People who refer to their SO as "the boy" or "the girl"… they annoy me. I see this on a number of blogs, which makes me think it's reached some kind of critically massive blogger slang stage or something, but it feels so incredibly… detached. Like the SO in question is just J. Random Girlfriend, who could be replaced at any minute by any reasonably priced competing model (think dishwashers and refrigerators here) without a problem. Of course, for many of these people I suppose that might be true. But it still irritates me.

In other news, the drive back into town last night was horrific and impressive all in one. Illinois was one huge Severe Thunderstorm from Indiana to Missouri, and we drove smack through the middle of it. It was bad enough that at one point we actually pulled over and sat under an overpass for twenty minutes or so. There's something slightly nerve wracking about sitting under an overpass in the dark, with rain coming down so hard you can't see the street ten feet beyond the overpass edge, and having semis come roaring by at 60+ miles per hour. On the other hand some of the lightning was something to see… there would be cascades of lightning that would start at the edge of the southern horizon and ripple overhead all the way to the northern horizon, lighting everything up with pure white light, and then plunging you into darkness that seemed that much more dense by comparison. Of course, after 2 or 3 hours of that, my whole body was one tensed muscle group, and I'm a fair bit sore today because of it.

Finally, Morrowind seems like it's going to become an addiction, if I ever have time for it. Between the already huge world, millions of side quests, and complete non-linearity of the game, and its impressive flexibility (at one fan site I've already noticed a couple dozen user mods for the game, and it looks like it would be fairly easy to come up with more myself), this game could last years. Not that there aren't a few improvements I'd love, namely NPCs who actually seem to have lives and a multiplayer, persistent version, but this game is shockingly well done.

Okay, that wasn't finally, this is finally: It is occurring to me more and more often that in less than a month Jenny and I will have been married for a year. Life is an interesting thing.