First entry in the new digs. Of course, as now seems to be the case with me, a lot has happened since I’ve updated my site with any personal news, so let’s just perform a mental dump and see what we come up with.

Of course, we must start off with the move itself, and all that it entailed. I must say that I couldn’t have done it without assistance (and cars) of Kelly and the Henkel brothers, two of my new roommates. The process took an extremely long time; even spaced out over several days of packing, storing, and moving it was exhausting, especially toward the end.

But I’m here now, and for the most part I’m even unpacked. I decided to go with the “Alabama room” motif that I’ve used for my study room in the past here, and I like the overall effect. If I’d have had the time, I’d have probably painted the walls to get rid of some of the old marks, but it’s okay. The bookcases cover a large portion of the wall anyway. One of these days I’ll snap a couple of pics, but if you’ve ever seen my old “Alabama rooms” you’ll have a pretty good idea of what it looks like already; just imagine a full-size bed in there instead of a weight bench. That’s now located out on our porch.

Anyway, I still haven’t completely finished with the unpacking part. I’ve got one more trip out to the storage area to make with all of the remaining bins, most of which are, thankfully, empty. I’ll do that tomorrow after my meeting.

Went down to Brianna and Mike’s this weekend with Kelly, and we played Texas Hold ‘Em two nights. It’s a good thing that I don’t gamble for money, because I’m terrible at it. Got to see Precious and Mr. Guy there for a little bit as well, since they were also down. That’s nice, seeing as I probably won’t be seeing them again until October, at least.

Classes are now over until the 25th, and that’s something to be grateful for. This was a long summer. I had never taken summer classes as an undergraduate or an MBA student, so the whole thing felt more rushed to me. The final in my computer architecture class was a killer. Even after giving the class another 15 minutes to finish, no one turned their papers in before time was called, and the average in the class was a 66. The professor normally doesn’t scale, but he felt it might be best to do so here. An 80 became a 100, so my 76 looked pretty good on the curve. As a result, I got my A. I am very happy about this, as this ensures higher than 3.5 on my core courses, as long as I don’t fail algorithms. This would be a great thing if I were just a master’s student, because then I wouldn’t have to take the qualifying exam. As it is, I’ve got to whether I have a 3.0 or a 4.0 in the core courses. It’s part and parcel of the process.

I also finally have my committee formed, after much fear and trepidation. I had my committee chair for a while now, but so many things got in the way for a long time that I didn’t believe I’d get it done by the end of the semester. I finally rounded it out, with my outside-the-department committee member being a religion professor that Kelly’s had a couple of classes with. You can imagine how many eyebrows raised when they saw that signature.

Of course, I’ve been trying to spend a lot of time with Kelly in addition to all of this. Originally, she had planned to be at FAU by this time, but various problems in finding a place to live have postponed her departure. In a way, this has been a good thing; we’ve had a little longer to spend together before we don’t see each other for weeks at a time again. She’s actually down there as I type this; tomorrow she’ll be apartment hunting.

Well, I’ll stop here for the night. Just letting you all know that I’m alive, online, and doing well. But I’m also hungry. So that’s all for now.