Back In The Saddle
As you may have noticed, I took a few weeks off from blogging. I had a lot on my mind, but I was still in the throes of writer's block and just didn't feel like it anyhoo.

But now I'm back.

Most Patient Wife and I just returned from a vacation. We visited her friends in a faraway place. Mercurial Girl wasn't with us this time, because she's off at camp. The vacation was filled with good food, friends, quiet moments and all kinds of stuff that would be boring to a 16 year-old anyway. I had a wonderful time, and the ol' batteries have been recharged.

Mercurial Girl is off at a summer work camp. She's been gone for three weeks. She'll come home for a break next weekend, and then it's back to the salt mines for another month. The program is part of Americorps, and I think it's a good deal for her. She's working hard, but it's also camp so there is a lot of fun, too.

So she gets to grow up a bit by being away for two months over the summer, she gets to earn some serious coin, and she's working hard as well. All in all, this is a great deal.

I do miss her, though.

In the time since I last wrote:

-- I became an uncle again. My sister (perhaps the sanest of my family) had a baby girl. I haven't seen any pictures yet, but I'm sure I'll just fall in love with her like I do with all infants.

-- I lost my old nasty cellphone, and replaced it with a newer one that works really well. So if anyone out there tried to call for the last week or so ... try again!

-- I have registered for school. This time for sure. I've toyed around with going back a few times before, but this time it's going to happen. I was recently passed over for another promotion at work and I have had enough. They gave the position to a guy who's been doing the job for three months. I've been with the company for three years, and I've been doing this work for almost 20 years. They've made it pretty clear that this is as far as I'm going in this company, and if I want to do any better, I'm going to need a degree or some sort of certification. So on August 21 is my first day of classes. I'll write more when I have more details.

-- We put up one of those pools that are advertised as "easy to assemble" and let me just say
"nuh-uh". We eventually got it done, but it warn't easy, nossir. The upside is that we now have a nice place to soak, so that's pretty nice.

Well, that's it for now. I've got a bunch of online stuff to do for school and then it's off to bed. Thanks for reading.