Well, it's high time that I finally mention my new friend. I got a kitten two days ago and named him Anderson Cooper. He's 7 weeks old, white and tan, with a gray and white stripey tail, and he's absolutely adorable. It's been fun playing with him, worrying about him, getting things ready for him.

He didn't eat or drink or poop for the first 24 hours, but last night he drank some water, then finally ate the food I put out for him, and, after several false alarms, he finally pooped in the litterbox. I couldn't have been happier.

Here are some pictures:

Really tired, but I'm back from the trip. I drove from Lindon to the Monterey coast on Wednesday afternoon/night (left Lindon at 12:30 MDT, got to the camp at 12:00 AM PDT), then spent the next few days enjoying Andrea's family reunion. A few of us drove down to Monterey on Thursday afternoon (really I just wanted to take a drive, but we did it under the guise of needing to go to Target so I could buy a towel), then went back into the mountains until Saturday. It was really nice up there -- great weather, lots of shade, fun times. We canoed and swam several times, and even though the water was FUH-REEZING, it was still extremely fun and relaxing.

On Saturday Andrea and I drove to Carmel, did the 17 Mile Drive, then had lunch on Cannery Row. After that we drove over to Fresno and had dinner with Grandma Charnock, Uncle Tom and Aunt Karen, Christy and Ryan. It was nice seeing them and introducing them to Andrea.

We drove home to Ridgecrest late on Saturday night, then got up and went to church. Andrea packed up on Sunday morning and we drove to St. George, where we stayed last night with her grandparents. Beautiful people -- classic Southern Utah folk. Then we got up this morning and came back to Provo. She's all checked in to her apartment complex now and I'm trying to dive back in to work. It's going to be nice, though, having her close.

I decided to take a half-day and go all the way to Monterey rather than leaving at 5 PM and going only to Reno. Should be a fun weekend!

I've had the pleasure this week of installing Windows Vista Ultimate Edition (Beta, of course) and Office 2007 (Beta 2, I believe). I felt like writing about the latter tonight while I sit here killing time before I call Andrea and then go to sleep. (Side note: last night I fell asleep on the couch. So much for getting good Saturday morning sleep for once.)

I haven't played too much with Office 2007 yet, but I imagine it still contains the basic word processing tasks as previous editions. There are so many UI changes that the two hours I spent playing with it were confined strictly to interface.

To start, the traditional File/Edit/View/etc. menu system we've come to love all these years is gone. In the top left corner is a round button that, when clicked, shows the items that would generally be found in the File menu (New, Open, Save, etc.), and next to that is a small area called the "ribbon" that contains common buttons like the Save, Undo, Redo, and Print buttons.



Under that are a series of tabs that have essentially combined the rest of the menus and the toolbars.



At the bottom right corner of the page are the viewing modes and a zoom scrollbar thing.



OK, I'm tired of writing about this. Talk about a lame "technical review." I guess you'll have to wait until someone more important or knowledgable about the topic writes about Office 2007.

Good evening.

still breathing, still living, not writing much, but living, yes.

I was in California from Friday until Wednesday. Quite fun. Hung out with Andrea virtually every waking minute of those days. On Tuesday we all went to a swim party and I got the worst sunburn of my life. The thing virtually incapacitated me for a period of 48 hours, but now I'm on the road to recovery.

I shopped at Target last night. There's nothing like slowly walking the aisles of a grocery store for an hour, looking at every label, planning, thinking, considering the possibilities.

My life is pretty much as boring as they come. Is this what adult life is all about? I need to get a deck chair and start reading on my patio, I think. I've already taken up puzzles. And of course I've been doing crosswords for years. If I had a reading chair that would give me the trifecta of old-people relaxation: jigsaw puzzles, crosswords, and a deck chair.

I need some excitement in my life. Andrea, should we take up a life of crime?