Can you guess what my first sentence will be? Wrong, it's not "It's been a while;" it's "Can you guess what my first sentence will be?" How could you be so off? Am I to blame? Was it bad a bad upbringing? Was I really that bad of a teacher?!

Well now I'm sad. Yes, this is my sad font, and until now, I've not had reason to use it. I hope you're happy!

It's alright; I'm better now, now that I've imagined your apology, as heartfelt as I imagine it must have been. You're forgiven.

When we last communicated via RSS, I was still in Port Orchard. It's fair to say much has changed. I don't really remember where I left off, and at the moment I don't actually have an internet connection, so I can't check, but suffice to say nothing all that important happened in my last remaining days there. Mostly it was packing, or stalling on packing. I really only finished about half, though I bet my mom would argue even less than that. A lot of it was stuff from my apartment at Western, and that stuff was never unpacked.

Sunday evening came, and I was supposed to visit my aunt and uncle in Bothel for dinner. I left about a half hour before we were supposed to have it, but my sister said she was running late too. We were supposed to meet at her apartment and then drive there in one car. I got a call while en route, but since I was driving, and it was past July 1st (July 6th to be precise), I ignored it. I was I-5 and couldn't really pull over. Apparently I'm one of the few people who takes that law even slightly seriously. I just know that I'm absolutely helpless on the phone. Today I was on the phone, sitting in my chair, and when I finished, I realized I was standing. Helpless and/or standing don't go well together with driving. I didn't much like getting on the phone while driving before the law went into effect, and now I have a valid, righteous excuse.

I got to her apartment and checked the message, which of course was to meet her at my aunt's, and hopped back into the car. I confirmed that it's about a fifteen minute drive from her place to my aunt's. You all can breathe easy now, or, at least easier -- there's still the unresolved case of the glove that didn't fit, unless such information was uhh... speculated about... in If I Did It.

So, I got there pretty late, after they'd already eaten. They gave me tacos while they ate their ice cream, and we talked. They also presented to me my graduation gift: a The NEW Super Mario Bros. lunchbox with an Arby's gift card in it. I don't know what they expected me to do with the gift card, but the lunchbox makes a great mantelpiece. William (or at least I hope that's his alias), my cousin, wanted to play Mario Kart with me, but I was pretty beat, and had my first day of work the next morning at 8:30, so we called it a night around 11:45.

On the way back I stopped to get gas, which freaked out my sister since I was no longer following her. It's probably about time I renamed her. Her name shall be Ashley. I suppose I could call her Travis for just as good of reason, but that might confuse our future audiences. See, had I been born a girl, I'd have been named Ashley. That was before they thought of the name-- very tricksy; ya almost got me, but I'm still one step ahead of you. And if she'd been born a guy after I was born a guy, her name would be Travis. So, as I said, it makes more sense to call her Travis than Ashley, but you understand. And if you don't, I suggest rereading this post from the start. You probably missed something important and entirely relevant in the second or third paragraph, which of course wouldn't make sense without having a complete understanding of the first.

Anyway, I got to Ashley's and Travis's apartment a bit later, where they freaked out at me a bit. I was about to get ready for bed, but decided first to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything. As it turns out, in order to fill out a certain form, I needed my passport, which of course earlier that day I had looked and decided I wasn't heading to Canada any time soon and left in my room. It was my turn to freak out. I called my mom who said she would have driven it to me, at least half way, had she not had a paper to finish that night for her Master's program. So, three hours later I got back to their apartment. On the way there, while I was still pretty stressed and on edge, worried about my first day of work and being awake for it, and not knowing what to expect, and whatever else, I really felt like God wanted me to go the speed limit the rest of the way home. How annoying, right? I don't go much over the speed limit, but I do consistently go five over. After a few minutes of arguing that it was my imagination, I gave in. I'm not sure what the reason was that God wanted me to, but I am convinced that he did. It very well could have been for no other reason than that it calmed me down. I get frustrated when people don't maintain their speed, or drive so that I can't pass them, or whatever else. Going 60 on the freeway allowed me to stay in the right lane the whole way. Sure I was passed, but that's what the left lanes are for, and I only had to pass a couple people, when there wasn't much surrounding traffic. I'm still not great at maintaining my speed in that car. I miss the van, though not as much now as I used to. The van was amazing for maintaining your speed, probably because of its mass, but also the gas pedal was somehow nicer.

