Don't Leave Home Without It...or Them

What would you plan to take with you if you were going away for a week to a conference in a far off city? You'd plan on Skyping with your family one or two evenings while you were away, you'd probably think of a few DVDs to take with you to watch on your laptop just in case boredom set in. What else would you take with you or plan to do without a car?

Indeed, I planned on Skyping with my hot wife and awesome boys. But, due to limited bandwidth on this small campus we are specifically not allowed to Skype. :( I didn't think of bringing movies, but I am incredibly lucky in that I can login to Netflix and get a movie on demand. Last night I watched MIB. However, MIB II is not available on demand so I went in search for something else.

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is available...yeah!!! But the two previous movies are not. I guess I'll just watch it out of order. That's hard for me to do. But I'll do it.

One really fun thing that I've done so far is just walk around. The campus is beautiful and I'll put some pictures on here soon. The weather has been nice and partly cloudy the whole time and that has been a miracle. The hot spots have been pretty hot. And it's true what they say, and I had long forgotten it, dry heat is much more tolerable than the humidity and when you step from the sunshine into shade, the temperature drops 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Woo!

Another little miracle was finding a pool table near my dorm. Pool is a hobby I used to have and I used to be really, really good at it. In fact, I nearly won each pool tournament I entered at UVSC back in the 1990's. (Notice that I didn't say that I won nearly all of the tournaments.) The "nearly" part resulted in getting nervous in the final game and I played it too safe. I took 2nd place in all but one of the tournaments I played in.

The one thing I brought with me to pass the time was on mp3 player and two books on CD. I began Inkheart yesterday and it got to some good parts today. I like the character names Silver Tongue, Dust Finger, and Capricorn. The other book I have with me (and that I'll likely get to this week because of all the free time on the menu) is called Uglies. Angie told me about it and I'll give it a go. Many of you know I'm more into magic, fantasy, and adventure. I just finished Brisingr and that was a thrill from cover to cover. Oh. And I like dragons. Christopher Paolini has tightly captured my imagination with his fantastic and varied descriptions of his world of Alegasia and dragon riders. I didn't suspect that his writing style and story would reach the pedestal where I put Tolkien and Middle Earth. It's a tall pedestal. And I thought there was room for only one favorite.

I was wrong.

On another happy note, I'm off to dinner pretty soon. And then I'll come back to my dorm and watch something on demand. Probably The Return of the King (extended edition). Ta ta!