Graduation Day!

Last night was the last meeting of Spanish class for the semester. Only about half of the class turned out, so we went over the homework, told a few jokes, and headed out, caravan-styley, for a local Mexican restaurant. Well, yes, it was NC-Mex (which isn't quite Tex-Mex) but the food was tasty and the waitstaff good-naturedly entertained our pathetic attempts to engage in all transactions in Engspish (which isn't quite Spanglish). Almost everyone who went to dinner is also planning to take the 2nd semester class starting in January, and we worked on the profesor to sign up to teach the Monday evening section if possible. He is a good teacher and we like the people who are taking the class. We've signed up, of course.

One cool thing about taking a class through the continuing ed program at the community college is that there are no grades, so everybody passed. But I think SNG and I will be doing a lot of studying over the holidays to ensure that we meet the prerequisites for the next class. :-)

Today I'm off for NYC. SNG will be flying out tomorrow, and while I'm teaching all day, he'll be walking around museums, Macy's, and the Empire State Building, and standing in line for cheap Broadway tickets.

If anyone has earned 3 days on the town, it's SNG. Bless his heart, he made the mistake of tracking his overtime in the same spreadsheet as his vacation. So far this year, he's taken about 145 hours of vacation. He has worked about 185 hours of overtime. You can do the math. It comes as no surprise when he starts to get all Jake Morgendorffer at the dishwasher, or the garbage collectors, or the TV, .... Yeah, he deserves a little down-time.

It's still 28 degrees outside, but I've procrastinated long enough. Gotta get running.

Home at last!

I've been mostly disconnected since Thanksgiving break started, with little fits of communication access, and then darkness again.

But first, a clarification about the hat my Canadian colleague so generously donated to me in my time of need in arctic Nova Scotia. My dad, a born-and-raised southern Louisiana boy, informed me that the hat is called a Toque. How he would know this, as he's never lived for more than 1 year anywhere colder than Texas, I can't underatand, except to fall back on the usual explanation that my dad actually knows everything.

So, through brilliant deduction, I have determined that my hat is in fact Provencal, and not Canadian as I had previously reported. The way I figure, if the hat is a toque, then surely it was named for Alexis de Tocqueville, which would make perfect sense as the Canadians, like Americans, are fans of democracy. And what a fine homage, indeed! And if a toque a hat, then I can only conclude that de Tocqueville translates to from Hat Town. Well, if there's a Hat Town in France, then it must be Avignon, where the critically acclaimed Chapeauneuf-des-Papes comes from. So de Tocqueville's ancestors must have come from Avignon, and the Toque, while it may have been dreamed up by Canadians, clearly has Provencal roots. And now you know!

By the way, the hat has saved my toque-us on 2 more trips since then, and it has special status as my 3rd-favorite-winter-hat now.

The Austin trip was terrific! We got to spend lots of time with my mom and dad, my brother and my sister-in-close-enough-to-law, which alone would make the trip worth going, but we also got to spend some time with my niece, who is the coolest little chickie I know. She's not very tall for her age, so even better, she isn't taller then I am yet. By about 10-12 years old, all my little cousins have passed me in height. What do they feed these kids in the public schools??? I know that within another 2 years or so, my neice will be doing the thing where she rests an elbow on my shoulder, all causally, so that it's even more obvious that she's as tall as an amazon. I'm resigned to my destiny of bolstering the self-esteem of the pre-teens in my family. Everybody's got their something. *sigh.

We did some pilates with mom, went ice skating with my neice, saw T&E and their little dude (a.k.a. Big Al). SNG went home on Tuesday, and I flew from AUS to Ann Arbor on Wednesday to teach at UofM. It was a good time, but Ann Arbor is SERIOUSLY cold. It snowed and I didn't have a car, so I walked everywhere. But I had my fabulous new knee-length down-filled coat, so it wasn't all that bad.

And there's only 1 trip left for the year! Yay! Week after next SNG and I will go up to NYC (I've got a 3-day class, SNG's got a lot of sightseeing to do) and hopefully will be able to see my cousin Cosmopolitan (who thinks her name refers to her social drinking habits, but it really refers to the fact that she's lived in some major urban-hip places, so she's the most cosmopolitan person in our family). We'll also grab dinner with a friend from work and his partner while we're there, and we always like seeing them. In the meantime, though, it's overtime in the woods for me! I missed most of the fall colors, but I'll be darned if I miss the last of the not-too-cold-to-hike weather.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!!

