Lots of stuff has happened and will be happening in the next week ( Read more... )

Oh have I been procrastinating this one. I've been to three shows and one funeral since I last wrote here. I suppose I'll try to make this brief ( Read more... )

I'm coming to Belleville! I'll be arriving by big bad greyhound bus into St. Louis around 10:20PM on Sunday night. I'll be leaving St. Louis on Wednesday morning at 8:30AM via Amtrak. Between then I'll be attending my Aunt Vicky's wake and funeral. Other than that I hope to see some Belleville people. Woohoo!

So my Aunt something or other is dying of cancer soon. However, I have not seen the lady in something like 20 years and I (embarrassingly) cannot remember her name. I'm thinking Vicky is/ was her name. She divorced my Uncle when I was a small child so I have no real memories of her. Divorcing my uncle is probably the wisest thing one can do short ( Read more... )

So the other day Jill and I were watching Season 3 of West Wing and we came across an episode where Toby and Lord Marbury (British Ambassador) snuck off from a White House party to have a drink and they both wanted some Lagavulin Scotch. It's a distillery just down the road from the Laphroaig distillery (good peaty scotch) on the Isle of Islay ( Read more... )

When you have academic conferences, you have lots of people submitting papers they would like to present at them. Thus they require lots of people to review those papers. Foolishly, I agreed to volunteer for this task and I now have ten papers to review by next Wednesday. I've read and reviewed two so far and I am now updating my journal in an ( Read more... )

So, today some guy entered a lecture hall at Cole Hall at Northern Illinois University and started shooting at the students taking a class on oceans from the Geology department. I don't really know any Comm students there anymore but all the English people Jill knows are okay and I assume all the Comm faculty were not attending the Ocean class. ( Read more... )

Oh it's been a busy, busy semester. I've been trying to get a study ready for next term for the first stage of my degree, design and conduct a study for a class, teach a persuasion class from scratch, work on my advisor's research, and take three classes. It's left little time for whining so I thought I'd try and get caught up all at once. Next ( Read more... )

It's been awhile hasn't it? Lotta stuff happened these past few months. Jill and I saw the Decemberists twice including a show where Colin Meloy pulled Jill on stage and let her play his guitar while he stood in the audience and pretended to be a fan. We saw Laura Viers open for said Decemberists twice. Her music has really grown on me. Her song, " ( Read more... )

There is a product, I shit you not, called the Simon Says: Sit and Spin. That’s right, Sit and Spin baby! Had I been playing a game of Simon Says at any point in my youth and had the honor of playing the Simon role, I’m certain that the punishment from any teacher overhearing me would have been dire if I had said, “Simon says... sit and spin.” ( Read more... )