Tired and night bring out the deepest thoughts. I'm not quite sure why that particular mix does so. Perhaps the crickets outside the open windows allow a measure of disengagement and reflection on the past and present with a wonderment at what tomorrow and the days ahead will hold in light of it all. Perhaps it's the way the waxing moon lights the sky on a starry night with a few picture perfect clouds that causes a pause in thought, ceasing where your mind was, starting it up again in something else, something deeper.

So where am I? Where are my thoughts in this quiet? What is going through my head when I wake to the sound of crickets on a near perfect Fall night? Perhaps it is not for all to know. Perhaps I am still getting used to what will be. Perhaps many more near perfect waxing moon-lit, starry and tired nights of open windows and crickets in the background will be what is necessary before I can say.

Hey all, thought I might let you all know I'm alive...but then some of you know that already because of the invites you've gotten in the mail. 27 days...we're so excited...and not communicating well with the outside world including Tomdle who has been emailing me about music requests and whether Enya tracks will be allowed on the playlist. That was last week. I still haven't gotten around to answering, "No, they won't be allowed." My soon-to-be Hot Wife didn't think they would fit. The wording of the answer, by the way, being an inside joke to a post of a blog MP found, the site of which I may link to just because of the overall hysterics.

This is actually the first Saturday in three I've had off. A TD'ing freelance gig presented itself at a local college doing the video board production for their football and basketball games. It's a great gig. Today, though, my soon-to-be Hot Wife and I are spending our Saturday as we prefer. Mostly unplanned, allowing the spontaneous and taking in the required. After sleeping in we got together to shop for food, make said food, watch "The Office"'s Season 5 bloopers, try watching "Lost in Translation" and chat for a while before the full-of-food feeling made one of us extremely sleepy. So now I'm writing this post while my soon-to-be Hot Wife sleeps on the couch and I work through email and remind myself of people I need to be calling and emailing back but haven't gotten to yet. Oh well, there's always tomorrow...

...Oh yeah, we're going to visit Williamsburg tomorrow.

This is from a WSJ article I saw on Twitter today:

...the future role of the Fed, Mr. Bernanke said the central bank will continue to strengthen supervision and improve the resiliency of the financial system.

The Obama administration has proposed promoting the central bank to the role of systemic risk regulator, while placing its powers to regulate consumer products into a new consumer protection agency.

Aside from the obvious facts, some of which being the citizenry of this country being made to bail out their consistently re-elected officials who created the mess and are actively making it worse, and all the President's Czars, is anyone else made nervous by Obama's desire for a new consumer protection agency?

SM posted this on Faceboo and I thought it would be fun to work on while winding down for the night and waiting for YB's text saying she got home okay...

==================================================================

Put an X by the states you have been to.
Put an O beside the states where you have lived.

Airports don't count! At the bottom, add countries you have been to also!

Alabama -
Alaska -
Arizona -
Arkansas -
California - X, O
Colorado -
Connecticut - X
Delaware - X
Florida -
Georgia -
Hawaii -
Idaho -
Illinois -
Indiana -
Iowa -
Kansas -
Kentucky -
Louisiana -
Maine - X
Maryland - X
Massachusetts -X
Michigan -
Minnesota -
Mississippi -
Missouri -
Montana -
Nebraska -
Nevada -
New Hampshire - X
New Jersey -
New Mexico -
New York - O
North Carolina- X
North Dakota -
Ohio - X
Oklahoma -
Oregon -
Pennsylvania - X
Rhode Island - X
South Carolina -
South Dakota -
Tennessee - X
Texas -
Utah - X
Vermont - X
Virginia - O
Washington -
West Virginia - X
Wisconsin -
Wyoming -
Washington, D.C. - X


Canada - X
Israel
Mexico -
England - X
Jamaica -
Germany -
Honduras - X, O
France - X

It's 11:38pm. Church is tomorrow. The apartment has grown very quiet with the exception of the neighbors next door whose gaming system, I'm assuming, is pumping through their too loud sound system. YB's oversized clock now has a batter driving the 60 second clock. It's another sound to get used to when all is quiet like tonight.

