Hey all,
I just noticed Marie's comment about not posting--and Scott told me that many people were concerned about the Red line incident--so I thought I would fill you all in.
I take the Orange line that goes from Prince George's County in MD into and out of DC everyday, so the crash didn't affect me very much. There were definitely quite a few delays, but I think the Metro tried to keep it quiet for a while. There were signs all over the stations saying that the Red line was heavily delayed, but no explanation, and it wasn't until I got online that I saw the damage. It'll take several weeks to clean up, because of the investigation into the cause, so there are a few girls at my job that have to walk to work.
Other than that (and the sad news of Jon and Kate's divorce, which I shouldn't really care about, but do because I follow the show religiously), the summer has been somewhat uneventful. Last weekend, I had a bridal shower in Upstate New York because my grandmother and mom still have a great deal of friends there that can't come to the wedding. It was awesome food, as always, but I was only there for a day and a half and came home very tired from the 7 hour drive.
This weekend, I'm flying into St. Louis Saturday morning and leaving Sunday morning so that I can go to my best friend from high school's wedding. It should be a good time, and I get to see Scott for the first time in 6 weeks! He's also coming out to visit over the July 4th weekend, which we're both excited for. I haven't had a chance to do any sight-seeing yet.
I think the wedding planning is still under control. My mom has inherited the logistical stuff like telling Stephens about the final numbers, so all I have left is tying all the infernal bows on the favors when I get back and doing the seating chart. Only about six weeks to go now!
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
D.C.
I just wanted to let everyone know that I got (safely) to my aunt's house in Maryland. The drive was long, but fairly low-key since it was the weekend. I start work in D.C. tomorrow and Scott starts at NISC tomorrow, as well!
-Bri
-Bri
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Trips and tooths and other things which start with T
So here we are, back in Columbia. Bri and I went to San Diego over our spring break; four days of fun, sun, and family, interspersed with about 6 hours in a dentist's office, where C's (she prefers it if I do not use her full name: works for me) dad used the power of SCIENCE and LASERs to cut out my wisdom teeth and repair a few cavities on both Bri and myself. He's an exceptional dentist, and the trauma was minimal as a result.
We spent much of the day with my brother and his wife, eating out at many an excellent restaurant and just generally enjoying the life of a southern californian for a few days.
We left for Columbia at roughly the same time a Storm of Ridiculous Proportions decided to attack the entire midwest like a drunken wrestler after a high school student. This caused a certain degree of problem, since apparently Albuqurque, Amarillo, and Oklahoma City were basically non-existent from the standpoint of highway driving. This left Texas. Miles and Miles of freaking Texas--the state that's so ludicrously big you can go to sleep in El Paso, sleep eight full hours, and wake up and STILL BE IN FREAKING TEXAS.
It, in short, sucked. A lot. Also, Yuma Arizona is an awful, awful place. But that's a digression from the story, which is centered mainly on Texas sucking. When we finally left Texas(about eight-thousand hours after entering), we went to Little Rock, then up through the Ozark mountains to Springfield, followed by the Lake of the Ozarks, dodging sleet, snow, and sheeting ice the whole way.
So we are back home, as is clearly the case, since I am writing this and classes have been back in swing for two straight days now. School becomes more and more onerous, as it becomes clearer that further advanced mathematics is fundamentally irrelevant to my new goals re computer science and a software development career. Bri is also struggling with the end-of-semester-slacking difficulty, which always makes complicates the completion of the spring semester. Still, it is six more weeks, and so we will simply have to straggle on.
Further information will, I think, have to wait until interesting things happen.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Too tired to be eloquent, too full to be functional
Today Bri and I started our trek through the states Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California to visit San Diego, in order that we may see Steve, Candice, and anyone else interested in visiting with us.
We started from Columbia at 6:30AM, and were in Kansas City by about 8-ish. Going around on I-435 took us a little extra time, but we avoided heavy traffic and got out of there in a reasonable amount of time, heading south on I-35 through Wichita to Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City is a surprisingly large city, with skyscrapers and everything. In Oklahoma City is the interchange with I-40, which took us to Amarillo. All in all, it took us a little under 12 hours in all to get to our hotel in Amarillo, which is startlingly nice, and from which I am writing this now while watching the Princess Bride.
