Done writing!!!

I finished writing my thesis yesterday evening! Now edit, defend, edit, edit some more....

Two weeks

So I have less than 2 weeks and I will done--well almost done. I just scheduled my defense for a week from Thursday at 1:30. I can give specifics if anyone is interested, but know that the title is "DEVELOPMENT OF JOINING METHODS FOR THERMOPLASTIC COMPOSITE SANDWICH PANELS" before committing. It should be a hoot!

Made there and back again over the weekend. Mistress Julie did not realize it, but she escorted me out of town when I was driving the Big Rig. Now I am thoroughly sick of driving and writing and cleaning and packing and unpacking...

At least Manny is being Manny and is the AL player of the week. Good of him to finally show up!

Driving the Big Rig and the TdF

I had some help loading the truck last night. It took less than 2 hours thanks to everyone who showed up. I could not have done it without you guys! It again hits home how much I am going to miss all the friends and family we have made here. SLC has been a great place for me. I have realized who I am while living here and that is in large part because I met and fell in love with AD. I do not know, nor care to know, where I would be without her in my life. I guess that is love.

As for that bike race in France, I am really bummed. I was hoping that this year would mark the first of the "clean" tours. Instead, it is more of a circus than ever. I truly love the sport of cycling--second only to skiing--and I hate to see it going through this. I know there are lots of clean guys out there that are successfully making a living as Pro's. The ones I know personally work their asses off, literally. They are class acts and stand-up guys who I have gained even more respect for in the past days.

Enough on the soap box, time to get driving the big rig up to the country of Montana. Then back to SLC for a couple of weeks to finish the thesis and defend.

Now if only the Yankees would stop playing .800 baseball!

Bathroom 2.0

My grandfather likes to tease me that we do in fact have indoor plumbing in the country of Montana. When we bought the house, we suspected that we had some rot and other issues to contend with in that area. It had to go and we got into it the day after closing. Here is Beth getting some aggression out:

You can see here that we had to contend issues all the way down through the subfloor, not to mention the layers of wallpaper (green area below the window):

We decided to replace everything except the ceiling and the medicine cabinet. Plaster is fun; sorry for the dust on the lens:

Well somewhere along the way a bunch of work got done (thanks Dingmans!!!) and we now have a tiled floor:

Not to mention we learned that AD is a wiz when it comes to working with a trowel and grout. Check out the river rocks from the stream near the house she grew up in:

In addition, the floor in the bedroom is done and next is painting the walls:

Plus a new kitchen sink, new plumbing, vastly improved electrical and some house warming gifts and we are about ready to move in! Unfortunately, the lawn went from jungle to brown after it was mowed and they only give you one free beer when you tell them that you just moved in down the street.

Now if only my thesis would finish writing itself.....

If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy!

We are up in Bozeman. Got a lot done on the bathroom and Ed came through with some solid plumbing work for us. Sounds like he is going to do a bit of electrical too. With any luck, the bathroom will be functioning again by this time next week. I was hoping to spend the week up here continuing to work, but alas my research calls. Dingmans will have to work without me next weekend, though I am not sure we could all fit into the house cuz it is pretty small.

We stopped into one of the two establishments that serve beer within walking distance from the house. We told the bartender that we had just bought a house down the street. He needed little more description that the color and that it needed some work--particularly a pass or two with a lawn mower. I am sure the neighbors are not enjoying the current height of the grass and everything else, but it will be better next year. In short, I do not find myself discouraged by the work that needs doin'. Rather, I am excited by the prospect and knowledge that the two houses next to ours are selling for at least $40k more than we paid.

Sandy is off to VT to find a place--we couldn't be more excited for him! Congrats to the new UT Crit Champ--Turbo. Beckett and the Sox are still getting it done after a bit of a slump. Life is good and would only be better if I had spent some time on the river after driving through one of the biggest Salmon fly hatches I have ever seen...

Vacation

I wish that I could have a 15 day vacation if I were under-performing in my job! Schilling stunk up ATL on Monday night. Anna and I were watching the game and I said to her "I'll bet he goes on the DL before the week is out." Sure enough...

Realistically, I am not at all concerned about this. As my buddy JB put it "I’m not all that worried, as Lester will be coming back; Tavarez has been far better than simply serviceable so he could stay in the lineup as Curt could go on the DL for some R & R; eventually we will see more of Delcarmen, Hansen, and possibly Buchholz; and Manny and Papi are due to pick it up." And I agree especially with Tavarez's gem last night.

Just in case you haven't seen this yet, check it out.

Rolling into Bozangeles...

Johnny Five High Uintas Alive

There are so many race reports from this weekend, won't take much time to write my own. Sandy finished third, Marc had an egg blow up in his face, and Sam had too much time on his hands. Like Turbo, my best ride was the TT thanks to the wicked awesome Seven Mike Hanseen at Canyon Bicycles loaned to me. Overall, it was a fun weekend.

I have been writing my thesis quite a bit. I have discovered a trick that works well for me. Five to ten page papers are pretty easy for me to crank out. Thus, I have broken the thesis down into bite-sized chunks. The real bonus is that the thesis is double spaced so when I take the paper and plug it in it suddenly gets voluminous. Then there are figures and graphs and footnotes--I swear half the time of writing is just busy work that a monkey could do!

ION, the Sox continue to roll. They do not seem as hot as they were a month ago. It has to be hard when you are playing against the Sox at your home field and all you hear from the crowd is the "Let's go Red Sox!" chant. Also, Manny has been dancing a lot lately which means he is happy and we are only 8 weeks away from his typical mid-season depression.

Dupree's ride

Whadda ya say; whadda ya know!

But not really. I personally liked the way The Sopranos ended on Sunday. I have enjoyed the show for a while now and will miss it. I also just found out about this alternate ending where "Manny emerges from under the table to warn AJ."

This is bad...

I got this from my sister-in-law and nearly fell out of my chair:

1. Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.

2. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

3. A dyslexic man walks into a bra...

4. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says: "A beer please, and one for the road."

5. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?"

6. "Doc, I can't stop singing 'The Green, Green Grass of Home.'" "That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome." "Is it common?" "It's Not Unusual."

7. Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, "I was artificially inseminated this morning." "I don't believe you," says Dolly. "It's true,” exclaims Daisy. “No bull!"

8. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.

9. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any.

10. I went to a seafood disco last week...and pulled a mussel.

11. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.

12. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says "Dam"!

13. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

14. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why?" they asked, as t hey moved off. "Because," he said, "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

15. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Ahmal." The other goes to a family in Spain ; they name him "Juan." Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

16. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (oh, man, this is so bad, it's good)..... a super calloused fragile mystic vexed with halitosis.

17. And finally, there was the person who sent 10 different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.