Saturday we drove to F's school for Family Weekend. It turned out to be so cold that we didn't participate in any of the activities, but just visited with her, which was nice. Took her out to lunch, shopped at Wal-Mart for various little things she needed. She's trying to get over the headcold that everyone seems to have to one degree or another.

Funny conversation with her roommate, who flew to Detroit the previous week for an Anime con, and who was singled out for extra security checks. The way F described her question of the security people was, "So, is this random, or, like, not?" But the roommate said she actually asked, "So, is this random, or do you think I look creepy?" Long pause, during which she realized that what she thought was a joke was being taken seriously. F's roommie has a pink-and-white face but long, long, straight, BLACK hair and she favors black fingernail and toenail polish. Perhaps she looks a bit Goth. She said the security person said that they have to take an extra look at people who seem "different" [making the quote marks with the fingers] and that "different" is OK, it's a good thing, really, but not in an "airport". So we live and learn.

We learned something about R's truck on the way home. (My car is in the shop.) It seems that his thermostat gets stuck on heat when the car is warmed up. You can turn off the heater, but you still get heated air from the flow-through ventilation. So we drove 3 hours in the 30-something-degree evening with the windows open so that we didn't absolutely die. I was surprised that my feet weren't blistered when we got home. I suppose his trips around town are short enough that he never really noticed. It will probably be an easy fix, once we get my car back, which has his tools in the trunk.

My job, well, my job is bounding along. New challenges every day. I think my computer is here, finally, so I can move my office down to the laboratory where I belong. Our e-notebook is being installed on the server later this week. The wireless hub has been installed in the lab, and the tablet we ordered is here; this is what we'll carry around to the workstations to enter data into the e-notebook. This is going to be so extremely cool. There's still a whole bunch of stuff to work out, but we'll get there.