August 2004 Archives
I’m not sure if this is political or not.
I was reading the latest Popular Science (my mom gets it for me. Thanks Mom). The latest issue is all about the future of cars. (Isn’t every other PopSci about cars?)
Anyway, this issue has a foldout section with all kinds of statistics related to cars and transportation — WiReD would call it infoporn — and they have a graph which shows the price per gallon of gasoline since 1920. It’s very interesting in light of how the price of gasoline is being used in the political campaigns this year and as a metric for determining the overall state of the country’s economy.
Sure, in the last couple of years, we have seen a sharp increase in gas prices, but unless there is an definitive reason behind it and not a market fluctuation, perhaps because of hostilities in the middle east, the trend over the last 80+ years has been that the price of gasoline will continue to go down.
PopSci’s graph - U.S. price of gasoline from 1920 - present
The last time there was a big spike in the price of gas — in the latest 1970s and early 1980s it took 6-8 years before the market returned to “normal.”
Now that I think of it, the drop in price around 1986 coincides with the U.S.’s big move to Japanese cars like Nissan Sentras and Honda Civics which, in the 1980s, had exemplary fuel economy compared to their U.S.-made counterparts.
Could the current spike in price be a direct result of the increased demand due to everyone and their dog buying 10 MPG SUVs in the gluttonous late 1990s?
This week has been crazy!
But, hey, I’m doing great.
My full-time Iodynamics partner — Mike — is cruising to Hawaii until the 1st of September, so I’m taking care of all clients north and south.
One of our Logan clients moved into a new office this week. Another Logan client changed Internet connections. Fortunately, Salt Lake-area clients are keeping pretty quiet. :-)
This hasn’t left much time for me to do any ODYC work, but I’m squeezing in a few hours.
The family is doing well. Maya is enjoying the first couple of weeks of first grade, but is discouraged that it’s not more challenging. Christine has explained to her that the first two weeks are review, but she’s still bored.
Eli is getting closer to walking. He visited the doctor today for his 1-year immunizations, so he wasn’t too happy about that. Four shots.
Partly due to the fact I came to some realizations during my trip to Washington last week, my relationship with Christine is 10-times better now than it was before. I can’t put my finger on it precisely, but I think something just clicked in my mind about being less selfish and putting more priority on the relationship with my most favorite person in the world.
Christine’s happy with these changes.
In other news, I’m very concerned about Jennie. I’m not sure what to say about it because I don’t want to create a situation that’s worse than it could already be.
It’s hard when you see someone you care about making decisions that fly in the face of wisdom. I have tried to persuade her to reconsider the choices she’s made, not because they are poor choices so much, but that the timing of those choices could be disastrous.
How’s that for cryptic?
We’re back on the road again — heading back to Utah.
Right now, we’re on I-84 in northeastern Oregon. I drove from Darrington to Seattle and then across Washington on I-90 and I-82 to get us back on I-84 without going through Portland like we did on our trip out.
Last night, we played the Whitehorse Mountain Rock Festival at the Whitehorse Mountain Amphitheater. It rocked. We rocked. I rocked. It was all a very rocking experience.
The Whitehorse Mountain Rock Festival is an annual event that lasts three days and features live music each day from a variety of bands. Friday night — the night we played — was a selection of tribute acts. Saturday and Sunday feature minor list classic rock artists and former members of bands.
The lineup on Friday was El Loco — a ZZ Top tribute; Thund Her Struck — an all-women AC/DC tribute band from L.A.; Strutz — an 80s rock cover band; And, finally, Sons Of Nothing — the premiere Pink Floyd tribute group.
El Loco, despite being the first band on at 6:00, put on a great show. They had the ZZ Top look down perfect. The guitarist and the bassist both had waist-length beards and the drummer had a thick dark mustache and bushy hair. They also had two dancing girls — one on each side of the stage — dancing to the music. The girls had at least three costume changes during the 90 minute set where they ran back to their trailer to change into a different miniskirt/top combination.
Thund Her Struck was a bizarre premise to begin with. Girls playing AC/DC... Girls liking AC/DC is unusual let alone playing it. In addition to being good musicians and highly energetic stage performers, the five women were all very attractive and had the guys (and girls) in the crowd cheering like wild.
After their set, Thund Her Struck had a “meet the public” table set up near the stage and a long line of people formed to meet the girls and get autographs and photos.
We arrived in Darrington around 2 in the afternoon. We had ten hours until we went on so it was no surprise that once some urgent issues were taken care of (e.g. setting up the crashing airplane, flashpots, and video projector) there was some time to burn.
