Today is Paige's twenty-third birthday. Happy Birthday!

The head of the VT music department, John Husser, sent an e-mail out to all music majors today. Here's some excerpts:

This is to report to you on the status of the departments current situation. As you know, budget cuts are here and real. The College of Arts and Sciences was given their target reduction for the next two years, and the college then gave the department's their reductions. We were assigned a 10% reduction. This is different from department to department and this is what I was expecting we would be called to do. This amount has nothing to do with our "value" to the college or the university, only our ability to "pay back". This percentage amounts to us having to cut $150,000 from our budget as it was this year. The other departments I have talked to are being required to cut from 6-10%.

The "rules" for these cuts included:

1. no firing of tenure-track professors
2. no firing of continuing instructors
3. no firing of full time staff members

This means in our department we had to draw our cuts from Dr. Polifrone's retirement, [an] already planned departure, [the jazz professor's] one year appointment, and [the choral director's] one year appointment. There are a number of complicated details about funding that I can not discuss because of confidentiality issues, but this is bottom line. This is not good news, and if you are in my MIDI class, you will have heard me ranting a few times over the past few weeks about politicians, and citizens who don't think they should have to pay taxes. We Virginian's are reaping the results of our past fantasy that we can have top 10 services, but pay taxes in the bottom 10.

I have had notes from a number of you and I wish I could tell you that you could do something about this situation. However, I think the reality is that the University is going to be short an enormous amount of money next year, and there is no way around it. If you wish to complain to someone above me, I report to the Dean of Arts and Sciences, he reports to the Provost, and he reports to the President who reports to the Board of Visitors. But, we get our E&G, (Education and General) funding from the legislature of the state of Virginia. And unfortunately, they do not have the needed money to keep the state running the same as it did this past year. This means either government services are cut, or taxes are raised.

If you would like more details about this situation, I would be happy to have a meeting with anyone, or everyone. I'll be upfront about this, and give you all the information I am allowed to disseminate. We are all in this together and the department will try to have this situation impact on your education as little as possible. Also, we will try to be sure everyone gets what they need to complete their academic programs.

Hopefully, this will be a short term problem. We are being asked to return money, not faculty positions. It could be worse.

I've already heard people who still attend Tech voice concerns over the long-term effect of these cuts on the program, as well as the qualifications (or lack thereof) of professors being assigned interim duties. I guess we'll see how things turn out in the future.

"What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin." - Mark Twain

Happy 24th Birthday, Paige!

My power went out yesterday at about 11 PM for an hour. Strangely, only the three apartments in my vertical column were affected -- the rest of the building looked fine in the thunderstorm. Perhaps my upstairs neighbour abused her vibrato one too many times and hit the natural frequency of electricity.

My students took their written midterm exams today and I'll be grading them over the weekend. I tried to make the materials during the course of the term a little harder than what was on the exam, so hopefully the grades will reflect that.

Here's a random music theory question for you. Is B-sharp to C-flat an ascending or descending interval?

Computer Stupidities
This article used to have a picture of duct tape on an assembly line with the caption "duct tape".
Idiots crash a cop party and offer drugs
ABC ensures that I can continue to post too much about Alias next season

The Oscars, Part IV of VI

The Nominees:
Brother Bear
• Finding Nemo
  The Triplets of Belleville
  
  What will happen?
  Finding Nemo will win this category by a landslide, since Disney has lost its touch. At least Treasure Planet is not in the running this year. It's a risky proposition to not pick The Triplets of Belleville however, since last year's winner was another goofily drawn cartoon that no one had ever heard of.

The Nominees:
The Barbarian Invasions
Evil
The Twilight Samurai
Twin Sisters
?elary

What will happen?
None of these films even looks foreign, and the last just looks like a French person in ESL trying to say "celery". You can't fool me with a tilde. The ad copy for Barbarian Invasions says that it's about sex and friendship and other things that invade our lives. DUCK! It's a FRIENDSHIP INVASION. Evil wins, since the remaining competitors look too much alike.

