Back!

Hi everyone. I've been gone for a week for my yearly pilgrimage to Mecca. I mean Seattle. Sarah, Alex, and I had a great trip with my relatives. We had some great days in the city and some good unwinding time. I was email incognito, blog independent, and poker free (except for the mini-tournament on Wednesday). I bought extra light acoustic guitar strings at Guitar Center and squid jerky at Uwajimaya, finally finished Stardust, and got beaten a lot at Settlers of Catan.

The one regret I have in all this is that I was unable to make it to the Friday showing of Snakes On A Plane with the Bad Movie Club. It was the last night before our flight home, scheduled to depart at 745 AM. I hemmed and hawed about going, but I finally decided it was too crammed to leave my wife to pack and worry about me driving home from the city at midnight. Plus, wasn't there a Simpsons-are-going-to episode (or maybe it was Marge's fear of flying) where the in-flight movie is about famous plane crashes?

Today is the first day of the second year of my graduate degree. I'm looking forward to the challenges. I hope I can get that thesis done.

I'll be back to regular blogging. As far as attendance goes, this semester I meet three days a week at 4:30 PM. I'll be busy for classes and projects, but I should be able to keep up. Just got to finish the last few library books. I am also thinking about writing a series on Anna Karenina as I reread it for the nth time.

Stay sane, and good luck for a productive school/work year to all.