Like I said, three hours later I got back to their apartment. They were sleeping on the couch so closely, it seemed like they were one body. I took their bed, which was scarcely large enough for one of me, and fell straight to sleep. (Okay, I think I've taken that far enough. Ashley will be singular again.)

I woke up around 6 the next morning. The night prior I had thought I was going to don my suit for the first day, but thought better of it while back in Port Orchard. I got to the campus, and actually into the building I was supposed to get to, around 7:00. I had expected traffic and to get lost several times, and allotted time accordingly. So I sat for an hour and a half. I played a little bit of my DS. I've been playing Phoenix Wright. It's a pretty fun game, and I highly recommend it to any DS-toting reader. It's certainly not a typical game, and like any software, it does have its quirks. I actually beat it tonight. It's irritating because even if you find a contradiction, you have to present the contradiction the game is expecting. For example in the last case, the witness testifies that someone was stabbed in the chest, when his autopsy specifically says he was stabbed in the back, but the contradiction they were looking for was that the murder weapon had a broken tip before entering the victim. (Gaul's nodding in recollection at this point.)

Around 8:00 they started handing out nametags to the thirty or so of us who had shown up early. I had been the first by about 10 minutes, then a couple more came and so on. Eventually there were 211 of us -- all starting the same day. I'm not sure it was absolutely necessary that I had gone home to get my Passport, but they did ask for it, and what's done is done. I made the right choice in not wearing my suit -- no one was. (I really doubt they'd fit in it anyway; I'm pretty thin.) Everyone was, however, dressed like I would for a church I've never been to: khakis or slacks and a nice shirt, so I fit in just fine. That's how we dressed the first day. The second day, everyone was in jeans.

So, for the first day and a half, we were in a program called NEO (New Employee Orientation). A woman lead the program/class. She seemed to go by her alias as much as her name. Aliases are basically what our email addresses are: <alias>@micrsoft.com. We can apply to get a nice address like, <firstname>.<lastname>@microsoft.com, but no one does for campus email. She lead the class pretty effectively, giving us lots of information without overloading us, and taking breaks for guest speakers and tens, if not billions, of short movies. The first speaker on the first day was a vice president of something, who gave his speech on innovation. He showed this 10 minute movie on how people at Microsoft envisioned the future of healthcare. All the buildings were white. All the clothing was white. All the counter tops were white. All the electronics were white. You get the picture. The first scene was a woman jogging, and some apparatus was keeping track of her vitals, and sending that information to her doctor and nutritionist, who then were put up on her white wall when she got home to have a video conference. Next up was her doctor, who after the conference, pulled out his white PalmPilot-like device, which gave him directions to his next patient's room. That kind of bothers me because I want my doctor to know how to get to rooms in his workplace, without some electronic device to guide him like the lines in Wall-E. Also, on his way there, he passed maybe one or two people. What kind of hospital lacks people? Anyway, his patient was white in a white hospital robe, in white sheets, on a white bed. His white table had two prescription bottles. A bell dinged from the table, and one of the red circles around the base of one of the bottles turned green. He picked up the bottle, and the circled followed under it until it was not above the surface anymore. He took his medication and as he put the bottle back, a red circle followed it. Anyway, his talk presented this as an example of good innovation, something to strive for and look forward to. Really? Haven't we seen I, Robot? I don't want my life to be so run by software. Sure, we already rely on it quite a bit. I'm typing right now, but at least I can still write on paper (if you can call it handwriting). We have traffic lights governed by software, but when the power goes out, we know how to stop and pretend the intersection is a 4-way stop. Dare I say the internet dies and we no longer have email or Amazon.com, I'm sure we'll all remember how to use USPS and Barnes and Nobel, with a little practice.