The Nominees:
American Splendor
City of God
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
  Mystic River
  Seabiscuit
  
  What will happen?
  The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the Jedi will win this category, simply because it's the hip thing to do, regardless of whether it deserves it.

The Nominees:
The Barbarian Invasions
Dirty Pretty Things
• Finding Nemo
  In America
• Lost in Translation
  
  What will happen?
  The actual screenplay of Lost in Translation doesn't deserve an Oscar, simply because it was the work of the actors in the movie that brought it to life. Without the talent of Bill Murray, it would have just been another movie where stuff happens and people are bored, à la Gosford Park. Finding Nemo isn't particular original even though it's good. Voters will choose The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in this category because their muscle memory will cause them to mark a box that isn't really on the ballot. To salvage the show, Billy Crystal will choose Dirty Pretty Things and make light-hearted jokes about Audrey Tatou.

We're only two days away from the Oscar ceremony, which I probably won't be watching. Tomorrow I'll cover all the actor categories, and the final day will be devoted to the directorial categories and Best Picture. Who will win? Only I know.

Yesterday's notable search terms:

michelle cao, fork tailed bush katydid, weenie wagon, if all the girls who attended the yale prom were laid end to end, i wouldn't be a bit surprised

Happy Birthday Paige!

Fifth Annual Oscars Week, Part I of IV

2005 Picks (9 of 24 right) 2004 Picks (8 of 24 right) 2003 Picks (4 of 24 right) 2002 Picks (9 of 24 right)

"For me, hosting the Academy Awards is like making love to a beautiful woman. You can only do it when Billy Crystal's not in town." - Steve Martin, 2001

I've done this for four years so you should know the drill by now. Movies that I've seen are bulleted in the list and I take no responsibility if you lose all your money betting on my completely unscientific choices! Follow the links above to see selections from previous years.

The Nominees:
Darwin's Nightmare
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
March of the Penguins
Murderball
Street Fight

What will happen?
If you were to put all of these movies in a room together like some kind of real life Ultimate Showdown, the penguins would quickly defeat Darwin's Nightmare, a movie about globalization and fish (penguins eat fish, you see). The Enron guys would break even with the equally seedy politicians in Street Fight, leaving the quadriplegic rugby players the perfect opportunity to kick both of their asses. In a final fight, the quadriplegics would get the upper hand over the penguins until the lovable anthropormorphic birds produce their secret weapon, narrator and four-time Oscar nominee, Morgan Freeman. Game over, March of the Penguins wins.

The Nominees:
The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club
God Sleeps in Rwanda
The Mushroom Club
A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin

What will happen?
Generally, Golden Ages don't have much conflict, and a movie about a happy period in the life of some writer who probably was not as fun to read as Gordon Korman just doesn't seem like it'd be worth watching. Rwanda is so 2005 and Mushroom Club is either a movie about the Super Mario Fan Club or the story of four Italian-immigrant women and their American-born daughters (neither of which seems particularly interesting), so I'm going to go with Death of Kevin Carter. Plus, if I were to go to a club, I would definitely want to go to the Bang Bang Club over the Mushroom Club.

The Nominees:
Don't Tell
Joyeux Noël
Paradise Now
Sophie Scholl - The Final Days
Tsotsi

What will happen?
As usual, Don't Tell, Paradise Now, and Sophie Scholl are immediately disqualified because they don't look foreign in the least bit. If you're going to put your film in this category, the least you can do is toss in a couple accent-egu's or weird words in the title. My vote goes to Tsotsi because it reminds me of the Ogden Nash poem about the Tsetse Fly and has playing card merchandising possibilities. Tsotsis -- collect them all!