The management of the festival treated us like real rock stars. I don’t know if that means we are real rock stars, or if it’s just easier for the festival to treat the Friday night acts the same way they treat anyone else.
Each of the bands had a trailer — a full-size motorhome with the fridge stocked with water, soda, and beer, hot water, toilets, shower, electricity, and TV.
The guys who drink in the band got all the beer they wanted. There was a to-die-for meal catered for bands and backstage staff which included seasoned buffalo chicken wings, meatballs marinated with pineapple, 3 or 4 different kinds of salads, and pretty much anything you wanted to drink. The management also had a fruit tray and a meat and cheese tray brought to our trailer later in the evening.
The amphitheater area at Whitehorse Mountain is set up as follows. There is a large multi-level concrete seating area arranged in an almost-semicircle. In front of that is grass. There is probably 120 feet from the first concrete step to a concrete pad in front of the stage. The stage is build into a log cabin-type building that also serves as the set up area for the bands. The stage is covered by a log roof. In front of the stage, they had a large lighting truss set up on eight pillars so there were lights above the front of the stage and then about 25 feet in front of that. There were also two light trees on the stage — one on each side — that had ten PAR-64 cans on them, each gelled a different color.
The front truss had several (8 or so) moving heads and multiple colored PAR-64 cans. The rear truss was all PAR-64 cans.
There were large speaker systems on each side of the inside pillars, facig the crowd.
We hung our projector inside the point of the log roof above the stage area and hung our screen above the drum riser toward the rear of the stage. We ran the cables for the projector down to the back of stageleft near the monitor mixer where I later set up my computers on a table.
Kendra, the lighting engineer, rocked. I was worried when I saw how “energetic” she lit El Loco and Thund Her Struck. Lighting Pink Floyd like that could be disasterous. She did great. The lighting was subdued and, for the most part, perfect. She also kept the stage thoroughly fogged up and hazed.
I thought it was dang cool we were working with a 20-something girl who was doing professional lighting engineering for a living.
It was still pretty light out when we set up the projector, so we couldn’t position it and focus it with respect to the screen. I made arrangements to bring a ladder out during the break between Thund Her Struck and Strutz to do that. By that point, it was dark enough we could see the image on the screen very well. We got the projector focused and almost positioned the way we wanted it; It was still a little slanted. I had to get back up before the Sons Of Nothing set and adjust it some more.
In addition to the projection screen, we also had a model plane rigged up on a wire to go from the concession stand at the top of back of the amphitheater seating — where the spotlights were — to the back of the stage. And, we had flashpots on each side of the stage which were to go off when the airplane came in.
Personally, I can’t say I’ve ever had a better show. The projection screen was really bright and colorful. I managed the video and CG visuals with more precision than I’ve ever done before.
The crowd was great. There were probably 2-300 people up close to the stage and a couple hundred or so more sitting on the grass or on the concrete bleachers.
We played from 12:15 or so until 2:30 in the morning. It was 4:30 by the time we got to our rooms at the Stagecoach Inn in Darrington. We were told we had to check out by 11 at the latest, so there wasn’t much time to waste not sleeping.
Thom and I got up around 9:30 and were the first ones ready to go. I walked to a convenience store nearby and got a couple Diet Mountain Dews to go and when I got back, Juli and Matt were ready to go too.
Speaking of Diet Mountain Dew, as soon as we hit Oregon and Washington, I couldn’t find it anymore on tap in the soda fountains. In fact, the selection of different sodas shrunk down to 6 or 8 pretty much everywhere we went in those states. That’s why I had to get 20 ounce bottles.
It’s not over yet as we’re still on the road, but I’ll say now that I had a blast and it was a thrill to get to perform my art (the projections, sound effects, and other special effects) to a large audience. Everyone I talked to congratulated me and the band on a great show.
Sons Of Nothing will be back in Salt Lake City in three weeks for a show at Liquid Joes and then, the week after that, we’ll be heading to Colorado for two or three shows.
We made it.
But not without having some experiences worth writing about.
We stopped in Boise and had dinner at Smokey Mountain Pizza. It was good.
Then, Thom took the wheel and drove us into the Oregon mountains. “ROCKS” and “TRUCKS,” screamed the orange and yellow diamond-shaped signs. In Utah they have signs that say, “WATCH FOR ROCKS.” I’m not sure what “ROCKS” means. I suspect it’s Oregon’s transportation authority giving us a heads up as we go on to play some kick-ass rock music.
