The chap in Laredo from whom we were supposed to be buying the Trans Sport freaked out at the last minute, abruptly deciding that he didn’t want to let us take the van to our mechanic until he had payment in hand, in spite of the fact that he had agreed to that arrangment two weeks earlier. (His emails became decidedly bipolar toward the end, veering abruptly from exclamation-point laden abuse in one message to contrite apologies in the next.) Since Laredo is a good three hour drive from San Marcos, and we were already a bit wary even before the breakdown began, we decided to call off that deal altogether.

Besides, holy cow, are Trans Sports ugly. When I play word association games, and someone mentions “Trans Sport,” the first thing to pop out of my mouth is “rhinoplasty.”

Instead we went up to Austin last Friday and found ourselves a Nissan Quest at one of the used car dealerships in the area. Though we ended up spending more for it than we would have for the Pontiac, it had fewer miles on it, seemed to be in fine shape, and was still a fair bit under the Blue Book price.

We’ve instituted a “no food” rule in hopes of keeping the van in reasonably nice condition. We’ll see how long we’re able to hold out against the ravenous tide of children.

If Tuna is the Chicken of the Sea, does that make eggs the Caviar of the Barnyard?

It was eight years ago today that Kathy and I were married. Though the intervening time hasn’t always been easy for either of us, I’m grateful every day that we’ve stuck with it.

Marriage is the crucible God most often uses to forge my character into something better than it would have otherwise been. The pleasure, challenge, and discipline of building a life together pulls me out of selfishness and forces me to think about another person — something that often comes hard for me. It’s rarely like I imagined it from the outside, and is often more work than my lazy nature would choose, but I’m glad that we’ve been able to discover the intricacies of marriage together.

Kathy, I haven’t any idea what life would look like without you. Thanks for being my friend and partner in all we’ve been through. I look forward to learning how to live with you and love you better over the next eight years — and beyond.

I’m swamped at work, so updates have been sparse lately. As a compromise, instead of my usual flowery prose, today you get PowerPoint-style updates:

• Abigail got baptized a couple of weekends back. Very exciting for her, and for her proud daddy who got to jump in the river and help.
• Our van died. We’re in the process of buying a used Pontiac Trans Sport to replace it. If you know good things about the Trans Sport, let us know! If you know bad things, then keep it to yourself — I already mailed the check.
• Emily’s 11th birthday was yesterday. We had a party on Saturday that was great fun. (Thanks everyone!) I got Em a copy of The Once and Future King, one of my favorite books. (She’s been enjoying fantasy a lot lately.)
• The Grant Mazak Band will be playing for Emily & Abby’s school on May 22. Woohoo! Should be fun.

A while back, I mentioned my friend Barry Brake and the fact that he’d been diagnosed with cancer at the beginning of the year. He has been going through chemotherapy for the past several months, and is at long last done. Though it’s been a long, arduous road for him, the cancer appears to have been eradicated, and Barry is gradually returning to full health. As evidence that the chemicals have not damaged his irrepresible sense of humor, he has posted some Glamour Shots of him in his chemo-induced baldness. Hot!

Barry’s chronicle of the last several months makes for excellent reading. It’s an interesting window into how a man of honesty and faith deals with this sort of hardship.

On a related note, Seth is walking in a fund-raiser for cancer on May 30. If you’d like to help the fight against this pernicious disease, sponsoring Seth is one way you can help right now.

This past Saturday, I took the three elder kids to Scarborough Faire, an enormous Renaissance festival a bit south of Dallas. We all had a super time. Favorite things:

• Theater in the Ground mud show. We enjoyed this perennial favorite from the front rows, necessitating a trip to the restroom for cleanup afterward. These guys are some of the funniest live theater I’ve seen.
• Jem Moore’s hammered dulcimer playing. Amazing technique, excellent musicianship. This guy reminds me of why I fell in love with the instrument many years back. He had a giant, four-octave dulcimer, and did the only rendition on that instrument of Bach’s Tocatta & Fugue in D-minor that I’ve ever heard.
• Last Chance Forever does a show that features hunting birds that they’ve rescued and are rehabilitating. Since we live in Texas, red-tailed hawks and vultures are the most common, but they included some falcons, owls, and golden eagles as well. We were rapt.
• Critters: there was a well-stocked petting zoo, as well as the occasional horse, elephant, camel, and llama wandering by.

Altogether, as much fun as a day at an amusement park, and cheaper, less crowded, and (ironically) cleaner. Highly recommended, even if you don’t have a secret desire to be a knight errant or to wear tights.

For you technical and musical types: Greg’s working on a way to represent chords on fretted instruments in XML. There have been one or two other attempts at this that I found out on the net, but Greg’s implementation looks to be the most complete and most flexible at this point. Cool stuff.

One of the preeminent ways that spammers get ahold of email addresses is by sending automated programs out to websites to search for email addresses thereon. If your email address appears on a website, it’s a good bet that your Inbox will soon be filled with dubious offers for herbal anatomy enlargers, Norton Systemworks, and business offers from Nigeria.

Since my spam count is now larger than my legitimate email count, I’ve been looking for ways to help fix that problem. Apple’s Mail.app has good filtering, but those spammers are devious, and keep figuring out ways around it. So, I took the step today of changing up the templates on this site so that the addresses of the people who leave messages will no longer be displayed. This will probably make the biggest difference for my inbox, since I post the majority of the messages here, but it will also help keep the spammers away from the other people who participate in discussions here as well.

Thanks to Steve for his help tracking down the right templates, and to Seth and the other Conversant developers for the ability to change thousands of web pages with a few clicks.

I took Emily down to the arcade this past Saturday where we blew through a moderate amount of cash between us. Though I’d watched Dance Dance Revolution machines with some amusement before, this marked my first attempt at actually trying the thing for myself. I once again confirmed the fact that I’d a big, ungainly white guy who has no business doing anything that involves rhythm in any way.

Another crowd favorite as determined by how silly you look when you play was Beachhead 2002 on a VR Vortek system. The VR Vortek features a big, yellow pivoting display that goes over your eyes which provides two critical advantages over a traditional display: 1. By rotating and looking up and down, you can interact with a full 360 degree environment. 2. It makes you look like a big, ungainly white guy whose head has been bitten off and replaced by that of a giant plastic mantis. Fun!

Some highlights from the Chicago Trip:

• Hanging out with the lads: Great fun to see the usual suspects, plus Ben’s friend Ryan, Chris’ medical school roomie Gary, and some of Chris’ friends from his Navy days at Duke, Terry & Megan (and Claire, their lovely daughter).
• The Art Institute of Chicago: American Gothic! A Sunday on La Grande Jatte! The Old Guitarist! Holy cow, it was great art overload.
• Shoreline Sightseeing’s Architectural tour by boat: not only was our guide a veritable wellspring of knowledge and a living window into Chicago’s history, but in the last five minutes of the tour he whipped out a harmonica and sang the blues for us. Who says a degree in humanities can’t get you a job?
• Evil Dead: The Musical!: based on Sam Raimi’s cult low-budget horror film, the Boxer Rebellion Theater adds a variety of music to the original story. Very silly, quite fun, and featured a Q&A with some of the actors and crew from the original film afterwards.
• Pizzaria Uno: the original Chicago deep-dish pizza pie. Heart-stoppingly good.
• Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home & Studio: Great tour of the home & studio, plus the surrounding neighborhood, which features another 15 or so Wright-designed homes. A marvel.
• A Cubs Game: The Cubs conquered the Pirates, 4 to 3, accompanied by rabid fans, Old Style, and Hebrew National dogs slathered in mustard, onions, tomatoes, banana peppers, and other yumminess.