Finally

No, really! I have good excuses! Just read on for a bit.

You see that book at the top of my reading list? Over there, to the left. The Book of the New Sun? It’s a really good read. The kind that just eats up your free time.

My free time last Saturday was also consumed by another very pleasurable activity: water sports. I went to a lake (artificial, like they all are in Kansas) with my cousins, my aunt, my uncle, and their dog and had fun on their boat all day. Water skiing, kneeboarding, tube riding (also called “not falling off of tube”)—I did them all. It was a great day; I didn’t even get sunburned. And in the evening, after I ate pizza with these ever-so-kind relatives of mine, I hung out at their house and watched fascinating programs on the hunting habits of wolves and polar bears on the Discovery Channel. Made me really want to go to Scandinavia, though.

On Tuesday, I played Ultimate Frisbee, as usual. But you see, I’ve been so busy, I didn’t even have time to write my customary Tuesday post! The game was really exciting, and by exciting, I mean there were a lot of drastic momentum changes. For example: we start by allowing Team Red (for whom Anna plays, I might add) to score six unanswered points. No sweat, we say to each other, we just don’t like blowing out teams. We’ll come back. And indeed we did, ending the half on a 6-2 run, so we were only down two at the half.

Then we started the second half on a 7-0 run. If all these numbers are confusing you, that makes the score 13-8. But then we let our opponents back in a little bit, and soon we stood at 14-12 after failing to win game point three times or so. Then we finally sealed the deal with a sweet Capt. Ryan Kilmer catch in the endzone. Victory: Team Blue.

Oh yeah, I also saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and was suitably pleased. See? There’s another blog-stopper.

The research project is winding down or wrapping up, depending on your preferred turn of phrase. I received a crucial shipment last week, so I was finally able to test the magnetization of my magnetic polymer composites. The final report and poster presentation are coming up on August 2nd, so I’ve started working on those.

Also around that time, I will be moving in to the new apartment at 1420 Tennessee. And on August 3rd, I fly back to Grand Forks for about a week. It’s going to be busy up until the start of school… at which point I expect the engineering curriculum will make it busier.