We listened to a lot of music along the way including CDs from No Doubt, Styx, Rush, Queensryche, Yes, The Police, Faith Hill, Tears For Fears, and Supertramp.
We filled up the tank with gas in Mountain Home. Around 12:30, we stopped at a rest area and Thom switched places with me. I drove the rest of the way.
About 3:00, our fuel gauge was crying out in pain. The digital readout in the Durango said we had less than fifty miles to go. As we proceeded, we were finding no exits- especially none with fuel stations.
Finally, we happened upon a little resort town called Lexington. We pulled in to find both gas stations were closed. Normally, (normal being “not in Oregon”) this wouldn’t be a problem because we could just pay at the pump and go. Oregon, however, has weird laws about gas being pumped only by an authorized, certified, bonded station attendant.
At that point, we had about 30 miles to go until we were going to be empty. Pretty scary.
We continued down I-84 until we saw a blue sign along the side of the road saying the next exit had fuel. Yay! We pulled into a sleepy town called Rufus (named after a sleepy dog made famous by his laziness, I’m guessing) and pulled into the Shell station.
The Shell station was closed. Great.
At this point, our digital readout said we had about 12 miles left.
There were two motels along the Rufus main drag and we went to the offices of both of them which had large, bright neon “OPEN” signs lit up in the windows. The doors to both offices were locked. One door had a sign in the window that said to ring the bell and wait patiently. We did. Then we ran out of patience.
We went back to the Shell station and attempted to make the pumps work with a credit card. Amazingly, Matt got his credit card authorized and we proceeded to start pumping some gas. While the computer in the pump authorized his credit card and allowed us to start pumping, the main pump was turned off- so there was no pressure — or, very, very little pressure. By squeezing the hose with our hands and jiggling the pump dispenser, we were able to get 6 cents of unleaded gasoline into the Durango. That might have been enough to offset the cost of turning the Durango off to try.
One of the motels had a few motorboats on trailers sitting in the gravel parking lot. I walked by them looking for gas cans. I figured, if we could get a gallon or two of gas into the Durango, that might get us to a gas station. We could leave $5 for the gas.
I found nothing but a pair of rubber boots.
We discussed sleeping in the car until the Shell station opened. We had considered checking into a motel until we found out nobody actually managed the motels in this town. So, we decided to make a run for it.
We got on I-84 again, turned off the A/C, and I tried to drive as fuel-efficiently as possible.
After about three or four minutes, we saw a blue sign on the right side of the road. As we got closer, we saw it indicated establishments at the next exit that provided fuel. There were five logos on the sign and three of them had “24 HOURS” printed underneath them.
We filled up the tank there in Biggs, Oregon and made it to Longview, Washington. How stupid we would have felt had we waited in Rufus until 6 a.m. to fill up the tank only to find a mecca of stations less than 5 minutes away once we got back on the road.
It’s a ghetto
When Greg found out the venue had secured us rooms in a Super 8, he got real worried. He said it could be a ghetto. We joked about that all the way here.
The Super 8 looks like any other Super 8 from the outside. Inside, it still looks innocuous. When you get into a room, however, you discover just how inadequate it is.
No in-room Internet. Okay, I realize this is still a luxury, but the telephone doesn’t even have a “data” jack. I had to take the faceplate off the box in the wall where the line cord (which was hardwired inside the phone) went into a jack and plug my modem in there. When I tried to make a local call to an ISP exchange, it rang the front desk. I hooked the phone back up and called and asked what I had to do to make a local call. They said I had to make a $10.00 phone deposit.
What is this?! A halfway house?!
No shampoo in the bathroom.
Both the sink and the shower faucets work exactly the opposite of what you’d expect.
But, we’ere here and we’re safe. And, we avoided a close call... with the Twilight Zone.
Just left Mountain Home, Idaho. We’ve been on the road since about 3 this afternoon. I picked Thom up at 1 and we went to the credit union so I could deposit a check, to Wal Mart to pick up a few items, to Maverik to get ice, a couple hot dogs for me, and some other things. Then, we headed up to Layton to meet up with Juli and Matt at Matt’s house.
We’re riding up in Juli’s Durango which has been pretty good to us, but has had some intermittent air conditioning issues.
Juli’s been driving since we left Layton. For the most part, Matt, Thom, and I have been reading. Thom’s been reading a book called Travelling Music by Neil Peart (of Rush); Matt’s been reading some Java Enterprise Edition book; I’ve been reading a self-help book titled Crucial Conversations and I read the first chapter in Matt’s JavaServer Pages Developer Developers Handbook.
