The end of a hiatus and the start of something new

So as the summer progressed I found myself with less and less free time. There was research during the day, hanging out with friends at night and then- oh shit, time for bed. Though I was able to find time every day to write a letter to my girlfriend, that activity mostly took over blogging for me. Writing at length about how my day was only to go back to a blog and write it again seemed silly and time consuming and I didn't want to just replicate the letters again, because then they would lose their significance (they were meant for her, not the whole world, whether the content was trivial or personal).

BUT NOW she is back in my time-zone and I am not out hiking about the west with Texans, so I can find some spare time out of my busy schedule to write again and keep this going.

So this is the end of the summer hiatus (until my week long vacation next week) for the Blue Shag Carpet, but more than just a restart, but a new beginning.

In the beginning I had pledged to keep people's names secret through the use of nicknames: this will change...maybe, slightly. The stories just don't flow well when I am having to constantly change and alter names, plus my friends who read this (all 2 of you) know who the people are so the anonymity is lost anyway. So it seems like a great opportunity to do a slight change. For the more benign tales of adventure, names will be used. However, some tales are just way too embarrassing for real names, but those stories never have a huge cast of characters. As such, for the especially juicy bits of gossip and ridiculousness, names will be arbitrarily changed on the spot. Most likely a "Boy A and Girl A were with Girl B and C..." sort of set up and if I am feeling especially creative: actual fake names!!! But for the time being, real names, real people, real hilarity.

Unfortunately these changes will have to wait until next week, since Ari (short for Ariana; my girlfriend) and I are going to the Adirondacks for the next week before school starts. I am really excited for this trip. Just the two of us, the mountains, the lake, nature, and all the time in the world. It's going to be so nice to just sit and relax and get away from it all before school starts up and there are the added things like life to get in the way of living.

Also, I have decided (almost arbitrarily) to do a triathlon in September. Now what would ever posses me to do such a thing you might ask? Well, at the start of last school year I decided to be more open minded and say fewer nos and more yeses, as such when I was asked to do a triathlon, it seemed like a great way to get in shape and I wouldn't be going it alone (Maggie, a grad student in my department, is the one who convinced my to do it). Now all I have to do is convince as many other people as I can to do it with me!

Well, that's all for now folks! More later and LOTS more after this coming week!