Jessi & I leave dark & early tomorrow morning.

See you all on August 10th. (We come back on the 9th, but we’re unlikely to see any of you that day.)

Things I did today:

• I drove Jessi to Fitchburg to take her teacher’s test. I’m fairly certain that it’s the most North that I’ve ever driven.
• I lounged about the house, enjoying my first weekend in a while without homework to do.
• I read the current issue of Reader’s Digest and the rest of a great book on Web site usability called Don’t make me think.
• One of the things I tried to do today was participate in a Magic Online draft. After my last pick, the server crashed. When it finally came back up, the cards I had drafted were gone, along with the packs I had used to enter the draft. Wizard’s Customer Service emailbox is now likely full of requests for refunds from consumers like me.
• I drove back to Fitchburg to pick Jessi up.
• We went to Applebee’s in Auburn for supper. I enjoyed the meal (and a delicious dessert). I then promptly got briefly sick after leaving the restaurant. After that I felt much better.
• We went to see my friend , who is back in MA with a new out-of-college job. It was good to catch up with him for a bit.
• We went to a brief Costa Rica team meeting, at which we got our team shirts. We have our final meeting before leaving tomorrow evening.

I just completed the final exam for my summer course yesterday. Hooray!

So, I get about a week off (only having work, and not having a class) and then we leave for Costa Rica.

In case you’re too lazy to look at my archives to see when we’re going, I’ll tell you here. We’re leaving a week from tomorrow (July 31) and coming back two Mondays later (August 9). While we are gone, we will not be reachable. Email to me will sit in my inbox. Phone calls will sit on our answering machine. My pager from work will be turned off and sitting here.

I received word today that my time off of work will be paid vacation time, which is quite good. It was originally going to be unpaid, but recent changes in their vacation policy make it slightly better, so I can get paid for not going to work. Working full-time can be very nice.

So, I’ve been paying about $50 a month for 768K cable Internet through Charter ($10 of which was for basic cable, and $40 of which was for the Internet access). I was playing around on their web site and noticed that I could sign up in my area now and get 3 megabit access for the $40 a month. (My current 768K plan seemed to no longer be available.) So I just called them up and asked if I could get the faster speed at my current rate. The answer was yes, plus they’d give me 2 months of free access just for upgrading.

I just find it quite interesting that the company is offering very different services for the same rate. My cable modem rebooted while I was typing this and now my Internet connection is over 4 times faster. Wheeeee!!!!!!

I suggest other people try calling up their ISPs and asking if they’re offering a better deal nowadays. Especially if that ISP is Charter.

In other news, I only have about a week left of my summer course. I will update more here later when I’m less busy.

All in all, we’ve had a fun weekend. On Friday, we went with a bunch of people to PJ’s and to see Troy. The movie was mostly random violence interspersed with short sex scenes, so I guess it was probably a fairly accurate account of the story and of the time period.

On Saturday, we went to my parents’ house for a traditional extended-family cookout. Was a bunch of fun and good food.

On Sunday, we went to my parents’ house again after church and had lunch, played Canasta, and retrieved our chairs that my dad has now fixed. In the evening, came over and we played Total Annihilation: Kingdoms for 3½ hours before I gave up. That was also a bunch of fun.

Today, we went over to my paternal grandmother’s to take her to Capen Hill Nature Sanctuary for a picnic and some nature-walking. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate with us, and we ended up just having a picnic on a slightly-damp picnic table that ended just as the rain really started coming down again. We retreated back to her house where we played dominoes. And this evening Ben & Cheri came over for our bible study.

For those who’ve been following it, I’ve posted my first response to my controversial post, and I hope to post more there sometime soon, although work and homework may mean that it’ll be a while.

I’ve been losing my voice over the past few days, and my throat’s been sore to go along with it. Last night I had a bout of insomnia, and didn’t get to sleep until about 3:30, giving me about 2½ hours of sleep. I did manage to get some homework done while I was failing to sleep. I did take a 1½ hour nap yesterday after supper, which I suppose mitigates the problem somewhat. But it is much less sleep than I need, I am now tired. And I have to go to work now.