Yesterday Meredith turned 23. Amazing. I remember 23 for me was a kind of the final winding down from the craziness that was 21. Today I turn 26, a number that still hasn't impacted me yet. I look at it and watch the past 3 years blur together, thanks to school, work, and the craziest people I knew leaving the state. I come from a family where school required working your butt off to attend, so seeing "26" and myself living at home (poor) again sucks. I guess it still shocks me that I didn't get the first job that was a given and thought I'd find other tech jobs in BR easily, which isn't the case. So I'm going to stop feeling sorry for myself and start a part time job while trying to find my way into Solid Systems before their June hiring spree. Meanwhile I've been using my time getting back up to speed in Solaris, speciality internet services, and Cisco routers. I'm hoping to learn to use my microcontroller programmer to build a few devices with old intel processors and maybe get another 3'x4' painting done. I've also been reading a lot too and am going on a spiritual retreat on the 22nd or around then. Ran into Andy the other night at the Sr. Helen "Dead Man Walking" Prejean's talk at St. Joseph's Academy about the death penalty (a very powerfully gifted and intelligent woman).

I never had problems shopping for gifts before until Meredith's birthday. She's very particular about things like jewelry and decor and whatnot that it's always been a bad idea to even try to enter that world (I don't believe that "the thought counts" is necessarily a reasonable compromise). I remembered her saying she didn't get anything fun for Christmas and how that kind of rubbed her the wrong way, so yep, you guessed it: I got her a model rocket starter kit. Apparently the romantic quality there-in didn't go over too well. I've decided rather than return it, as a birthday gift to myself I'm going to give it to my friend Paul from Sri Lanka. Between work and school, he pretty much has time to burn since it's never easy making a large group of friends in another country. So I'm going to call him up today to maybe get a bite to eat or just visit/give him a pretty souped-up kit with two rockets, a launcher, and all the "not included" stuff included. As laughable as buying this for Meredith might sound, I think I originally did since I don't know her to have a single hobby that she persues in her spare time and I remember the satisfaction I got putting one of these together and watching it work. Hats off to you, Mr. Goddard.

My good buddy Tuan has seen stepped foot into my living space. I'm going to try to lure Josh over next.