Quote of the Election Season

From a WaPo column discussing the proposed amendment to Virginia's state constitution to ban gay marriage:

A defender of traditional values quotes an anthropologist who believed that sexual orientation often changes over the course of a lifetime, and an advocate for gay rights rests his case on the idea that the church is better suited than the state to judge the quality of human relationships.

Is this a great country or what?

Strange times we live in...

New Members in the Family

No, Dad, we're not expecting. :-) But we do have two new members of the family to celebrate. The first is my beautiful new Toyota Prius. Such a fun car, and it gets likes 500 miles to the gallon. OK, it only gets about 50 miles to the gallon. That's all...

Second, and more exciting, the wife and I reached a deal to buy a house!! We made an offer on Wednesday, followed by 6 counter-offers. We finally agreed on a price, which means we will soon have a home to call our own. No more back and forth trips to Michigan. No more explaining why we have multiple apartments. Just the two of us in a beautiful house in Zionsville. Woo hoo!

And the added twist that makes the whole story funny... The call informing us of the counter-offer which we accepted arrived while we were signing the papers for the car. So yes, we bought a car and a house within about 15 minutes of each other. Well, ignoring all those details like closing and inspections, but you get the idea.

Such an exciting weekend. I don't think I can take many more of those.

In Better News

Google is going green by using solar power for their main campus. Cool!

Habeas Corpus

R.I.P. You had a good 800-year run.

I Got In!!

Yesterday morning, I went to check my email and found a new message waiting patiently in my inbox. It matter-of-factly informed me that I had been recommended for admission into the Purdue Computer Science Department, and I would be receiving an official offer from the Graduate School for admission as a Ph.D. student! I have been initially assigned to have Dr. Christina Nita-Rotaru as my advisor. Her research focuses on security aspects of wireless networks, a very interesting subject. This is fantastic news, and I cannot wait to start in January.

About a week and a half ago, I got a very promising fortune when eating at Panda Express. It was something along the lines of, "You will share good news with everyone you love soon." Indeed I have.

Now comes a whole range of life changes. First, Brianne and I will begin looking to buy a house in the Zionsville area so that our commutes are manageable. Then, we have to move everything from my school apartment in Okemos, MI, and our apartment in Ft. Wayne to our new home. In addition to that, we took a Toyota Prius out for a test drive yesterday and loved it. So it looks like I'll be trading in the Accord pretty soon. So many things happening all at once, and all of them are exciting and fun!

Unlucky Friday the 13th? Heh. Quite the opposite for us.

Update: The silver Prius has been reserved and should be arriving mid-November.