I'm in Austin, with the UT- aTm game on behind me. We got here Wednesday and the weather's more like late September than late November. We've been able to bike and hike and eat and do all those things that you'd want to do in central Texas in November. Mom made a whole mess of pies, and we delivered 6 of them to the Salvation Army Wednesday afternoon. They got apple, pecan, and pumpkin pies. Mom makes a mean pie, and it's nice to think of all those people enjoying it for Thanksgiving dinner. But not all the pies went to charity- she made apple crisp, key lime pie, pecan pie, and pumpkin pie for our Thanksgiving dinner. Today she'll make a lemon meringue pie, too. Oh, the humanity! Sometimes she just gets the bee in her bonnet to do something, and I guess this week it was pie. Aw, shucky-darn, we just have to do our part to support her hobbies!

Before the gorgefest yesterday we saw our very dear friends T&E and their little 20-month-old munchkin. He's the cutest little guy you've ever seen. What a flirt!! He'll hide around a doorway and peek his head around, look at you, and smile this sly little grin and it's IRRESISTABLE, I tell you! Almost makes me want one of my own. Or maybe T&E will let us borrow theirs.

Today my niece is coming to town!! Yay! Her birthday was Tuesday, and I haven't seen her since Christmas 2003. She's such a cool kid. She's getting old enough to appreciate the finer things in life, like clothes shopping, ice skating, and Harry Potter. This should be a fun weekend for sure!

By the way, update on the New York trip last week. I went to a Broadway show called Avenue Q. It's a parody of Sesame Street, complete with muppets and perky little songs. Very very funny. I'd love to get the music on CD. I'd highly recommend it to anyone going to NYC. Very irreverent, and SO much fun.

Oh well, this is getting to be a boring "what I did last week" post so I'll stop here. Maybe I'll think of something else to talk about to humor you later on. Have a terrific holiday and I'll eat an extra slice of pie for you!

It's Krispi and it's fresh, but it ain't doughnuts...
Nova Scotia was really fun. It turned out to be colder than The Weather Channel thought it would be, so I didn't really have appropriate clothing. I should've known -- if you go to Canada, BRING THE PARKA! Even if it's August. You just never know when a nor'easter will strike. Luckily, a colleague from Toronto took pity on me and gave me a bright red, most-super-fantastic took (or is it spelled tuc?) with my company's super-fantastic logo emblazoned across the front. If, like me, you didn't watch enough Doug & Bob MacKenzie as a child, a took is a hat, like a stocking cap without the ball, and kind of shaped at the top- not like a tube that's just been stitched together at a point, but a little more, um, square-ish. Mine also has a liner of black sweater material around it, giving the effect of 2 tooks layered together. It's most awesome. And warm.

Trivia for the Traveler-- Seafood in Nova Scotia is CHEAP. And GOOD. If you pretended the canadian $ were actually US$, it was STILL cheap. Then take the prices and multiply by about .78, and then it's like they're giving it away! And in a way, I guess they almost are. There were roadside trucks all over the highways selling-- no, not watermelons, or peaches, or even boiled peanuts (a southern delicacy).... fish! Smoked, fresh, live, whatever. Lots of fish. For sale on the side of the highway. I didn't partake-- allowing the local restauranteurs to do my cooking for me. But I could definitely live in a place where they sell seafood at every corner. Mmmmmmmlobsters. I'd buy a pair of big lobsters on my way home from work and do 'em up right, in crab boil! Extra spicy!

(slap-slap, focus! back to reality!) OK, anyway. On Friday I had nothing to do but sightsee and so I took my rent car, my took, and a crude Avis map of NS, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island on-one-page and followed the coastline along the Atlantic ocean and various coves, bays, waterways, fishing villages... It was Remembrance Day and I saw a band of WWII veterans at the Lunenberg Canadian Legion building looking distracted but very patriotic. What a great time. The only shopping I did was at a monster tourist trap called Peggy's Cove where I visited the busiest gift shop ever. I don't mean it was full of people-- I mean it was busy. My eyes never adjusted to the spectacle of tchotchkes. SNG got a groovy new magnet and I got a bunch of postcards (my pics weren't as good).

On the way back, I saw the funniest sign- hand (spray-)painted, out in front of a (ahem) business establishment:

Krispi Kraut

Sauerkraut

Always Fresh!

Eat your heart out, doughnut fans. Get them when they're hot??