Upon arrival, we decided that we would try to find some decent Mexican food--which we did! We went to a little diner-type mexican nearly-hut called El Bracero. I'm pretty sure that it was a former fast-food joint, and it doesn't look like the sort of place that we would enjoy, so we were leary upon entering, but feeling adventurous, we girded ourselves and entered. It was very casual, but pleasant, so we sat down and received our nachos--the most ridiculously awesome nachos we have had. Ever! Bar none! And then we had food--except that neither Bri nor I knew enough Spanish/mexican food items to know what it was that we ordered--Bri ordered off of our server's recommendation, and I made an essentially random stab at an order. Bri ended up with some rather excellent Steak tacos, and I managed a Pork steak that was quite possibly made entirely from habaneros. So spicy we were sweating and nearly crying, but so good we wanted to go back for a second dinner! Delicious!
Anyway, after having raved about this restaurant for the same amount of time as we spent speaking of the trip itself, we are about out of interesting things of which to speak. Tomorrow its up at 6-ish again, and on to Pheonix, AZ. We are super-psyched for the desert adventure!
We started from Columbia at 6:30AM, and were in Kansas City by about 8-ish. Going around on I-435 took us a little extra time, but we avoided heavy traffic and got out of there in a reasonable amount of time, heading south on I-35 through Wichita to Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City is a surprisingly large city, with skyscrapers and everything. In Oklahoma City is the interchange with I-40, which took us to Amarillo. All in all, it took us a little under 12 hours in all to get to our hotel in Amarillo, which is startlingly nice, and from which I am writing this now while watching the Princess Bride.
Upon arrival, we decided that we would try to find some decent Mexican food--which we did! We went to a little diner-type mexican nearly-hut called El Bracero. I'm pretty sure that it was a former fast-food joint, and it doesn't look like the sort of place that we would enjoy, so we were leary upon entering, but feeling adventurous, we girded ourselves and entered. It was very casual, but pleasant, so we sat down and received our nachos--the most ridiculously awesome nachos we have had. Ever! Bar none! And then we had food--except that neither Bri nor I knew enough Spanish/mexican food items to know what it was that we ordered--Bri ordered off of our server's recommendation, and I made an essentially random stab at an order. Bri ended up with some rather excellent Steak tacos, and I managed a Pork steak that was quite possibly made entirely from habaneros. So spicy we were sweating and nearly crying, but so good we wanted to go back for a second dinner! Delicious!
Anyway, after having raved about this restaurant for the same amount of time as we spent speaking of the trip itself, we are about out of interesting things of which to speak. Tomorrow its up at 6-ish again, and on to Pheonix, AZ. We are super-psyched for the desert adventure!
Monday, March 16, 2009
We're slow dancing in a burning room
Not much to report. Life goes on, and all that. Except that we leave for San Diego on Friday, and I got my conditional acceptance letter from the MU Computer Science Department. This means that I am going to be cross-listed as a Mathematics ph.D. student AND a Computer Science M.S. student. I have to stay in Mathematics because they are who are paying for my Teaching Assistantship, and they aren't obligated to do that unless I'm a member of their department; this isn't great--it means I still have to study for qualifying exams and take math classes and stuff like that. Still, it's good news--I just have to keep pretending to be getting a math ph.D. for two more years. So that's good, and all that.
Otherwise, no news to report that you haven't heard yesterday.
Otherwise, no news to report that you haven't heard yesterday.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Something Something with a cherry on top
So Bri posted recently regarding our inexorably oncoming wedding. It is now five months away, and approaching with what can only be called frightening velocity. Much like an avalanche, or a landslide, we can't get out of its way--we just have to run as far as we can, hide behind a rock, and hope that the Red Cross can dig us out before we run out of crackers.
In two weeks we are going to San Diego, so that Doc Goodman can blast out my wisdom teeth with the power of SCIENCE! Which is always to be preferred to a guy with pair of pliers and a pitching wedge. We are also going to go to the beach. A lot. Probably all the time that we are not spending with Steve and Candice and company (We like water).
In the interests of keeping this in some way relevant and, not to point too fine a point on it, entertaining, I will ignore the normal day-to-day trappings of our existence and focus on the neat, big things which occupy our lives--a global vision, if you will. Bri, who loves details, among other things, will almost surely focus her contributions on plans and logistics and all those fun, interesting things that she's so good at keeping track of. She will be a very detailed atlas, while I will be more like a picture from space--mine might look cool, but hers will help you get somewhere. The advantage of this approach is that she's better at keeping logistical things interesting, while I...well, I have no positive contributions, but this is my website, so I get to post anyway! So there!
We went to St. Louis today. Took Bri's little sister Corissa home for her spring break; her dad and I worked a bit on maintaining Bri's car. We got a nice dinner and Bri's dad gave her car an oil change, so that worked out rather nicely. Now it will be possible for us to take her car to San Diego when we go.
