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beneath this skin these fragments caught

NP: Peter Gabriel - "Up"

Bah, another round of PG tour dates in the USA and another round of him not coming to St. Louis! Grrr. Though I'm not sure I could afford to see the show even if he was coming here, so maybe it's a moot point to begin with.

One of the bad things about not being in college anymore: there is no spring break. Though on the flipside, there is an annual allotment of paid vacation. So I suppose it all evens out in the end.

Erin's friend Wes from Ohio is staying with us for a while. His railroad job is transferring him to the area, and he's on a scouting mission to find an apartment, at which point he'll send for his wife and kids.

It's supposed to be a very nice day outside, and even nicer and more springlike tomorrow. Not sure what the weekend plans are yet, but whatever they end up entailing, I hope at least a good part of Saturday is spent outdoors.

Erin crossed the river and braved the lush environs of southwest Illinois to meet me at the Belleville Denny's after work, at which point we went to that bracelet place on Main that she's been trying to catch open for ages and ages. After that we headed back to Denny's and had dinner with Ryan S and his girlfriend, which was way cool, since I hadn't seen them for a while, and since Ryan and I had been trying to meet up for weeks now but neither of our schedules let it work out.

Walking around downtown Belleville, just in the few blocks of Main in either direction of the square, I feel very at home. I mean, I was born in the hospital only a few blocks away, which I'm sure has something to do with it. Maybe it's just that wherever you come from, part of that place will always be part of you, it's ingrained, it imprints you. I mean, it's not a glitzy place, it's just your normal, small-to-medium sized county seat type town. But it resonates with me. I can sit on a bench near the courthouse, reading a paper and drinking a coffee, and feel completely at ease. Granted, living in the city now, I'm still not particularly far away. But I think it's still worth observing and thinking about.

No, no, no, no, no.

Some people in my lab are installing a new server at the base this weekend. They'd been waiting for the equipment to be shipped here from somewhere in England, by way of a truck from Chicago. Well, apparently the truck arrived last night, but at too late an hour to actually get into the base. So, it seems that the server sat in this cold truck overnight, got condensation all over it, and then froze. Now they're trying to thaw the thing out and hope that it's not fried. Sometimes I wonder about people...

Earlier this morning, I'm pretty certain that I completed some sort of unholy trinity of things that I swore I'd never do. I mean, two of the three were already in place -- last year I bought a cell phone, and this past fall I started drinking diet cola. Now, as of like 8 o'clock this morning, it's all over. I drank a bottled Starbucks Frappucino thing. Yeah. I used to make fun of J.R. all the time for drinking those things back in the day. And there I was, paying hard earned cash for one.

Baseball season is nearly upon us. Spring training is already in progress, and the regular season begins at the start of April. There's something about baseball that stirs my American blood. Much as in the way my place of birth is permanently a part of me, I think on some level baseball is floating around in my bloodstream. Maybe if you decode the pattern of some of my DNA into binary, it'll work out to be Willie McGee's lifetime batting average or something.

Our within-walking-distance neighborhood bowling alley bar is the best bar on earth. It's official now, I'm pretty sure of it. Any place where you can drink mind-bogglingly cheap bottles of Budweiser, eat jalape�o Krunchers (that's a brand of chip, for those not in the know), watch the Blues and still have a conversation that's doesn't get drowned out by shouting and hooting -- that is what you call a find. They also have a jukebox that, while it does have some country music, which is unfortunate, also has enough of merit to be worth playing. There's also darts, pool, and some sort of weird tabletop shuffleboard thing, which is the must-have trio (well, the shuffleboard can be replaced by any random third thing, like a good arcade game, but still) in any good neighborhood bar.

I just wanted to state, for the record, that Erin completely and totally rocks my world. We fight sometimes, but it seems like we blow little things way out of proportion. I mean, like I've said before, we have areas of improvement, and we need to take those seriously. But I digress -- she is utterly brilliant. And if I haven't said it lately, well then I deserve a punch square in the face, because it's true. She's still the best conversationalist I've ever met, she can drink me under the table, she reads and listens to all the right things, she's smarter than me, compassionate and snuggly and hot. And like I said, smack me upside the head if I ever don't recognize and appreciate that.

If "The Meaning of Life" is also your favorite Monty Python flick, drop me a line via your method of choice. I just need to know I'm not insane here.

I'm in a fantastic mood today. I think I'm going to take a mini-lunch now and go for a bit of a walk around my little office park. Scenery's not much, but just look at that blue sky.

then / now