My grandma died. I'm heading home. Dark for about a week.

It is my great pleasure to announce that Wallybee (and given the occasion, I will mention that her real name is Biyi, so I suppose she's the WallyBiyi) and I have been declared to be husband and wife (not in that order) by the People's Republic of China! The ceremony is on Saturday, but in the meantime we have had some photos taken in a full-day procedure that desperately warrants further explanation, but will have to wait for another occasion. In the meantime, I offer this sneak preview: [link]

Her parents are very gracious and welcoming hosts and I'll be staying with them (and my lovely wife) until after the wedding. Then I will just be staying with my lovely wife.

If anyone has my old 718 home phone number, throw it out -- Cablevision fucked up when they said they could port it to the new address, so we're sans land line for the foreseeable future. Cell # remains the same.

If anyone has Emily's phone number, could you email it to me? I have a job lead for her. Profile addy good.

All set! Thanks.

Ok.

After much thought and deliberation and weighing the pros and cons and throwing bones and doing tarot readings, Joe and I have decided that the signs are all pointing for us to move back to Michigan.

It was always in The Plans, but it's just been moved up.

We have wonderful friends that we consider family here in LA, but we both think it's time we went back so Em can be closer to her grandparents the way Joe and I were with ours.

It's not tomorrow - it's gonna be about 6-8 weeks.

We're selling everything but books, clothes, dvd's, and toys and shipping it all and then packing up the van and driving back. Should be interesting with 2 cats, a dog, and a 2 year old.

Hi everyone. I want to thank you all for your good wishes for Biyi and myself. I haven't been able to get on the internet much over here, but I'm going through all the messages and we're both very thankful to you all. And, we have another piece of news. When Biyi first applied for her partner visa, we were told we could expect to wait until maybe July to hear the answer. We had our interview at the Australian Consulate in Shanghai yesterday. They called today to let us know she's been approved. She will return to Melbourne about a week after I get back from our honeymoon. (In other words: WHEEEEEEE!!!)

This couldn't have gone better. Thank you everyone for your good wishes, and for sharing in our joy (there's an awful lot of it, so I reckon there's enough to go around).

In conclusion, yesterday we saw spider crabs. Thank you all for listening.

First, I want to say thank you, so much, to everyone who contributed toward my trip to volunteer in Israel. I really appreciate it.

Secondly, if anyone's interested, MTV was filming the trip, and it's going to be shown as part of a show about college kids who volunteer during spring break. I'm not sure whether or not I'll be shown. It's called "The Amazing Break," and it's going to be on MTV on Sunday at 8 AM.

Please to send the urgent health~ma towards Fort Lauderdale. MIL went in for a routine hernia operation on Thursday and we thought everything was fine. It ended up that she had 3 hernias and it was more complex. She is in ICU on a ventilator and has some bad clotting issue of some kind. They are doing a procedure in about an hour having to do with straining the blood. Her oxygen levels are bad and things are very scary. Prayers would be a good thing.

health ~ma requested for my dear friend out in Baltimore. She's five months pregnant (v. high risk pregnancy) and has just started coughing up bloody mucus. She's going to the ER right now.