I remember telling myself when I was about 14 that I would never marry nor have children. So far, I was right.

(To be clear, I've never been sad about it. Although if the "right" person appeared in my life, I might marry.)

The "love at first sight" thing happened to me when I met my BFF. We were 16, at a fan con in Nashville. Our eyes met, angels sang, bluebirds tied ribbons in our hair. She remembers what actually happened, all I remember is seeing her. We lost touch for many years in adulthood, and when we found each other again, it was like we'd never been apart. If either of us had been a guy, we would gotten married when we turned 18 and our lives would almost certainly have been much better. Except I'd probably have kids now because she wanted them. But the kids would have been better off (presuming she got the same ones as she did in this life) because they would have had a stable loving family and a father who wasn't a fucking asshole. I'm presuming I was the one who got to be a guy, because I'd rather and she wouldn't, but either way, stable loving family with sane parents.

See how my mind works? Wasn't that fun? I need a drink or something.

Omnis, sorry to hear that you can't enjoy the nice weather. Good luck moving all the gear. I'm currently en-route to JFK, where I change planes and have another flight of about 8 hours to make it to Barcelona. It should be a busy two weeks on the NCL Epic, but it should also be a lot of fun, I enjoy working with the Nickelodeon folks.

When I was in college, I was convinced I'd be in a serious relationship by my junior or senior year, and that we'd get married after graduation.

Heh.

I was sure I'd be married by 22. But the last time I thought about it with husbands in the picture, I was 18. We were planning to run off together and find TKD black belts and marry them and tour the country fighting. Ah, crazy kids.

Later on it was assumed I would have lots of kids, father unimportant. His main job was to only diverge from my genetic template in order to make the kids brighter, stronger, better soldiers. He couldn't make them not look like me. And he had to make them taller.

I actually went looking, and discarded many almost-theres.

And then I became me.

I've skipped to the end.

Dad got here yesterday and we went to get Thai food. The Thia House was named the Best Thai place in New England in 2009 by Yankee Magazine and it was really good.

Then today we went to the Shelburne Museum, which I knew very little about it. It's big. Your admission is good for 2 days and it will probably take 2 days to see everything. Currently they have several temporary exhibits - one of Vermont antique firearms, 1 of Papercraft in 3D which is spread over 2 buildings and is truly amazing, including altered books, and clothing exhibit in High Style 1690-2011. We didn't get to that one.

Plus their regular, permanent collections include Impressionists - Manet, Monet, Dega, Cassett. Plus hand carved furniture by Tiffany. There's a steamboat, a train depot, train engine, train cars. All kinds of houses and buildings. It's truly amazing. A general store completely stocked. Apothecary, barber shop. I don't know how many straight razors they have on display but it's a lot.

It's just amazing. This is the museum story of how it came to be [link]

It's incredible.

askye, it looks like it's worth visiting Vermont just to see that!

It is! Just going in the general store was incredible. Electra Webb bought out inventory of general stores going out of business. So there's bolts of cloth, and probably 2 dozen assorted shoes.

And in the steamboat they have several of the staterooms set up as they would have been so there's clothes and accessories. I took some pictures but some places either it didn't feel right or flash wasn't allowed so I just didn't.

Askye, I'm definitely adding that to the list of things to do in Vermont, along with "meet Askye". I don't think we'll be getting back up there this year but maybe next year.

Cabinets are all but packed. At least their insides. Still stuff on top, but I can't reach that stuff. I think I'll leave the workbench for next week. I'm pooped. All this lifting can wear ya out.

And in SoCal news. It looks like the 405 in Orange County is at a crawl. But in LA, in the Carmageddon area, clean n green zipping by. Guess where my commute is? Yup. In the OC. Cest la vie.

Bummer omnis. I'm guessing that most folks in the Carmageddon zone got out of work as early as possible.

I have a friend who's a nurse at UCLA Hospital. She says that the shifts this weekend are falling heavily on folks who live in a reasonable range for street-driving to work.