Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Again we had late nights of school much of the week, but starting Wednesday we began preparing for a "get together" with Wayne's fellow grad students we had planned for Thursday. Wayne wanted an opportunity outside of class to talk with the other students about projects and ideas and to just get to know each other better. And since school wasn't providing that opportunity, we decided we ought to. We made several dips and lots of cookies Wednesday, cleaned the house, and minimized furniture in the living room and dining room so there would be room for everyone.  read more »

This week, I went to most of the advancement to candidacy presentations for the second year MFA graduates. ATCs are basically the thesis defense for MFA graduates in this school, as there is no post thesis show defense, only a presentation of the work. Most of the ATC candidates gave a thorough presentation, however I wasn't courageous enough to challenge those candidates I didn't think were addressing important flaws in their work.  read more »

Wayne was on spring break, and went in to campus to get work done on his projects even though he had no classes. He got to sleep in, and we stayed up late several nights. One night, I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday, we came up with a brilliant plan to go on a car trip [after we threw out ideas to fly somewhere, like Boston]. We went to maps.google.com and started scrolling along the CA coast -- south at first, since we've been north before. That's when we saw the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area near Pismo Beach. Excellent. We've always wanted to visit dunes. What else we would do and where to stay we left open-ended.  read more »

Last Sunday, we mentioned a concert that we were going up to in Palo Alto. More people showed up than I had expected, fewer than Rebecca had expected. The concert was a refreshing experience, since we haven't had much live music in our lives lately - or at least not much good live music. San Jose isn't a cultural center for the arts and we haven't been making much of an effort to invest in seeing their chamber orchestra. Perhaps we should, just to see if it is worth it.  read more »

I learned this week that even though the new building is the exact same distance as the old one I worked in, it takes less time to get there. Excellent. Something about how driving south on highways is better than driving north on highways or what I usually took: city streets. Plus, it's nice to sit near the people I work with. I feel less...isolated...at work. Less likely to resort to instant messenger to communicate to teammates. :) Oh and my coworkers like that we're nearer to a lot of restaurants. I suppose that's a perk.  read more »

Rebecca's cold has passed, but hit me with a vengeance. Instead of being a quick hit though, it took all week of sniffles before on Friday and Saturday it knocked me off my feet and I couldn't do anything. This is a mean bug. I don't like it. [yeah...I didn't like it much either. Who would? -beck]

Rebecca officially took a sick day on Monday to finish off her cold while the rest of her work was being packed up for her move. Everyone was in a huff over the coffee machine being packed too early on Thursday, apparently. Her first day of work at the new building will be on Monday.  read more »

Ah-choo! I started getting the first hints of a cold Tuesday night, and by Friday I was working from home so I wouldn't have to get up all the time to go blow my nose and/or bother coworkers nearby with my flowings and blowings, sniffings and whiffings. Saturday was probably the worst of it, though, and I felt like doing nothing but sitting on the couch in a daze. And so we watched a couple of movies. What else do you do when you'd rather not have to move or think?  read more »

We've spent the past two nights trying to coax our newest visitor, Lux, out of hiding. Lux is Rebecca's sister Suzie's cat and is spending a few days with us (mostly hiding deep in our spare bedroom) while Suzie is on her way north to Seattle. More on this trip later, but trying to get Lux to befriend us has been a tricky situation. Sometimes that's the way house guests are. Even if they're cats.

Last Sunday night, we went with the Rocks to the Snell's house (does this constitute some sort of triple date?) to play a game called Munchkin. [fun game, fun people, fun time]  read more »

We had stake conference today, so we're already home from Church before we would have even left home on a normal week. It's nice to have the rest of the day available to us. We'll see what mischief we can come up with later this afternoon. :)  read more »

Last night, we had another fancy dinner cook-off with some friends (with nice seared duck and some pork/gouda open faced sandwich things) and our friend, Chris, told this joke:

A man went into a pet store one day. He said to the clerk “I want a parrot, and it better be able to talk.”

The clerk replied “We have one talking parrot, but we’ve had some trouble selling it.”

“I’ll take it.”

“But…”

“I don’t care, I just want a talking parrot.”  read more »