Ray has inspired me with his dancing and wine appreciation classes. I don't have the time and money for formal classes right now, but I've started studying cooking with online tutorials. Tomorrow I'm making a souffle. Kelly and I are also trying to make plans to get back into rock climbing. Somewhat related to that, I have I found something else I want to get good at: parkour or free running. Today I hurt my shoulder vaulting over a stretcher at the hospital and broke a limb off of a dogwood tree swinging from it. Despite my inauspicious start, within six months people will be calling me the next David Belle.

I meant to write about this earlier but haven't had a chance. I spent the week before last in Arkansas and it was, I think, the best trip we've had out there. We got to get away for a couple of days with my family and enjoy some of the state's natural beauty. My clan, my parents, my sisters, and their husbands spent two nights in a large cabin on the Buffalo River. One day just the siblings and spouses took a leisurely canoe trip down the river with several stops for swimming and jumping off of things. I got to spend more time with my sisters and brothers-in-law than I normally do. We are never all together. It was a longer trip than usual, so we were able to visit with more people. We went to a family reunion, so Kelly got to meet some of my relatives that I don't even know. But it was like the Olive Garden, "when you're here, you're family." We got together with most of the people I still consider friends, but not everyone. Sorry Ray. By the end of the week, if I weren't starting school at Emory this fall, I would have been ready to move back.

Here are a few more pictures.


Now. Yaël, I've decided to answer your comment question in a new blog entry rather than in the comments for the previous post because I've had a few people ask me about it. I got my free Xbox 360 through an incentive marketing program at GadgetCity.com. Everybody was surprised when it actually came in. If you or anyone else decides to give it a try, I suggest going to scam.com and searching for threads concerning GadgetCity and the other YF Direct sites. Apparently there are people that practically earn their living getting free gifts from these web sites. I didn't check it out until I got worried I was being scammed about halfway through the process, so I ended up spending about $60 on something I wasn't interested in, but Kelly is getting a video ipod for a total of $7. I've read that this particular company initially made it really easy to get the free gifts, and was giving away more than they wanted to (apparently they didn't go into business just to give away expensive gadgets). So, now they've made it harder to get something for nothing, but it might still be worth it to check it out in case they actually have offers you are interested in.