weekend report, Gentoo groovitude, and a return to Tech...

It was somewhat strange, showing up at Tech again... Atlanta seemed somewhat strange, driving up towards downtown from the airport. Somehow my room seemed different, which might have been just the blinds being closed (I generally keep them open) and the computer being off (there was a power outage). Just minor things had been changed around, and being away from an area for over a week... eh.

I was very much ready to go, when I left. I've been feeling, now that I'm back, halfway between relaxed/recharged/ready-to-go and somewhat reluctant to let myself believe that any of this is important at this point... being here again feels sort of futile, when compared with my past week spent sleeping and reading and visiting friends and family, and especially with yesterday. I remarked earlier today, as I was wandering off to go inflict 2130 on some hapless Compies, that 24 hours ago, I was laid out in the grass, next to Esther, on a hill in a park right near Rice, smiling brightly in the warm sunshine... that was really wonderful :)

Saturday, Esther and myself did some walking and jogging around Rice's lovely Outer Loop, which is about 5K around and goes right past above-mentioned beautiful park, then later on found our way to a wedding, in which one of her friends from Intervarsity was getting married. This was a somewhat strange event for me. I was feeling somewhat discombobulated -- I felt silly showing up to a wedding mostly nicely dressed, save that I didn't have my nice shoes with me, so I ended up going with my standard blue sneakers. Although it seemed strange to me, apparently due to sheer human volume considerations, I (and several other people, this hoopy frood named Billy included) hadn't been invited to the wedding reception, so afterwards, we walked back from the church. It was interesting talking with Billy, who successfully navigated us down Main Street back to Rice -- apparently he's a mechanical engineer and ex-300m-hurdler who likes to run the Outside Loop and in the park to keep in shape, and seems to enjoy going to Rice. I hung out in Esther's domocile, waiting around for her as the reception went on, and got progressively more frustrated with myself for not being able to figure out where I'd put my wallet (we found it later :) ) and for not being able to get the ethernet cable to line up quite right so that eowyn could talk to the network whilst plugged into the wall...

This became important to me because I'd recently found out that my Gentoo ebuild for amp got accepted into the tree: Gentoo users, emerge sync and then enjoy the amp-y goodness, yo! Right there in /usr/portage/media-sound/amp ... an ebuild submitted by yours truly! Yay! :) Anyway, at that point, I wasn't feeling particularly joyful, just increasingly twitchy. Esther showed up not long after, and that was definitely happifying. We ended up, Saturday night, going out to this funky ice cream place called Amy's, which was nice.

So then Sunday we had brunch, chatted about economics and freedom and the relationships 'tween individuals and governments, looked at cool British Stuff at a store devoted entirely to that sort of thing (I've got a new hat as a result of this) and then walked barefoot in the park for a while before dropping me off at the airport...

Wonderful weekend, and an excellent way to end Spring Break...

For a while after I've been around her, she pops up in crowds -- at first glance, random people try very hard to be her, and Esther's voice is very easy to hear in my head...

Hrm... tonight... I think I'm Squeaking. Lisa and Daniel said they'd get some code and a list of things to fix sent out my way for the Least Interesting CS class. But before then... I'm going running.

I think I might have to make my own set of LJ icons... show of hands -- who would think it was cool if I took a picture of myself making each of the faces for the supported LJ moods?

thoughts, decisions and rulings

I went running, and it was good -- they finally opened up That One Intersection (Atlantic and Ferst, for those familiar) again, so it's now viable to do our Inside Loops again. So I did one of those with Marty, then headed off for an Outside Loop. Very enjoyable...

I'd made a note to make a note about this, so here it is: apparently the Aerospace Systems Design Lab had considered themselves GT's Best Kept Secret, and in order to maintain their secrecy, they put out tshirts about it. Andrew thought that they had been doing a pretty good job of maintaining secrecy, and pointed this out at dinner, because until tonight, when he saw a young lady wearing the ASDL tshirt, he hadn't heard of them at all, and he's an aerospace engineer. So I'm putting up this link... to help maintain their shroud of mystery.

Today, Corey and myself decided that we either need entourages, or need to become members of celebrity entourages. He's picked J-Lo. Miss Lopez, if you happen to be reading this, my roommate wants to be in your retinue. Send him an email.

Additionally, it was ruled that we need to open up a nightclub in the Vatican. I'm thinking that we could play some breakbeats, and probably some IDM. Global Goon seems apropos.

Everybody in the world seems to be getting married... it'd been pointed out by one of Esther's friends, while we were in Houston, but we're just getting to that age, where it's not quite as absurd of an idea as it used to be, and older friends are engaging in matrimonial-type activities left and right... Reed told me earlier tonight that over Spring Break, he and his girlfriend announced their engagement. I ran into Natalie earlier, whom I remember is on track to get hitched with Adam... it wasn't all that long ago when girls were a completely separate tribe. *blinks* I'm getting old...

Hrm... I think I'll be off to do some high-intensity Squeakin'...