We’re headed to Boise where we will eat some dinner.
Thom and I bought some lunch meat and some bread at Wal Mart so we didn’t have to eat out every meal during our four days away from home.
Christine and I still haven’t found our digital camera. We’re pretty sure it’s gone for good. Christine and I talked about using the money I get from this “Sons Of Nothing — Northwest Tour” to buy a new one. I’ve been looking at an Olympus digital as a replacement for our Canon S10. If I had money to burn, I would get the Nikon D100, but the simple truth iS that we have to be budget-concious.
I have started doing work for a company based in Toronto, Canada called ODYC. I learned about this venture through my friend and co-worker at About.com, Dave Buchanan. He’s the development lead on ODYC’s project and felt I would be a good person to bring in on a contract basis to help get the project done.
I’ve got all the ODYC stuff on my laptop so I can get some work done while I’m on the road. I hope I can find time to do that because I want to devote some serious time and get deep into the existing code and design documents so next week I’m intimately familiar with everything.
The venue we’re playing at tomorrow night is a casino. Apparently, all the acts they bring in are tribute acts, hence our booking. It’s a little weird that we’re playing a casino, but if there’s a good crowd draw, we won’t complain.
As I mentioned above, I read some of Matt’s JSP book. The J2EE and JSP world is SO complicated compared to Perl. I’m having trouble understanding why so many entities choose Java for web application development. Just the amount of code required and the number of files which need to be created and edited, just to output a dynamic “Hello World.” to the browser seems an order of magnitude greater than with Perl.
I wish I had the J2EE or J2SE on my laptop so I could actually play with it a little bit.
Quite the weekend. Very productive and enjoyable, for the most part.
Friday the 13th == Buffy!
Last month, Eric and I started talking about watching the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode, Once More, With Feeling at his parents house since they have a big flatscreen TV.
We decided the best night to do this would be Friday, 13 August. In attendance were Eric, Adam (my brother-in-law), Melissa (his wife, Christine’s sister), Jennie (my soon-to-be ex-sister-in-law), Christine, and me.
Eric’s parents have left to serve a mission in the Phillipines, so they weren’t there. Eric ordered some pizza, I brought drinks, and Jennie brought enough lime-flavored tortilla chips and salsa to feed 40 people.
After watching OMWF, Adam and Melissa left and the rest of us watched Hush.
It was a great get-together. The shows looked terrific on the HDTV screen. There’s talk about doing it again sometime.
Hot Egos
Sons Of Nothing played a show in Salt Lake City at Club Egos on Saturday night.
The show went fairly well, but sound check was delayed by more than two hours due to obscure technical difficulties. Greg, the drummer, thinks the place is cursed or haunted because of all the problems he’s had there over the years in other bands and what not.
I had lots of new video for this show including stuff for On The Run, Time, Money, and Learning to Fly. I also experimented with some material for the original piece Mr. Serious, which is becoming a band and crowd favorite.
The A/C system at Egos lacks punch and I was soaking with perspiration at times during the set up and during the show itself. But, it wasn’t intolerable.
This was the second time SoN played Egos this year. The audience was as good or better the second time and the music was definitely better. The sound mixing was nowhere near as good, though. Whoever they had the last time SoN played there was better. I don’t know if it has to do with the fact they moved their soundboard since the last time or what, but blaring high-pitched feedback was showing up in the mix a lot.
On top of video projections and computer-generated visuals, I handle the sound effects. There were quite a few at this show partly because the set list included all songs from Dark Side Of The Moon. I think they all went off relatively on-cue. In addition, I was running lights. So, I was busy.
After the show was over and we packed up the gear, Thom and I met up with Jennie and our old friend Dave at a Dennys for a post-show meal. It was a lot of fun.
I got home close to 5 a.m.
On behalf of the band, I’d like to thank all the people who came to the show including people I’m related to (Jennie, Tom, Adam, Laura, and Jeremy), Bobbi, Dave, Chadd, and Damon. I hope you all had a blast.
Jennie did some great work at the show collecting additions to the Sons Of Nothing mailing list and selling over a dozen of the band’s latest CD, One Left Turn. She is really becoming a valuable person at these shows.
We may be heading back to Egos in October. We’ll see.
Sunday
I had such a hard time waking up this morning. I don’t know why.
Heh.
