Long time no see...

OK, it's been almost three months since the last entry. Summer is already gone, and autumn is upon us yet again. We've actually been having some cool weather for the last several days, and warming up my car definitely takes longer than a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, in the last three months, I moved (as many of you may already know) to a suburb between Baltimore and DC with my girlfriend Johanna, built a computer, had my parents visit us for several days, did some hiking in Catoctin Mountains, etc., etc. So it was rather busy summer for me.

We moved on a sunny Saturday in mid-July, with me driving a yellow 16-ft truck rented from Penske. We also hired a couple of helpers for loading/unloading, so that we don't have to break our backs. The day started with us picking up the truck around 9:00 in the morning, and our plan was to load my things first, load Johanna's stuff, then go to the new place about 30 min from Baltimore. Everything actually went so smoothly that it was almost scary. That's right. Not even a scratch on the truck. We were actually done unloading, and returned the truck before 2pm...

Just by looking at how much stuff we had to load onto the truck, we were a bit nervous about unpacking and figuring out where to put what. But then again, the idea of hosting my parents in a week was a great motivation to get the place look presentable. Within the next few days we had most of our furniture set up, unpacked almost all of the boxes and organized the closets, and got the kitchen up and running (including my espresso machine). It was amazing...

Then came my parents toward end of July. My dad was in Baltimore last year, but this was my mom's first time on the East Coast. We had a little tours of DC, Baltimore, and Annapolis, visiting museums and historic sites, going to good restaurants (e.g., Black Salt in DC), etc., etc. My dad has a habit of roaming around when he's in a novel environment, which made their visit a busy one, but I hope they enjoyed it. Above all, I hope the whole experience wasn't too stressful for Johanna...

And yes, I did build a computer on my own for the first time. It was something that I have been interested in doing for a while, and I thought this was a good chance because I have office space at our new place. Another thing that I wanted to see was if all those open-source softwares (e.g., OpenOffice.org) work well enough to replace more commonly used commercially available softwares (e.g., Microsoft Office). For OS, I decided to stick with Windows XP at least for now, as I'm not quite ready to switch completely to Linux just yet. Anyway, I managed to assemble what I think is a decent system around $900, and it's been working pretty well so far.

We did not forget to go outdoors for Labor Day weekend. We picked Catoctin Mountain Park for hiking, which is located about 50 miles North of DC, outside of Frederick, MD. We really enjoyed our hike, which was about 6 miles of well-maintained trail, and the weather was just perfect - sunny with dry cool air and almost no wind. Highlights included a view of Blue Ridge Mountains, as well as a 78-ft waterfall, Cunningham Falls. Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo of the fall because it was mostly dry, and there were just too many folks enjoying the last bit of summer before getting back to school.

Anyhow, it's been about two months since we moved in together, and so far things are going pretty well. I guess we are still adjusting to how each of us does some things differently (e.g., doing dishes, cleaning, folding laundry, etc., etc.), but I think we are flexible enough to accommodate each other...

Well, I guess that's pretty much all I got for now. I'll try to post more often - and yes, I promise...