The Nominees:
Howl's Moving Castle

• Tim Burton's Corpse Bride
  Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
  
  What will happen?
  Look, a category that I actually saw a nominated movie in! I'm going to predict that Wallace and Gromit will win, because they're so lovable and clay-like. Corpse Bride was not particularly memorable and suffers from having the creator's name smeared across the title like some reenactment of Miss Piggle-Wiggle's Selfishness Cure (This is Dick -- Don't Touch!) I'm saying no to Howl's Moving Castle because it reminds me too much of Milon's Secret Castle, easily one of the worst Nintendo games ever created. I own it only because as a kid I had a castle fetish. I doubt any of this year's movies rank up to movies like The Incredibles and Finding Nemo though.

The Nominees:
Badgered
The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation
The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
9
One Man Band

What will happen?
Unless the Son is a strange paperboard cutout of a monster that loves the moon, Moon and the Son will not win. The studios will also sabotage the chances of 9 and One Man Band because they start with numbers, and would introduce all sorts of alphabetizing confusion at Blockbuster if they won. Are you supposed to go to the segregated number section between the TV Shows and "A" or are you supposed to spell the number and go to that letter? The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello cannot decide whether it wants to be a childrens' book or a Discovery Channel special, so Badgered will take the Oscar home. The IMBD synopsis says, "The tale of a badger who just wants the world to let him sleep." How can that NOT win?

The Nominees:
Ausreisser (The Runaway)
Cashback
The Last Farm
Our Time Is Up
Six Shooter

What will happen?
I'm going to assign plot summaries to each of these movies, and then pick my favourite based on which seems the most promising:
Ausreisser (The Runaway): Rotund German boy, picked on by all his schoolmates, decides to run away to Norway where he eats whale blubber and saves a Nordic beauty from certain death. Subtitled.
Cashback: Double-crossed thief, Porter (Mel Gibson), attempts to extract $70,000 from a recalcitrant ATM which has a $500 a day limit.
The Last Farm: The tale of the Korean pro-gamer (Jonathan Ke Quan) who won a Starcraft tourney by building supply depots in hidden corners of the map until his opponent died from playing video games for more than 48 hours straight.
Our Time Is Up: The rise and fall of a publically traded tech company, "Our Time", who had the bright idea of putting a clock on the Windows taskbar.
Six Shooter: Biopic of a crazy, mathematical genius (Gwenyth Paltrow) who tries to assassinate six world leaders by kidnapping them and reading proofs until they die of boredom, while an over-the-hill Secret Service agent (Clint Eastwood) is hot on her tail.

Six Shooter wins, hands down.

To be continued tomorrow...

Happy Birthday Paige, a.k.a. Oompa Loompa Girl!

Newsday Tuesday

"I can't say I know exactly how a victim of a sexual assault feels, but I think it's something like this -- they invaded my home," Washington said.

I'm sure there are worse ways to defend yourself when you have a history of short-tempered outbursts and shoot the guys delivering your furniture, but it'd be hard to top this one. After remaining silent for thirty days following the shooting, the best that homeland security officer, Colonel Keith Washington, and his lawyer could come up with was "They raped my house"?

To be fair to Washington, he at least tried to come up with some details, such as "One of them hit me with a lead pipe". However, any reasonably educated American who has ever played the game, Clue, knows that you can't invoke the lead pipe unless the pipe is in the same room. It's not even clear from the news reports if the pipe was ever found or if Washington had a pipe-shaped bump on his head.

Three CD players hidden under a cathedral's pews blared sexually explicit language in the middle of an Ash Wednesday Mass, leading a bomb squad to detonate two of the devices.

Detonating a CD player spouting filthy lyrics will surely teach it a lesson, but it seems like overkill to me. Why did it they have to incinerate two of them before realizing that the third was harmless? This sounds like a case of a very bored bomb squad that hadn't gotten to blow anything up in a long, long time (which incidentally puts an ironic spin on Ash Wednesday).

In fact, this would probably be a good way for the now predictable show, COPS, to generate some ratings numbers: At the beginning of any chase, the cops warns the perp (via a bullhorn) that if they get caught, they'll have to pick from three mystery prize boxes. One of the boxes has a Get Out of Jail Free card which will allow them to walk. The second is empty, and the perp gets taken into custody. The third box contains a bomb. Good old-fashioned American hilarity ensues.

