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Update

Update

There have been some largish life events, so I thought everyone might like an update.

First, I moved to Denver. Lauren got a job and her own apartment so she’s graciously taken me in. So that’s where I’ve been lately. We didn’t have internet for a while, and even still my computer is broken from the move. However, Lauren’s new computer, which she built herself, has been running swimmingly all day. So I write from it. For those of you concerned, I am consciously trying not to co-opt her new machine into my own, despite her generosity. I know it’s hers and I’m not going to take it over even if she lets me.

It’ll be a lot easier to do that if I can fix my machine. It boots up fine but after about five minutes the screen goes blank except for vertical lines. The color varies, sometimes black, sometimes brown, sometimes grey. Afterwards the fans run as if the machine is running normally, but I cannot even get the numLock light to go off on the keyboard. It has been suggested that it could be a problem with RAM, which I’m rooting for as an alternative to the video card. I haven’t done much work on it, yet, however, since first we had no internet and I had other pressing issues to tend to, and later Lauren’s computer build was in progress. Checking the RAM should be simple, but my graphics card is pressed right up next to the ram slots, so I cannot remove any w/o removing my GPU, so the process will be time consuming. If anyone has any ideas for fixes or diagnostic tests or whatever, please let me know.

While I’ve been here not on the internet I’ve been helping? get things set up. When I arrived there were numerous problems with the apartment that turned out all the be linked to an electrical issue. Only half the power the apartment was supposed to get was coming to us, so lots of stuff worked poorly or not at all. But they fixed that.

Then the internet was supposed to be flipped on, but it didn’t work and some guy from the ISP had to come fix something that was mislabeled, probably about 1 foot from where the electrical problem had been. After that was repaired I had to talk to customer service for around 45 minutes to actually get the modem/router thing to work, but we got it in the end and we haven’t had any internet related issues since.

The third thing to break was our water heater, which burst and started dripping water down right beside Lauren and I and all her shiny new computer parts. I suspect the heater would have burst a long time ago, but who knows how long it hadn’t been actually heating water because of the electrical issues. Lauren and I were right there luckily and got towels and bowls, and when it became clear it wasn’t slowing down I managed to pull a lever thing that seemed to stop the flow. A maintenance guy came and replaced it (with my help lifting) soon after, and everything’s been good on that front as well.

So the joke is that there’s not much left that can break before we’re fully refurnished. I just hope the toilet and other plumbing holds together.

Lauren and I also went to the Ren Faire w/ her sister, brolaw, and brolaw’s bro. Those are words, right? Shut up red squiggly lines. It was pretty nice, although, we left a bit earlier than we might have otherwise, due to incredible rain. I don’t think it rains like that in Kennewick. See video put together by brolaw, Kevin.ย Oh, also, constumes furnished by brolaw’s bro, Austin, so credit and thanks to him.

Next week is the long planned vacation to Grand Lake, similar to last year. So I will hopefully be away from the internet most of that week as well. If I’m online during day light it means the weather is not cooperating, and at night it probably means the fire ban is still in effect and I can’t make s’mores. ๐Ÿ™ Will be way fun, though, rain or shine, fire or no. Mother is going to come down for part of the week this time so I probably won’t have to post as many pics to make her jealous.

Oh, also, toast/bread with peanut butter and banana, a long known deliciousness, is good with walnuts added. Just sprinkle them on there, press them into the gaps between the banana. We had leftover walnuts after making cookies and that’s how I’ve been getting rid of them. I recommend it.

Get on G+ if you want shorter, more frequent updates from me. Otherwise, I’ll try to update this a bit more than I have been of late. Peace.

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Update

Brevity is the soul of wit, so what’s infrequency the soul of?

Let’s hit the highlights you’ve missed.

The weekend after the Kaitlin’s wedding Mom and I went back over the mountains to go to Steve’s birthday party (get Lauren). We did some family visiting and whatnot before we stole Lauren back to the Tri-Cities.

So Lauren was here for a week. I had to work so we didn’t do anything truly awesome, but we did the whole happy couple thing. On Sunday we went to Morgan Fuquay’s (friend since preschool) engagement party. Hung out a bit and fed the wasps. Went to Costco and bought a 40” 1080p LCD and an ice cream bar (I love those Costco ice cream bars). We went on some walks, saw a Princess Bride in the park, I got Lauren to ride a bike, and of course we did a lot of watching podcasts, TV shows, and movies.

