Ah, spring is in the air! I refuse to call it fall as there isn't that nice crispness to the air that you get in the fall nor have the leaves changed any. Not that they change a terrible lot down this way, but they do change some and that is a requirement for fall in my mind. In south Mississippi we go straight from summer to a long spring with a bit of winter stuck in the middle. At least in this part of the country we usually get a little bit of something that slightly resembles fall and winter. This is that cool air with a softness about it, a gentle breeze, happily chirping crickets at night that you get in the spring.

But it's cooler and that makes me happy. Some folks complain of Seasonal Affective Disorder in the winter months due to the lack of light and warmth. I get depressed in the summer because of the stifling heat and humidity. And summer here lasts a LONG time. This year longer than others, well into mid-October. That's too long for my likes.

I have my windows open and can enjoy the coolness of the air and the crickets singing their song (not many people play music with their legs, but crickets do a rather good job of it) with the occasional frog and bird and other assorted and sundry insect or animal joining in the chorus. When I drive I take the more meandering routs with the slower speed limits so that I can enjoy the cool air with my windows down. Windows that are down not to evacuate the furnace heat air from my car but to let in the cool, fresh air.

So Nick is in a good mood and that means he is back to posting in his blog. When he takes a hiatus from his blog it either means that a) he's far too busy to be posting or b) he's just depressed (likely from the southern weather) and doesn't really feel like bothering with it at all.

This last weekend Becca, Mike of Springstead (who is going out with Becca now, in case anyone doesn't know yet. How you wouldn't know by now is far beyond me unless you just don't know any of us) and myself took a short roadtrip down to Mississippi.

We drove Friday to Colombus, MS and stayed at his folk's place. The weather when we arrived there around one was beautiful and we enjoyed walking around downtown there for a bit after our filling lunch.

Saturday we headed down to the 'burg* and where we still have friends, and where two of said friends were finally getting married and thus the reason for the whole trip in the first place. We got some sandwiches from Lenny's** and headed to the Lovely Dale apartment. (Lovely being my former roomie Chris and Dale being his roomie, Andrew.) Of course we had to get the key before we could get in, just as if it were a proper adventure game.

Then was the wedding. The wedding was good, Sam came down the aisle to Let it Be just because it wouldn't be a proper wedding for Beaux to be involved in if something of that sort didn't happen. The food was wonderful and included boiled shrimp, jambalaya (if you haven't had it before you absolutely must have some from Louisiana at some point in your life or your life will not be good), and bread pudding as a groom's "cake".

After sufficiently stuffing ourselves and seeing the bride and groom "off" and then seeing them return moments later to stuff themselves and open gifts before departing for the moon of honey we went out for sushi with Chris. The three of us intended to watch him eat (and I intended to have some sake) but when we got there I couldn't help but order a salmon skin handroll and a couple of pieces of yellowtail nigiri. I mean, who could? And Becca and Mike had some red bean and some green tea ice creams.

Sunday we treked back home as Mike had to be at church that evening. It's a shame because we missed a concert of the Carey Chorale. A chorale which, by the way, will be singing in Carnegie Hall in New York in the spring. Mozart's Requiem. Conducted by John Rutter. John freaking Rutter. We didn't do cool stuff like that when I was in the chorale! (It is very hard to type out the HTML for an italicized letter I as it's three I's in a row. Crazy stuff.)

The trip was great. And since it is followed by springish weather Nick is very much in a good mood. I'm sure that work and the likely pending hot weather will suck that good mood out and replace it with more depression/weariness. I'm quite sure.

That's the account of the trip. Now on to other things.

We have started a handbell choir at church! I have missed ringing a lot, it's been about two years now or more since I last rang. Going on three years, I guess. The church is currently borrowing a set from another church that I guess, sadly, doesn't use them. Perhaps they use bells but they have a better set and just don't use this particular set any longer. It's the Malmark training set with the white and black handles that match the white and black keys on the piano. We had a wonderful response to it with about 20 people showing up for the first rehearsal. Jonathan weeded through it and we are down to a group of 11 ringing three octaves. Simple music as most of the group hasn't played or hasn't played much. We ring the first weekend of November.

Christmas music is being learned at the church for the Evensong rehearsal and includes two of Shaw's Many Moods of Christmas collections. The choral society is getting ready for our fall concert in two weeks. (Saturday the 29th if you'll be around.) Music for that concert is coming along quite nicely, nicer than I thought it would be with even the French and German pieces nearing readiness for the concert. Porter even canceled our rehearsal the Friday night before the concert (it was a choir only rehearsal so no big deal with the orchestra or anything, our big dress is Saturday morning and we'll have the children's chorus with us Tuesday night).

I miss the opera.

I recently made my first trip to a bookstore in a few months. I try not to go too often as I end up spending far more money than I have intended to when I go in. I bought three books this time. The Cowboy Bebop manga that came before the series (intended as an introduction to it, I think) which is a bit hard to get used to reading as it's printed in the Japanese fashion of starting on the right side and reading to the left side, or backwards to us westerners, Good Omens by Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman, and The Salmon of Doubt, the posthumously published book of Douglas Adams (A bit of a British sci-fi collection there? Aye). Good Omens is great, as I expected a collaboration between these two would be, and Salmon is turning out to be a great read as well. It's basically a collection of columns, magazine articles, snippits of things he wrote and gosh knows what else and the unfinished Dirk Gently novel, Salmon of Doubt (which it was hinted at in the preface could have been turned into another chapter in the hitchhiker's saga). The footnotes thing in this post is a Prachett that he uses throughout the Discworld novels and used in Good Omens as well.

Today I washed my car and then discovered the need for a new battery for said car. So I got a new battery for said car. Woo, spending money.

Well, I need to wash a couple of dishes and do some ironing and this post has gone to three pages in length in Open Office, so I shall end it now. I guess it's fitting that my first post other than to inform the world that I can wirelessly connect to the internet at home (albeit dialup) is a rather lengthy one.

Now stop yer whining, Lily!


*Hattiesburg, where we went to college for 6 (Mike), 5 (Nick), and 4 (Becca) years. Four of Mike's Six years overlapped with the 4 and 5 years of Becca and Nick.

**Hattiesburg is a wonderful place to live if you like deli food. There is Lenny's, a wonderful place for a cheesesteak, Villie's, McAlister's, and not Pepper's. There used to be a Schlotsky's but I suppose they couldn't handle the competition from the local chains (The afformentioned four are all from the general Mississippi area, I am pretty sure. I'm not really sure where Pepper's originates, but I'm sure the others are all local to the state or at least Memphis which is almost Mississippi.) These places are, other than friends I have still in that state, the one main thing I miss about living there. There just isn't a good deli around here like those.
- posted by Nick @ 10/18/2005 11:20:00 PM | 0 comments

 
Woo! I have wireless internet at the house now! Of course, it's still dialup, but it's wireless! That means I don't have to use the main phone line if I want to use the computer in a room other than my bedroom! (Or that I don't have to run another line off the computer line...)

It took me a while to get Interner Connection Sharing (ICS) to work between my two computers but after a while I found out that if I tell my laptop to use the ICS host IP (192.168.0.1) as it's DNS and Gateway manualy it works! I'm not sure what this will do if I use wireless elsewhere, though I think it should be alright since 192.168.0.1 is usualy the router's address. My router now uses 192.168.0.2.

We shall see the next time that I'm in another location!

Anyway, it's not cable or DSL, but it's wireless at least.
- posted by Nick @ 10/17/2005 06:31:00 PM | 0 comments