Animal control authorities are not amused by a fast food chain's marketing stunt encouraging customers to dress their cats in a special take out bag.

I think my position on these atrocities is already well-established.

Happy Birthday Paige Jenkinson!

Dentist Day

Today is Paige's birthday, and in honor of that momentous event, I went to the dentist yesterday for the first time in nine-hundred-forty-five days , which is longer than the shelf life of pasta (which starts to hatch mealworms around the two year mark, according to the bulk macaroni we kept in our house after I went to college). The duration even outlasted our previous health insurance provider at work, which meant I needed to find a new dentist in the network (this could also be the synopsis of a new Sandra Bullock movie: The Net 2).

I located a dentist's office on Route 7, north of Route 28, and established their credentials by noting that the main dentist's last name had five syllables would not have been an acceptable Scrabble word. I tried to make an appointment for a cleaning, but was informed that the first visit never involved a cleaning, because they needed to accurately assess my teeth to determine how much time the hygenist would need to devote to the cleaning (translation: we're going to make the HMO pay for an extra visit for giggles).

I arrived at their typical office a half hour ahead of schedule. It was a typical affair hidden away in a bland office building with issues of National Geographic, Time, and Highlights for Kids from four weeks ago, and the sounds of power tools ringing in the background. After filling out the First Time Survey (yes, I am happy with my smile, and no, I do not have venereal disease) I was escorted to a dentist chair for X-rays.

This office still employed the classic "bite down on this film eight different times and we'll take eight X-rays which can then be stitched together with the Landscape Stitch feature on our camera" approach instead of the high-tech X-ray machine that revolves around your head in two minutes while exposing you to high amounts of radiation. Fifteen minutes later, my mouth was all cut up from the sharp edges on the films, and the assistant to the assistant to the hygenist scampered off to the One Hour Photo to get them developed.

After reading about Hillary Clinton's out of control momentum in the Presidential primaries (TIME, January 2008), the X-rays came back. Because my previous dentist had flipped the films and then informed me that I should get teeth extracted from the wrong portion of my mouth, I made sure that these were accurately arranged to reflect the true position of my teeth. According to the X-rays, there are no cavities and my home-prevention routine is stellar. However, I should get my wisdom teeth extracted before they cause problems, and I should come to the dentist more often.

So essentially, absolutely nothing has changed in the past three years, which gives me no compelling reason to visit the dentist again anytime soon, and my HMO just paid for a bunch of useless X-rays. Chalk one up for health care.

Happy Birthday Paige!

Friday Fragments

the 1294th most popular Friday destination on the Internet

♠ Following the "success" of their Drive Hammered, Get Nailed campaign (which only resulted in an increase in drunk driving arrests around the sorority floors of the University Commons at GMU), the Fairfax County Police have launched new LED signs with the message, Accidents don't happen... They are CAUSED. It seems like this sign is more confusing than helpful, since an accident which is caused does, in fact, eventually happen. In fact, I predict that accidents will actually increase around this sign as cell-phone drivers try to wrap their brains around the anti-tautology, run out of brain waves, and drive into a ditch.

♠ In fact, the more I think about it, the more I believe that IT'S A TRAP designed to send cell-phone drivers into a ditch, leaving the innocent drivers alive and well.

♠ Speaking of innocence, it's becoming increasingly less innocent on the Internet. As you probably noticed in yesterday's Weird Search post, people like to find naughty things, and the screenshot on the right is from the Hasbro site just a few days ago, where the Scrabble Word of the Day was posted for a good two hours before being taken down and replaced with the word "triply" (in a triple manner, or how Hasbro described the accident when their content manager was fired and pushed down a flight of stairs after the debacle).

♠ It's peculiar that that word would come up at all, since playing "dildo" is not a very high-scoring venture (in any setting).

♠ In a similar vein, when I went to wish Paige a happy birthday on her blog this morning, it told me that I wasn't allowed to do so unless I typed "coutchie". I wisely opted not to, in case my typing history appears during the 2028 Presidential Elections and scandal ensues.

