indeed spend most of my day reading docs. But I didn't expect to be missing from the HR files - someone lost part of my paperwork which meant that I never got entered into the system - so I still have no ID card and no employee ID/file, which also means that I cannot sign into any of the intranet functions or set up my work email and all of the other little things. I also don't have a workstation yet... apparently everyone thought that someone else had ordered it for me, and as a consequence, nothing was ortdered. But no biggie... I will bring in my laptop tomorrow. IP autnentication should give me access to most (non login) intranet functions, and I have a bunch of meetings that I am scheduled to attend which will a) be really interesting and I will get to meet a lot of people, and b) take up a lot of time. And maybe by the time that the meetings are over in the afternoon my identity will have percolated through the PeopleSoft system and I can pick up my ID and be all official.
Hey. Se la vie.
And I just got finished re-writing my complete Malachan turn because of a (*%&#^ file corruption that completely wiped out all of my orders. Fortunately, John was right, and it didn't take me nearly as long to wr-do everything as I was afraid that it would.
August 1
When I moved out of my Ann Arbor apartment, I dumpstered the ratty old loveseat that I had been using as a couch. I had a futon that I had been sleeping on as a bed, which I wanted to use as a couch/guest bed. And since my folks have been saying that I was wlecome to have my old bedroom set (a nice heavy oak double bed and dresser) whenever I asked, I figured that this would be the perfect time. So when I moved into my new apartment I put the futon in the living room and put the dresser in the second bedroom/computer room, where I pressed it into service as a hold-all for disks, CDROMS, small computer components, and random cables. This left the master bedroom pretty much empty and waiting for the promised bedroom set. It also left most of my clothes in duffel bags and boxes, but I figured that this would be fine for a few days. My folks were supposed to deliver the bedroom set today, which they did... sort of. They brought the bed, but not the dresser. They couldn't fit the bed AND dresser in the back of their van, and figured that I would rather have the bed first. So... now I have a bed, but no dresser (and I am not going to dump all of the computer stuff out of the old dresser so I can use it to temporarily hold clothes) and most of my clothes will stay in the duffel bags and boxes and in piles on the floor for the next couple of weeks until my parents can come back with the dresser. No matter. Most of the "important" (read, for work) clothes are already hung up in the closet. The rest are just Tshirts and jeans and such, and having them all strewn about on the floor will be JUST like being back in college. Heh heh. :)
In other news, the Altoids (tm) company has come out with yet another new flavor... licorice altoids. Yum. You can smell the licorice right through the tin.
In other other news, I start work tomorrow. I am quite looking forward to it since I have gotten pretty bored with unpacking and arranging, and it ought to do a good job of distracting me from homesickness.
In other other other news, I found the cable for my camera. Here is a nice picture of John and I at Sarah and Mike's wedding.
