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The weekend was pretty calm - just some time well spent with my family. Actually, the highlight of the weekend home was twofold:

1) playing the mandolin for three hours on Saturday night with a local bluegrass band. I get to play fairly often with my grandfather and uncle, but their style of bluegrass is older than the hills and filled with endless repitions of G, C, and D chords. My grandfather is a true "Scruggs" style banjo player, making him really unique in today's realm of music but rendering the songs a bit hum-drum after a while. The fellas that I tinkered around with Saturday night have a distinctive blues sound to their music, and it really stretched my abilities to be able to follow and play along. The night made me realize that I'm better (on the mandolin) than what I give myself credit for. It's nice to surprise yourself every now and again!

and 2) catching Book TV's presentation of America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction in the middle of the night on C-SPAN 2. I just love those Daily Show guys. . .
. . . .
So, it's Monday and work's not too bad today. I guess we should be kind of light today - it's the first of the month and after all the work they dumped on our department last week, I imagine that they'll find someone else to dump on this week. And now I have time to piddle-paddle around the internet and waste time writing in this journal. Not that this journal is a waste of time. . .it's just that I'm wasting company time. . .ah, forget it.

I guess that I don't really have anything all that profound to say.

Happy voting tomorrow!
-d.