So the good news is that now that we're both employed, the getting-the-server-at-big-number-of-miles thing is back on. However, we've upped the ante, so to speak, and now we have to do 1500 miles by the end of the year so the server will be kind of a 'woohoo, we did it!'/joint Christmas present for ourselves. But we'll at least have a web server, where we can host all of our domains (must not consider buying more domains. Um. Oh dear) and Richard can have all sorts of happy nerdly fun playing with firewalls and email proxy whatsits and all that kind of thing that I am just as happy to leave up to him because I don't ever want to have to deal with it myself.

I was originally pushing for the 2000 mile mark, because I'd sat down and calculated out how many miles we'd have to do to make that, but then I had to be realistic and consider the fact that there will be at least 4 or 5 weeks in the next several months when we'll be out of town for training for the new job, or actually *working* at the new job, and the weeks we're home there are bound to be more mornings that are either too windy or too nasty-hot (like today!) and we're shortly going to be entering the rainy season, so perhaps aiming to do another 700 miles in the next four months might be better than trying to do 1200. However, next year, I'm sticking to the 3000-mile goal, and if we do that, our reward is going to be flat screen monitors. How else can we continue to combine the nerd thing with the jock thing, after all?

Speaking of nasty hot, I must note that now that my hair is getting so long, I am rediscovering how much I like to braid it. I went through a stage where it wasn't quite long enough to braid because all the short bits would fall out and then it just looked like I'd attempted to braid it but then went through a wind tunnel. But it's getting long - longer than I've had it in a very long time, and I'm starting to play with it again - all the different types of braids.

This weekend we went down to see the in-laws (well, just mom-in-law and the not-the-almost-twin sister-in-law) in the play Honk. Not-The-Almost-Twin was playing a male character and at one point her character (a tom cat) does this song and dance with a female cat (played by another female). Apparently during rehearsal, her dad (who was the director) kept telling her to be more seductive. This was made doubly amusing by the fact that during some of the later rehearsals, the woman playing the female cat was gone, so the stand-in was her mom. This, of course, got Richard, the Almost-Twin sister-in-law, and myself giggling madly about how this could be a whole Jerry Springer show - girls who dress up as guys to seduce their moms. Um. Okay, maybe you had to be there.

Anyway, the play was fantastic, especially since Not-The-Almost-Twin was wearing a mustache and beard and looked scarily like a younger version of Richard, plus we got to see my mom-in-law in orange tights (because she was playing a duck, see). And the trip down was a lot of fun because we had quite delicious take-out Chinese food for dinner with the Almost-Twin in their new house and before that we went to the Scottish games in Pleasanton and managed to stumble onto a concert by Tempest. Oh, and while we were at the games, Richard got to eat haggis (shudder) and we found a new stuffed dragon that needed to come home with us. We've shown it to Rosemary, but so far, while she has given it quite a bit of sniffing and staring, she hasn't transported it anywhere yet. This may be because it's too large, or perhaps she has to confer with all the other stuffed dragons as to which stair step the larger one would be best suited.

This morning we were going to get up early and go riding, but by 8am it was already horribly warm outside, and my front tire is flat again anyway, so instead I started working on my next big project. I'll tell you all about it at the end of this week, assuming all goes well, but for now I'll simply say that it involves sheetrock, dead sea creatures, and lots and lots of blue.