oh joy, oh joy

yesterday was a long day.

i left jersey for pittsburgh on friday... you never know what age kids my aunt there will have when you visit (she and my uncle are foster parents)... the current crew (besides my 13 year old cousin rachel) are charles (age 5), jason (age 4), and shyanne (8 months)... the boys were playing in the front yard when i arrived, while my aunt and uncle were inside... to my surprise, they both walked right up to me and asked "who are you?" and shook hands with me and introduced themselves... friendly kids...

at dinner, charles, who is in preschool, asked me to write his name on his placemat, and i did... later he was all excited that they had written his name on his hotdog... finally, rachel helped him get an ice cream cone and when he sat next to me again, he exuberantly pointed out the letters on the cone and said "look! my name!", to which i replied, "um, sorry, that spells 'TAKE OUT'"... my aunt laughed *really* hard at that :-P

that was friday.

yesterday i got up at 7:30 and headed out of pittsburgh by 8:30 (am eastern time)... drove straight to cincinnati and met memphis jenny at a pottery show there for an hour before heading onward... drove the rest of the way to memphis getting in at 8:30 (pm central time)... roommate called at one point and in my reach across the car to grab the handsfree set, i answered with the microphone flying across the car before i could speak... first thing i heard was her laughing really hard, and she commented "at first it sounded like a spaceship had answered and i was sincerely worried you had found a way to get to the moon without telling me first!" -- that was amusing :-P

last night, dad, ryan, and i went out to eat... dad gave me crap that i wanted to go somewhere where i could get salad instead of ordering in pizza... again at lunch today when i just got the salad bar, he was upset that i didn't want appetizers or dessert... for as much crap as he's given me about my weight over the years, you would think he'd be happy to see the change in diet and the fact that i'm finally starting to lose weight now too...

i was exceedingly irritated last night after dinner when i went to check email from the math department and from the REU and discovered first when i tried to type "mail.yahoo.com" that i couldn't get the stupid machine to type an "i"... i asked brother what was up and he commented that it was fine yesterday and he didn't know what i did to it to make it act up... as i fiddled and leaned over the computer desk to reach around to the back of the computer tower, i noticed my shirt got wet, and sure enough when i turned the keyboard upside down i poured a whole coffee cup full of water out of it. i really really don't understand how my family could have saved up for so long to buy themselves a computer, fully understand the investment it was for them, and then drench it and ruin parts of it. even after drying it out, the keyboard is non-function (it was a cheap one anyhow), so i dragged mom to office depot this afternoon and got her to buy a new one, and an optical mouse (because her old cheap mouse is annoyingly sticky anyhow)... she was surprised that she only needed to spend $10-15 each if she really wanted to and ended up with a $30 really nice keyboard, and a standard $15 optical mouse... and now i can check email at home again -- this is a good thing.

it takes a matter of about 3 hours for me to remember why i don't come home much. no matter how much they clean up, after the birds (right at the bottom of the stairs from my room), they never deep clean the house enough to get rid of bugs... every time i go to my room there's a cloud of small flying bugs going up the stairs ahead of me... i just leave all the windows open a lot, and that helps to make them escape, but as soon as we get a rainy day here, i'm going to be miserable.

the 8th graders at mom's school are on their class trip this week... mom said i can install maple on the 8th grade computer for the week (as long as i take it off again by next weekend) and i have their classroom to myself to have a dsl connection to do some math work... that'll be good... so i guess i'll be hanging out at my old grade school this week.

the memphis zoo also does free hours on tuesday afternoon and mom thinks she and i should go this week, so that'll be nice too.

true i grew up here, but i completely fail to understand how my family can live in a house this gross and dirty... my brother cleans *my* room decently before i come home each time, but there and in front of the computer by the front door are about the only places in the whole house i can stand to be for more than 5 minutes... i'm glad i don't live in this house anymore :-P

done complaining... maybe i'll read the afternoon away and think about doing work tomorrow.

later dudes.