It has been a while since I last wrote an entry, as usual. I’ve started a couple entries and not finished them.
Julie has finished her last term of law school as of last week. She seems to have taken a temporary interest in knitting and cross-stitching. I say temporary because she’ll be starting Barbri classes in a couple weeks. Once those start, it will probably be like her first year all over again until her bar exam, which is July 24 and 25 in Tampa. Her graduation is Friday. I’m taking a day off work for it, as we have six parents coming in to see it. One thing I really don’t understand is why UF doesn’t consider a Juris Doctor degree to be a doctorate, since UF has them dressed in masters degree caps rather than doctors’ caps. I would find that rather insulting, but Julie doesn’t seem to care that much either way.
Next month is Jenny’s (Julie’s sister) high school graduation in North Carolina. Julie and I are taking a train to go see it. Taking a plane would be way too expensive, and driving would divert too much of Julie’s attention from studying (since she’ll be in the middle of Barbri class at the time). I wonder how it will be to ride a train. The total cost round trip is just under $300 for the two of us.
I guess I should talk about some more depressing stuff. A couple months ago, I gave it my shot at being a dog person. I fostered a three month old puppy for about three weeks. The intent was to eventually adopt, but things didn’t work out that way. The ultimate downfall was that our cats kept fighting with the dog (not so much the other way around). I think that it is going to be a lot of trouble to ever have another pet with our two cats. They do well with each other, for the most part, but they absolutely hate other animals. At first they just feared the dog, but eventually Darwin came out and started testing his boundaries with the dog. Next thing I know, the cats were ganging up and raiding the dog when she was just trying to sleep. I can also say that trying to take care of a puppy was a big mistake. My opinion of it now is that there really is no good reason to adopt a puppy as opposed to an adult dog. The puppy had digestion issues (which was expensive), and always needed to be the center of attention (even when I was trying to work). I got pretty burnt out quickly. I felt really lousy about what happened, but I haven’t really been thinking about it in a while. Reading around the Internet, there are a ton of ubber self-righteous dog lovers who like to give people crap about a failed adoption, but I can guarantee everyone that I punished myself enough already.
I’m not sure if I should be talking about this or not, but since Julie and I moved into this apartment in Gainesville, we’ve had problems with (what I believe to be) fruit flies every summer. They tend to disappear when things get a little cooler. Anyway, we had them last year, and it was horrible, and they have been coming back this month. We tried to many things last year: traps, cleaning, trying to find “the source”, as everyone on the Internet calls it. Problem is, we’ve never been about to find “the source”. Neither of us have ever had problems with fruit flies until we moved here, and we’re not trashy people. I have a hunch, and I’m trying it out now. I think our kitchen sink itself might be “the source”. So I’m trying to flush it out with Drano a few times to see if that is where they are breeding. I hope I can get control over them. I hate them and want them to die!
I’m working on getting my first FCC Amateur Radio license. Nick got his earlier this year and seemed to be trying to get me into it also. Julie also seemed to be encouraging me to look into it. Anyway, right now, I’m studying to get the Technician level license, which is kind of the entry, lowest level, easiest-to-get-deal. I’ll be taking an exam the first Saturday of June. If I pass, I’ll be issued a license and call sign. At first, I wasn’t really sure about it, but the more I study, the more interesting it seems. I am particularly interested in playing around with digital modes, and maybe see what I could do in amateur radio astronomy. I’m thinking after I get the Technician license, I might start studying for the General license, but I might need to take a class to prepare for that. I posted some links about Amateur Radio that I have found useful in preparing.
Things seem to be going well in regard to the Home Project. There are lots of pictures in my Gallery, and that’s mostly how I’ve kept things up-to-date for it. I also recently put together a new Gallery for videos. My mom has been taking pictures. It sounds like the week after Julie’s graduation will be when we have to go to Pensacola to wire my house with intercom and ethernet, etc. I’m not sure all the details yet of when and how long, but I do know that I’ll need to be quick about the wiring process. If you’re at all interested in the building of my new house, you can register on this website, and I’ll give you privileges to see the Home Project page.