For one of my friends, however -- a singer, a dancer and a lover of life -- tomorrow will in fact be too late. Tonight I'm raising a glass of water in honor of Pete and his family.
Gosh it's been a long while since I've updated people on what's been going on over here. It's actually been really frickin' busy around here, and there's gonna be some very interesting changes coming Real Soon Now. Specifically, Teh Geek and I are scheduled to close on a new house in two weeks. The entire process from house search to bid to contract to inspection to closing has just swept by in a blur, but I'm really excited by it all. The new place is in Wheaton (well, technically Silver Spring -- but never mind that), just a short piece up the road from the mall. It has a nice yard, a GREAT kitchen, and one of the nicest neighboors I've ever met.
The other piece of news that's been taking up a huge ammount of my time and energy is that my boss at work went on medical leave a month ago, and I've been running things ever since. I've always said that I never really wanted to go into management, but I've been finding it exhilierating as well as exhausting.
Anyway, the extra hours at work mean that I've had to start getting to bed earlier... so I'm going to start heading in that direction. Hopefully I will have more updates for y'all in the weeks ahead.
Well! I apparently had VOX Mobile on my phone all this time and never knew it. Maybe now I'll have fewer reasons not to post.
Too bad there doesn't seem to be an option to cross-post to LJ. :-(
Late this past July, Giddysinger and I started house-hunting. I reserved a notebook (one of the heavy-covered, grid-ruled types I use for my professional work), and we started doing some web-based research. We began talking to various people about their home-buying experiences, found a real-estate agent online, looking up house and neighborhood prices, and discussed both budget and what we want in a house.
By the time we had some clear ideas on particular houses, a pre-approval letter from our bank, and had winnowed down the huge list of hits provided by the agency's web search, Revels rehearsals had started up. In addition, Giddy was building up to Golden Quarter and I was getting ready for a late-fall professional conference. Then there was Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's. I used the time I had to drive by several of the places, looking at the exteriors and making additional cuts based on maintenance and neighborhood.
Today we met the real-estate agent for the first time and toured several of the houses on the short list. (Several were added to the short list even though they hadn't made it through the automated filters. They're just a bit above our target price range.) Of the places we viewed, there are two we think would be wonderful. One is solidly in our price range. The other has a nicer kitchen, a deck, a bit more space, and somewhat better maintenance - but is listed almost 10% higher than my "maximum" price. Our agent thinks he may be able to talk it down.
So it's time to move more aggressively. Giddy's father has made it quite clear he wants veto power over houses that look like either they'll need lots of maintenance or are in sketchy neighborhoods. He has bought and rented a number of houses in the past and is providing a large contribution to the downpayment. Accordingly we need to set up a time when he and the agent can go with us to compare these last two houses. We'll also call up a couple of banks and ask for estimates on loan rates. The agent will do some research and start talking to the sellers. I'm hoping that within a couple of weeks we'll be making firm plans to schedule inspections, closing, etc.
I like the current apartment, but want to be out of here by May 1. We'll probably make it.
Dinner was a relatively small affair this year with just Teh Wife and Teh Mother. Still, I'm actually rather pleased with how it turned out:
Roast Turducken. (Relax... It was store-bought. I am nowhere near good enough to make one of those myself.)
Sweet Potatoes:
(recipe from my father)
Boil and peel 4 pounds of sweet potatoes.
Mash the potatoes in a bowl
Add a stick of butter, 1/8 cup of maple syrup, 1.5 oz rum, 8-12 drops of Tobasco, 1/4 - 1/2 tsp salt.
Mash all the ingredients again until everything's smooth. (It's important to mash the potatoes first BEFORE you add any butter.)
Pour the potatoes into a ceramic bowl, and cover the top with brown sugar and pecans.
Bake until the brown sugar is melted.
(This recipe theoretically serves 8, although the three of us at exactly half of it.)
Cinnamon Spinach Salad:
(recipe from flutestory)
For the salad, combine baby spinach, 2 medium apples thinly sliced, walnuts and dried cranberries in the bowl.
For the dressing, combine 1/4 cup honey, 3 Tbsp veg oil, 2 Tbsp cider vinegar, 1/2 tsp dry mustard, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp salt and 1 pressed garlic clove together and mix well.
(recipe serves 6ish)
And to round it out, of course, an Apple Pie and Vanilla Ice Cream from Giffords.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
When I originally came up with the name of this blog, I imagined the "for all" as being represented with the corresponding mathematical symbol - essentially an upside-down capital A. (I think it's a coincidence that it resembles that letter, and the symbol has something more to do with a V + crossbar, but I don't know.) Anyhow, I now have a title banner... At some point I want to insert some background pictures and make a collage referencing various games, physics projects, and people.
I can only put the personalized banner with a small set of backgrounds, thus the loss of the "Weston Natural" backdrop that was here before. The new green grid is reminiscent of the heavy bound notebooks I use at work, and which I've started ordering for personal use. (They hold up MUCH better than conventional notebooks, and the grid rule useful for sketching diagrams of dungeons, monsters, spaceships, fictional blasters, plasma guns, or noise-rejecting magnetic probes.)
TTFN
Something Giddysinger and I have long feared has come to pass. Much of our free time has come to pass, and we are constantly discussing our options with each other, with friends, and with random passersby. It's sadly reminiscent of the doomed characters from this video:
Yes, we've been sucked into a MOG (Multiplayer Online Game; I will no longer use the unwieldy conventional acronymn MMORPG). In particular, we've become mired in Puzzle Pirates, which has the nefarious plan of being built around short, 5-minute games. We keep thinking, "Just one more hit, man. I can take it. Just one more. It's not too late." Several hours after we start, when we're too tired to think and there's a dawning realization that there's much less than the nominal 12 hours of night remaining, we'll log off and crawl into bed.... So if yer on the Cobalt Ocean, me hearties, come looking for Giddysinger of the Boochin' Drunks and Madammad of the Booty Bandits, both of the flag SuperAwesomeness.
This is from a friend's f-locked post on the "Inside the Actor's Studio" meme:
10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
"I
don't care if you never believed in Me, I always believed in you. And
yes, all the crap I put you through was a test. Congratulations, you
passed: here's your sword."
Mom's about to get hit by Hurricane Ike. The family has determined to "hunker down" as the Mayor of Houston recommended. (Mom's actually in Beaumont, TX, but Houston's the closest reference point for distant folks.) Ike's expected to be a category 3 hurricane when it makes landfall southwest of Houston, and to have hurricane-force winds extending into Louisiana. It'll still be a Tropical Storm when it gets to Arkansas, and a Tropical Depression when it gets to Illinois. It's friggin' huge. But not much I can do about it. Mom said she'll try & call once she has updates.
Meanwhile, I'm at University of Maryland again today. I spent a lot of yesterday making modifications to the gun to try to improve performance. The mods seem to have helped substantially, though it's still not up to what we'd originally hoped to achieve. Unfortunately, my adjustments can't withstand the est. 300 kA currents that are produced... Basically, the high current current creates a strong magnetic field just outside the conductor. This field contributes to a magnetic pressure which pushes the current inward, crushing & tearing the conductor. So one of the top machinists here is making a new connection. It's taking longer than expected, because we couldn't find appropriate parts to scrounge. Not much for me to do with that either....
Thus I'm taking an early lunch to check my mail, write a blog entry, and get out of the freezing lab.
I hate waiting.... as Giddy can attest if you ask him about cooking with me around...
