24 November 2006 1019 EST
24 November 2006 1019 EST Thanksgiving...so much to be thankful for. Here are the highlights from yesterday. First, there was the football game with Pepe, who I hadn't seen in like six years. He looks exactly the same, though, and the game was a lot of fun. I had a Tony Romo-like day, passing for three touchdowns and grabbing two more in the air as well. Oh yeah, on my way to play football, I got stopped by a cop and he gave me a speeding ticket. On Thanksgiving!! Yeah, I was a little upset, but not as upset as the last time I got a speeding ticket, which just happened to be on Thanksgiving weekend back in 1998 when I was heading to the Tech/UVa game with Lenny. I felt bad, however, when the cop ended up pulling over another hokie maybe two minutes after I had gotten back on the road. Oh well...
After football, I cleaned up and headed over to the parents' for the festivities. There was a lot of eating, followed by football, followed by nap, followed by Nintendo Wii, followed by more eating, followed by more football. Then I came home, did some laundry, and worked out a little bit with Thursday night football on. Good times. Happy thanksgiving!
22 November 2006 0355 EST
22 November 2006 0355 EST It's been crazy as of late, spending all of this QT with the fam and the gf. And then there's the homework...all of these projects for all of these classes I'm taking. The semester ends in about three weeks, and I spent somewhere around twelve hours on one of the projects today, and it's maybe at the 60-70% point right now. In my social justice class, I spent about an hour or two working on a draft abstract/outline to share in class today. It was a pretty awesome class, as we're collaborating to write a paper that we're hoping to get published. That's been a lot of fun. I'll keep you posted as we get closer to finishing.
Did I mention that I lost all four of my fantasy football games this weekend? I guess there are worse things. Ben, Thuy, and I are going to donate blood tomorrow, and I plan on doing a practice run for the turkey trot 5K that I may run Thanksgiving morning. Then I'm actually gonna get together with Pepe in Herndon on T-day morning to play a few hours of flag football before pigging out over at the parents. Busy, busy, busy.
20 November 2006 1127 EST
20 November 2006 1127 EST As much as I think I am sometimes, I am far from a superman. I went running with Anna yesterday morning and did about six miles before heading over to Anacostia Park for our flag football game. I was feeling pretty pumped the whole time - got to play offense for the whole game too...usually, I only play one side of the ball, but it's nice going both ways. Anyway, I was fine until the last ten minutes of the game when I started to cramp up a little. Overall, I did alright...got an easy pick, a nice catch from Dave and a couple of decent defensive plays. We still ended up losing in the end, though.
After that, I limped home and hung out in front of my computer watching football stats and yelling at the skins game, followed with yelling at the cowboys/colts game. Then I jumped over to pick up Anna for this Texas Hold 'em tourney out in Vienna, with church/asian friends of Lenny and Steph. Let me tell ya...these guys were hustlers. Hehe...they were all pretty good and I played kinda loose to start it off, calling when one guy went all in on the second hand...and losing. I watched for a while before Lenny got bored, I think, and gave me his little stack. I stuck in it for a while after that, playing a lot tighter and going all-in three or four times before I met my match at the championship table. Top prizes were these nice bibles...but I finished like 7th out of 25-30 people. Oh well.
Anyway, I woke up really sore this morning, but I'm hoping it'll be better by Thursday. I'm thinking about doing the turkey trot 5K around here and then playing some flag football with some old VT alums out in Herndon before eating lots and lots of food. We'll see how that goes.
17 November 2006 1739 EST
17 November 2006 1739 EST And then came Plan 2B. I stayed up past midnight last night with windows opened for Wal-mart, Kmart, AAFES, Costco, Circuit City, and everyone else who was rumored to have a midnight sale for PS3s online. No dice. For the most part, it seemed like all the sites crashed around midnight and still no link for PS3s. When I checked again in the morning, Costco and Circuit said that they were sold out, so maybe I'd missed the boat on them. Then Yenny AIMs me and tells me that Costco is supposed to put them on sale at 11:00. Between 11:00am and 1:00pm the Costco server is just complete trash, probably getting reloaded a few billion times over that time period by nerds and more nerds. Me, I probably accounted for just a few thousand reloads...and to no avail. Eventually, I have to shower and I meet up with Anna for lunch before I go to tutor for the last time this year.
