No entry for ten days?! You might think I was some sort of Luddite...

Well, maybe I am. The reason for the lack of journal entries is unrelated to this, though.

For the past two weeks I've been as busy as a busy little bee (bzzz -- bonus points if you can name that once-very-popular tune). I've flitted from one social engagement to another. And you know what? I've had fun.

A hell of a lot of fun.

The single defining characteristic of the past two weeks' social engagements was: variety. During the past ten days I:

• Played paintball with Joel and Aimee and Mac and Pam and Kris and Tony and a bunch of strangers.
• Attended Andrew's birthday party, at which I had a series of unexpectedly fascinating conversations. As I told Andrew (to his amused dismay): the party exceeded my expectations. Vastly.
• Helped shop for equipment (esp. goalkeeping equipment) for the soccer team, then had a painful and pitiful performance in goal during practice.
• Enjoyed a fantastic meal at Jeremy and Jennifer's accompanied by good conversation (and, of course, some play with Harrison and Emma).
• Spent a pleasant evening with Mac and Pam and Kris at the Clackamas County Fair. Where once we got together with M&P about twice per week, we're now lucky to do things with them twice per month. This is sad, but I still enjoy the time we spend with them.
• Enjoyed a Geek Weekend with Dana and Andrew. Though we had grand plans to do All Things Geeky (role-playing games, construct a VPN, go to a gaming store, play board games, etc.), we basically only played Starcraft. Still, this was fun -- you just can't beat the best game of all time.
• Attended a surreal barbeque at Clara's; I knew only Dana and Clara and so spent the evening making small-talk with utter strangers and then, as a climax to the entire week, singing karaoke with them. Bizarre, bizarre, bizarre, but curiously fun.
• Had a decent soccer practice on Sunday, a practice in which I didn't perform well but learned a lot about goalkeeping. This is the kind of practice that's most beneficial, I think -- though I didn't do well at the time, I learned plenty to help me do well in the future.
• Was present for what I considered a great book group discussion on Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. A post-group chat revealed that I was in the minority, though; others didn't find the conversation that interesting. Nusuth. I enjoyed it.

Those are just the highlights. I also did some Computer Resources work, read a lot, joined Metafilter, spent hours worrying about my injured quadriceps, researched wide-angle lenses for my camera, read goalie tips on-line, found several new magazines that interest me, watched some soccer on television, continued drafting in two fantasy football leagues, renewed my love of poetry (in the process finding a fantastic on-line poetry repository) and, of course, spent time with Kris.

I've had a great ten days.

My injured quadriceps is actually beginning to worry me. As I've mentioned before, Roth's aren't keen on doctors. Still, this injury is lingering (it occurred on July 31st) and surely a doctor could give me advice on how assist the healing process. Yesterday was terrible; the pain and stiffness were unbearable at times. However, this morning the pain and stiffness have subsided and the leg feels better than it has in weeks. Strange.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2004 — Guest Blog: Playing at the Court of Appeals   This morning was a fairly stressful event. I had an appearance before the Oregon Court of Appeals.

2003 — Husbanding Points   In which fall approaches. In which I find a precious ring. In which I am a fan of movie musicals. In which I build a stockpile of Husbanding Points.

— Site Tweaks   In which I do a bit of site redesign.