This week's destination-- New York.

Chicago was fun. A coworker from Detroit was also there teaching, so we went to the Art Institute's museum and dinner afterwards on Thursday evening. There was an exhibit of old B&W photos of Paris dating from the mid/late 1800s to about the mid 1950s. Some very early photography, and it was surprising how good condition these pictures were in. One thing that was interesting were some pictures taken to document the original layout of some Paris neighborhoods that no longer exist. After the revolution, a big effort was made to tear down and rebuild some neighborhoods to make them more amenable to modern infrastructure, straighten street layouts, and widen the streets-- preventing the easy erection of impromptu barricades that were so key to neighborhood battles in the late 1700s/early 1800s. A photographer was hired to document these neighborhoods that would be completely flattened. It was kind of sad to think, this neighborhood, which looks like so many you might see in Paris, no longer exists at all.

This week I'm off to Halifax, Nova Scotia. How many times will I have the opportunity to visit Nova Scotia for free? I'm taking an extra day on Friday to look around. It'll be chilly, but not too bad. Weather forecasts say lows in the upper 30s at night. Heck, that's about like Raleigh. Anyone have suggestions for things to see in Halifax? I hear that the Bay of Fundy has some of the biggest tides in the world- that should be intersting to see. And I bet their seafood is outta sight.

The Guy Fawkes Day celebration was SO much fun!! I think we should have bonfires more often. Burning Stuff!! What a joy! It was like camping without the camping part. With a house! And toilets! And TV! And extra pickle relish in case we ran out! We burned the Guy F effigy and learned that yard scarecrows from the grocery store are not flame-retardant. They torch like they're made of lighter fluid.

During the bonfire, we were all cooking hot dogs and s'mores over the flames, and eating WAY too much. Everybody was QUITE full but still eating, when someone pointed out that we were really just eating as an excuse to keep burning things. Well, why do we need an excuse?! So we burned stuff. We burned everything we could find. Acorns, marshmallows, wrappers for everything, hot dogs, buns, mini chocolate bars, aluminum cans, paper plates, junk-mail catalogs, you name it. If it wasn't nailed down, it went into the fire. Did you know that aluminum can burn? Well, they melt into a little puddle. Close enough.

Cold Blues
So I'm sitting in the kitchen Friday night watching SNG make some chicken and sirloin stir-fry with about 1/4 cup of cayenne pepper and I start sneezing-- and sneezing, and sneezing. At first we thought it was the pepper in the air, but after dinner I was still sniffly and then my throat started to hurt and by bedtime I was full-out sick with a cold. Or maybe allergies, I can never tell the difference.

I don't get sick very often. I probably get food poisoning more than I get flu & colds combined. Part of the thrill of business travel is the uncertainty of restaurant cleanliness standards-- Salmonella Roulette! Anyway, I don't get sick very often, but when I do, it lingers for weeks. Good timing. I've got 5 straight weeks of travel, and if you've ever flown with a headcold you know it's an experience in pain like no other.

This is definitely some kind of avian-bird-flu-SARS head cold thing. I felt too bad to workout on Saturday so we just hiked with the dog in the woods out back. We probably walked 2 miles, but Goofch ran about 5 or 6. The woods are full of deer. It's nice to see that he's getting some of his fitness back. This time of year is so nice because it's still green, but there are very few spiders or bugs. It's the Golden Mean of the forest, that balance of the hot and cool forces, when the sky is a rich shade of blue and the squirrels are fat.

Sunday we took the tandem out for the 2nd time in over a year. First time was a couple of weeks ago when we discovered that the left-side gear shift lever was broken and we were perpetually stuck in the granny chainring. It's now been repaired, and I figured riding the tandem meant if I started feeling rotten, I could let SNG take up the slack. It was a good call because I needed to drink about every 10 seconds and on the tandem I can just let go of the handllebars the whole time if I want to. Besides, the view is nice where I sit...

Last night Peace and Fuzzy came over for dinner and a movie. They brought over The Third Man-- an old B&W murder mystery/con film set in post-WWII Vienna. It was written by Graham Greene, who is really good at developing quirky characters that have a certain awkward realism that came through even under the veil of late-40's-movie elegance. The main character was really good at blundering his way through every situation leaving a trail of destruction all the while apparently oblivious to the role he played.