♠ If I were actually to run for President (pending Arnold Schwarzenegger's dstruction of the "US-born" requirement), I would need an old white guy to help me win in the South and in central Ohio. I would probably choose my best man, Jack -- he would do well in public office.

♠ Speaking of Jacks, I don't understand why they continue to hire Jack Black as an actor or presenter. His showing at the Oscars was just painful to watch, much like most of the rest of the two hours I had on in the background before shutting it off. Hugh Jackman dancing around and singing about how he hadn't seen The Reader was inspired, and Ben Stiller's cameo was chuckly (in a chucklesome manner), but otherwise it was just plain bad, like a Shostakovich symphony arranged for marching band.

♠ Sadly, I have played a movement of a Shostakovich symphony while in a marching band, back in 1999 when I was in Rosie's rank.

♠ Speaking of Rosie, she popped out a baby on Monday (missing 222 by that much!), Colton Jason Mirick. I estimate that it will be twice her size in roughly four weeks. Congratulations!

♠ Plans for the weekend include a dinner with the family and some overtime. My work schedule should be back to normal within the next couple weeks, just in time for some Corned Beef and Guinness on St. Patrick's Day. What are you doing this weekend?

♠ I'm going to stop writing and post this, since Katie Lucas has reloaded the page four times in the last hour looking for a post. Have a great weekend!

Weekend Wrap-up

I did not realize that "Total Editing Time" was one of the properties that Microsoft Word captured, and I probably would have preferred remaining in the dark about this particular measure.

When not writing tutorials showing Turkish bombers flying over a veterinary hospital in Atlanta, or running on the treadmill watching the really awful part of 24, Season One, involving amnesia, I was probably sleeping. However we did go to Don Pablo's on Saturday night for a very slow dinner and two-course carnitas (the tortillas came fifteen minutes later). We also watched the movie, Drive, which was interesting but not the type of movie I was expecting to watch. Ryan Gosling really looks like a less goofy version of Jason Segel.

We caught a little bit of the beginning of the Oscars on Sunday night while eating chicken bacon alfredo pizza, but it was unmemorable apart from Nick Nolte's lack of sobriety. The whole telecast sounded like we were listening to it from inside of a submarine, and I could barely hear Billy Crystal's song over the accompaniment. The Oscar for sound mixing did not go to the Academy's sound booth.

How was your weekend?

Memory Day: Thirteen Years Ago Today

On February 27, 2000, Shac and Kelley had a student recital in an interminable line of student recitals. Using my newly discovered Photoshop skills, I provided them with a set of incredibly pretentious recital posters, including one which just called it "The Recital".

I probably turned pages for accompanist, Jim Bryant, on this recital, as that was my go-to way to get better at reading piano scores and learning not to write block chords with 11 notes in my own piano parts. I also performed anonymously in Intrada by Otto Ketting.

Intrada was one of those weird solo pieces where the composer believes that people want to sit through a trumpet player talking to himself with dissonance for several minutes. Shac "improved" the piece by narrating a poem over the top of Kelley's performance, and then had me perform the last couple bars from the Green Room for an artistic fading-away effect. Quality theatrics!

Sick Day

I am on Day 3 of a flu-like stomach virus, which is why there was no post yesterday. Apologies to the stalwart few that kept coming back every few hours and then checking the calendar to make sure that it wasn't 12 of 12. On the plus side, you now know what my website would look like on the first day after my death, or alternately, every Saturday since August 2004.

I first sensed that something was amiss around 3 AM on Tuesday. That entire day was spent at flu-driven extremes -- having a fever with chills, being exhausted but not being able to sleep, and incapable of getting comfortable in any position. Events came to  a  the head in the afternoon, in a Jackson Pollack meets the Exorcist meets my bathroom moment. Incidentally, the body triggers an effective physiological warning when you need to honk, but about 5 to 6 more seconds of alert time would be nicer, to get your affairs in order.

