After.

These are my before and after pictures. I got two pairs of Hong Kong-made glasses today as well as getting a haircut in BG. I wish Perrysburg were hip like BG...you know, a cool coffeeshop that stays open past 8pm and people who care about doing fun community stuff or at least about hanging out at a coffeeshop as a default behavior instead of lounging around home or driving their minivan to yet another kid's soccer game.

We are still looking for a house. It is frustrating and happy all at the same time.

I am an aquabat...or a guy who cuts onions.

Today: Got my car a bit more ready for the trip up to Detroit tomorrow. I had to put on the gushy all-seasons. Then a youth came over and we worked on his car. Then I met up with Anne and Gerry for a concert at Zoar. The entire Toledo Orchestra was at Zoar! It was part of the "community series" and it rocked. The choirs and pianists of the church were featured and Eric Dickey (our music director and all-around nice music guy) wrote a piece that absolutely blew me away.

What a great day.

Hey, has anyone ever used Skype? I just downloaded it as a cheap way to talk to Anne's dad while he is in Germany. He leaves in two weeks to teach technicians how to fix stuff. He is sprechen well for a guy who has been sprechen for only a month or so.

Learning something new every day

Can we borrow your kid? Cuz we can TOTALLY do the diaper thing now.

Happy photo!

Let's see. Work is going well. I am now doing a lot of "clustering," which is a fancy and really confusing way of trying to figure out who people are by putting them into optimally-different groups. I am getting to be pretty good at it...and it is an art form, what with all of the recodings one has to do. For instance, 99 people buy a small car. You want to figure out who they are. I break them into 3 groups based upon criteria that we think matter. These are filtered a million ways and entered into a stupidly confusing equation and then we have 3 groups that are able to be "profiled." So there might be one group of soccer mom-types, another of young people who bought for value, and another who like to race them. Anyway, it takes forever to do but can yield decently interesting and useful results.

I have been carpooling with Melissa, the BGSU grad student who I knew at Maritz prior to starting work. She lives 3 blocks away from our apartment. I like carpooling. It makes the drive better and really does a lot for sociability--you know, it is a lot nicer than jumping from home to computer screen at work.

The baby is kicking Anne a lot. I can barely feel it, but apparently it is more noticable if it is kicking from inside your own body. Who'da guessed?

Rich is getting me back my dissertation draft and I am trying to keep up with it so it can go out to the committee soon and I can defend and be done with it.

That's all the news from Lake Wobegone for right now.

Nate. Bowling Green. Black Swamp. I love those things combined...plus the other dozen or so people I love about BG...and the really cool place that it is. It is one of the nicest places in the world. Few corporations. Lots of community. Neato people. Art. Music that doesn't suck, or that does suck but exists and tries really hard so you have to feel good about it being around. Anne and I miss it a lot. I will admit that freely. We think that we need a place like this again. A place where people sit in coffee shops until midnight and talk about deep stuff. A place where people read things that are not on the bestseller list. A place where grown people fingerpaint. If you know of such a place that would have us, let us know.

Zoar has been really great lately, but I need Sundays like this every day. I got there early and made up 4 pump pots of coffee for everyone. (I can really see how a person could like to work in a coffee shop. It is fun, creative, it smells great, and you get to meet all sorts of neat people who are biased to like you because you are serving them a chemical.) Then Anne and I played in the funk/jazz band for service and it rocked. I love playing for that...with a feeling deeper than anything else I have felt musically. It is the perfect fit for me--I would do it every week if I could. Then there was a chicken lunch thingy that was super-tasty and very good for meeting neat new people. We are officially adults now. We talk to people who have kids...and we like it. Also, I think it is cool that Zoar is donating one of our pastors and a few other people to take the donations down to an ELCA church in Mississippi that is presently hosting about 200 people who are displaced because of the hurricane. Anyway, I think it is cool. Zoar has also been going nuts about MAYBE getting displaced people who would be placed there from the Red Cross because it is the designated disaster recovery area. It was lit up like crazy last week on news that many people could be showing up...but that never happened.

I ordered some glasses from Hong Kong and I will get some more later--they are really stinking cheap and appear to be pretty fashionable. If they aren't, I can just order more of them because they are so cheap.

Now to sleep and go to work. This weekend felt like it lasted a week..a really good week. Last but FAR from least, I got my dissertation back from my advisor and he had surprisingly few comments. He actually just expanded on the stuff that I had noted to him was pretty bad to begin with (some graphs I was not happy with and such). I will hit this hard this week and maybe go for the approval from him. It is scary and surprising, but the degree will ACTUALLY be over this semester (of course, it has to be...what with the life changes like a baby and official job and stuff).

Big news: The Civic is back on the road...and this time it has a suspension that probably will not ka-thunk in the rear (new suspension bushings are in and look good!). So 9 days after being put in there, the car is back in its spot with a new stereo, distributor, trailing arm bushings, spark plugs, an interior-appropriate-painted "custom" cupholder, and a freshened ignition system. I was disheartened when it would not start on Saturday, but (after a lot of trying and checking everything) it started with a puff of oily smoke.

What a wonderful weekend of relaxing and getting junk done. Now to go back to work refreshed and in my own car. Heck, I still have $2.50/gal gas in the thing.

I also am looking forward to seeing some friends I have been putting off to work on the dissertation and the car--though it was super-cool that Randy stopped by on Saturday, that was a really nice conversation and stuff.

That reminds me...what is with the lemonade stands for the Red Cross (500 google news items tonight for "Katrina lemonade"? I think it rocks...there was more than one in Perrysburg today. This was a really cool idea, and the kids appeared to be having a good and productive time. She probably had $10 in that plastic register!

Look all you want, but please don't touch.

The baby cannot read. It woke Anne up at 5am (for the first time). We thought this would also be appropriate to the people who are very interested in her uterus now (but it is cool, really)

My trip to "the automotive client in Detroit" was very interesting. The office is nice, really nice. The larger building is amazing--quite a feat of architecture. I think I will enjoy going there--it will be a great break during the week. It will also be nice to work on just ONE dataset--to get to know it and understand it well.

My Civic is still on stands. I will finish it today. Surely. Teh bushing on one side is done (it is in and reassembled and everything! The other is ready to be done. I am very glad Lukas "the wise one of NW Ohio" was able to point me to the benefits of a MAPP torch. It is WAY faster than propane. Then an oil pan gasket, spark plugs, and oil & brake fluid change and I will be set to roll. My jack even started working again (who wants to take "do not adjust" screws seriously when a jack is broken?).

Anne and I went to alumni band last night. It was a really small alumni crowd due to poor publicity. We connected with some of the church youth, so it was a good thing to be there. FYI, I think Perrysburg was losing 45 to 7 when we left.

Now to go to a quick church meeting and then spend the rest of the day under the car. One youth is coming over until he starts working so he can bask in the car-fixing experience. Any other takers?