When I come home, I figure I'd give Costco one more shot. Maybe their servers were down even longer and I'd still be able to make it. No dice. Then I pop over to the AAFES site to check one last time. Uh oh! Wait a sec! What's this? A link to PS3...599.99, with free shipping and no tax? I go ahead and click through, changing my address from Afghanistan to C-ville and check out. I even printed out my receipt. Now all that's left is waiting for it to show up. I'll keep my fingers crossed, but I won't be holding my breath. Who knows...maybe I did get lucky. And for you nerds...maybe now you'll want to join the military. See the kinds of perks you get?
16 November 2006 0926 EST
16 November 2006 0926 EST So while I'm clearly disappointed right now, I am okay with the fact that I don't have to spend a day without the internet. I showed up at the
Best Buy in Sterling at 8:00 this morning, thinking there might be a mad dash to start a line. What I didn't count on, however, were my fellow nerds' complete disregard for the rules. Rules! Nerds are supposed to follow rules! But alas, when
Best Buy closed down for the night, nerds slowly creeped into line one by one, well ahead of the 24-hour cutoff; and there were already fifty of them, sitting and looking miserable in the rain when I arrived this morning. Anyway, long story short, I'm back at home in front of my computer, with my MREs and tent and change of clothes at the ready for the next big fiasco. Also, I don't have to feel bad, now, for abandoning the girl I've been tutoring who has her GED exam this weekend.
15 November 2006 1221 EST
15 November 2006 1221 EST It's been a while since I've played video games; but with the PS3 coming out on Friday, I've decided to camp out in front of Best Buy tomorrow to get my hands on one. Best Buy has a 24-hour rule so that's probably my best chance. I called a Circuit City today, and they said they already had about a dozen geeks camping out front. I wonder if they know that's it's supposed to rain all day tomorrow? Anyway, I wanted to post this in case anyone else is interested and wants company...or in case anyone wants an opportunity to spend 24 hours with me and can't think of another way to ask. This is your chance! I know it's $600, but I'm not going to keep it. With copies selling for nearly 2K on eBay, that pretty much covers my mortgage for one more month...hehe. Life is rough. Seriously, the hard part is going to be going a whole day without checking the stock market or my fantasy news. The sacrifices I make...
FYI...in case you're looking for a place to camp out, check out PS3Seeker.com, where they've google-mapped out every location that'll be selling PS3s, with approximate inventories and phone numbers.
14 November 2006 0049 EST
14 November 2006 0049 EST It wasn't a busy weekend so much as it was a densely-packed one. Friday morning started with a call from the parents as I drove them to the airport at around 0500h or 0530h or something. I didn't realize that Dulles was so close to my house, but I guess it is. I promptly returned to bed upon arriving at home, though, and overslept until nearly noon. Then I cleaned up and stopped at Belvoir to pick up a few things for my uniform before doing
Let's Dish over in Ashburn with Anna. That was fun, and we followed up with way too much Chinese food afterwards.
On Saturday, we drove down to Staunton for the Regimental Muster. It was pretty nice, and we had a chance to dress up all fancy and stuff. I looked really good...and she was alright, too. Anyway, from there, I had a huge southern breakfast of biscuits and gravy, pumpkin pancakes, eggs, and bacon before driving back up to NoVa. Oh, speaking of which...one of our sergeants major said the funniest thing in a class he was teaching. Talk about stereotypes...he was giving a class on communication, and in his deep accent, he made a comment about making a trip from Southern Virginia to the occupied territories of Northern Virginia in reference to all of the people of various nationalities around here. I know it was a joke and all, but it was funny in so many ways.