Tuesday night was the worst, scrunched up in uncomfortable positions across pillows and blankets next to a space heater, in the delirious throes of an opium dream to rival Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. When not fighting cats for blanket rights, I was demonstrating the dual discharge of detritus from a dysfunctional digestion. The meals recorded in my weight loss journal for that day included 8 grapes and a saltine cracker. (Side note: get a wife, because they will go to the store and buy you grapes when you are sick).

Every day since Tuesday has been the aftermath of a tornado -- I am longer probably dying, but still not working quite right and not able to do much besides sleep all day long and eat grapes. This morning, I felt well enough to start a laundry with all of my artifacts of sick, and then promptly had to lie down for a nap before writing this post.

I feel like this stomach flu should have come and gone in a single day. It's definitely passé now and has outstayed its welcome. This is probably why they invented the word, "antedifluvian".

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2015 album.

• Events
  • Visited Sam, Kristen, Ingrid Michaelson, and all the restaurants in Richmond on the weekend of 1/31 - 2/1.
  
  
  • Went to a mini Super Bowl party with dancing sharks at the Crane's on 2/1.
  
  
  • Had my company winter event at the American History museum on 2/7.
  
  
  • Went to "Pups in the Pub" at Old Ox Brewery with the Lowry dogs on 2/8.
  
  
  • Met Isaac Ahlbin and played Hearthstone on 2/13.
  
  
  • Saw both sets of parents as well as newly-relocated Mike (Local-Mike?) on 2/14.
  
  
  • Enjoyed good snows on 2/17 and 2/21.
  
  
  • Went back to the Crane's for the Oscars on 2/22.
  
  
  • Survived another overnight deployment for work on 2/26.


• Projects
  • Studying for my AWS Developer certification in earnest this month through LinuxAcademy.com.
  
  
  • Assembled a bookshelf.
  
  
  • Shoveled lots of snow.


• Consumerism
  • Enjoyed seasons of Justified, Bosch, Lilyhammer, and Lie to Me. Just started Sherlock.
  
  
  • No great new music this month.
  
  
  • Played Hearthstone, The Talos Principle, and Far Cry 4.

February's Final Grade: B, lots of indoor time, but pleasant and mostly low-key

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

A few photos have been added to the Life, 2017 album. Google Photos sucks.

• Events
  • Got my first speeding ticket in about seven years driving down to work in Fairfax on T 1/31.
  
  
  • Had Sara over for grilled salmon and the Appalachian Trail game on F 2/3.
  
  
  • Spent a weekend in Sperryville, with a hike of Little Devil's Stairs, a visit to the Aleworks, and dinner at the Schoolhouse Pub on S 2/4.
  
  
  • Watched the first half of the Super Bowl then turned it off with cataclysmic effect on our assumptions on S 2/5. (Just like the election!)
  
  
  • Had dinner and an appalling sour beer that wasn't advertised as sour at Mellow Mushroom on T 2/7.
  
  
  • Met up with Michelle and Sara for comfort noodle food at Singh Thai on Lake Anne on S 2/12.
  
  
  • Had comfort American Chinese food (followed by Sweetfrog) on F 2/17.
  
  
  • Had Rebecca's parents over for lunch and played with Tom's new slingshot on an unseasonably warm S 2/18.
  
  
  • Met with our new doula at Cafein on S 2/19.
  
  
  • Had the 20 week ultrasound (2 weeks late) on W 2/22.
  
  
  • Went to my parent's house for an oil change and to celebrate my dad's birthday, and also to reveal that we're having a GIRL, on S 2/25.
  
  
  • Did our taxes and marveled at obscene savings on S 2/26.


• Projects
  • Averaging 60 hours per week at work, but only driving the death commute to Fairfax once a week.
  
  
  • Fixed a deathtrap outlet that shorted out whenever Rebecca leaned against the wall, as well as bare spots where Booty destroyed the carpet trying to get into the bedroom when we kick her annoying ass out.


• Consumerism
  • Got to level 528 in Overwatch, with 540 hours played and a 51.1% winrate.
  
