I’m Wearing Erika’s Scarf. And a comfy scarf it was and likely is and will continue to be. Though scarf may not be the right word.

Cora and Jesse. And a blank white wall.

Phil is Watching. The camera broke after Phil stared at it. Okay, not really, it ran out of batteries when I was taking a picture with Jake and Amy H in it.

Compare: I’m having fun making comparisons of these photos. Jenny’s smiling in both of them, but Jesse looks absent.

Don’t Lick The Penguin. Unless you’re the groom.

Suzanne, Benjamin, and I

James and I

The Ladies! Some days, I love being a bachelor.

Crazy Smyly. This guy used to be my roommate.

And the whole crew.

I left for Nebraska on Tuesday and arrived in the late afternoon. Jenny met me at the airport. Meanwhile, Phil was finishing his graduate classes for the day, returning home, and cleaning the shower before I arrived.

I enjoyed spending a lot of time with Phil and Jenny while I was there. They’ve been married for 1.5+ years now and I appreciated the opportunity to observe two of my friends and how they treat each other in the context of marriage. I saw a lot of respect, concern, grace, and love between them in their words and deeds. I’m impressed and very grateful to have them as friends.

The Nebraska vs. Colorado football game on Friday was an incredible game to witness. It was high scoring, and ended w/ the right team winning — Go Big Red! My favorite moment was watching Ndamukong Suh (Nebraska #93 Defensive Tackle) put the smackdown on Cody Hawkins (Colorado #7 QB) while returning an interception for a touchdown.

Many games of Carcassonne the board game were played while I was there. Though I was experienced with playing the game, I only won on one occasion and didn’t know a couple rules correctly. However, I felt justified on returning home and realizing that my rules were different due to their being rule changes made over the course of the game’s history. (Source)

My iPod broke. Today, I bought a new one.

Seeing other college friends was fantastic as well. Many people came over on Saturday night, hung out, talked, and ate soup.

Other things: mediocre Mexican food and superb conversation w/ Jesse and Tyler and Nail Bunny, free dinner at Lazlos w/ Phil, Jenny, and Ben when the server lost our order, espresso shots at a new coffee shop, meeting w/ Hank (Aaron) at B&N at closing time to purchase football tickets, chilling w/ Varv and Linda, and brunch w/ Erika and friends.

One of the biggest revelations of the trip was the realization that there are numerous, attractive, single females in the world who notice my existence and appreciate partaking in conversations. I need to do a better job of finding a more local variety.

In any case, I’ll be in Lincoln/Omaha from November 25 to November 30. I look forward to seeing my college friends and doing some conversational catch-up on life. Since I was last in Nebraska, I’ve changed jobs twice, gained fifteen pounds, and developed a fondness for Norwegian symphonic metal. Glorious.

If you’re going to be in Nebraska, give me a hollar! I’ll try to setup a get together of some kind for whoever is going to be around and wants to hang out on a day other than Thanksgiving.

Menu:
1) Spaghetti. wheat noodles and spaghetti sauce (from packet)

2) Chicken. Skillet cooked. When the skillet gets sufficiently heated, I pour in some water to create water vapor, and then seal the top of the skillet w/ some foil and a round pizza pan. This heats things up quite well within the skillet and helps the meat cook more thoroughly on the inside. The water vapor also helps the meat remain juicy. It’s still a good idea to turn the meat over a couple times and redo the seal.

For flavoring I tend to improv: today, added salt, pepper, dash of oregano, one beaten egg, “bread crumbs” (fist-ground Ritz crackers), Parmesan cheese, and some spaghetti sauce. It tasted good for improv. (I was roughly following a recipe for Parmesan chicken.

3) Green beans. They come from a can, they were put there by a man.

4) French bread. Sliced, buttered on each side. Note: don’t broil french bread. It starting burning on top in less than five minutes. I need a better way to heat it up for the future.

Results: Although I didn’t have as many guests as intended, the two people who were able to make it had a good time. I had some decent discussion about Christianity, science, and community with Lion. Also discussed work situations and other topics. Nick got here a bit later.

