Archived news items from February 2003
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current news
newer old news from March 2003
Is it possible to have been incredibly busy all week, but yet not have much interesting to put on the web page?
Went bowling again today, and did better overall. I broke 100 in a game, again.
Friday night I was up at school until after 11:00 P.M. catching up on a couple of weeks worth of grading. And tomorrow I'll do the same.
Music went really, really well this morning. I really dig Freedom Song; it's got the coolest funk breakdown ever.
Oh, and I was at a party yesterday where the participants each had a nametag with a famous couple stuck to their back. Then, we were supposed to figure it out by asking yes-or-no questions to others. Mine was "Will Smith and Jada Pinkett", which was complicated by the fact that I'd never heard of Jada Pinkett, and didn't even know Will Smith was married. Looking her up on IMDb reveals that I might have seen her before in Scream 2 or on A Different World (the sitcom from the early nineties). Once I figured out that the male was Will Smith, I knew I was beaten.
Um, that's about it. Spring Break is only two weeks away.
Had another busy social day today. Music was awesome like I hoped it would be, though I did break a string during rehearsal this morning.
Went out to Double Dave's after church, and then went bowling. Out of three games, I had one game where I bowled over 100. Overall, I had four spares and two strikes. And we couldn't figure out the scoring computer at first, so I was known as "GRAHAM X". I think that'll be my new ninja name. "Graham X bursts from the shadows, katana blazing!"
Mostly just hung out with folks. It turns out if you spend three hours in Starbucks, a lot of people you know will come through.
I'm home way past my bedtime, though, so hopefully I'll be able to get up in time for the men's small group tomorrow morning.
Well, the full week back at school was relatively slow, which is why I haven't updated. There is only a week left in the six-weeks, so projects start pretty soon. I also need to start getting things a little more directed towards the A.P. exam in CS-2, since that test is coming up, too.
Monday morning was small group, with Whataburger's 99-cent breakfast burritos.
Monday night was math tutoring, with two weeks worth of work to review, since Jesse had been sick the previous week. Jesse started out with a poor showing, missing as many as eleven on a single 30-problem set. Eek! But he finished strong, with some of the later sets having as few as one-and-a-half wrong. Plus, I was able to identify two types of problems he just didn't know how to do and teach him those. Much to his relief, they were quite easier than he had expected. Jesse's mother, making up for a couple of weeks of relatively pre-packaged dinners, spent longer than usual cooking and produced some excellent hummus with celery in a pita, some falafel, and a superb dish with rice, almonds and dates!
I continued being fed by others with Tyler's "drumming with others" lesson Tuesday night, and Valarie made a tasty lemon chicken. Cookies were made by daughter Emily.
Wednesday I ate my first meal at home since probably Friday of last week: the "salad that eats like a meal". Baby spinach, zesty sprouts, tomato, carrots, a mixture of garbanzo, pinto and kidney beans, a hard-boiled egg and some sunflower seeds. Yum!
Friday I packed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (using the last of my peanut butter in the process), which I ate during 'A' lunch. Then when I went to my cubicle Danny and the tech gang were there with Saccone's pizza, so I had to have some of that. I snacked a bit when I got home, and had a Whole Foods cafe vegetarian club for dinner, with some Amy's ice cream afterwards (sweet cream with a cookie dough crush-in).
Today I still felt full when I woke up, so I've just eaten tiny snacks here and there.
Okay, enough of the food update. (That's what you get when nothing much else goes on.) Last night I got in late, so I slept in until after 10:30 today. Balanced my checkbook, got my slow-leaking tire repaired at Discount Tire (for only $10), worked out by myself at my own apartment complex for a change, and finally transferred all my hanging file folders from the plastic tub I've had since college into the two-drawer filing cabinet I picked up at a garage sale months ago. I need to do my taxes soon. Maybe tomorrow or next weekend.
Last Saturday after the Men's Theology Coffeehouse (now just called "Straight Talk") I spent a while browsing the Dr. Seuss section at Barnes & Noble, since at a workshop last summer I learned that he has several short stories which relate to various computer science concepts. I went ahead and picked up the $10 The Cat in the Hat Comes Back (which is about recursion), but didn't feel like shelling out $15 each for the other three books I wanted.
