Innovations on ancient torture methods

For any interested parties out there, I have personal experience with how to make Chinese water torture that much worse:
1.) put your victim in a tiny tent
2.) cram him into a wet, oddly shaped corner
3.) give the rest of the room to a thrashing toddler and her disgruntled, sleep-deprived mother.
4.) then start the water dripping from the ceiling.
5.) for added measure, after a couple hours -- steal his pillow.

Now you know what camping was like for me this weekend.

Friday night, we headed north out of greater C-bus with some friends to go camping. Our last attempts at camping in the Midwest have been...er, less successful. (Let's put it this way, our two best experiences thus far have been at the county fairgrounds in Palmyra and in our friends' backyard). Up until we headed to bed at 1 am, this trip was looking really promising -- s'mores, the lil' chomper went to sleep before we did, beautiful area, and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies (thanks, Ruth). And then, five minutes after crawling into our tent, the rain started.

It was still going when we left nearly seven hours later.

I guess our poor little tent isn't made for that kind of deluge. About 90 min. after the waterworks started, rain started to seep in the sides and drip from the ceiling. It only went downhill from there. Rather than being disappointed, we were kind of relieved when our friend Rob came by our tent at 6:45 am to tell us that the nearby creek had risen three feet during the night, and that we were going to have to pack up camp or risk being flooded out.

Don't get me wrong -- it wasn't all bad. In the rush to pack up our rainy camp, Ruth didn't even notice me snarfing down all her cookies.

Ahh, freedom...sort of

To all of you wondering when I'm going to finish the incomplete I had left over from spring quarter of last year -- wait no more. Not great, but good enough.

To all of you wondering when I'm going to be done with graduate school -- keep wondering. There's at least three more years before the dissertation's done. At least.

Q

The Challenge

Here's my goal -- update this blog at least twice a week for one month. Of course, whether or not we have two blog-worthy events going on in our lives each week remains to be seen.

As a way to keep me honest: if I ever miss my goal, the first person to catch me slacking gets a special prize.

Q

p.s. Ok, so for whatever reason the blog thinks I posted this two months ago. I did not; in fact, I posted it early July 14th. Dumb blog.

Life returns to normal

...or as normal as it ever gets for us. Originally, I think that the idea was to update this thing on a semi-regular basis to keep interested parties current about our goings-on. For those of you frantically checking our blog several times a day on your employer's time, wait no longer. We're back.

Since the Valentine's Day greeting that we spammed everyone with back in April, we've been busy. In late Feb., we found out we had three weeks to find a new place and move. So we did -- its a nice 3 bed, 1 bath, unfinished basement about 1.5 miles away from campus. On top of being spacious and affordable, I can still ride my bike to school, there's a yard out back with room for a garden (fresh basil, here I come), and the area's nice enough that none of our neighbors have had domestic violence squabbles on our doorstep. Everyone's happy.

On a parting note, I just had a birthday last week (thanks to those of you who remembered; shame on you who didn't). The weather was just too nice, so I blew off school and we went to the zoo. Besides confusing the goats in the petting zoo with dogs, Lydia did very well at the "what-animal-is-that" game. The aqaurium was an unbelievable hit ("fiiiiissshhhh! FIIIIISSSSHHH!"), with the monkeys coming in a distant second. Here's Lydia with one of the nice doggies.

-Q

Lydia in her first few months:

LYDIA MORE RECENTLY:

Halloween 2005