Its’ been a while since i blogged. largely due to the fact that everything seems so up in the air these days. I did get into the Simmons program which was really exciting. But, at $930 a credit….classes (3 credits) are not terribly affordable. I missed deadlines for scholarships and didn’t score any financial aid. So, at the moment I am entertaining a lot of possibilities. I’ve sent my resume to lots of places that offer tuition reimbursement at one of their benefits. Also, i’ve applied to some jobs at Simmons because of a sweet tuition waiver that they offer. So far I haven’t heard back from anyone… Then today I had my review at work where they said lots of good things and gave me a nice raise… So, I am trying to be patient and trust in Gods timing and his plan. It is easy for me to worry and want to figure it all out. But, God knows the plan for jill holt…. until then, I’ll just keep roller skating with my husband. What a BLAST we had at Roller Kingdom – skating and lazer tagging 
New pics updated!
Archive for May, 2007
Jill’s Turn
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007Anniversary Weekend
Sunday, May 27th, 2007Friday night: Slept on a new air mattress in the living room and watched a documentary on the Revolutionary War.
Saturday: I gave Jill a present I’d been saving for awhile…
Yes, it’s scary looking. It’s a total inside joke based on an episode of MST3k.
Saturday Night: Got packed up and went camping on the Daman’s land (like we did two years ago!).
We reached our exact same campsite of two years ago and set up camp!
The mosquitoes must have just hatched this week, because they were out in droves. Jill and I used bug spray and started the fire to get rid of them, but they were still pretty bad. We had hot dogs, marshmallows, and beer for dinner. Eventually we retreated to our tent to escape the blood-suckers. Here’s a pic of Jill from in the tent and one of the mosquitoes our tent kept out.
Go tent! Finally, this evening we had Tony and Shannon over. We played an exhausting game of ultimate frisbee (2 on 2), played some “ball”, and recorded some strange sounds with lots of reverb. Now it’s 1 AM and time for bed.
Our Thursday
Friday, May 25th, 2007Thursday saw Ben driving to Leominster to meet with Mike Todd (the guy that organized the music event a few weeks ago in which I played country music) and three other musicians. One was Josh Young, another guy who played at the performance I did. I met him briefly at that time, and called him later and talked with him about playing. He does lots of worship-type events for churches etc. The other two were a guitarist and violinist.
After we talked a bit and got all introduced we trucked over to Mike’s church and played for an hour or so. The other guitarist and I were uncannily similar in our playing, although he is more of a jazz/blues guy. He used a Fender Tweed tube amp of some kind and a Strat with nothing in the middle. The violinist was great too – she uses this very, very expensive (she wouldn’t tell me how much exactly) instrument and is attending Berkeley in the fall.
After playing we went to get Thai food. I got some egg rolls and plain rice. We talked about culture differences in the USA and speeding laws/tickets.
Later that evening, Jill and I met with a website client of mine at our favorite sushi place. He was on a business trip in CN and wanted to drive up to meet us. He’s a friendly chap (from the south, so automatically friendlier than most of New England) and was semi-new to sushi, so we tried to indoctrinate him into the sushi way. We talked about jobs, marriage, vacations, web design, culture, etc.
Tomorrow is our sixth anniversary! It’s a three-day weekend, so we have plenty of time to camp, watch movies, hike, read, go out, or whatever we like. Props to Jill for putting up with me for ten years (we started dating ten years ago tomorrow)!
Meeting + MST3k
Monday, May 21st, 2007I had another meeting at church yesterday. Jill was there this time. She says she could understand how the first meeting would have been hard. This one was calmer but still hard for both parties to be calm and collected. In short, I will be playing 50% of the time (mutually agreed to) and I’m supposed to work on certain inter-personal stuff, i.e. accepting authority when it’s present. They agreed to help me along the way using methods I can understand and being clear about their expectations. The whole thing is very depressing – when you are confronted with your problems.
Last night Tony and Shannon came over and we had dinner and watched MST3k: The Movie. Fun times. I made mojitos and spiked sparkling grapefruit juice.
Finally, I had this really cool idea for putting LED “tube” style lights on the front of my amplifier that would light up the front when you turned it on. Tony agreed that it would look great, but the prices for just 6 feet or so of LED lighting is like $40. Kind of expensive for vanity lights, but maybe if I’m persistent I’ll be allowed to buy them
Cleaning Nite
Saturday, May 19th, 2007Tonight Jill and I were both in cleaning moods. Jill got rid of a bunch of stuff to make space for an air mattress she wants to get:
Sarah wasn’t sure what was going on… this kind of thing doesn’t happen often in the tranquil Holt house:
I started re-organizing my nook, got rid of my keyboard stand for now (don’t use it enough to justify the stand) and fiddled with power cables and cords in a way only meticulous geeks could understand.
We finished the evening with vacuuming and reading. I’m currently reading “Tom Sawyer” to Jill.
Thursday Night Fever
Friday, May 11th, 2007My lil’ iMac had some temperature problems last summer. When running at a high processor speed, it would shut off sometimes because of sustained internal temperatures near 200ºF. Last night was the first really warm night, and sure enough, back to the old problems. Here’s a temperature graph, it was up really high for a while there:
To fix the problem, I tried (like last year) putting a fan behind the ‘puter that blows into the holes. It helps a little bit, but doesn’t solve it. I think an internal fan must be busted.
Hikes
Monday, May 7th, 2007Part of Ben’s emergence from winter hibernation is his facination with nature’s awakening. On the past three days, I’ve been on around four hikes in the woods surrounding our condo. One with Dan, one by myself, and two with Jill. It’s the perfect time of year – greenery is just coming out, but no mosquitoes and perfect temperature. I did have to remove about three ticks so far, they are out in strength.
See the Queen Lives On!
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007When I was in high school we created the first ever “See-the-Queen” event (1995) where we all got gussied up and went out to eat. We (about 12 of us) hit the Papa Razzi in our fanciest and had a grand time. Since then I’ve been involved in…1 college one where we, 1 with church friends, 1 for Jayne’s bday, 2 or 3 with Young life… and I know there are more out there! People have been Seeing-the-Queen in Canada, Louisianna, and the most recent spotting was in Maine! Jayne had all her nieces (7?) over for the weekend and they did a See-the-Queen! Woot! Anyone else out there who has had a see-the-queen experience?