But yeah, after breakfast, I drove quickly back up here so I could fix my line-up before the early games before leaving for my own flag football game in DC. I showed up late because I didn't pay attention to the eVite about the field change. And then when I showed up, I only got to play about ten minutes before a cop from the DC Mall park people came up to our field and threatened a citation if we didn't stop playing. We informed him that we were part of an organized league that had permission to play here, but he didn't have anything of it. (Oh and when I say "we," I mean the people in charge and not me.) Anyway, we all scattered after that, and I came back home to hang out and watch football before cleaning up to go to the movies with Anna to see the Return. I think she was a little disappointed with how much closure there was to this particular thriller, but I still had a good time.
Hmm...and then there's today. I didn't really accomplish much of anything except for my tutoring. My girl is less than a week from taking her GED exam. Once she's done, that'll be three down for me and there won't be any left. I don't know what I'll do with my free time after that to make myself feel useful again.
Also interesting is that I heard from three really random people today...like for the first time in months/years. Steve texted me, Tommy called, and one of my students now at West Point AIMed me tonight. It was great to hear from all of them.
09 November 2006 0308 EST
09 November 2006 0308 EST So much going on. I ended up hanging out with Ben and Thuy after class today. We had dinner, played poker, and watched comedy central all night. Plus, Ben got me a present. It was awesome...a framed 12x16 of William Shatner...soo good.
Anyway, I came home and did my usual fantasy research before going to bed when I started chatting with one of my old students from MV about investments. Eventually, I stumbled onto the Investopedia Fantasy Stock Market Simulator and I signed up. Anyway, it's an open game where you just invest 100K in fake money. Anyone can join the game at any time; so if anyone wants to join, I'm gonna start tomorrow and see if I can work my way to the top of the rankings...about 500K right now. It's cool, though, because there's a forced diversification rule so you can't put more than 10% of your investment in any one company. Maybe I should think about that when I look at my real-life portfolio...hehe. Anyhoo, shoot me a message if you're in. It should be fun.
08 November 2006 1127 EST
08 November 2006 1127 EST It really has been a long time since I've cared this much about an election, and it's cool that Virginia is in the national news today. After looking over the results, though, I started reflecting on why it is that people tend to look at Virginia as a backwards kind of state, and why certain people in Northern Virginia don't like to associate with the rest of the state...with some even talking about secession. Anyway, thanks to
http://sbe.vipnet.org/, I was able to take a closer look at the results of the voting for the proposed constitutional amendment to define marriage. What was interesting was when I broke the vote down by
localities to see how each of the 134 voted, I found that there were exactly 13 who voted against the amendment and 121 who voted for it. The thirteen:
- Albemarle County
- Arlington County
- Fairfax County
- Alexandria City
- Charlottesville City
- Fairfax City
- Falls Church City
- Fredericksburg City
- Lexington City
- Norfolk City
- Petersburg City
- Richmond City
- Williamsburg City
Interesting, no? So while there are those of you who are ashamed of living in Virginia on a day like today, be proud if you live in one of those localities.
07 November 2006 2327 EST
07 November 2006 2327 EST Anyway, with about 97% of the precincts reporting, it looks like Allen is up by about 1/3 a percent or about 7K votes. I don't know if that's too close to call or what. It also looks like Virginia is going to add that stupid wedding amendment to the state constitution as well. Do people seriously believe that something like that is going to hold up over time? Oh well...1.3 million Virginians can't be wrong, right? *mutter* Those people are so gay.
Ahh...I love being ironic. What I don't love, however, are whiners...which is why I won't complain any more after this paragraph. I just got an e-mail from my professor for my online class saying that my name came up as being non-responsive for a group project. This kinda pisses me off because I think I know the guy who complained. Well, I don't know him really. I met him once in class, and he sent me three e-mails yesterday. Apparently, I don't get a full day to respond to an e-mail before he complains to the prof. What's funny is that eveyone is supposed to send me stuff so that I can compile it for the final paper. How many people have sent me stuff? Zero. Have I started to panic and e-mail people like crazy? No, because I'm not a little &!+@#. I guess I'm pretty hot right now. I'll be fine in a little bit.