0814090907The only other interesting thing that happened during the week that I can think of is that someone egged our house on Wednesday. Well, threw an egg at the front window. Aaron rushed out and got all excited, whereas I was inclined to just ignore it. Kim convinced me to go out and make sure Aaron didn’t get beaten up, though, which was easy cause we didn’t find anyone. The next night someone wrote “Bitch” on the drivers side window of my parents car, which Lauren was borrowing. They did it with soap or something, so it came off easily enough, but Lauren kinda got freaked out. She thought she knew who it was and that they were after her or something. There’s been no events since then, though. I postulate that come the weekend they had better things to do, and if we make it this whole week without event I’ll assume they got bored, or they really did dislike Lauren and her absence is saving my house from further attack.

Donny is back in town for a little break, so he visited a few times, and Elisabeth, recently returned from the orient, came down on Saturday. We all went and saw District 9. I had no idea what it was when we went, so I was pleasantly surprised. It was definitely a good movie. I don’t think it’s actually as amazing as the hype would suggest, perhaps, but it’s good. If you factor in the low budget it’s quite incredible. I admit I can’t really comment on the hype much, being totally insulated from it, but I hear there is hype. Also, just a side note, I don’t think it counts as a sci-fi movie. I think to be a sci-fi movie that science has to play an important part in the plot, it kinda has to be a character. Maybe you can make a case that District 9 fulfills that, but it’s pretty thin.

So, Elisabeth stayed for a night, and then stole Lauren away. ๐Ÿ™ It was nice of her to drive her home, I guess, since she needed to get back and my parents are gallivanting around on some road trip.

So, with no parents and no girlfriend for the last 3 days I’ve been living the bachelor lifestyle. Pretty much work, and then go home and watch podcasts and such. I’ve also been wrangling w/ my computer trying to make it suck less. And chatting w/ Lauren. Really it’s just the bachelor life in that I have almost no food. I’ll go shopping some day. I want someone with a car to take me to Albertsons, or anywhere that sells the new thick shelled Klondike bars. I wanna try them, but the stores close enough for me to buy ice cream at don’t seem to carry them.ย  However, I could buy milk and bread and such on my own if it comes to that.

So, I have had some free time and I haven’t been blogging. Part of that is because I started watching Peep Show. It’s a British comedy that Keston suggested when the Central gang went down and stayed at his place. It’s about these two losers. It’s really funny. One of the actors’ voice sounds really familiar to me, but I don’t think I recognize him. I wonder if he voice acted something, or if all Brits sound the same after a while.

I’ve watched 2 seasons (series) which to the BBC is 12 episodes. It’s got some of that awkward humor that I don’t like much, where someone is just in a horrible situation and it’s supposed to be funny, like Curb Your Enthusiasm, but it’s British so it’s better, and that’s only like half the humor. The characters are just so retarded and do the most ridiculous things. I LOL every episode. And Wikipedia says it’s not cancelled yet, so hooray for that.

I’ve been riding my sister’s bike to work for the last couple weeks. It’s red, so it goes faster. Actually, if it does go faster, it’s cause it’s a hybrid bike. I’m leaning towards the idea that it does go a bit faster, although it’s difficult to judge w/o the speedometer. I think I’m getting to work in about the same time w/ less effort. Kinda makes me wonder how much a difference a full road bike would make.

I worry a little bit about going much faster. People are clueless and deaf and always walking on the bike path. Today there was a woman walking her dog, and she stopped at this point where the path goes up a curb, turns 90 degrees and then goes down a steep hill. I was riding slowly at her, while she stopped, turned towards me, and let her dog off the leash, so I thought that was a little strange but at least that she’d seen me. But, as I got closer I figured out she hadn’t and saw she had in ear buds. Anyway, it was too late and I was passing between her and her dog and as I was she turned to reach for her dog or something and almost hit me and recoiled in utter surprise. It was kinda funny, but only because we didn’t collide and die.

Also, today on the ride home I almost rode over a snake that was lying in the middle of the path. It was dead in the middle. I’m meaning directly in the center in the previous sentence, although it maybe been literally dead as well. I zigged around it but when I looked back it hadn’t moved, and I can’t have missed it by much. It might have gotten run over earlier.

David Mitchell is the name of the Peep Show actor I was saying had the familiar voice. Wikipedia says he did the narration for Beauty and the Geek, which I did see like 5 – 10 minutes of. I hope my auditory memory is that good. I can’t find anything else on his filmography that I’ve seen. /shrug

I have a bunch of spider bites on my legs. I think I got them all in one night, but I’m not sure. Sometimes when I get up in the morning, my bike is part of a spider’s new web creation, even though I parked it only 12 hours before, so, that’s pretty cool. I wonder if we manage to get the yard taken care of a bit through the winter if next spring the insect population will be more limited.