After that he warned of us "bad innovation," which was hacking and the like. Not that I at all advocate the destructive capabilities of the skilled programmer (and I decidedly do not), but in a way, it seemed to me that the hackers here were the Rebel Alliance, to business technology's (not Microsoft's or any company's in particular) Galactic Empire.

He also talked a bit about bugs, and his dream that one day, some thirty years down the road or so, they'd look back and be boggled that buggy software once existed. He showed us some of Microsoft's best. I've seen screenshots of most of them in emails caught by my spam filter a couple times, so odds are you've seen them too. Some ones, I suppose, weren't in the emails because they were only funny to devs, like errors that say "Overflow at line 1." The average person doesn't know that that error means, "Hey, come exploit me at line one, Mr. Hacker!" Still, my favorite was a serious design flaw in some software that someone (I don't know if it was MS or not) wrote for hotels. Apparently this was an intranet site so people could order videos or something from their hotel room, and the site would automatically tack that onto your bill. Anyway, there was a "fee" parameter in the URL, so "somehotel.com/movierental.asp?fee=8.95" or something like it. It turns out if you got rid of the parameter, it completely crashed the system so no one could use it, which is bad enough in itself, but of course, what values are programmers going to try? fee=0.00, of course made it free, but no, that's not good enough. fee=-100.00. That's more like it, and yes, it worked. We've come a long way since then. I hope.

All the videos, particularly the first day, made it feel a little cultish, actually. Microsoft is such a great place to work. Here's another reason it can be your new god. There was a guy who apparently was being hired to public relations with a jacket that said "Evangelist" on the back, as in Micrsoft Evangelism, which is actually a department there. Their goal is to go out and get people excited about Microsoft technologies. It's not a bad goal, but the word "evangelist" in particular bothers me. And then the whole idea of being called by your alias rather than your name... Cults often rename their members, yes? In two week's experience, however, working at Microsoft doesn't at all feel like a cult. On the contrary, in a cult (or so I would imagine), you're brainwashed into believing everything about the cult is truth and the best and so on, whereas at Microsoft, we're extremely self-critical.

The second guest speaker was a woman who talked to us about our benefits at Microsoft. The one I'm most excited about is a program called GIVE, where MS will match dollar for dollar any donation to a government-approved non-profit organization that fit some pretty broad criteria (basically, they won't match my tithes, but I hadn't even considered that until I read the criteria), up to $12,000 a year. If that's not insentive to give generously, I don't know what is. So, the amount God pushed me to give to the INN over the summer is being matched, and the donation toward Hime's September Jamaica mission trip is being matched toward her trip. I'm very excited. The rest of our benefits are pretty amazing too. In Washington state, we have three health plans to choose from, and they'll actually give us a little bit back each paycheck if we choose the Group Health option (which I did -- I don't really have a reason to see a doctor outside of Washington for the time being, and I can always change it in some November down the road).

The next day, we had a speaker from Legal talk. He was pretty funny, as we were promised on day one. Unfortunately, for entirely valid reasons, we're not really allowed to talk about much of what goes on at work, and every division is different. For example, XBox devs don't talk about their products pre-release at all, even to other devs within Microsoft, whereas my group, SSDS, is a bit more laxed. We can talk about what it does (in fact much of it is documented in MSDN), but how it does it is completely hush-hush, outside of the company. Another unfortunate must is that we can't really work on Open Source stuff, because if we look at source that's copyrighted, we're corrupted in the sense that we can't then go write code similar to it, or the big meanies who maintain the GPL will come sue us, and perhaps rightfully so.

Anyway, expect whatever content I do post here in the future to lack much information about work.