06 November 2006 0852 EST
06 November 2006 0852 EST I really don't know why I'm still up right now. I went to bed a little after 0200h after chatting with Thuy about fantasy for an hour or two. It was a long drill weekend, with me not getting home until nearly 2000h last night, but I got more sleep than usual since we ended up moving indoors with the temperatures dropping to the 20s at AP Hill this weekend. I was actually looking forward to staying out in the field, but I won't complain too much about the change of plans. Highlights for the weekend include:
- driving for my commander all day on Saturday while he gave a VIP tour to the Loudoun representative in the state senate
- having one of my soldiers leave the result of the Tech/Miami game on my pillow for when I came back from 2.5 hour meeting on Saturday night
- seeing a few of my old soldiers from Afghanistan again (CB, Speedloader, Dancing Queen, and Slowmo)
Anyway, why am I up? I woke up on my own around 0600h this morning needing to go to the bathroom. But since I was up, I figured I would make a few fantasy pick-ups considering the injuries to Bernard Berrian and Willis McGahee this weekend. That was only supposed to take about ten minutes and then I was supposed to go to bed after that. But a few minutes kinda snowballed into a few hours and now the market will be opening in about a half hour. What to do...
02 November 2006 1145 EST
02 November 2006 1145 EST Honestly, I don't know why there are so many spammers on my comments page. It's not like that many people even read this page anymore. But whatever. I spent nearly three hours this morning learning a little more perl/cgi and I added a little confirmation page for my comments, so hopefully that'll help things. If not, I'll keep on learning more, I guess. In that sense - that I'm learning more perl - I guess it's not an entirely bad thing that I've gotten the spammers. But it sure as heck is annoying.
Anyway, drill is this weekend; and we are staying out in the field the whole time, so that'll be interesting. I'm even going to get started early on my homework today so that I don't have to cram on Monday/Tuesday like I usually do.
01 November 2006 2350 EST
01 November 2006 2350 EST I really do enjoy my classes because my classmates are all teachers...and boy do they say the funniest things. I say funny, but I think I really mean sad. I guess it's also kinda sad that I write down quotes from class so that I can blog about them later, but this stuff really is funny. There's one girl, especially...I had a class with her last spring, and she was just as clueless, I think. This is her second year teaching, too. Anyway, quote number one isn't so much funny as it is prejudiced. Our professor was talking about the research course that is the final requirement for the graduate program here, and the girl says, "my friend is taking the research class with the professor who doesn't speak good English." Umm...okay. Random much? And she said it as if she expected everyone to know who it was after her amazing description. I don't know. Maybe you had to be there. Did I mention that she's an English teacher too? I mean, seriously...it's a university. There are soo many professors who don't speak English well. Anyway, the second comment came as we were trying to develop a rubric for our final project. For some reason, she was really worried about making sure the paper was in APA format, and she yelled out, "not getting something right shouldn't keep someone from getting an A!" I don't know. Again, maybe you had to be there. But to me, getting stuff wrong is usually what keeps you from getting an A. Maybe it's just me.
01 November 2006 1124 EST
01 November 2006 1124 EST Things not often heard coming out of a teacher's mouth during class: "Do orgasms hurt? Not if you're doing it right." Umm...yeah...hehe. We had a guest speaker in class talking about special ed children, specifically students with autism/asperger's, and she was wrapping up with a story about one of her students during family life education. You should have seen the look on our professor's face when the guest speaker said that. It was hilarious because she is sooo conservative. But yeah, it was a pretty interesting class today. I thought I'd share.
Other things going on...I noticed that I'm running out of Vitamin C already...which is interesting because I bought a half-pound bottle just a month ago. Go figure.
Oh...and the last thing. Yesterday, I guess I wasn't playing well with others on the message board for one of my fantasy football leagues. So I was disciplined by having my posting rights taken away for the board. That made me really sad because I really enjoyed trash-talking on that board. Who knows what I'm going to do with all of my time now.