But, I managed to make it to sacrament meeting at church. Then I took Eli home and while he took a nap, I took a nap. Then we went and picked up Christine and the girls, changed our clothes at home, and then headed to my parents’ house for Sunday dinner.
Oh, it gets so late so quickly!
PLUG/PM
Last night I went to the PLUG meeting and it was awesome. There was a Perl Mongers get-together before that. It was the first official meeting of what is likely to become the Northern Utah Perl Mongers. It was nice to see some people come out who had little or no experience with Perl.
At the PLUG meeting, Ned Hanks presented on Nagios and it rocked. I wrote my own monitoring and reporting system from scratch a couple years ago... and that was a rewrite of something else I wrote. Nagios is probably 3-400% of what I have developed and it’s supported by a user community. I’ll be moving everything over to Nagios very soon now.
Just a reminder
Big Sons Of Nothing show coming up on Saturday. Be there (if you can)!
A near miss with two storms
Florida and the southeast coast are getting battered right now by a couple of tropical storms/hurricanes. Yesterday, I got a call asking if I’d be willing to teach a Linux system administration next week in Orlando.
I checked my schedule and it wasn’t the best because I was supposed to head up to Washington state with Sons Of Nothing for a couple shows on Thursday and Friday, but I need the money, so I made arrangements for my good friend (and brother-in-law) Adam to cover for me with the band so I could fly down to Orlando for a week of Linux instruction.
Then, this morning, I found out the class had been cancelled. Perhaps the facility is likely to be underwater on Monday?
Oh well.
So, now I’m back on track for going to Washington with the band and I’m happy about that.
I just won’t be able to buy that new digital camera I’ve been scoping out. ;-)
Howdy there. I’m blogging live from the XM_Coldaire WiFi network at the XMission colocation facility in downtown Salt Lake City.
I love that I can just walk in here, flash my fingerprint and enter my ultra-secret code, and work on a machine. It’s awesome.
One of the Iodynamics servers here at XMission has needed an upgrade to Fedora Core 1 or 2 for a while now. It’s a web server and it’s been running Red Hat 9. RH9 didn’t have a real good Apache and mod_perl package in it so I’m upgrading.
While the upgrade is proceeding, I’m surfin the web and blogging away. The only thing missing from this experience is a bowl of sunflower seeds and some Diet Coke.
Whoa. This installation is screaming by fast. The hardware is only a Pentium-III 866Mhz, but the hard drives are Ultra-160 SCSI drives that spin at 10,000 RPM. I think it’s only going to take 10-12 minutes to install Fedora Core 2.
Of course, once it’s installed, we’ll wait a half hour or so while all the updates install. FC2 has a lot of them because, IMO, it just wasn’t ready for prime time when it was released.
Changes of plans
I had planned, anticipated, looked-forward to, longed for accompanying Sons Of Nothing as they journey to Washington state to perform two shows next Thursday and Friday, but I’ve had an abrupt change of plans.
Today, our good friends at Guru Labs called. They’re in a bit of a bind and need someone to teach a Linux system administration course in Orlando, Florida next week.
Honestly, we need the money right now, so I can’t say no. But I couldn’t do it without making some arrangements for Thom and the band. My brother-in-law— and great friend— Adam came to the rescue and volunteered to take my place as technical minion for the band.
What a guy
Woops. I was busy blogging and missed the Fedora Core 2 installation prompting me to insert disc 2. Wow. That was fast.7
Anyway, back to this Orlando business. There are two tropical storms (could be hurricanes) on their way to Florida right now. They’re SUPPOSED to be finished doing their work by Saturday and I’ll arrive on Sunday. Whew.
Whoa! Now it’s asking for disc 3!
Well, this is going to be finished soon and then I need to restore stuff... so I better sign off now.
Sons Of Nothing is playing at Club Egos in downtown SLC this Saturday evening. I've got a handful of free tickets if anyone is interested in coming.
This is definitely a show to come to for several reasons, including:
- Ego's is an awesome club
- The FloydShow will include a complete performance of Dark Side Of The Moon
- I'll be debuting several new video clips
So, if you're interested in a free ticket (or a few), let me know or e-mail Thom via the SON site.
You know, a visit to engrish.com is guaranteed to cheer me up. Couple good new ones this week.
Eli’s #1
Monday was Eli’s first birthday. We had a small family and friends get-together with my parents, Christine’s parents, our neighbor Mandy and her son Jack, and Jennie. Christine’s lovely sister Laura and her hubby Jeremy came too. We’re not sure why... but we’re glad. ;-)
Eli had a blast. Christine made a delicious cake I wouldn’t mind her making a couple times a month (or more frequently, even). Eli got lots of clothes and a few cool toys. Maya and Lucy really liked the John Deere utility ATV thing he got. It vibrates, makes engine sounds, and plays some workin-hard country music.
