I'm back from Kansas City. Helped my dad move into his apt; we drove from NC to KC, and I just flew back tonight. Tentative family plan it seems is to keep the house in CH until my sister finishes high school and goes off to college; then we'll sell the house and mom and dad will buy a house in Overland Park (a very very nice suburb in KC, I was quite impressed) while they buy a townhouse here so my sister can declare residency. Hopefully by then I'll have some sort of monthly income so I can pay minimum rent and rent an apartment somewhere (I want to move to the West Coast).

Random thoughts from this weekend:

• I am an internet junkie. I paid $5 for 2 minutes of Internet access from one of those damn kiosks at Hartsfield Airport. I was so excited to see 70 emails... but only 10 of them were legitimate e-mails. The other 60 seemed to be from random strangers offering me to make me really rich, enlarge my penis, refinancing my mortgage, or show me lesbian sex. I'm down with all of them, actually. Except the lesbian sex stuff. YEAH. NONE OF THAT. EVER. *cough*
• I was situated in between a fat, smelly person and a sick person on my trip back from ATL. Do you remember those court cases where a bunch of fat people sued airlines for forcing them to buy two seats? I'm beginning to understand. Now, the person next to me wasn't excessively fat, but it was bad enough that I couldn't use my left armrest AT ALL. And isn't it generally agreed that the left armrest is *my* armrest??!?!?! Sigh. I remember when I first read the court cases that I immediately felt sympathy for the fat people - but now that I'm in that situation ... I can definitely see the reasoning. It's not fair to that person who is sitting next to you and is totally uncomfortable because your fat is spilling all over seat onto my seat. Not cool.
• Kansas City was cold ... but not because it's just temperature cold ... it was the WIND! I honestly can't remember weather that was so cold AND so windy at the same time! And of course ... the temperature is getting REALLY warm starting TOMORROW ... after I leave (great).
• A Chevy Malibu is *not* the best car to tow large amounts of equipment with. The Malibu is not a bad car though - definitely a nice economical car that I wouldn't mind having. But it lacks the power of a Ford Taurus (I'm not really kidding here - the Taurus *does* have a fair amount of power for an economy-class car)
• I got a TON of reading done on my "vacation." I finished "The New New Thing" by Michael Lewis and "In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters" by Rick Chapman. New New Thing is a fun read about the rise (and fall, I guess) of Jim Clark of Netscape fame. 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters is more of a personal memoir of technology companies f'ing up from the perspective of Rick Chapman. Both are solid reads and I enjoyed both thoroughly. I continue to make solid headway through the dense "The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else" by Hernando De Soto which is a great book that traces the failures of the Third World to "elevate" themselves to the economic status of the "Western" world. I've finally managed to cut my concurrent reading list from 6 books to 2 books (Other book is Postively Fifth Street by Jim McManus), and boy does it feel good! :) I hope to finish these last two books so I can finally have *nothing* on my reading list ... until I start another concurrent reading list with 6 books (hah!)
• I love driving.
• I love traveling. I love airports, too.