31 October 2006 1000 EST
31 October 2006 1000 EST The last few days have been rather interesting. Start off with Friday night. I hung out with Thuy, hopping from Taco Bell to Goodwill back to Taco Bell in search of food/halloween costume ideas. Then on Saturday morning, got up to hang out with Jane and Anna at the
Let's Dish right by TJ. Then I came home after that and got pretty for the halloween party. It was an interesting time, but not really my kind of party. I'm more into the board games, quiet music (unless it's karaoke), and definitely a smaller crowd. Anything more than ten or twenty people starts to get loud for me.
But yeah, on Sunday, I had to get up early to get over to DC for our flag football game which we lost. It was close, but I didn't feel that great about the game because I was pretty much a non-factor. That sucked...and I got a little dirty too. On my way out of DC, though, it was even worse since they closed off over a dozen streets for the Marine Corps Marathon. I went from one exit to the next to the next to the next, just searching for a way out of the city. Eventually, I found myself in a line of about 200 cars trying to do the exact same thing. In the end, I found myself going west to the beltway and then looping back around to 66, taking about an hour and a half total.
Then yesterday, I slept a lot and worked out before cooking dinner for Anna and going to a free movie thanks to movie passes Ben gave me. We watched the Grudge 2 over in Arlington, where we actually had the whole theater to ourselves. I guess Monday night isn't a big date night with MNF and whatever else is on TV. Go figure. Anyway, since we had the theater to ourselves, I didn't mind screaming like a little girl throughout the whole movie...and oh did I. It was actually really scary. Go figure.
Anyway, happy halloween. Here's to hoping that my house won't get egged while I'm gone at class all night.
25 October 2006 0225 EDT
25 October 2006 0225 EDT So I don't usually talk politics too much, but I found myself AIMing with Stora tonight. He's probably the one guy I don't discuss too much with 1) because he's much more informed about this stuff than I am, no matter how much I try with my Daily Show updates and Sunday morning shows and 2) because he's so conservative, he makes me feel like such a liberal. Anyway, I forget how the discussion started. I think he was wondering what Anna's political affiliation was and he was happy to hear that she was pretty conservative. Then I told him about how I was probably going to vote for George Allen until I heard a radio ad the other day. Sadly enough, the radio ad was approved by George Allen. I couldn't find a transcript or a copy of the ad online, but I did catch an article that quoted a part of the ad that was particularly disturbing for me.
There are those who would like to change the definition of marriage. Jim Webb is one of those people. This Election Day you'll have an opportunity to stand up to the Jim Webbs of the world—to the people who want to weaken marriage. Jim Webb, Hillary Clinton and their liberal allies in Washington don't want to give constitutional protection to traditional marriage. If they don't share our values on something as basic as marriage how can we trust them on any issue?
George Allen? He's never wavered. He believes marriage is between one man and one woman. He believes in strong families and he'll fight to protect traditional marriage. We don't need the Hollywood liberal values of Jim Webb and Hillary Clinton. We're just fine with our solid Virginia Values.
I know I've been a huge supporter of him through all of the macaca stuff because I remember this speech he gave to us at Virginia Beach when we went down there for the officer convention last year with a few hundred other National Guard officers. He was an amazing speaker. But at the same time, he's right. If he doesn't share my values on something as basic as marriage and civil rights, how can I trust him on any issue?
Yeah, I won't get too political, but most of you know where I stand on that issue. It was the most important issue for me for the presidential elections (hence Nader vote) and it remains my biggest issue today - one of the few I'll discuss on this page. Anyway, with that said, I actually took a few minutes to look at the other measures on the ballot. I know, right? Amazingly enough, in the nine years since I've been able to vote, this is the first time I've looked at all of the ballot measures and all of the candidates before election day. I guess it can't hurt; and no, it's not too late to change.