  
  • May have purchased something wholly unnecessary but very cool after tax day reinforced how much we have in savings.
  
  
  • No new music to speak of this month, but still enjoying a Bliss n' ESO station on Pandora.
  
  
  • No amazing shows this month, but waded through yet another season of Game of Thrones.

February's Final Grade: B, A mix of work any play, possibly with a little too much work. Rebecca's feeling better!

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2019 album. Google Photos sucks.

• Events
  • Tried out Senor Tequila's for dinner on F 2/1 (not bad for Mexican food, but that is 98% of Mexican restaurants).
  
  
  • Worked through a minor flu-like cold on S 2/2 while Rebecca held a playdate with her library friends (and a homemade quiche).
  
  
  • Had the Jacksons over for dinner on S 2/3 on what happened to be the Super Bowl.
  
  
  • Had Ghazaley and Michael over for dinner on F 2/8.
  
  
  • Went to Jax's 2nd Birthday Party on S 2/10.
  
  
  • Had a family dinner at Cafesano on T 2/12.
  
  
  • Visited my parents with Maia on W 2/13.
  
  
  • Had a family dinner at Saigon Cafe on F 2/15.
  
  
  • Went on another paint date on S 2/16, while Rebecca's parents babysat.
  
  
  • Had a snowbound day with Maia on W 2/20 while Rebecca went to the aquatic PT conference.
  
  
  • Maia had a playdate with Carolyn and Fiona on F 2/22, followed by a family dinner at The V.
  
  
  • Went to a Game Night at the Smiths on S 2/23 for spaghetti and The Mind.
  
  
  • Invited the Jacksons and Hannah over for dinner on S 2/24, then failed to get any live stream of the Oscars to appear in the background.
  
  
  • Family dinner at O'Faolain's on M 2/25, where Maia made endless circuits of the nearly empty restaurant.
  
  
  • My parents came over on W 2/27 for a Maia visit.
  
  
  • Caught up with an old friend from FGM, Joe, at Bar Louie for lunch on H 2/28.


• Projects
  • Became an advance test reader for a yet-be-released book.
  
  
  • Worked on a massive proposal all month at work.


• Consumerism
  • No time for gaming this month!
  
  
  • Enjoyed listening to the new Hilltop Hoods album, The Great Expanse.
  
  
  • Enjoyed watching Russian Doll, Season One this month.
  
  

February's Final Grade: C+, Two straight weeks of work leave little room for other pursuits.

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2023 album.

• Events
  • The first snow of the season gently dusted the grassy areas around our house on W 2/1.
  
  
  • Date Night at a cooking class (Culinara in Vienna) on F 2/3.
  
  
  • Rebecca and Maia went to a 7th birthday for Fatima on S 2/4.
  
  
  • Maia was invited to two next-door birthday parties for Jax and Elizabeth on S 2/11.
  
  
  • Went out to Harper's Ferry to see the Whitmer clan on S 2/12.
  
  
  • Went to the monthly HOA meeting on W 2/15.
  
  
  • Maia went to the grandparents' for the weekend, F 2/17 - S 2/19.
  
  
  • Dinner at Not Your Average Joe's after a trip to the Container Store on F 2/17.
  
  
  • Snow flurries in the morning on S 2/25. Dinner with Car and Jordan (kale, lentil, and sausage soup).
  
  
  • Visit from my parents to celebrate my dad's birthday on S 2/26.


• Projects
  • Got new tires for my Accord on M 2/6 after the year-long slow leak in one tire finally became a fast leak.
  
  
  • Continued learning Kotlin by redoing Advent of Code puzzles from 2015 - 2017.
  
  
  • Finished providing proofreading services for the final volume of The Wars of Light and Shadow by Janny Wurts.


• Consumerism
  • Enjoyed watching Cunk on Earth and Abbott Elementary this month.
  
  
  • No amazing new music or books.
  
  
  • Still playing Overwatch 2.

February's Final Grade: B, feels really busy but pleasant overall