Around noon on the second day, they gave us all our Microsoft badges that grant us access to the buildings we're in. From there, I walked two buildings over to where my group is. There, they set me up with a computer and such, and for the rest of the day I put it together and installed Windows Server 2003, and so on. I have a peer mentor who's worked at MS for a few years, but in this department only about a month or two, and he's been a wonderful resource and friend to me, helping me get settled and get a grasp on things. I hope someday I can pass on the favor -- and have as much patience as he's displayed.

Until this past Wednesday (so for about a week), I've been working on a toy program of my own design that uses the software we're developing; so I was writing a program as if I were a third-party company. Using it was remarkably simple, though there are a few features that we'll get to later that would be nice to have.

Meetings are pretty fun, especially if they're brainstorming meetings, because people get pretty heated. It doesn't really get unprofessional, but there's definitely a debate and sides taken and everything, and then when the meeting is over, everyone walks out as if nothing happened except good ideas. At least that's the impression I got.

On Friday night, I was exhausted, but not as badly as I was on Thursday night. Ashley had to work late, so I got to her apartment, took an hour nap, got up to watch Last Comic Standing, and went back to sleep. I must have had some quality sleep, because Friday morning was the most awake I'd been all week. Anyway, after work on Friday, I drove up to Bellingham, and stayed with Hime again. Rufus's wedding was the next day, so that was the primary reason I went up, but also to visit.

God works in mysterious ways: a cliché, but a true statement nonetheless. A few weeks ago when I was apartment shopping, the guy who worked at the apartments I decided on told me that in order to have some fees waived, I'd have to email him a copy of the first page of my offer letter within three business days. Wednesday morning, I did. I tend to get fairly paranoid when it comes to things like this, so that night I almost got out of bed to make sure I did in fact send it and then if I had, to write an email to confirm. But something stayed my, er body I guess, as I was in bed. Friday, at work, I got a call from the guy asking if I had ever sent that letter, to which I said I did, and he figured it was just caught by his spam filter and asked me to send it again. That whole week I had been putting off calling the place to tell them that I'd be moving in on Sunday because of the wedding on Saturday. It wasn't so much putting it off as I was just busy. Anyway, after I emailed it to him and stayed on the line until he got it, I asked him about moving in on Sunday, and he said that they were closed, so I'd have to get my keys that night. So, had my email not been filtered, or had I emailed a confirmation (though who's to say that wouldn't have been filtered too), or had I not had to send him my offer letter, or had he not called me (as by that point I had forgotten), I wouldn't have been able to move in on Sunday, and that would have been quite messy.

Anyway, I don't remember much of that night. We went to an improv show that was so-so. Hime gave me my The INN hoodie. I guess she had worn it, which doesn't bother me, except that yesterday I kept smelling her scent and it distracted me. In a good way. The wedding, on the other hand, I remember just about all of. Hime is a confusing girl. Honestly, sometimes she makes me feel like trash, and most of the time she makes me feel great, and then sometimes, like during the wedding, she makes me feel luckier than the groom to have such a good friend, to be so close to someone like her. She didn't do anything in particular, I don't think, but somehow she made me feel loved, and liked for that matter. One of our friends at the wedding, a photography enthusiast, took a picture of the two of us. He posted it on Facebook Wednesday night and Hime commented on it. The next morning I saw both. Some combination of the quality of his camera, the skill with which he wields it, and the beauty I had my arm around, produced my favorite photo in years, if not ever. I asked him for the original (since the Facebook one was severely shrunk). Even though it was taken upright, the width was large enough that I still had to shrink it side to side to fit my desktop background, 1680 pixels wide. The 1050 pixel height is just enough for our faces. It looks almost as if that was the entire photo. At the risk of seeming too interested... actually, let me do this right.

In the parking lot, after the wedding, it just felt right that while I was in my suit and tux shirt, I should open the door for my date. She teased it was the suit that made me a gentleman. So for the rest of the weekend, if I thought about it, I opened the car doors for her -- it seemed to make her happier, and I like seeing my best friend happy. At one point during the wedding, I was introducing her to a guy I knew, and he asked if she was my girlfriend. I said, "Nah, we're just friends." She pretended to get all offended because I didn't say "best friends," and made me correct myself. She knows how she rates in my life.