*tick-tock* *tick-tock*
Anyway, after spending the last two hours on both Jim Webb's Site and George Allen's Site, I'm once again sitting in the middle with my decision. I guess I have another week or two to make my choice though.
I'm off to bed for now. Tomorrow, I'm hanging out with a dog and doing homework, so I need my sleep. Thanks for everyone who filled out a survey to bail me out of a jam in class today. That would be Lenny, Yenny, Jane, Ben, Thuy, Arun, Craig, and Anna. You guys rock!
22 October 2006 1212 EDT
22 October 2006 1212 EDT Thumb drive, bic lighter, and money...what do these three things have in common? I'll give you a few seconds to think about it as I continue with today's entry. You see, in the last three or four years, I've been somewhat forgetful at times and have often neglected to check my pant pockets before doing my laundry. Amazingly enough, the three aforementioned items continued to function after a cycle in the wash and a cycle in the dryer. Yeah, the money isn't so surprising, but the bic lighter?! I didn't realize that there was such a good seal over the lighter fluid section. I was pleasantly surprised with the thumb drive functionality, too. I mean, it was a few years ago when it happened, but I think the most important thing is to make sure that it is completely dry before attempting to use it.
Anyway, with 45 minutes before kickoff for the early games, that's all I have to say about that. Happy late birthday, brother! (...and happy birthday to me in two days.)
20 October 2006 2343 EDT
20 October 2006 2343 EDT It's a good thing that I only have to type because my voice is all but gone right now. I just got home from the TJ homecoming game and it was such a good time. I mean, first off, Ben and I were there...so you know it was rocking. But yeah, we rolled in about 15 minutes after kickoff and there was this huge traffic jam in front of the school. Every spot was taken, including the hundred+ meters of fire lane and all of senior lot. So we moved on next door to Weyanoke and stole the last spot there, saving us from a sad walk over from the
Home Depot (formerly
Hechingers) parking lot.
Anyway, we show up at the gate and who else do we see but Rocky Oteng. I gave Ben a nudge. "Hey, isn't that Rocky Oteng?" I asked, motioning to one of the few black students on the TJ side. Before Ben could answer, Rocky called out to us and we quickly joined the pocket of class o' 1997ers huddled behind the band. Included in the crowd were: Chris Lewis, Matt Makowsky, Tayo Ogunnaike, Armand Alacbay, and Philip Javier-Wong. Anyway, it was a wild and crazy time at the public school-sactioned function, even though TJ ended up handing the game over in the last minute. Oh, there was a teacher cameo by Mr. Berry and that's about it.
Let's go TJ!
19 October 2006 0218 EDT
19 October 2006 0218 EDT I ended up staying up later than I thought I would tonight. I came home and found myself on instant messenger (what are the odds, right?) chatting with Thuy for the last two hours. Anna and her roommates are hosting a halloween party at their house next weekend, so I wanted to brainstorm some good costume ideas. At first, we were looking at things we could do together, but then we shifted more towards conceptual costumes. But the problem with conceptual constumes is that you can't be too intellectual. I mean, things have to be very obvious or else you'll have people asking you, "what are you supposed to be?" all night long. Anyway, I think we have a couple of pretty good ideas, but I'll sleep on it and see if I still like them in the morning. Until then...I guess I'll be sleeping.
18 October 2006 0116 EDT
18 October 2006 0116 EDT I think I may have missed my calling. I know I'm an infantry officer, but
these ten Virginia National Guardsmen got mobilized for a year to read military blogs and surf other military websites. Don't I feel like a fool. Here I am doing all of this stuff for free! Hmmm...you know I'm kidding, right? (especially if you're one of those guys and you're reading this page right now) As much as I hate censoring myself, operational security is very important and these guys are doing a very necessary job even though I like to poke fun. The best part, though? Well, these guys actually work out of the same armory as we do. And even though there are like two lieutenant colonels and a few majors who work out of the same armory, I am the one with the special assigned parking spot right in the front. That's right, baby.
