Boy, do I have nothing to say.

But let's see how this goes, anyway: We went to the beach yesterday with Helen and Buebbles and hung out for a couple of hours. We read and flew a kite and talked. It was a little overcast and windy, but the sun was warm, so the overall effect was nice. And Matt almost met a new girlfriend. After he took down our kite, this woman came up to him with the pickup line, "I know this sounds weird, but I noticed you were flying a kite. I have one too, and was about to try, but wondered if you could give me some advice." Matt gave her a few pointers, and she walked away saying she'd give it a try. She seemed hesitant and walked fairly slowly though, and Helen urged Matt to go help her. He waffled for a few seconds, but then ran after her. I didn't hear what he said to her, but I did hear her reply, "That would be great!" So he helped her try to get the kite in the air for ten minutes or so. I think if he had taken off his wedding ring, he would have gotten her phone number. I did hear him tell her that somebody had given him his kite as a present, which is true, but what he didn't tell her was that it was a wedding present.

Yesterday evening we tried to have a cookout with Buebbles and Helen, but we ran out of gas for our grill, so we ended up broiling cheeseburgers. The burgers were all right, but I was disappointed that we ended up doing all of the cooking inside, especially since our apartment gets extremely hot in the late afternoon even without the oven on. But dinner was fine, and afterwards we played dominoes, which is a game that I don't abhor. We had a good deal of fun yelling to each other, "You screwed me, lastname, you screwed me!" I knew this phrase originated with Robbie, but I didn't remember the exact origin until I asked Jess this morning. She reminded me that it was what Robbie wanted to say at our wedding when he got up to the microphone to do his reading only to find that Tobias had taken the printout of the reading with him. "You screwed me, Hoeink, you screwed me!" Oh, that would have been funny.

We're leaving shortly to see Spider-Man 2, which I'm looking forward to. I was pleasantly surprised with the first one, and I've heard from many people who liked the second one better than the first, so we're taking the plunge. We hardly ever go to the movies these days, it seems.

In other news, Matt has 170 pages of his thesis written. That amazes me. Mine was 140 in its entirety. I'm glad that he's made so much progress, because for a while we didn't know if we'd actually be able to leave by mid-October, as we'd been planning. But it looks like that won't be a problem, and Matt hasn't even been working weekends much. It's been nice to have the time and opportunity to take advantage of our last summer in Santa Barbara.