L'aventure américaine

Last summer, we were preparing to get married.  I thought that this summer would be calmer.  I'm not sure if it is or not, but I do know that Randal and I have managed to fill our weekends completely with friends and fun and work and play.  So, I'll sum up. Early July: Randal finds a kitten in the plants outside of his building.  He brings kitten inside.  He intelligently leaves for a week so that I have to watch the kitten and become attached to the kitten.  So, we keep the kitten.  He lives in the building and his name is Building Cat or Jigsaw or Jiggy Sawdust.  He likes 1) wet cat food, 2) climbing up your leg, 3) dogs. Building Cat and Juneau.  So stinking cute. Mid-July: Our friend Adam turns 30.  We help him celebrate by going on a sailboat in the Upper Klamath Lake.  Randal helps sail the boat.  The captain of the boat calls him Black Shirt.  The captain of the boat is fond of me because I give him brownies and pesto.  We are invited bac

 Such a long time ago!  But these pictures shouldn't be missed. I quickly flew home for the 4th of July because my impressive brother was presenting an impressive poster at an impressive conference in Baltimore and decided to round out his impressive trip with a visit to Indiana. Computational linguistics + wellness = best sibling duo ever. We had so much fun.  We watched home videos that would have been painful to anyone else.  Dad and I harvested some wheat, then winnowed and threshed it.  Charles and I ground it.  Mom made bread.  And we all enjoyed it. For the 4th, the Dickens, Lupovs, and half the Longs joined us for a good, old-fashioned Shank 4th of July.  And we laughed and swam and watched fireworks and sang songs around the campfire and reminded ourselves again of the wonderfulness of family. It was a brief trip, but an utterly fantastic one.  Wiffle ball.  Awesome. Ew!  We're in the muck! A lesson i