17 October 2006 0045 EDT
17 October 2006 0045 EDT Interesting observation of the night: garbage stinks. Seriously, it smells. Umm...so I think I've missed the last two trash days, so there was probably some stuff growing in there. I missed recycling day last week, too, so that's kind of overflowing as well. That's all I have to say about that.
I didn't get much homework done today, but I did get a quick nap in and I continued consuming somewhere around 20,000mg of Vitamin C today. Anyway, I'm tired, so I'm going to go to bed with visions of a stock market pullback dancing in my head. Intel releases quarterly earnings tomorrow; and for the first time in years, I have my money sitting on the side hoping for them to post some disappointing numbers. I mean, you saw Monday Night Football, didn't you? If that's any indicator, this looks like it may be a good season for the Bears.
16 October 2006 1133 EDT
16 October 2006 1133 EDT I finally got a chance to zero my weapon and fire this weekend. That made me feel good. Usually, I'm stuck in meetings and doing paperwork all the time, so I don't get a lot of time to do regular infantry-type stuff. But this weekend was pretty low-key with a lot of the brass out of the way, so I got a chance to actually spend some QT on the range. On my qualification, I hit 34/40, which I think is the best score I've ever gotten. I was pretty happy with that.
Also nice was coming home and booting up my computer to see that my fantasy teams will most likely go 3-1 for the week, with my only loss coming to my mom, who just happened to start Mark Bulger, Tory Holt, Travis Henry, and Todd Heap this week. I still have Bernard Berrian playing for me on MNF, but something tells me he won't do well enough to overcome my 50+ point deficit. Anyway, I'll keep the FF talk to a minimum because I talk way too much about that stuff anyway. Lot's of work due this week and next week, so I'd better get started...after this nap.
12 October 2006 1353 EDT
12 October 2006 1353 EDT My library book, wishing Tommy and Thuy happy birthday, selling my house....yep, you guessed it - things that are overdue. I guess it's only fitting that the only library book that I've borrowed in like ten years was turned in overdue yesterday. When you're as busy as I am, little details like that tend to just sneak by, you know? Anyway, I have a bunch of things I just added to my calendar for this month, so it looks like I'll be even busier in the weeks to come.
Anyway, I'm getting stuff ready for drill this weekend, and I need to wrap up as much homework as possible this week because I don't want to have to worry about it so much come Monday. Mondays after drill are reserved for napping and slothing. Then I have a bunch of projects due around my birthday, so that'll be interesting. The weekend following that, though, Anna and I are going to do Let's Dish with Jane and Ian on the 28th. I'm kind of excited about that too. We'll be cooking up some chicken satay, mahi mahi, shrimp scampi, thai-marinated flank steak, Greek pork pita folds, jambalaya, spinach lasagna rolls, and chocolate cake. But yeah, I've been meaning to do this ever since one of the teachers at South Lakes recommended it...and now I'm finally getting around to it.
Other than that, everything is pretty much business as usual...school, working out, market-watching, ff, etc.
11 October 2006 1659 EDT
11 October 2006 1659 EDT So it was mentioned to me that today is
National Coming Out Day. You can even go to your Yahoo! avatar and have him/her put on a National Coming Out Day t-shirt and put him/her in front of a pretty rainbow background like me. Ben, Thuy...do either of you guys have anything to add?
Seriously, though, cool day...which reminds me that I need to get a couple of bumper stickers for my car, including a
Feel Your Boobies one and one for
HRC. Plus, I need to take the 30 seconds of time it takes to apply my
BloodSaves one already.
11 October 2006 0929 EDT
11 October 2006 0929 EDT When you don't necessarily have that much time to spare, it's interesting what you make time to do. Last night, I decided to install IE 7 as I started to read that they were adding a tabbed browsing feature with their new version. Two hours later, I found myself uninstalling it and going back to v6. It turns out that v7 just crashed over and over again for me, not unlike iTunes v7. What is up with that? I guess 7 just isn't my lucky number.
