Lorena spent the whole day cleaning and cooking. She had the time of her life. It is counterintuitive to me how those first two sentences hang together. Part of it had to do with the fact that she bought him a new mop. Looking back at that last sentence, I concede that, still, none of this makes a whole lot of sense to me. Lorena picked up Christian after school, just like the old days at NCSU and they went down to Target to buy “stuff.” Both of them had a ball. I am losing hope that I will figure out all the joy associated with these events. On the other hand, I hung around in the apartment all day, did nothing and felt really good about it for the first tie in years.
Christian was at school today for his bi-weekly meeting with his sponsor from MIT. The difference about today’s meeting was the quasiconvex optimization proof Christian did for his research. He has been working on it for the last several months and he finally got it figured out since after we arrived. It was a big relief for him, but I have no clue what any of it means. Still, like Conoscopic Holography, even though you have no idea what it means, you know it must be great because it sounds so cool.
Betty Blonde #495 – 07/09/2010
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We are taking a brief hiatus in Tempe to visit Christian in our road trip to Texas. Lorena needs to get her workouts in. She explained it is not so much that she is fanatical about doing it, she just hates the pain of starting all over again when she has missed a week or two. She is actually up to two 35 minute sessions per week on the elliptical and three 60 minute sessions per week on the Concept II rowing machine with some weight lifting thrown in the mix, too. It pains me just thinking about it.
I drove down from Prescott to Phoenix last night to spend the weekend with Christian at his apartment in Tempe. We have been out shopping all day. He spent less than $50 to buy a coffee table, a side table for the sofa and a computer monitor table. Then today, we went out and he bought a guitar stand, a desk lamp, a floor lamp and a hand vacuum. We had a great time. He is now heading out to a game not at his friends house while I hold down the fort in is apartment and get some work done. Tomorrow we get to go to meeting and hang out together again.
This is a picture of Kelly and Christian with their new backpacks on their first day of college in August of 2010. I am going to post pictures of them at the start of each year for their for years of college. Now Kelly and Christian both have apartments in their respective new towns as they start their PhD’s. They have both been able to find good apartments. Kelly is about 30 minutes by bus from her office at University of Washington. Christian hit the lottery and found an apartment about a block from the light rail that will take him to within a block of his office at Arizona State University. He should be able to get from his apartment door to his office in about 15 minutes.
Who knew homeschool would lead to something like this? My Dad bought me two brand new suits when I was about 30. I needed them when I moved from an engineering function to a sales function in my first “real” job that was something that more than just a way to earn money to get by. Neither he nor I could afford it at the time, but he did it anyway. Now, I get to return the favor.
I am dying to see how he looks, but the suits are currently with the tailor and will not be available until I leave on my next trip to Arizona.
I would love to buy some of this same stuff for myself, but I am still holding on to the illusion that I might lose some weight some day before too long. Well, that and the fact that I do not have any mone left after making all these big expenditures. I called my Dad and had a nice talk with him about it. I do not think he even remembered that he had done it nor how much it meant to me. He just always did whatever he could to help us. I really hope that Christian gets to do this for one or two of his own sons someday.