Boy, the Men's Wearhouse really likes us. Day after we bought my wedding dress, we went in to see what they had and ended up walking out having spent over a grand. My platinum card was crying very loudly that weekend.

My better half is now the proud possessor of a full tuxedo - from bow tie to shoes and everything in between. Including the shirt studs, braces and cufflinks. Plus we found a very nice sport coat, two pair of slacks, two shirts w/ties and an additional set of braces.

The nice thing is, for every $500 you spend, they send you a $50 gift certificate (gotta join their little club but its free). So, when the gift certificates arrived, we went back on New Year's Day and found a nice 3/4 length coat for Fred that ended up costing us $11 out of pocket.

Now all I have to do is mail off the invitation, now that everyone is on the list. Got the chapel contract signed and faxed off and reserved the private room at the restaurant for the dinner after the ceremony. Plus the deposit for the private room. Can't forget all those pesky deposits.

Have to talk to my daughter - she's the maid of honor - about what she's going to wear. She's been a maid of honor of brides maid so many times, I'm hoping she has something already that she'd be willing to wear again. The dress she wore at her foster-sister's wedding would be fabulous, if it still fits.

A friend from grade school, who lives in Vegas, can't wait for me to arrive. We haven't seen each other since grade school and only found each other a couple of years ago on Classmates.com and have been e-mailing ever since. It's nice to have someone in the know down there. Especially since we have a lot of similar likes - motorcycles, guns, chocolate and working for a transit district. I don't work for a transit district but my better half does and so does my friend and her husband.

Less than 3 months until the wedding day. Got to make that man of mine an honest man.

And I thought American politics was amusing. Australia does things a bit different, and with even more transparency and hilarity. Seems that there isn't a fixed day for when elections are held. The sitting prime minister gets to pick the day within some range. The range was starting to run out, and Mr. Howard has been promising for weeks that he's going to set an election 'soon'. Yesterday was the day he called it. For November 24 - or about five weeks from now. Contrast this to the U.S. where they're fighting over an election that's a year away.

So although we know the opposition is Kevin Rudd - a guy who looks a lot like John Denver, and have known it for some time, the campaign has only just begun - and in five weeks it will be over.

Now John Howard has been taking a beating in the polls, mostly for not standing up to and disagreeing with 'the idiot'. So day one of the campaign starts off with a (drum roll please....) tax cut. If you can't beat 'em in the polls, and don't have a credible strategy, bribe the voters. You may laugh, but this tactic has been working for thousands of years.

I can hardly wait for day two. This promises to be quite an interesting election.

Think I might have a fractured wrist.

The sound studio is just about back in full operation - for the first time in several years.

I've been doing all the tests and configurations, and only have a few more cables and a bit more PC configuration until it's ready for use. It fell into a state of entropy about 2002 what with combining two households and trying to run a music store. Half the equipment ended up at the store, and I never quite had a dedicated PC to spare since. I've been able to use all the tools for making music in the ensuing years, but the ability to store it conveniently has been lacking.

A lot has happened since the days of Maxwell Silverthorn. My music has evolved considerably, and my life has been through some pretty radical changes.

It's time for a new CD.

Trying to plan a small wedding isn't fun - especially if you're planning on going to Las Vegas for the wedding.  Reserve the chapel, make flight reservations (not fond of flying either), get a room at one of the casinos, get the wedding license and pay for the minister, print the wedding invitations and mail them, rent a car, make a list of guests to invite, find a place to board the cat & dog, find a wedding dress, rent a tux,  and most important of all! Figure out how to pay for it all with out using the credit cards.

Even quickie weddings in Vegas aren't cheap. $55 for the license and $55 for the officiant. Chapels run from $99 for a 1/2 hour up. All depends on what you want. Want a theme wedding? Be prepared to pay extra. Medieval costumes at the Excalibur run $75 per person. They aren't bad but most look like they are the ubiquitous 'One Size Fits All' which anyone with any brains in their head knows that isn't true.

I guess this means I don't get to play with my income tax refund this year. Nor does my fiance so at least we'll both be in the same boat. Home mortgage is almost paid off so that will help also - unless I use it to pay off the other bills. I don't want to be in anymore debt just to get married. I want to be less in debt - better way to start married life.

 Mind you, this isn't my first wedding. It's #3 for me and #2 for my better half. I guess third times the charm? Or is it three strikes and I'm out? What ever! My better half says this one is for good though - he's waited long enough for me to come to my senses. Long story and maybe one of these days I'll tell you all about it.  Until then, I'll let you wonder.

Once more became gainfully employed. Started this morning at a large nearby University managing computer systems for the Electrical Engineering Labs.

Lasers, robots, tesla coils. The morning drive is over the edge of the escarpment, through the rain forest and along the coast. And the real kicker is that they're gonna' pay me for working here.

The quickest way to immerse oneself into Aussie culture is a day at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. Think of your typical American county fair, but with maybe half a million participants. But ag is what it's all about. Horses, cows, sheep, dogs, crops. Riding contests, polo matches.  

The interesting thing to a fresh mostly foreign observer from California is that a) the majority of the population is of European descent, and b) the majority of the population have no evidence of eating disorders, being mostly average body mass. This is in stark contrast to any California audience of similar size.

Dear Santa -

You know that quad core 64-bit Pentium with 8 gigs of RAM and a 400G hard drive I asked for? Yeah, with the quad firewire interface and twin 27 inch monitors. That's the one.

Nevermind... Could I have one of these instead?

I promise to make this easier... but I've just plugged in comment avatars. To use them, first go to register and setup a basic account (I'm not quite ready with advanced accounts).

Then login.

Then go to avatar and select an avatar. You will only be able to do this if you have an account and are logged in.

From there on in, if you're logged in and make comments on this board, your avatar will be displayed.

There is still a lot to do, so don't hassle me about feature requests like uploading your own avatars and viewing profiles and stuff like that.  All of that will come in time.

Oh and for folks who have been here awhile and made comments in the past, if I notice you have an avatar, I'll do what I can (manually) to add it to your existing (prior) posts.  

Ya' know what I have against muslims? No, I really don't have anything against their belief system. I also don't believe they're all terrorists. But I'm deeply offended that nobody seems to have taught them that the letter 'Q' is always followed by the letter 'U'. Al Qaeda. Iraq. Qatar. See what I mean?

A Mr. John Jenkins is filing suit against Eastern Associated Coal and Chisler Inc. Seems he lit a smoke in an outhouse and the thing blew up. Methane gas. Yes, of course there's methane in outhouses. Doh! The suit claims negligence in that one of the defendants ran over or otherwise ruptured a methane pipe to cause said explosion. Eastern Associated is a methane producer. This would all be just a silly little accident except for one thing - Mr. Jenkins is a methane power plant operator working for a competing company - North West Fuels. The whole thing stinks. Literally.