Eli’ll grow out of it. I did.
The country music.
oscilations
As I mentioned in the last Fozzolog entry, my moods have been a bit on the downside yesterday. Today was probably the worst in months. Fortunately, I got out of the funk I was in and was able to do some work on the sprinkler system in the front yard and head to Home Depot with the family to do some shopping. We stopped at McDonalds on the way back.
Christine has been very good to me. She has to put up with lots of bullsh*t from me when I get into a down mood. I pity anyone who has to deal with me when I’m in such a funk.
I’ve been thinking maybe I married the right girl.
We’re coming up on TEN YEARS this year. Wow.
Right now, I’m feeling the best I’ve felt in several days. Despite being in a funky mood most of the day, I learned a little about myself and some ways of dealing better with these funky episodes. So, I’m feeling a lot more confident now.
ITT Technical Institute
I interviewed for a part time teaching job at ITT Tech last week. The interview went fine. They asked me to come back this week for a teaching demonstration where I would present a topic for about 15 minutes so the staff could gauge my ability to teach.
I e-mailed the associate dean I interviewed with and told her I had decided to withdraw my application. Here’s why: When I interviewed with her, she asked me about my certifications. I told her I didn’t have any and have never been required to have any. I mentioned that, in several instances, I’ve taught courses for other schools and training companies that were preparatory for certification exams like the CNE and the RHCE.
From what I was able to gather, if they hired me, I would start at the very lowest pay bracket because I only have a bachelor degree and no certifications to go along with it. She told me even an A+ certification would go a long way to bumping my pay up.
I thought about this over the weekend and it irked me more as I thought about it. Talk about inflexible policies! Shouldn’t they pay their instructors based on experience and performance? Certification seems to me to be a poor guideline for pay— especially when I consider the people I know who hold certifications like A+ and MCSE. They don’t know that much. In some cases, I know a lot more than them about PC architecture and Microsoft operating systems and networking.
These certifications don’t represent any real retention of knowledge about the respective topics nor does it represent any superior ability to convey that knowledge to others in a teaching environment.
Even the skills required for the RHCE— which I admire and would gladly get if someone gave me $1000 or so to take the exam— can be crammed for and forgotten promptly once the exam is over.
I’ve been having a crummy last couple of weeks. Stupid depression.
I’m going to try harder this next week to buck it. I hate how my moods control me. If I’m in a bad mood, I might as well be sedated. I’m useless. I can’t concentrate. I can’t work. And, most of all, I can’t seem to be real nice to anyone.
So, first off, I apologize to anyone who I’ve EVER treated badly because I was in a bad mood. It’s stupid.
Why have I been moody? Partially because work has been slow and the money coming in isn’t as good as it could and should be. It’s a dry spell. Small businesses have them, I know.
I’ve been trying hard to be a good leader, but my moods make it hard for me to be a good leader all the time. Half the time I’m great. The other half the time I’m all doom and gloom. I hate it.
Granted, I’ve learned how to deal with this depression crap a lot better than I could, say, five years ago. I just need to keep on it. It takes a long time to rewire years of bad wiring in the brain.
Now, if anyone’s reading this blather... Do you have any advice? This, of course, assumes you can relate to my condition. I know, it’s a stretch. Maybe I’m just a very self-centered prick.
We went and helped Jennie and Debbie move some stuff into their apartment on Saturday. They’re on the third floor, so they were lucky they had a few big strong men to help carry stuff.
Christine said she had some anxiety seeing Jennie’s stuff in the apartment.
The apartment is really nice and it sounds like they’re getting a fair deal on it. The apartment community has a swimming pool, tennis courts, and probably some other perks I’m not aware of. Maya and Lucy are excited about going to visit Jennie and getting to go swimming.
Ever since we moved out of Jay’s house (It’s “Jay’s house” now, I guess), Maya and Lucy have wanted to go “sleep over with Jennie“ but Christine and I haven’t felt good about it, for obvious reasons. But now Jennie has an apartment! Even better, she has an apartment with Debbie! Debbie’s SUPER FUN!
I hope they get sleep at night. I can imagine them sitting on the floor in the living room in their pajamas, eating junk food, talking, laughing, etc. and not noticing 5:00 a.m. just came and went.
:-)