When I got home, I went to Amazon.com, where I discovered that I could get the same three books, plus a copy of Norah Jones' Grammy-nominated Come Away With Me, shipped for less than the books alone at Barnes & Noble. So I purchased them, and they arrived today.
I like the Norah Jones album, though time will tell whether it stays on my rotation longer than a few days.
For the record, the three other Dr. Seuss books were:
All right, I've almost been awake twelve hours today, so I think I'm going to try to really catch up on sleep by going to bed soon so I don't have any trouble getting up to lead worship in the morning. We've got an experienced crew playing this week, and it looks to be a good set.
Gotta love them two-day work weeks. I've had quite a musical weekend. Friday night was the annual Friday Night Live talent show. This year I didn't have to judge, so I just got to enjoy the talent, which I thought was better than previous years. Also, Austin guitar legend Monte Montgomery opened the show with a 40-minute set that was excellent. Makes me want to write songs again.
Saturday evening I went to go see Point of Contact at the Vibe. By their show times you can tell they are moving up in the world. 8:00 P.M. on a Saturday night is definitely higher on the food chain than they'd been.
Of course, this morning was worship, which is fairly musical. This is two weeks in a row I didn't break any guitar strings, and I was fairly hard on my guitar today. After church the singles went to P.F. Chang's because an au pair who's been in the U.S. for a year (and attending Lakeline Church most of that time) is returning to Germany on Tuesday. The food was very good and the prices are pretty reasonable assuming you can resist getting appetizers or dessert. Of course, we did both.
Then later in the afternoon we went to see Chicago, which is, of course, a musical. I enjoyed it a lot, though it isn't going to dethrone Moulin Rouge anytime soon.
Successfully made it to the men's group this morning at six o'clock. It was, again, worth my time.
Today and tomorrow at school we're having our annual Continuous Improvement conference, which is professional development stuff that's always a lot of fun. I went to four sessions today and only one of them was dubious. Tomorrow we have five. And then Wednesday is just a normal teacher workday. It's always nice to just be able to spend time with other teachers without "the kids" around, which is something we seldom get to do. I know any parents reading this can sympathize.
Rode my bike today after getting home because it was beautiful outside. And then spent some time working on the setlist for Sunday. And now I'm going to try to get to bed relatively early. When I get so little sleep (which happens when I'm leaving the house at 5:45) my bones kind of ache all day.
So... notice anything different?
Yeah, that's right. The domain-squatting losers that had snapped up grahammitchell.com about a month before I was going to register it (along with hundreds of other random firstnamelastname.com domains) finally decided it wasn't going to make them any money and let it go. So I was able to get it at the normal market rate of $25 a year. So now both grahammitchell.com and grahammitchell.net go to the same place, and mail works to either.
I've got both for the next two years. I think eventually I'll only keep one of them, and it'll probably be the dot com, but I haven't decided for sure yet. For now I can paraphrase Homestar Runner and say: Welcome to Grahammitchell.net. "It's dot com!"
I'll briefly catch up on the last week, but I've got an early morning tomorrow.
Sunday afternoon on a whim I drove up to watch the Superbowl with my Dad, as it was also his birthday. It was a long day (with over six hours of driving), but it was worth it. I also got to see Paul and Julie and Logan (who's now sleeping through the night). Got back to Austin around 1:15 A.M.
Monday morning I got out of the house by 5:45 A.M. to make the first meeting of Chris Crombar's small group, "Get a Grip". It looks to be good, and I'm glad I went, though it was hard to wake up. It'll be every Monday morning at 6:00 for the next six weeks.
That evening I did my usual math tutoring, so it was a long day.
Started on PHP with my webmastering kids. I was able to get a downloaded version that they can run on demand on their server accounts just to practice the basics, so I'm messing with that now.
Got my guitar back on Tuesday, and it seems to play really well. I practiced with it Thursday and used it for both services today and didn't break a string, so that's a good sign. Hope it continues to hold up.
Yesterday I did lots of errands and worked out again, this time maxing out at an alleged 185 pounds! I still think the weights are light, but I'm improving at least.
The singles went to Chuy's after church today, and I got to see Jamie for the first time in weeks. Food was excellent, though since we had to wait for a particular section it took us a long time to finally get seated.
Had a team leaders meeting back at the church at 4:30, and then got fed dinner and brainstormed about the Lakeline Church webpage over at the Petrini's.
And then updated the web page.
January 2003
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