From there we went back to her apartment to change into our bathing suits and head to the lake to meet the girls from her house. First we hit Boomer's, where I ordered too much. At the lake, there was a girl in a very pink, and somewhat skimpy bikini, though as Hime later said, she could pull it off. I did my best to not be distracted by her, but at one point, I was talking to one of Rosa's friends, and pink bikini girl and a bunch of other people with her started walking by. I didn't even know who it was that caught my attention out of the corner of my eye, but I glanced to the right real quick as I would had it been anything moving: car, squirrel, boomerang, guy, or pink bikini girl. Apparently Roas's friend noticed my glance, and turned around to see what I was looking at; when she turned back she had a smirk on her face.

That night we ended up watching the Wedding Singer since half of our group had never seen it. Adam Sandler is real hit-or-miss with me. This one was a hit, though. It's not the best movie ever made, but it still was pretty good, if a bit chick-flickish, but what would you expect when the title includes the words "wedding" and "singer?"

Sunday morning, we went to Morris's church. It was pretty tiny, maybe thirty people, but they seemed like they all knew each other. I wouldn't mind being part of a church that size. I think three or four different people came and talked to the four of us visiting to get to know us and such.

Pretty immediately after church, I packed up and headed to Redmond. There I met my mom and Jack who had driven up a U-Haul with all my stuff in it. They forgot only one major thing: my desk. Even so, I was very grateful, and they, along with my aunt, uncle, two cousins, and grandma helped me move in. It took about an hour from start to finish. I was impressed. I'm actually pretty happy with this apartment. There are few things that could probably use a little repair, like the bathroom door that doesn't like to close, but it seems to be a nice neighborhood, and it's pretty quiet. Also, the location is great. Without traffic, it's an 8 minute drive to work. My mom keeps bugging me to get involved in a carpool, and I might, except that my hours seem to be pretty sporadic, and I don't want to tie down another person to my schedule, or have myself tied down to them. Also, it's really not very much gas from here to work.

On Monday after work, I spent about $250 on stuff I did need for the apartment, from food to a shower curtain to a lamp to some towels. Apparently you're supposed to wash towels before you use them or they shed on you. Lesson learned. Sort of. I still haven't washed them. Tomorrow I will. I need to do laundry here soon anyway. Also, my pillow needs to be cleaned. But that's neither here nor there.

Yesterday I began working on my tasks for this sprint. A sprint is a phase in agile software development. Basically it's a 5 to 6-week time where we work on very specific tasks, and then we take a short breather working not as hard on specs and such, and then do it again. I still don't know enough about what I'm doing to feel comfortable asking questions, but I'll get there. Also, I'm having a hard time remembering names, and I feel terrible about it. No one else there seems to have that problem, or to have had that problem in the past, whereas other issues with being new they sympathize with.

Last night a guy from CCF called me because his dad was having programming issues. He was working with InfoPath (which I've never used) and a script he downloaded off the internet (never a good start). It'd have been a 3 minute fix if I'd had an internet connection, but between figuring out what his code looked like over the phone, and realizing he was using JScript rather than VBScript, and convincing him that in if statements in most languages, the == operator is different than the = operator, it took a couple hours. Not that I'm complaining. I enjoy being helpful. Most of the time anyway. This morning I received a Facebook wall post from the guy saying that his dad was really grateful and owed me a dinner.

Tomorrow Ashley and I are going kitteh shopping. That should be fun. On Sunday I hope to look at the church that Solomon suggested a few weeks back, but for that I'll have to access the internet, and I'm not sure where I'll do that. Maybe I'll drive onto campus.

It's not really that late, 12:30, but I'm exhausted all the same. Bedtime.

