One of my all-time favorite personalities, Justin Wilson, has passed away. When I was young, I memorized many of his rambling cajon stories are repeated them, with accent, for the amusement and the annoyance of my friends. Perhaps tomorrow will be cajun night in memory – crawfish pie and a bunch of wine for dinner!

The White House Web Site is sporting a fresh new look, and includes the First Lady’s online diary. Oh my!

If you are at all into Elizabethan Renaissance gowns, you’ve got less than a day to snatch up one of the best I’ve seen. Right now it’s going for a bit over $1000, and the material alone almost cost that.

Since tomorrow begins my birth month, it’s vitally important that the first words out of my mouth after midnight is rabbit, rabbit. Vitally important.

There’s the beginnings of a vibrant online Wiz War community. I probably spent more time in college playing Wiz War than any other single activity. Here, they’ve got the rules and cards on-line, a discussion board, and a few other things. Check out the pictures section, where you can see a fabulous home-made board and cards.

Yes, at first he politely laughed at us (“Well, at least my belly’s full,” was the quote), but then things got better. It’s still a long shot, but we’ve established a dialogue and he knows exactly where we’re coming from. We’ll continue talking over the next few weeks, and we may yet strike a deal. He wants the land to be used for what we want to use it for, and while he’s been making his money from real estate, he’s more interested in the use of the land than the money he’ll make, for this particular piece of property. All the extraneous factors are in our favor, but the money gulf may be a hard one to jump.

Two years ago today I began keeping this collection of links and thoughts. I’ve never been able to keep a journal or diary more than a few weeks, so for me two years is quite a feat. My intended audience is me, but of course I was pleased when after a few months I had five or so regular visitors. Today, nearly a hundred people a day come though these pages, and I’ve received some of the most wonderful comments I could hope to hear. Many people stumble in here through a search engine – the wide variety of topic discussed have pushed many weblogs to the top of search engine results, no matter the search string – and many return on their own. Thank you, all of you, for deciding my life through my eyes is worthy of visiting. And I’m even more pleased that so many people I know, and even some I’ve never met, have begun keeping their own collections of links and thoughts, partially inspired by what they’ve found here. Even though I am often not very good at it, it’s my firm belief that writing one’s thoughts down is crucial to self understanding. We’re not just a collection of impulses – there are reasons why we think and do what we do, and through committing these things to writing, we can better understand ourselves and improve our relations with others. And it’s just plain fun to drop in on friends’ and strangers’ lives and see things through someone else’s eyes. I encourage everyone to write online. It takes no money or technical knowhow. There’s Blogger (where I got started), Diaryland, and OpenDiary, all of which easily work through your web browser and all can set you up with free space. Weblogger is powerful and cheap. I’m now using GreyMatter, which is great if you already have your own space and are technically inclined. You can create your own if your an expert. And there’s many other possibilities I don’t even know about. But of course, you can also just jot notes down on a piece of paper and the throw it away. That’s not as fun for me, but it would work just as well for you. Just write, and get to know yourself a little bit better. Here is a time lapse of the past two years here at Kestrel’s Nest: August 30, 1999: It lives! September 30, 1999: Cheese Roll Goes Down Well October 29, 1999: Phil dE Cat with Grape Jelly November 30, 1999: The Clothespin Repertory Theater January 1, 2000: I went to the Gobbler January 31, 2000: Udderly Smooth Udder Cream February 29, 2000: Tour my house March 30, 2000: There are nipples everywhere in New Mexico April 30, 2000: I destroy a city May 31, 2000: Playing baseball with Action Jackson June 29, 2000: Kitty art for the masses August 1, 2000: Confederados in Brazil August 31, 2000: Hampster Dance Lyrics September 29, 2000: Redcricket Camtoons October 30, 2000: Stratego Collectible Card Game November 29, 2000: Tatrachromats see four primary colors December 29, 2000: The Complete Uncensored Unbelievably True Ren & Stimpy Story! January 31, 2001: Georgia gets a new flag February 28, 2001: Cuppycake Gumdrop March 27, 2001: Call me Trimtab April 26, 2001: How does my garden grow? May 31, 2001: A fake life and an earthen oven July 9, 2001: I’m getting married July 23, 2001: I’m a bad family member August 30, 2001: You are here

Breakfast tomorrow morning may decide whether or not we buy the farm we’ve been after. I’ve told you it’s really expensive, but we’ve nailed down just how expensive it is. After talking with the banks, the federal government, the local tax assessor, nearby land owners, and other people who were interested in the same property, we know that the current owner is asking roughly more than double the actually appraised value of the land and buildings. That’s a heck of a markup, and no one I’ve spoken with can justify spending that much or lending that much for the land. So, tomorrow Chris and I will sit down with the owner and his realtor over breakfast (at a local greasy spoon) and attempt to convince him to cut his price in half. Laughable? Yeah, but if it works… and besides, you never know until you ask, right? The owner is a shrewd businessman, according to all accounts. So we can try to get much of his asking price by throwing in add-ons. Such as the tractor sitting on the property. And having a well done (he does well-digging). And putting a home on the property (he brokers log homes). And when my Saturn’s lease expires next summer, I’ll need to replace it with the truck (he can likely get one himself very cheap and sell it to us at value). If he can do all these things at low or no cost to him, but get their fair value for them from us, he’ll be right back up close to what he’s asking. And the bank will loan us that money. So he’ll have to decide, over a platter of scattered hashbrowns, whether he wants us to use his old family farm (well… his cousin’s, anyway) as a working cottage farm and do a little work himself, or whether he wants to hold out and fleece a weathy city person who can pay in cash. It’s been almost a year since the property’s been on the market, and he hasn’t found the right rich person yet, so I’m hoping he’ll settle for us.

I went to school at New Mexico Tech, the only school in the country that offers an undergraduate degree in Astrophysics. (At other schools, it’s strictly a graduate program, but since Socorro, New Mexico is one of the world’s centers for astronomy, Tech could go the extra mile.) Now, folks can go to neighboring Arizona to attend the country’s only accredited school that offers a degree in astrology. A subtle, but large, difference. People used to ask why I was going away to New Mexico (to study cosmology) when there were so many good schools for cosmotology close to home. Well, even with their accreditation and federal student loan money, the graduates won’t be able to come close to writing horoscopes as good as those over at Free Will Astrology.

Kevin Smith has a very nice comic strip in the New York Times detailing his meeting and then kissing his wife. I’m not such a good artist, so I just had to write about my own experience here on the weblog. In fact, when I want to make a comic strip, I have to steal the artwork and add my own writing. (It’s full of in-jokes and not as effective as the actual booklets I printed up and passed out, but the point is, I’m no comic book artist.)