So today I'm back at work after about 4 hours' sleep last night. On the upside? I did get our spanish homework done about around 2:30 this morning. But you know how your nose gets all raw when you have a cold? I've got vaseline slathered all over my nose and lips and it probably looks like boogers but I swear it's vaseline, and I should probably work with my door closed today. Not only for the ick factor, but because when I'm sick, I worry about being Too Much Information Girl. And while you, my cyber-friends, certainly want to hear about clever tricks to drain hard-to-access sinus cavities, I doubt that my coworkers do.

It's winter already?
It was 41 degrees this morning!!! It's still October. It's still hurricane season! It can't be 41 degrees.

So when it's this cold, I don't like getting on my bike. Jogging is much nicer in the cold because there's not so much wind. Maybe if I ran faster there'd be wind. But the way I run, I only feel wind when someone passes me. ;-)

Spanish class is coming along OK. It's fun and all, but last night we spent almost the whole class reviewing homework. It moves along pretty slowly, and I'm afraid that by the time the Spain trip rolls around, all I'll be able to say is "What time is it" and "The professor is tall" and "I have a hardworking piece of chalk." I still don't know how to ask for the bathroom. "Donde esta la toilet?" Or is it "Donde es la toilet?" Is a toilet always a toilet? Does it meet the requirements of geographical-location-means-verb-change? Oh drat. "Ou sont les toilettes" is just so much easier.

I wonder whether more Spaniards speak French or English?

The people in my class are a hoot, and some of them seem pretty cool. I wonder how many will take the level 2 class next semester. Heck, I wonder whether I'll be able to, with the travel schedule that looms on my horizon. I was just lucky that this semester all my business trips start on Tuesday or Wednesday so I can take a Monday night class.

And speaking of travel, last week in Boston I visited the museum of fine arts. It was terrific. I'd recommend it to anyone headed up that way. There was a free exhibition called "Things I Love" which was a collection of William Koch's art and other nifty things. Koch (I didn't know who he was, either) is a wealthy tycoon who raced in and won the 1992 America's Cup race. He sounds pretty arrogant, to tell the truth, BUT what was really really really cool is that out in front of the museum were THE SHIPS that took 1st and 2nd place in that race. The winner was Koch's ship, America3, and the 2nd place was a ship called Il Moro de ... (something in italian). Right there, in the MFA's front yard. Words can't describe. They were so beautiful.

There was also an Ansel Adams exhibit, but it was $22, so I skipped it and looked at the pictures that were made into postcards in the gift shop. It looks like it would have been a great exhibit, if I'd had enough time to make it worth $22.

But the best part of visiting the MFA was the concert. As I was walking around looking at the Asian and Islamic art sections, I could hear faint music, like bells only kind of like strings, too. Gradually the music became louder, so I went to find where it was coming from. Up in the musical instruments collection they had set up a small platform where a group of about 15 musicians were playing various ancient chinese percussion-type bell and stringed instruments. The music was different from anything I'd ever heard before. Little by little all the visitors to the museum made their way into the little room to listen. The people watching was almost as good as the concert.

This week I'm in the office (except for the lunch date in DC Wednesday) for the last time until late December. Next week: Chicago. I'd like to catch a jazz show or a few museums while I'm there. Any suggestions? I'm staying downtown just a few blocks south of Navy Pier.

Stocking Stuffer!
Whoa, y'all. Check this out. One of SNG's friends at work saw this bike for sale in a shop in Italy for about 1200 euros (about USD1500). Check out what it retails for here.

SNG summed it up best when he wrote "Holly Carp!"

Holly carp indeed.

So, who thinks I should bring a few bikes home from Europe this winter? I could always use another bike...

I know that people like to be festive, and I'm certainly the LAST person who should be critical of others' holiday decorations, but...

I CAN'T STAND THOSE INFLATABLE LAWN HALLOWEEN CRITTERS!

It's just so obvious that the FatCat Executive of Creative Ideas sent a memo along the lines of, "If we have the sweatshops use the same dies for cutting nylon Christmas gewgaws but cut orange fabric instead, and then silkscreen jack-o-lantern faces on them, Voila! We'll have a fresh new profit channel! They'll sell like hotakes in February!"

The locals are just MAD about those inflatable halloween yard critters, in all of their 8-foot-high glory. My neighbors (a.k.a. The Woodspeople) haven't put up many of these, but I suspect that's just because they don't decorate for anything.

Like all the lawn inflatables, the Halloween critters have their charm while they're on, but by morning they're just a bunch of sad puddles of dead rip-stop, lying there like Oz witches after a storm.

