Since everybody else is posting theirs I thought I would say that yes, I do have a Dreamwidth account (a free one, I'm sure not paying $200 for it, although I gather they've sold decently well) under my same username. I don't know what I'm doing with it exactly, but I have it.

I went to bed when Rob got up, which was early (by normal-people standards), around 5:30 or 6. I woke up around 9 and went, wait, I can't wake up now, that's only a few hours of sleep! and went back to bed and slept until 1:30. I sort of think my habit lately of going to bed around the time Rob gets up works pretty well for Rob, since I apparently snore intermittently these days. (I have a new nightguard, which may help somewhat - the jury is still out on that.) Most of the time it works pretty well for me, too, since I have mostly been getting a good bit of studying done in the middle of the night - except lately I have gotten hooked on Atlantis, which is a shoot-the-marble kind of game, and I've been spending way too much time playing that instead. I don't know what's so addictive about it really, but I can't seem to stop playing it. I need to bear down this week and do some reviewing so I can take several tests and get on with this.

Our anniversary was Saturday - twenty-two years. We celebrated by going to Saltgrass for dinner (I had a steak, a tiny little perfect filet; Rob of course had chicken, because he is inhumanly virtuous), and Rob also brought me a plant, a lovely cyclamen which will undoubtedly die the minute I put it outside with the rest of the plants - past experiments have shown me they don't take the heat well - so we are keeping it inside for now.

Yesterday we went to see State of Play, the first time I'd been to a movie in quite a while. (I would be interested in seeing Wolverine if the reviews were good, but since they mostly seem to think it sucks I will pass.) State of Play was quite good and it seems to have gotten completely ignored, which is a shame. It is based on a British miniseries which I am interested in seeing now. (Pause while I go look at Amazon.) Here it is, and I just ordered it.

OK, time to go study now.

We are about to partake of the great delicacy of Celina - pizza from the drive-thru liquor store. Don't ask me, it just is.

(aka, a catch-up entry)

Hmm, I don't even remember when I last made a substantial post. Maybe on my anniversary, which was a week or so ago. Oh yeah, and I griped about the construction on Saturday. Let's see, in between there, I got really busy again at work - thus the lack of posts - and not much else happened, that I can recall. (Unless you want me to talk about American Idol. Which I don't think I want to do right now, but could probably be persuaded later, if there is interest.) Friday I left work early but I think I did boring stuff like get my glasses fixed and enter things into MS Money. So that gets us up to Saturday and the construction. I did stay home Saturday, but the flip side of that was that since I was home, I convinced Rob that we needed to go out to eat somewhere reasonably nice as a late anniversary dinner. So we went to Landry's. I had filet mignon and he had stuffed flounder and lobster bisque for an appetizer. It was a very nice dinner. I haven't been in there in a while, I forget how nice the atmosphere is. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sunday I did get up early and make the circuit around the construction to get to my mom's house. I scanned a bunch of pictures, which are then going to somebody else or going in the trash. Some of them seemed to be from my dad's side of the family, so he may get them in the mail soon. Like this one:



That is my dad's Aunt Ida and Uncle Jack (in 1967, according to the back of the card) - he is definitely getting these because I only ever met them a couple of times and although I remember that I thought they were nice, that isn't enough to give me any great sentimental attachment to this picture. That one is not surviving the weeding process; it's interesting enough to scan but not interesting enough to keep the paper picture.

and now I am sleepy so I will spare you the account of the stomach ailment I have had since sunday night, at least until later.

We have just had a very good dinner at a Mexican restaurant in College Station called Abuelo's (that means Grandfather's, right?). I assume it's a chain (yes, it is) but at least it was a pretty good one. They also had very good margaritas - I only had one, but it was strong and I am feeling rather mellow.

A whole bunch of relatives turned up this afternoon, most of whom I hadn't seen in several years. They were the "old people" of my family, meaning my grandparents' generation. My grandfather was the oldest of 5 children, and (a little oddly) although his brothers and sisters have all been dead for a number of years now, several of their spouses are still alive, and have remarried, some of them. I think they are all in their 80s, or at least very close to it, but they are hanging in there. (I don't think that any of my great-aunts and uncles married people significantly younger than themselves, that's why I think it's a little strange. That may be a bad sign for my own longevity, mightn't it?)

One little note from the road: on highway 290 coming out of Houston, they have painted these blue circles on the shoulder every half a mile or so, with a hurricane symbol in the middle. I can only guess that that is supposed to signify that it is an evacuation route - but honestly, I don't think anybody who doesn't have the wit to figure out for themselves what the evacuation routes are is going to figure it out from that sign. The water is south and east from Houston - so to evacuate you go north, or west. I wonder how much money they spent painting all those symbols on the side of the road.