I'm waiting for the phone to ring. Some old church friends were kind enough to let YB rent a room until she heads north for the wedding in October (97 days!). They are super nice people with cool kids. The only downside is they live 25 minutes away. Tonight is the first night she is driving back alone which makes me a bit nervous. So I'm waiting for her to call when she is close to arriving.

The ol' blog won't turn into a wedding blog, I'm just in a reflective kind of mood tonight. Or thoughtful. Maybe. Maybe I should have my vitamin regimen that I never took today. That sounds like a good idea. Maybe I should consider taking a B vitamin complex. I've heard that's good for you. All you North Carolinian folks can weigh in on that one. Then I can start filling out a questionnaire type thing. That sounds like a plan. My air conditioning should shut off shortly after I start, followed by the phone call. After the call the apartment will grow quiet again, filled with sounds from the neighbors next door and a clicking second hand and the footsteps of myself going to bed.

Well, it's a brave new world out there. America has made the transition from analog to digital broadcast television. "What is that," you ask? I won't go into it because the answer is too tied up the particulars of technical jargon and individual station circumstance. Suffice it to say, the industry has been forced to "improve" itself by Congressional mandate and has spun the forced coercion into telling you they are upgrading their picture and sound quality. What a load of crap. Ask yourself this question, why did virtually all stations make the switch, and on the same day? I doubt the answer will be because the consumer demanded it. No, I highly expect the average viewer will wonder why their picture freezes and sound completely drops out on a sunny, cloudless day. Or why some people in urban settings may not get a usable signal at all anymore. Yup, it's a brave new world out there.

I, for one, am at least glad something good will come of this nonsense. Yes, I for one am glad the government sold those old PUBLIC analog frequencies to private companies. A poorly implemented 3G cell phone data service just wasn't enough. Nope. Now we're going to get 4G. Next year, when 4G becomes more readily available, we'll probably see less news stories on the dangers of driving while texting. We might be seeing the dangers of cell phone video chatting while driving.

Some time ago I needed to revisit an old post. By old I mean one from shortly after I started keeping this blog. My search ended in vain as I realized that Blogger somehow deleted the old material, I'm assuming, around or after it was bought out by Google.

Stupid Google.

So now I am in a quandary. What do I write about? Originally, if I remember correctly that is, I was going to write about "stuff" in my day to day life that was worth writing about, or other things that happened to get me thinking, or anything else that didn't bore the living daylights out of a certain Tomdle - that exchange of posts and comments are now somewhere in cyberspace trash because of the aforementioned deletions. All this is to say, before I attempt to write the rest of this post, I think I will be taking suggestions on what to post on the blog. Just leave the suggestion in the comments section of this post.

Some quick research revealed that my last post was on April 26. That was a long time ago. I suppose the Cliff Notes version of the happenings is always welcome, so I suppose that's a good place to start. It was on or around April 26 that I ordered a certain piece of jewlery. I couldn't blog about that for obvious reasons. It came nine days or so later. I couldn't blog about the hassel of delivery either, for obvious reasons. 13 days after the 26th was RU Commencement at which YB was originally not going to participate in, then was going to participate in, then decided not to. I'd tell the story but this is the Cliff Notes version. Comment if you want the story. Instead of commencement I took her on an absolutely fantastic day trip to Hatteras, NC, where we got engaged. Since this is the Cliff Notes version I can't go into what happened there. Again, comment if you want to hear. Two weeks ago YB and I went into full force move mode, moving her out of her apartment as per the student housing folks - boy, there's a rant. Since we're planning on using my cozy one bedroom we moved most of her stuff here. My apartment has never been so full. In the roughly two and a half years I have lived in this apartment it has thrown up three times. The first was last year during a parental visit. It vomited out parts of an entire sofa bed. The second two took place when we moved YB's stuff. No amount of Pepto was going stop a mattress and $30 desk (Walmart special) from landing on the trash heap. YB is now temporarily living at a friend's house, but will hopefull relocate soon to a nice grandma's house.

128 days and counting.