I've still not figured out a good way to allow backward access to my posts. For now you can use the search bar at the top that blogger puts up there and search for "postxxxx" where "xxxx" is the post number, like "0012" for this post. Saying this here won't be too helpful in ten posts, when it gets pushed off the front page though. Hopefully I'll add buttons to the top by the time that happens.

Right now I'm loving this band called Seabird. If you listen to Spirit, they sing Rescue, whose first catchy lines are "I'm pushing up daisies / I wish they were roses". The music just leaves you longing for something. It's rare that music these days can stir up that kind of emotion. The whole album ('Til We See The Dawn) is worth buying if you're an iTunes or Microsoft Marketplace fan. Also, iTunes right now is selling it in aac format for $.99 per, so no DRM, plus higher quality sound.

Also lately I've been reading a lot of different things, particularly webcomics. I read all the way through Queen of Wands at least until it started over with commentary. The author quit writing them. As I understand it, she (Aerie) ended up marrying the author of Strip Tease, Chris Daily, and now they write Punch an' Pie together. I've (and am continuing to) read punchanpie, and have read most of Strip Tease now. (Note: 'read' in the previous sentence has multiple tenses.) They're alright. Like with most story line oriented web comics, most of them are a little funny, and then once a month or so they make you laugh out loud. (An example of a comic that makes me laugh out loud almost every time is xkcd which is not story line oriented.) Then there's qc, Wigu, Dinosaur Comics, Ctrl+Alt+Del, and SAMWAR.

What else is interesting to me lately? I have two kitties now. My sister and mom each bought me one, though my mom wasn't there to help pick them out. Their names are indeed Kotenok and Calloh. They're both tabbies. Kotenok is short-haired, greyscale, and super affectionate. Calloh is long-haired, lynx-tufted eared, greyscale plus brown, and a bit more individualistic, though she likes to cuddle when she's sleepy. They're slowly becoming a bit more obedient with the help of Sheriff Squirt Bottle.

Work's going decently. I'm actually on vacation right now; SQL Server 2008 was just released so everyone in the database side of MS gets a week off. I'd just like to point out that I feel I deserve this break. Countless hours of my life went into that release and I'd just like to take some of that credit while it's still fresh in people's minds.

Today I saw The Dark Knight at the IMAX theater with Minnie, after watching Batman Begins at my apartment. Both movies gave me the same reaction, I think, though I enjoyed how demented the Joker was in the second movie. I don't like it when there are situations with no right choice. They make me irritated and feel hopeless. That said, I still recognize they were great movies, even if I didn't enjoy the themes. Anything more I say on this topic will just be spoilers.

I've done a lot of driving lately, and I'm heading to Bellingham tomorrow for a couple nights, so there's another two hours there and two hours back, assuming moderate traffic.

On Friday, I got off work two hours early, having expected to drive up to Bellingham to pick up Hime and head back down to Port Orchard. That day was stressful, perhaps the most stressful I've had. On top of doing the work I'd normally do in an eight hour day, I also had to leave a readme for whoever was going to pick up my slack this week, explaining everything I was working on and its current state. I have no idea whether I left enough information and it took me a night to calm down from that. Anyway, Hime ended up having to drive to her parents' house anyway, which turns out to be about 15 minutes north of my place. So, when I got home, I watched the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring. After she called me to tell me she'd gotten to the house, I left and got there as she was getting out of the shower. We left about ten minutes later, after she'd met my kitties.

Traffic wasn't too bad, but we were still an hour and a half to my mom's house, where we dropped off our stuff and the got the kitties situated in my room. From there, Hime and I drove to El Sombrero, which was closed, and then to McDonald's. I must be growing up because McDonald's only disappoints me now. My McDonald's cravings cannot be fulfilled because their Big'n'Tasty now tastes Big'n'Nasty. The McChicken isn't like it used to be either. All that they have over me anymore is the Barq's rootbeer and their fries, the first of which I can get elsewhere, and the latter I don't crave. Anyway, we got to the farm where my mom's wedding rehearsal happened just as the last people were leaving. Hime was introduced to people I've known my whole life and people I didn't really even recognize at the same time with equal importance. It seems like introductions should have some weight to them, but I haven't figured out how that would work. I don't mean to say people that i've known forever are more important than people I hardly know, but my best friend was meeting a lot of the family and close friends that raised me, and somehow that felt important to me. I don't think she felt the same gravity.

