I am now back in Lincoln, home from my month running around Kansas. I started out with a couple of days in KC, staying with both John & Chris and Cindy & Ray. Cindy should be having her baby any day now. I went to the "fish fry" on the Clark farm with Cindy and Ray and her folks. John finally took some time to work on my car stereo. It's better, but something still shorts out when it rains. We ate dinner at Famous Dave's, which was pretty good.

On my way to my folks', I made a random stop in Manhattan and dropped in at the school. I visited with Samer in the lab until Kevin came to campus. I saw Dr. Hosni too, so it was a fun little visit. Had lunch at the Gold Fork, one of my very favorite places to eat. I also went through town on the way back to Lincoln, and I tried out the new Famous Dave's there. The ribs were fabulous.

I then went to my folks' to start building stuff. We built the giant bookcase for upstairs, 3.75 stair treads (plus a practice one), a side table for the deck, new shelves for the bedroom (with edge banding), finished installing baseboard and replaced a couple of pieces, installed misc. trim pieces, made my picture frame, assembled one more floating shelf, hung pictures in the bedroom and upstairs, and ate way too much ice cream. In the middle of the building, I went down to Wichita and stayed with Angie, Wes, and Katie for a couple of days. I had lunch with some old coworkers, had Tony cut my hair (I miss Tony!), fed the ducks at the Bradley Fair pond, ate Marble Slab ice cream, read books at Borders, went to the farmer's market, and played badminton in the yard. I also got to meet up with Paul for lunch at Terradyne. What a nice place! Turns out Paul does the accounting for his wife's office, so he's an extra good guy to keep in touch with.

And now I get to catch up with my own stuff in Lincoln. I got through the mountain of mail and was only late with the electric bill. I spent yesterday working on the notebook with the gang at Steve's new place. I took chocolate pie, so I was popular. It was nice being back with my friends.