OK, now that I got that out of my system, I sincerely apologize for offending any of you who may have one such critter on display in your yard. Go enjoy your lovely lawn thingie. Even if it is an exact replica of the Snowman critter, only orange-and-black.

Tomorrow I'm headed for Boston, where it'll be cold but the public gardens are still good for jogging any time of year.

Since my cousin has brought up the topic of embarrasing holiday candy-related-topics, I have to take this opportunity to admit to something slightly embarassing.

During October, the cafeteria at work (the World's Best Cafeteria, complete with live pianist, no joking) has candy corn as one of the toppings at the frozen yogurt/sundae bar. I love candy corn. And being too ashamed to just get a scoop of candy corn in a cup, I have been getting a teensy dab of frozen yogurt and scooping a few spoonfuls of candy corn on top. Yeah, that's a sundae, really. Oh just ring it up already. I'm just here for the candy corn.

But if I bought a whole bag of candy corn, it wouldn't be as good. The Forbidden/Rare Treat is so much better than the plentiful harvest. Besides, I can justify 10-15 corns. I cannot justify a whole bag in one sitting. Oh yes, in one sitting.

So anyway, with the candy corn harvest in full swing comes pumpkin season. I tried a new recipe for pumpkin-chicken stew that has hard cider, apples, and parsnips in it. It's based on a beef stew recipe my MIL sent to me. It's so good that it deserved a fancy name. I've decided to call it Pumpkin Poultry Parsnip Pomme stew. Just has a nice ring to it. Email me if you want the recipe. It's outta sight.

Back to mildly embarrassing things people do in 4th quarter, I'll be having lunch in DC National Airport on Oct 26. Just lunch. Off the plane at noon, and 55 minutes later leave again. Why? Because I'm 2 segments short of Platinum status on that airline, so I found the cheapest round trip 2-segment in Q4, and that's it. If you're going to be in DC, perhaps you can join me. But it'll be a real eat-and-run thing. Lunch: $78+tax, fees, and market price for a lobster roll at Legal Sea Foods. Platinum Status Perks for 2006: Priceless.

I think this act will, once and for all, land me in the category of Road-Warrior-With-Borg-Looking-Perma-Bluetooth-Earpiece-Geek. Except I don't have a borg-styley bluetooth earpiece.

WEEKENDS! WEEKENDS! I WANT MORE WEEKENDS!

We had SUCH a great weekend. I was so sad watching the sun go down yesterday because it meant the weekend was over. SAD! BLUE! We mountain biked Friday, rode a Ridge Rd loop Saturday, did all our house chores, went to work and got some stuff done, biked some more Sunday, went kayaking and open-water-swimming in Lake Jordan, made about 8 QT spaghetti sauce, cooked 2 pork loins and a mountain of veggies in the dutch ovens over an open fire in the backyard (yes, we ARE the "bubba" neighbors who burn stuff in the yard) and slept with the windows open.

It never got over 81 degrees, and never got below 68 degrees. The sky was blue. At one point there was candy corn falling from the sky, and it had no calories.

And now it's Monday. We have spanich class tonight. Or, as we've taken to calling it, Espanich class. In classic Cat&Tony style, I did my homework Tuesday last week, and have been fiddling with it to get it "just right" ever since, and SNG still hasn't done his. But it's OK, because I will let him cheat off me on the exams. 'Cause I hear that he puts out.

Did I say that out loud?

I'm in town all this week and next week. I was actually supposed to be in Austin this week, but that class was cancelled. And if I had gone, I would have had even MORE fun this weekend. Mom & dad went to a huge "Thank you" party for the city of Austin that was thrown by Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crowe last night, and it must have been some party, because every one of my phones has a voice mail of my mom hooting and hollering while Sheryl Crowe sings live in the background. What fun! We should have been there!

Finally, a big congratulations shout-out to my dad who handily took home the Texas state championship road race title for his age group in the Senior Games on Sunday. For bicycling. As if you had to ask.

PS- Blogger has been giving me a hard time with comments lately. If you don't see a comments field below, try again later- it'll be back.

A Pig Of Beauty Is A Joy Forever.
No, it's not a phrase spied on a t-shirt in Tokyo, or something that emerged from babelfish. It is the sign introducing you to a Red River Hog at the San Diego Zoo. And it may have to become my .sig file.

