Done!

I have it in my hand -- my reciept saying that the department received my thesis. (185 pages) Yipee!

I moved up my start date on my job to August 28th. This start date has the advantage that I will be eligible for benefits in September, instead of needing to wait till October, and I will get Labor Day as a paid day off! (The old start date was Sept. 5)

Now, I am back to wedding planning. At the Holiday Inn, the person we had met with at first has left, and the person in his place didn't return my phone calls for a week, and was only going to be available 9 - 5. There might have been someone else available at other times, but this person didn't have the wherewithal to tell me who that person would be or when they would be available. So, I nixed the Holiday Inn, but that left us with only our sky-high priced options, all of which I felt lukewarm about.

Christine had a great idea, though. Why don't I have the wedding in Manchester? There is an airport. It is within driving distance (sorry, guys from MA). Things are VASTLY less expensive. Sounds good! I am going to go up to NH on Wednesday night, babysit Ally Thursday morning, and then go galavanting around with Christine Thursday afternoon and Friday. I called some places, made some appointments, and ran some numbers. Things are like 50% less expensive, on average. And I like the looks of them better. The flight to Manchester might be more expensive -- I checked Orbitz. But, I expect hotel accomodations to be significantly less expensive, so that will probably balance out. And people won't have to deal with Boston traffic. This all sounds good to me. Still looking for May 12. May 19 is an option if May 12 isn't available, and I think that May 11 should be an option too. Some places didn't have Saturdays in May available, but Fridays were wide open (and subject to discounts!) Does anyone have opinions?

So, Saturday, Barb and Christine and I went around to about 10 garage sales, being silly. I bought an ice cream maker for $5. I thought that if i used it once, I had bought $5 of fun. Well, I used it once. Zach (our landlord's son) had a barbecue on Friday, and we ran the ice cream maker. It took a LONG TIME, and the ice cream never froze solid. Maybe I didn't do it right. But, we emptied the ice cream slush into containers and stuck it in the freezer, and it came out pretty good!