Sorry I didn’t post on Saturday like I said I would; it ended up being a busy day. Of course, that means I now get to type the Update O’DOOM.
the blind date that wasn’t. . . much of a date, that is
Well, his name was Joel, and he might have been 25, but if he was, it was 25 going on about 17. It went down like this. Jen and I drove down to Lehi, which is where we were supposed to be meeting the guys. When we got there, it turned out Kevin (Jen’s date) was right on time, but mine wasn’t there. He had been rafting on the Provo River, and wasn’t back yet. So we finally decided to go to the restaurant without him. We get to Chili’s, meet up with another couple, and there’s an hour wait– but since it’s already 8 and the concert starts at 9, no go. We ended up at a fast-food Chinese restaurant, where Jen’s date paid for both Jen’s dinner and mine. We made awkward small talk until we were almost done with dinner, when my date finally showed up.
He’s totally NOT my type. Bleached-blonde hair messily spiked every which way. Elementary school field day t-shirt. Cares more about his band than, oh, anything else that I could tell, unless it’s kayaking/ river rafting. So we sit for about 15 minutes while he eats, make more awkward small talk, and then we all head off to the concert– me still in the car with Jen and her date, since Joel’s car was full of his guitar and other associated band stuff. Turns out the concert is in Joel’s backyard, for some high school graduation party, and that the band (Tension) is missing its drummer. Ever heard Blink 182 without a drum beat? Yeah, me neither. So Jen and Kevin and I sat on the swings and listened to the badly-played music while young boys grabbed burning sticks out of a fire pit and chased each other with them.
It was surreal. So that’s what cool people do on weekends. I never knew.
Anyway, when the concert was over, they had planned on playing games, but it was already 10:30 by then and we didn’t want to drive home too late at night. The fact that neither of us had very much in common with our respective dates had nothing do to with it, I assure you. 
So, yeah. Doubt I’ll be seeing him again.
So what have I been doing with myself since? Lots of stuff, I assure you.
memorial day weekend
Saturday was spent doing several things, among them getting a new cell phone. I wanted to switch my plan, but since I was on an AT&T plan and Cingular bought them out, they wouldn’t let me do it without buying a new phone. I got this one, which is rather cool. Much cooler than my old monochrome-screen-no-bells-or-whistles phone. Rather enjoying it, actually. Did you know you can download Pitfall? 
I also helped out a bit around the yard– we’re still getting our over-grown and/or dying yard into shape– and we had an excellent dinner of barbequed hamburgers, with grilled pineapple for dessert.
Sunday I went to church, had dinner with the fam, and then we started on our annual trek to family gravesites, starting at a cemetary here in town where my Bytheway great-grandparents, my cousin Thomas (who was stillborn), and my Grandpa By are buried, then continuing up to Heber where most of my mother’s side of the family is buried, including my Uncle Ray. We left flowers on all the graves (including the headstone–complete with names!!– that my as-yet-perfectly-alive grandparents have already put up. We rounded off the day with a visit to my aunt Jeanine’s, because my cousin and his wife were in town for their brother’s graduation. Fun, exhausting day.
Monday we headed up to my great-uncle John’s house for the annual Memorial Day breakfast, which unfortunately was rained out. The pancakes still tasted good, even though we ate them inside instead of in the backyard. We stopped at Pace’s for our annual Astro Pop (wonderful popsicles, mmmm) and then went to see Star Wars. I really, really liked it. And I never cry at movies, but this one got me– when they started playing Leia’s theme and the binary sunset theme at the end. Curse you, John Williams! After the movie we stopped at the Salt Lake cemetary to put flowers on the grave of my last set of great-grandparents, then headed home. But the day wasn’t over yet! We did a bit more yard work, grilled steaks, and then watched A New Hope (which my sister-in-law has never seen). Good times.
So now I need to go back to everyone’s reviews of Revenge of the Sith and see your reactions.
and since then. . .
Work has been interesting, because apparently the power outage on Friday burned out the power supply on our file server at work, and they weren’t able to restore said server until last evening, so there really hasn’t been much that we could do. Business was back to normal this morning, except for the ususal hiccups that a computer disaster will cause, which is good, because we have deadlines coming up.
School is out for a bit, as the prof gave us the last two weeks of class off to work on our research paper. I’m going to be attempting to write the theoretical chapter of my thesis as my project. My approach is a weird kind of amalgalm of moral, cultural, and postcolonial criticism, so it actually should be interesting. I went to the library on Wednesday to do a bit of research, and ended up getting more than just school books. . . a few Perry Masons that I hadn’t read (or it had been so long that I forgot the plots) and a few Georgette Heyers– mostly mysteries that I haven’t been able to get my hands on, but a couple of her romances too. I’m rereading Cotillion at the moment.
Oh, and today I received a mysterious package from the Evil Triumverate. It’s marked “Do Not Open Until June 4.” Dang.