The Red River Hog has hairy ears like my grandfather had. I suspect that when he's old and wrinkly, SNG will have them, too. But for now his ears are super-cute. And an SNG of beauty is a joy forever.

This week I went open water swimming with a colleague who's really into boating but had never tried kayaking before. So I let him use one of our 'yaks to shadow me and keep the powerboats from plowing over me. It was quite a symbiotic thing we had going-- I was slow enough that he was under no pressure to pick up Mad paddling skilz in a hurry, and I needed a human shield. I swam for 90 minutes, with about 15 of them hanging onto the bow of the boat watching the clear blue sky fade into a purple-and-orange sunset. Did I ever tell you how nice it is in NC in the fall?

No trips for a couple of weeks. Instead I'm supposed to be writing a course for a customer that is contingent on their signing some legal document, which was due last Monday, but is still not yet signed, so I can't start the work yet. And if they wait much longer, I will be on the road again and their course will have to wait until next year. So in the meantime, I'm catching up on all the nifty programming projects I had put off for the last few months.

OK, that was seriously boring to most of you so I'm going to exit stage left. Have a great weekend! It's a PERFECT 10 on the weather channel's Fitness Forecast for this afternoon, so by the time you read this, I'll be cavorting with the birds and the trees!

It's been awhile since I've posted because of all this traveling. Last week I was in Rockville/DC where we shared the booger experience together. No need to thank me, I know you're grateful.

I am left pondering why it is that I get these booger harvesters and many of my coworkers don't. I am sure that it's just that other people don't notice. They have the same rate of nosepickers, but their detection system is insensititive to all but the most blatant of excavation activities. I recognize that my measurement device is quite sensitive, and like a good neural network with adaptive learning capability, becomes better attuned to subtle variations in methods for digging concealment. Perhaps I can get a job with some super-secret intelligence agency finding and rooting out terrorist booger-depostion activities. You know, track down where terrorists are wiping their boogers off in public places, like underneath seats at airports, on commuter handloops in subway trains, things like that. But it would be dirty work.

This week I flew out to San Jose, CA (as opposed to San Jose, Colombia-- where I nearly boarded) for a conference. I gave 3 presentations: a half-day course and 2 50-min paper presentations. But the most exciting work I did was over coffee and lunch with an old grad school friend of mine I make a point of visiting whenever I'm in the bay area. He's one of those rare clever types who appears to have an inexaustable supply of neat ideas. We spent some time talking about a paper idea (actually, 2 ideas) that we could collaborate on. I need friends like this, who come up with ideas for research papers that other people might be interested in reading. I can be a great workhorse when I have the time to devote, but my ideas usually entail finding the hard way to do something, such as coming up with a new test statistic that is less efficient than what's already implemented in the software, and by the way you have to program your own matrix language code to get it, but gee, isn't that neat?? I know you're itching to hear more, but I don't want to be scooped, so I'm keeping the details to myself. Because I know you were all just waiting to scoop me. Dianaverse is aways trying to steal my research paper ideas and publish them in some tier-2 journal where she can use the puppy-pornography data example. And kiltman does worse than that-- he takes my ideas and comes up with better titles than I can come up with and so everyone reads his version of the paper instead of mine.

This whole silly mood I'm in must be from jet lag or something. I'm currently in the kitchen at my BFF Lizard's house in San Diego. Thursday night I flew down here to spend the weekend, and SNG flew in from RDU. We've been having so much fun. The weather here really is a pretty as everyone says, but (I think I've posted about this before) the traffic here is really nuts. Not quite Chicago-traffic-crazy, but I think it's worse than Atlanta traffic. Which is also really bad. But the weather is the least of the reasons we're here. Lizard has been stationed and otherwise occupied all over the world in very hard-to-reach places most of the last 10 years, and until she and her SO moved to the mainland this year I had seen her a grand total of 1 time in 10 years. This is the person I used to smoke ciagarettes and eat big-grab chips and mini-muffins with in my car before school started every morning in high school. She was the other half of prom double-dates. She was the maid of honor at my wedding. And not even having a coffee with her for years at a stretch? It's just not right.

Anyway, so now I'm having a cuppa at her kitchen counter, and SNG is sitting here waiting for me to take him for a jog.

Better run. We're going to the zoo later! Yay! If I get any good pics I'll post them when we get back.

I'm teaching in Our Nation's Capitol this week and I just have to get this off my chest...

PLEASE STOP, I CAN SEE YOU!

It's DATA mining. Not nosemining. And I'm not a TV.