I got back from my beach trip yesterday evening, having driven up to Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina to meet up with some Virginia friends at a beach house they'd rented for the week (Pictures are on the Photos page). I would've liked to stay longer, but that whole educational process was beckoning here and I had to take care of some more residency things before classes start. The drive up and down isn't so bad, because the states and the scenery change pretty regularly. South Carolina could stand to be abbreviated by about fifty miles, and we could always use an interstate from Savannah to Tallahassee, but otherwise things were pretty uneventful, allowing me to make the trip in about eleven hours. I'd never driven on Rte 64 in North Carolina before, and they keep your interest by having a different sign for every geometric permutation of intersection possible. Not content with the standard T and cross intersection signs, they mix it up with a variety of arcs, thin and fat lines, and general convolutedness. The signs actually resembled the four picture set on Mike's kitchen wall. By the way, it's also "unlawful to feed bears along the highway" on Rte 64.

Last night I set up my cable modem, which only took an hour and a half on the phone with the illiterate Comcast folk to work correctly. It's so much better than dial-up, and reminds me of my days in the dorms at Tech, which was one of the first schools nationally to wire all their dorms with Ethernet. This should be very helpful for passing around my music files, and I'll probably do more MP3s this year than last.

Bulbous Bouffant (MP3, 3.9MB). I'm not sure why, but this song is incredibly funny.