I've been trying to teach Bri how to drive a stick shift, and it's actually going pretty well--when I can get her out to practice. She suffers from a chronic lack of confidence in her ability to keep the car going on hills, so she would probably appreciate any funny stories/interesting tips that you'd like to give her. Please, though, for my sake, omit the horror stories of pushing four cars off of a mountainous cliff because you couldn't stop the car from rolling backward--that is NOT something which would encourage her to continue with the learning experience. Of course, if she learns, then we won't have to take her somewhat older car every time we make a major trip (Which happens on the order of at LEAST once per day, it seems sometimes), so there's a bit of a motivation on her part there, at least.
I never really realized how racked Dad's nerve had to have been every time we went practicing--I'll bet he had to come home and have a nice quiet lay-down in the dark after every session; Bri is doing rather well, and the number of times my feet are twitching is STILL enough to make my feet sore after less than an hour. So there's a life-lesson in here, I think, though I can't find it yet. Probably "Don't teach someone how to drive without first inbibing considerable ulcer medication", though it could also be " Wear comfortable shoes which will not bruise your feet every time you stomp on the floorboards". I'm working on this one--more when progress is made.
In another strange and totally inexplicable fashion, I've been reciting Psalm 23 in my head a lot--you know: "Lo, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" and all that jazz. Not really understanding why, though--my religious beliefs are the psychological equivalent to stumbling blindfolded through the amazon rainforests at midnight, wearing nothing but deer repellant and a stick of dynamite. Who knows, though--maybe I'm having an epiphany, in the biblical sense. Then again, maybe I'm just watching too many comic book movies. Who can tell? Not me.
In two weeks we are going to San Diego, so that Doc Goodman can blast out my wisdom teeth with the power of SCIENCE! Which is always to be preferred to a guy with pair of pliers and a pitching wedge. We are also going to go to the beach. A lot. Probably all the time that we are not spending with Steve and Candice and company (We like water).
In the interests of keeping this in some way relevant and, not to point too fine a point on it, entertaining, I will ignore the normal day-to-day trappings of our existence and focus on the neat, big things which occupy our lives--a global vision, if you will. Bri, who loves details, among other things, will almost surely focus her contributions on plans and logistics and all those fun, interesting things that she's so good at keeping track of. She will be a very detailed atlas, while I will be more like a picture from space--mine might look cool, but hers will help you get somewhere. The advantage of this approach is that she's better at keeping logistical things interesting, while I...well, I have no positive contributions, but this is my website, so I get to post anyway! So there!
We went to St. Louis today. Took Bri's little sister Corissa home for her spring break; her dad and I worked a bit on maintaining Bri's car. We got a nice dinner and Bri's dad gave her car an oil change, so that worked out rather nicely. Now it will be possible for us to take her car to San Diego when we go.
I've been trying to teach Bri how to drive a stick shift, and it's actually going pretty well--when I can get her out to practice. She suffers from a chronic lack of confidence in her ability to keep the car going on hills, so she would probably appreciate any funny stories/interesting tips that you'd like to give her. Please, though, for my sake, omit the horror stories of pushing four cars off of a mountainous cliff because you couldn't stop the car from rolling backward--that is NOT something which would encourage her to continue with the learning experience. Of course, if she learns, then we won't have to take her somewhat older car every time we make a major trip (Which happens on the order of at LEAST once per day, it seems sometimes), so there's a bit of a motivation on her part there, at least.
I never really realized how racked Dad's nerve had to have been every time we went practicing--I'll bet he had to come home and have a nice quiet lay-down in the dark after every session; Bri is doing rather well, and the number of times my feet are twitching is STILL enough to make my feet sore after less than an hour. So there's a life-lesson in here, I think, though I can't find it yet. Probably "Don't teach someone how to drive without first inbibing considerable ulcer medication", though it could also be " Wear comfortable shoes which will not bruise your feet every time you stomp on the floorboards". I'm working on this one--more when progress is made.
In another strange and totally inexplicable fashion, I've been reciting Psalm 23 in my head a lot--you know: "Lo, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" and all that jazz. Not really understanding why, though--my religious beliefs are the psychological equivalent to stumbling blindfolded through the amazon rainforests at midnight, wearing nothing but deer repellant and a stick of dynamite. Who knows, though--maybe I'm having an epiphany, in the biblical sense. Then again, maybe I'm just watching too many comic book movies. Who can tell? Not me.
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