Anyway, I woke up after about 4.5 hours of sleep this morning around 0700h. I guess I could've gone back to sleep, but I found myself taking a quick peak at the foreign markets and the pre-market stuff for today. Then I started to look at the earnings calendar for Oct/Nov (I added some notable dates to my Google Calendar, btw) and it was 0900h before I knew it. At that point, I figured I'd might as well stay up for the opening bell, right? Earnings season is always fun, but I haven't been watching a lot of Squawk Box on CNBC this morning. Those guys always have a way of making it out to be March Madness every quarter.
Oh well...60 seconds until the bell. I'm gonna post this and then take a nap around 1000h. Enjoy.
11 October 2006 0049 EDT
11 October 2006 0049 EDT So the more time I spend in my web accessibility class, the more I think I need to overhaul this page. I haven't done a redesign in about two years now, so I'm definitely due. But at the same time, working on my eHome should probably take a back seat to fixing up my other home. Oh well. Today's class was fun, either way. It was an introduction to CSS...which really isn't anything new to me, but it does help to get a formal lesson instead of learning off of other people's web sites.
Other than that, life has been treating me rather well. After driving back from Boston in the dead of morning on Monday, I came home and cleaned up a little before Anna came over. I pseudo-cooked up some quick stuff and we watched EdTV on the big screen. That was fun...I always enjoy that movie. Anyway, after that, she had to leave to go running with her sister and stuff, so I just kinda moped around and napped, among other things.
Today, I tried to be the good boyfriend. Anna's been feeling kinda sick the last day or two, so I got her some medicine and I made her some chicken noodle soup today. I was pretty proud of myself. Usually, I'm a campbell's soup kinda guy, but I actually boiled a chicken and added vegetables and noddles/rice for this one. So yeah, that took me almost four hours to make today, but I had some downtime to work out, shower, do some laundry, and FF while it was boiling. Oh, and don't worry. I ODed on the VC today too. This guy ain't catchin' nothin'.
Also noteworthy is the fact that my firefox search plugin isn't working. It's been really frustrating having to load an extra page to look up words in the dictionary or wiki-ing. My bookmarks file disappeared about a month ago as well, but that was more sad than frustrating.
07 October 2006 2049 EDT
07 October 2006 2049 EDT Today's update comes from Boston and it was completed on my sister's computer. We kicked off the road trip at about 9:00 last night from my parents' house and we wound up in Boston around 5:00 this morning. The drive was relatively uneventful...which is good. There were a few annoying traffic spots around NJ and NY...to be expected, but it was kinda stuff I was hoping to avoid at 2:00 in the morning, you know? But yeah, after the drive up, I just swapped seats with my brother and crashed for a few hours while they did some sightseeing around Boston. They grabbed me a whole bunch of food from Chinatown and then we linked up with Jane, Ian, and Yenny, who flew in this morning.
After we linked up, we split up a little bit and Ian showed us around his old stomping grounds. We ate lunch at Bartley's Burger Cottage, which was so busy they had to take our orders while we were lined up outside the restaurant with about 30+ other people. The food was good, though, and it was fun. We loitered around a little bit after lunch and laughed at all of the street performers before going into this chocolate shop and then circling back to the hotel. Back there, I played a little bit of hold'em with Lenny before napping on and off for the next hour or two. Then it was off to this Middle Eastern restaurant for dinner...and again back to the hotel. It's not even 9:00 yet, but I think I'm done for the night. I don't think I'm gonna be doing too much partying while I'm up here. I'll maybe wake up early and hit the gym for a little bit and then take a nap tomorrow. After the reception, we'll be heading back to VA, so there won't be too much time to goof off.
03 October 2006 1212 EDT
03 October 2006 1212 EDT
Okay, so I really don't have much time to post right now, since I'm cramming to get some reading done before class today. But I took a short break to do a little AIMing/snacking and I saw that my DA Photo had been posted already. I look so pretty. Hehe...okay, that's all I have for now. I'll maybe post more after class. I'm a little sad right now because I lost a whole bunch of fantasy games this weekend that I thought I should have won. *sad face*