My aunt, whose not really my aunt -- she was my mom's foster-sister growing up -- and her daughter, Navi, were staying at our house, as well as my grandma, so we were short one bed. Hime took Ashley's, my aunt and Navi took my room, and my grandma slept with my mom; I gladly took the couch, despite the objections I predicted Hime would have.

The next morning, my mom headed off to get her hair done up. The night prior, Hime had asked my mom for her hair straightener. Apparently, my mom handed it to Hime right in front of me, but somehow I missed it. When I woke up well before Hime did, and couldn't find the straightener in my mom's bathroom, I figured she'd packed it and left with it, so I called around, eventually borrowing Ashley's friend's sister's an hour or so before Hime got up. When Hime found out about that later, she thanked me for my effort.

We left for Silverdale shortly after Hime woke. She had wanted to get my mom chocolates for a wedding gift. Anytime I'm around Macy's I always get a few boxes for my favorite women: my mom, my sister, and usually someone else if there's an obvious pick. My mom likes milk chocolate, while Jack likes dark, so we decided to get two boxes, and give the gift together. At the wedding, I, unfortunately, forgot to give Ashley her box, so it remains in my car. Hime and I finished off the box I bought for her of assorted dark chocolate mints within the day. Evidently I've had enough calories to last me the rest of the year, so I've started a 140-day fast. Should be interesting.

The wedding itself was interesting to say the least. I think it was special. In fact, I'm glad that it rained. It seemed to be meaningful rain. The rain started when the ceremony started, and ended when the ceremony ended. Then it waited for us all to move down to the reception and started again until we all finished eating. I like the rain, and I think my mom does too. I don't know about Jack. My grandpa walked my mom down the aisle. He'd told my mom and me that he wasn't going to, because he didn't feel she was his to give away anymore. She was a grown woman, and this was her second wedding. So, I was surprised when he did. Both Jack and my mom pulled a prank on the other when presenting the rings. Jack pretended to have lost my mom's and had this entire skit play out. My mom pulled out this giant ring big enough to fit three fingers, with an enormous glass diamond on it.

After the rain stopped the second time, a breeze started which didn't help Hime or me, as we were drenched to the bone, I in my full suit, and her in a sundress. So, we went back to the house, changed, and headed back just in time for the garter toss. Apparently the ones that he shot into the crowd were all the ones he'd gotten at weddings in the past. There were about eight. I did not participate in the catching. That would just be too awkward. After that, my sister and her friend (the one whose sister loaned me the hair straightener, but I don't want to think up an alias for her) fought over the bouquet. Ashley ended up with about three flowers, and her friend with the rest. Then Jack gave a short speech about a couple "batons" he wanted to pass on. The first one he started off by saying, "Is Jordan Hitch nearby?" I said, "nope," as I was walking up. There really ought to be a word for something between 'said' and 'yelled,' because that's more of what I did. My baton was a book called "A Man, A Can, and A Grill" which was a cookbook of sorts. Our handshake turned into a semi-hug which was a little awkward. I've never hugged a little person before. The second baton was to a friend of mine: bachelor 'til the rapture. I think that would have been embarrassing, but he seemed to take it in good humor.

William basically fell in love with Hime as soon as he met her. He's usually my shadow, but he was anything but subtle about wanting to hang around her and not me during the wedding. I thought it was funny more than anything else. His sister had a crush on my sister's ex-boyfriend while they were dating. Tastes must run in the family. (That, of course, is not to imply that Hime and I are dating, or that I think we ever will -- even driving to the wedding she reinforced that we weren't going to go down that road.) Right before William and his family left, Hime and I played some sort of blob tag. It was fun, which I normally would not say about playing with children. It was out of my comfort zone, for sure, but it was fun.

