Oct update

Hi everyone,

So good news on my stress level. We finally shipped Mac Office 2011 for all languages. After releasing, the very next day at work was night and day different. My stress level went from 100% to 0% overnight. I actually had time to put some new desktop wallpapers on my computer at work. Anyhow, things are already starting to get busy again at work but still nothing compared to the past months.

More good news, I am definitely going to Beijing, China! My flights & hotels are booked. I leave Oct. 29th and I will be staying for 7 days. I am very excited about it and I hope to make the most of the time that I am not working. I have been told that my hosts in Beijing are extremely hospitable and will go out of their way to show me a good time. So, I couldn't ask for more.

I'm making a bit more progress on our 3 week South east Asia trip. I think we will spend 1 week with Tom in Taiwan and then head over to Thailand for 2 weeks. Originally I was thinking of visiting more countries, but it just seems too complicated and Thailand seems amazing enough as is. The North and South of Thailand are almost like 2 different countries. I have been working on planning this trip for several days now and I still have so much work to do. It's crazy how complicated these trips can be. I was contemplating just buying a prepackaged trip but I think it will be more exciting to do it by myself.

Julie is working hard these days on her PhD applications. She has decided to change her topic of her PhD slightly. Originally she was going to write about the same thing she wrote about in her masters (adolescence under the Third Reich before the war). However, for several reasons she has decided to change her topic to marginalized German adolescence after the war. It may sound like only a slight change, but its fairly significant. She has at least a dozen books to read over the next few weeks before she can even start her PhD application for this new topic; She will be very busy.

I want to write an application for the new Windows 7 mobile phone. I mostly want to do this to round out my CV in case Julie gets into a school and I need to travel with her and get a new job. There are currently very few apps for the phone, so nearly anything I write will be original. Still though, I have no idea what to make. Any ideas?

That's all for now.