1 day 4 hours: countdown to Grace-time. [laughs] I have not, however, wasted several days of time packing. As always, it has been saved until the last minute. Mostly because Friday I caught up on sleep, then went to dance lesson, then went to hear some guy play at a coffee shop. It was cool, he had an amp-hook-uped violin, a regular viola, an electric guitar, and a keyboard, along with a bag full of noise-making devices like quarters, clappers, tennis balls, etc. He also had a really nifty tool that allowed him to record a sound, loop it, record on top and loop that, etc. So he would loop the sound of a tennis ball being banged against the ground to a beat, then a quarter hitting the ground, then he added a couple extra tennis ball syncopations. He even, at one point, had me record the slurping-the-end-of-a-smoothy sound, twice, on beat. It was amusing. He recorded some guitar and some violin, and played melodic non-recorded lines at other times. He alternated this music with guitar ballads and soft picking sessions and violin/viola jigs and rags. It was very entertaining. I proceeded to wake up yesterday at 10:30 in expectation of going to San Antonio with my friend Irina and her friend Alison from DC. They didn't wake up till 11 though, so when Drew called at 11:30, we went out to lunch. The plan ended up changing to Galveston because they didn't want to drive 3 hours just to turn around and come back after a few hours, and since Drew had very little left to do at work, he ended up coming along to Galveston. It was fun, we had good seafood (though the gumbo very blah, and Drew couldn't eat it because it had sausage, in addition to the shrimp he was going to overlook for this occasion) and we saw a bunch of cool historic houses (from the street, but still), and then went shopping in the historic section stores called the Strand. We finished the evening by rolling up our cuffs and standing in the surf at the seawall beach. It was pretty in the dark, only seeing the white of the cresting foot-high waves and the sparkling reflections of lights from town behind us, and the water was very warm. We went back to Irina's house for snacking. Provolone goes well with dark Rye bread, by the way. [grins] Then I drove Drew home, and crashed there because I was freakin' tired. Today, he's on my side of town again for work, and he's going to finish up and then we'll see a movie. I gotta call Grace and see if she wanted to see either Batman or War of the Worlds with me. I just don't want to save them for when I get back, because I'll undoubtedly miss them in the theater [laughs]. But, if that plan is happening, I have to get some stuff done, and I need to go to church that I need to leave for very shortly (so I don't miss the later one and have mom get mad at me). So, au revoir, blogger. Until again.