So Lauren’s leaving in 11 days for Spain. When she left I was thinking it was further off, so I thought there was a better chance of us seeing each other again b4 she left. Now it seems somewhat unlikely. /sigh It’s ok though, I hate those big goodbyes anyway. Plus internet, I mean, what’s the big deal with being 9 hours ahead. ๐Ÿ˜›

So, it looks like I’ll just be chilling out at home this weekend. Haven’t really done that in a month or so. My parents are getting back from their trip, so they might crash the party and make me do housework, but they might be busy with their own stuff. /shrug Pat’ll be around, I think, but he has 40 gigs of Hercules to watch, so he’ll be distracted.

I think I will end this post. I just want to quickly mention one thing. There was recently (sorta, I’m a bit behind on my podcasts) a TEDTalk about the aqueous ape hypothesis of human evolution. I strongly recommend people watch TEDTalks, and in general you can trust them, but this particular one, I’m pretty sure is crap. I haven’t had time to do the research yet, but I feel confident that it’s a fringe hypothesis for a reason. I’ll let you know if I find time. Anyway, I wanted to warn against this particular talk because the speaker is not un-compelling, and the audience seemed really taken, and I’ve also seen signs that more and more people I know are actually watching the TEDTalks, so the impact could be great if not countered.

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Update

things that have happened

KM&KM
This is what I'm talking about
Last Friday mother and I went over the mountains to the Seattle area largely to attend the wedding of Kaitlin Carr (defunct name) and Kevin McNamara. Lauren’s sister got married and we went. We also snagged Yusuke from Ellensburg and took him to the airport. His flight was at 4 AM so we ended up just dropping him at like 11:30 cause we didn’t wanna wake up. Sorry about that Yusuke. ๐Ÿ˜› He txt’d saying he was leaving, eventually, so I guess he made it.

We didn’t end up taking the truck and stealing the Carr chairs, as previously reported, because the information that said I could have those chairs was incorrect. I mean, partially. I can have them, eventually, maybe. Whatever.

The big story of the trip was the big fight that occurred around us soon after we arrived on the scene and I met all of Lauren’s family. You sorta had to be there, but the gist is that Kaitlin cried, some assumptions were made, Lauren’s aunt got booted from the house and wedding with lots of yelling and goading to violence, and then there was lots more crying, and then in like 10 minutes there were apologies and everything was pretty much back to the way it was before. I was only tangentially involved, and so it wasn’t my fault. At least not the way some of you are thinking.

That was all the day before the wedding. The actual wedding day seemed to be pretty uneventful, in that regard. There was the wedding, which is quite the event to those involved. I just watched from the balcony. It was like 20 minutes long, so that was good, and they, meaning the bride and groom, actually managed to pull off the first kiss in front 130 people thing really well, I thought.

The reception afterwards was neato, I guess. I mean, I’m not much for parties and whatnot, but this one didn’t have booze, so that’s up my alley, and I got to sit at the head table, which is also up my alley, and I got to sit next to Lauren and hang out with her the whole time, which is really the reason I went over the mountains in the first place. There was all the usual reception stuff, dancing, bad dancing, toastsโ€ฆ yeah.

The rest of the weekend I basically follow Lauren around like a puppy and hung out with her family. We ate and bowled and stuff. I think I was very witty and charming, and nobody tried to exorcise me, so I had a pretty good time.

Ok, enough about that. Ask Lauren if you wanna know more about her sister’s wedding. ๐Ÿ˜› We came home Sunday and I did laundry (yeah, I know, lame huh) and set up my Drobo I bought and got ready for work.

My cousin, Steve, is having a party on Thursday, so we’re going back over the mountains (yay! More Lauren!) for that. Consequently, I’m trying to work long hours so I won’t fall too far behind taking off two Fridays in a row, and half a day on Thursday. So, I’ve basically been working all the time since I got back.

I installed this plugin, SunCult, that tells me when the sun will set and what not. Yesterday I managed to ride home entirely during twilight. The weather addon says the apparent temperature was 94 due to the wind. It was actually 98. Nice eh? Twilight riding is definitely as cool, temperature-wise, as I can do w/o biking in the dark, but it also has the greatest number of bugs to contend with. I’ve been careful to bike w/ my mouth closed, and I managed not to swallow any, but I know if I keep biking at twilight they’ll get in my eye or nose or something.

So that’s what’s been happening. I have a busy few days ahead of me, so posts might not be coming.I was just wondering, though, can anyone tell me if poppy seeds actually add anything to the taste of poppy seed muffins?