We stayed for a couple more hours, and helped clean up after the newlyweds left. Hime was feeling a bit ill and had medicine back at her parents' place, so she and I packed up at my house and left back for Redmond. She was cold the entire time despite the fact the heat was all the way up and I was sweating. I suspected she was sick on top of what she needed the medicine for. Her mom picked her up from my apartment.

Just to finish the Hime-related material, I'll skip ahead a bit to Sunday night. I texted her: "Hey, if you're still here and you're not sick of me yet, would you want to go out to dinner?" She responded that she was already in Bellingham, and otherwise she would. So, I asked if she wanted to go out to dinner one of the nights I was in Bellingham. We're going on Thursday night. In the context of the moment, it seemed like we both were picturing just the two of us, and while I know her well, I don't know whether that's actually what she was picturing. Either one-on-one or with a bunch of our friends will be fun.

Sunday morning I went to church. I've been visiting the one Solomon suggested I look into. It's an Assemblies of God church called Life at the Ridge. I gather it's about sixty people large, but during the summer somewhere between thirty and forty usually show up. I really feel at home there, and everyone seems alive and excited and genuinely loving. I met with the pastor last week over lunch. He and I had a long talk, basically giving him my life's story, hitting on everything from my becoming a Christian to Eowyn, to my parents' divorce, to Jamaica, to my mom's remarriage. We talked a bit about his history too, how he's lived in every state touching the pacific (save Hawaii), and knows a bit about programming, and so on. I really like him. He called me today while I was at the movie, just to say he should have remembered it was odd to see me on Sunday because I had told him I'd be at my mom's wedding still, and wanted to know how it went. Do most pastors do that? I guess I could see John at Harper doing that, but the church is too big to do that sort of thing for everyone.

Last week after church, I went out to lunch with a few people from the church. Sadly, I don't remember any of their names. One guy led worship the first two weeks I was there. The other guy was visiting from the midwest, where he goes to college, and he works at Starbucks there. And the woman is a financial advisor type person in Seattle. Actually, come to think of it, I do remember her name now, but only after a friend of hers said it at church this week. Also, it won't do you any good that I remember it because I'd only alias her anyway. In fact, I could alias to the two guys whose names I don't know. How would you like that?!

Man, I've had some funny thoughts lately. I wish I could remember them. They were just one-liners, typically ironic or oxymoronic. There was a line like that in Batman that no one laughed at, too. I chuckled. Then again, the movie was so loud there, that I don't think I would have been able to hear someone next to me laugh. The fire truck on fire was a nice touch.

After church, I went down to Kent to go to IKEA with my grandma who was on her way back up from my mom's to Camano. She bought me two bookcases and some pictures and frames to go with them. The bookcases were heavy, too heavy for me to carry, anyway, and she's not as young as she used to be (as can be said of anyone). She asked me if I knew any of my neighbors yet. I don't, really, but I had a solution to get the boxes into my apartment by myself. See, I have a computer chair with wheels. All I had to do was put one end on the chair, and carry the other end. My grandma guided the chair, but really, I could have just gone in front and the weight of the box would have pulled the chair along. My grandma looked at me and said, "You're one in a million. Most intelligent people aren't smart." That made me feel really good.

Yesterday, I didn't have anything planned, and an old friend from high school got online for the first time since January. We started talking and then she asked if I wanted to get coffee, which turned into mall pizza in Auburn. So that was another long drive, though entirely worth it. It was good to catch up with her. This isn't a bad thing, but it reminded me of the differences between Port Orchardites and people on this side of the water. Cultures are weird.

In closing, I've finally almost finished the fifth Wheel of Time book. I didn't like this one as much as the past four. The climactic battle was pretty lame. It lacked description of the would-be cool scenes, and there was no real battle between Rand and one of the Forsaken, like in the last ones.