We played a game of Carcassonne. It’s my current favorite board game. It’s tile based and you take turns putting out tiles and placing your pieces. You get points as you reach objectives and keep playing until you run out of tiles.

After Lion took off, played some PS3 w/ Nick for a bit, but I’m not enthralled by any of the multiplayer games I’ve tried so far (Gran Turismo 5, Armor Core 4). Then again, I’m not quite the fiend at video games I was in the late ’90s ;)

All in all, I’m glad I had people over and I’m hoping to do it again on a monthly or bi-monthly basis.

I did a lot of things. My highlights include touching a six-hundred-year-old tree, hanging out w/ my friend Mark and his wife MaryEllen, meeting some of their friends including Jessica who I stayed with the first two days, eating Southern food, playing racquetball (which I just realized I’ve been spelling wrong for the last week), seeing some huge planes, going to the beach, and seeing historical sites such as Boone Hall Plantation and Fort Sumter.

Six Hundred Year Old Tree and Me: This tree at Boone Hall Plantation is over six hundred years old. Yes, that’s right, since before Columbus. I stood by it and even touched it. Pretty sweet.

Mark in Front of Fort Sumter: This is a photo of my friend Mark in front of Fort Sumter.

Check out the rest of the album:

At the Crossing in Kirkland

Pose w/ a Monkfish

Under a Waterfall at Westlake Center

Building a Jenga Tower to Heaven: It fell soon after. Bubble tea is awesome.

The Sun Setting in Seattle: View from Medina, the town of Bill Gates

Rock On, Seattle

From a quick read, what I gather is that his new bill would require students in unaccredited school situations (read: home-school) to be tested on an annual basis at the parents’ expense in order to ensure adequate progress is being made. If not, parents can be required to enroll their students in a public school.

I don’t really have a lot to add, but if this is something you’ve ever heard debates about it’s worth looking at his posts.

I never thought I’d see the New England Patriots lose Super Bowl XLII to the New York Giants. I gotta say, that was the best Super Bowl I’ve ever seen. Down-to-the-wire drama and a huge upset — perhaps the biggest in Super Bowl History. Plus, I’ll get to tells kids in twenty years that I saw the greatest team in NFL history lose the only game that matters.

I saw the game with a couple of friends from church (Aaron & Jessica) — two of the few people my own age. They have a lot of friends there age which was nice. Also, I will not complain when I’m invited to social gatherings that include even one available female my age. It’s probably the first time that’s happened since I moved here.

HDTVs rock. I want one, but then I think about starving children in Africa. But I don’t think starving children anywhere are able to consume HDTVs so I feel a little less bad about wanting one.

So FLAC files sound awesome. I decided to rip Radiohead’s new album In Rainbows to FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) to see if the sound quality is really that much better. It does sound a bit better. At some point I want to repartition my hard drives and perhaps slap a fat 1TB (Terabyte, baby, Terabyte = one thousand gigabytes) drive in my computer so I can go crazy on backing up all my albums and DVDs in the best quality possible.

The only problem with FLAC is that it’s complicated if not impossible to get iTunes to play FLAC. So what I’ve done is I’m using Winamp is the player/library for my FLAC files and storing them all on one of my other drive partitions to keep it all sorted and simple. Of course, I also created MP3 copies of the files for use w/ the iPod. With the demise of DRM though, I’m more open to considering other portable media players, but I can’t say I’ve seen anything more impressive than the iPod.

I’m considering purchasing a laptop I can load up w/ Linux. Partially to be nerdy and indie and open source, but I’ve become a lot more familiar w/ the command line over the years and it’d also be a much better machine for doing web development. Anyway, this also feeds into the desire to find alternatives to iTunes/iPod because Apple isn’t exactly friendly w/ Linux.

Of course, I’d take a Macbook if I could get one, but cost remains prohibitive. It’d cost me twice as much to get the Apple as it would for a comparatively powerful Dell w/ dual-core Athlon chips, 2GB RAM, DVD-burner, 120gb hard drive, wifi.

I’m impressed w/ how busy I’ve stayed this weekend. I spent 15 hours out on Friday, 9 hours out on Saturday, and 9 hours out today.

Social Life FTW!!!