Hey guys!

- I'm glad we're starting another wiki (thanks Sarah Mae), I like to talk and you guys were a pretty receptive (tolerant) audience so I'm sure I'll let my rantings out here every now and then and I'll probably change up the formating and make it all pretty sometime...but not right now...maybe later.

Ok, pretty now. Blog now

What I did on my summer vacation...

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5/14/07 - I'm having a pretty good break so far. Work is easy and short so I have lots of time on my hands and not much to do. I've been going to the rec center more often (gotta love those ellipticals) and I've started drawing again (maybe if I do anything fantastic I'll post it to show off...but don't hold your breath). I have postponed my Ohio trip until september so I can go on a 2 week vacation I have been looking foreward to with Aaron and his fam up in the mountains somewhere. And my cousin (13) is coming in and staying with me for the entire month of july, So, at least june will be nice and relaxing :)

As far as school goes, I have two session B classes coming up in July which should be pretty interesting classes, I've even got one with my bud Brian! On a more depressing note I've developed a nervous twitch everytime I think about the fact that I'm starting my thesis this summer. The thesis itself is not the scary, twitch inducing part, it is the fact that I will be working on it with Dr. Mchale. He just kinda emailed me and said, and I quote, "here's your thesis blah blah blah I'm smarter than you blah blah blah", I couldn't say no. He's a good guy and all, but..um...he tends to make me feel like a retarded monkey smearing my own feces all over the place. I'm sure I'll rant more in detail on that in blogs to come but for now I think that visual was adequate.

5/18/07 - Well today was the last day of school for the kids I watch. I have an entire week off of work until the camp starts...not sure what to do with myself. But we had such a blast today! I brought in all sorts of snacks and we had a pizza party and watched movies. We went outside and played kickball but my team lost :(. We also made a water slide out of a big swirly slide on the playground, a waterfountain and a few 5 gallon buckets, the kids had such a blast (they even talked me into going down the water slide a time or two). And of course I got the glare from many of their parents when they picked their kids up soaking wet. I am really going to miss those kids next year, there are a few that are not coming back and I dont know if Im going to be working there next year anyways. I didn't realize how attached I've grown to these little brats! But anywho here are a few pictures of the day, I made them all get together for one group picture (which took about 20 minutes) but I didn't get any of the awesome water slide. - Pictures of the coolest 2nd graders (soon to be 3rd graders) I've ever met!

On an academic note, wish me luck, I'm starting coding for my thesis project next week, and my director just went out of town for a month...it will be interesting!

5/21/07 - Holy crap I'm bored. My day: I went to the lab to do mindnumbingly exciting tape cueing for hours, I went to the rec center to exercise (so my muscles dont completely atrophy), I had an entire conversation with my dog after taking her to the dog park and I counted the little squares on the carpet in the spare room, and I did a little work on one of my drawings. I tried to occupy my time, but I still end up sitting here for hours in front of the TV farting around on the internet. So here I am posting a completely pointless blog that that maybe 0 to 2 people might read and that I dont even care about let alone the 0 to 2 people that may read it. Why arent I doing something interesting right now? Any suggestions? I know what your thinking, and I have no illusions about the level of my nerdiness. I know I am a hardcore nerd, its ok.

5/22/07 - Bad news gang, my family is having some disturbing issues at the moment.

Let me give you a little background here, I'll start by saying that I have only one grandparent (who i will refer to as Pappy {dont laugh!}) all the others are..well... ya know. Anywho, I am really close to this grandpa of mine and his wife, "Granny" Caroline (although not my first choice, she is still a pretty cool lady), I believe she is Pappy's 4th or 5th wife. The two of them have been married about 17 years, so most of my life that I have memory of. They live up in Chattanooga Tn. so I dont get to see them but once a year. Growing up, they were my life during the summer, all our family vacations were up there and I spent half of my summers hanging out with them at their beautiful house on the Tennessee river. Side note: They were not the typical grandparents, they were actually fun to hang out with (I got to drive my first boat and his 1969 corvette when I was only 12, but dont tell mom!). My one and only aunt (small family) also lives up there, quite literally just down the road from Pappy and Caroline.

So here comes the blow, last night, my Aunt called us at about 10:00 with the news. She said that Caroline (excuse the expression) pretty much had a cow and took Pappy's cell phone, his keys, his cars and locked him out of the house with only the clothes on his back and his harley. My initial thought was WTF??? Yeah, these two have had some heated arguments in the past but she has never done this to the poor guy! So my aunt goes on to tell us that Caroline believes that Pappy (at the ripe age of 67) is cheating on her. Ugh....PAPPY....WHAT WERE YOU THINKING...SHE'S RICH!!!!!! So luckily Pappy is in the business of buying fixer-uppers and fixing them up to rent them out, so last night he stayed in one of his rental homes. As much as I love my grandpa to pieces, he has done a few stupid things in his lifetime, most of them being fueled by the popular homewrecker we all know and love...alcohol. So I wouldn't completely put it past him if he were under the influence, but Caroline has no real proof so we are still in the dark about the truth of the matter.

Not sure why I felt compelled to tell you all this story, I mean no one died and its not the end of the world, it is just really bumming me out right now so I wanted to vent via typing. So right now i'm just praying that Caroline gets over this and takes him back, because if this ends up in divorce it will be ugly, everything is in Caroline's name (the house, the cars, the boat, etc...), and she can be quite the spiteful woman when she thinks she has been wronged. Isn't it ironic that Pappy divorced his last wife because she was cheating on him? Ugh...