19 August 2006 1519 EDT
19 August 2006 1519 EDT Yesterday was definitely a first for me. Thuy drove me in to Georgetown yesterday and we ended up spending three hours in a hot room sweating with like eight other guys...it's been a long time since I've had so much fun.

That's right. We did a fantasy football draft, and I had a blast with all of my notes and my spreadsheets and everything. I'll post the roster of my last two drafts in a second (my family draft and the one I'm in with Thuy and his other friends). But yeah, so much trash talking and geeky football statistics talk. It was hilarious. Then after the three+ hour draft, Thuy drove me home, and we spent the next six or seven hours going through line-ups, analyzing teams, trades, etc. I didn't fall asleep until about 0600h. It was crazy, but I'm still wired about the fantasy season starting...in case you can't tell. Anyway, rosters are posted below, and I'll probably take a quick nap before heading out to watch some football tonight. MTF.

First is last night's draft. I picked up Shaun Alexander with the 4th pick!!!

Drew Bledsoe Ben Roethlisberger

Shaun Alexander Brian Westbrook Reuben Droughns Chester Taylor LenDale White TJ Duckett

Chad Johnson Keenan McCardell Antonio Bryant Kevin Curtis Bobby Engram Reche Caldwell

Antonio Gates Adam Vinatieri Tampa Bay Buccaneers

And then my family draft, picking in the number five slot:

Kurt Warner Mark Brunell

Tiki Barber Willis McGahee Willie Parker Deshaun Foster Frank Gore

Donald Driver Eddie Kennison Joe Jurevicius Antonio Bryant Ernest Wilford

Antonio Gates Adam Vinatieri Jacksonville Jaguars

17 August 2006 2138 EDT
17 August 2006 2138 EDT Honestly, I don't know why I was thinking this today...but if I died and had my remains turned into diamonds, would anyone wear me? I need to update my will and I need to write my living will too. Anyone up for a will-writing party again some time this fall? I need to bounce a few questions off of everyone...like is it cool to have karaoke at a funeral?

Yeah, so I guess it's kinda random today. I started tutoring a new girl today and I helped my new roomie Brandon move in, too. Oh, I figured out how to set up my us.army.mil e-mail with outlook today, so I spent a few hours cleaning out my inbox. That was really cool. I read through some really old e-mails too...always fun. I got some ink in the mail, too, so I have printing capabilities again, just in time for the draft tomorrow. And that's about it. Did I mention that I took a two-hour nap this afternoon? Admit it. You're jealous.

16 August 2006 0300 EDT
16 August 2006 0300 EDT Twenty-four hours of voluntary separation between me and the internet...and they said it couldn't be done.

I drove up to NJ yesterday to hang out with the relatives for Dorothy's white coat ceremony. She's really smart, in case you were wondering. She's twenty and starting med school tomorrow. On the car ride back, I was talking to my sister and my cuz about how much Dorothy and I had in common. I finished my undergrad in three years too...except I finished with a 2.7 GPA. She has like a 3.9, getting all A's throughout her three years except for one B+. I even joked with Matt about how she bowed out of this year's Fantasy Football league because she knew she'd be pre-occupied with med school and studying. Me, I quit my job for a year so that I could goof off and do whatever I wanted to while I finished up my masters. So yeah, we quickly concluded that we didn't have too much in common. I'm really proud of her though. They grows up so fast, don't they?

14 August 2006 0755 EDT
14 August 2006 0755 EDT I honestly didn't think I would have to deal with spammers on my message board just because it's such a ghetto script. But when I woke up this morning to about a dozen comments posted with links to gambling sites and whatnot, I found myself uploading my very first spam filter. I was kinda proud of myself for that. Now, I just hope it works.

Last night was my fantasy draft with Ben and Thuy. We kinda just decided to do one yesterday. Ben actually wanted to go out and do something "RL" as he likes to say, but we quickly shot him down with the 2-1 advantage. Amazingly enough, the ten team draft only took about two hours to complete, with my team as follows:

[NOTE: I was pick #10 out of 10]
[NOTE: I am also reluctant to publish my second team as it kind of gives away some of my drafting tendencies, but only a loser would search the rest of my archives for my previous draft results. Plus, I'm just so darned proud of my team.]

Drew Bledsoe Mark Brunell

Rudi Johnson Willie Parker Frank Gore LenDale White

Steve Smith Donald Driver Deion Branch Eddie Kennison Matt Jones Antonio Bryant

Antonio Gates Zack Hilton

Adam Vinatieri Jacksonville Jaguars

During my draft, however, I got a call from one of the contractors regarding an estimate for some work in my house. I foolishly scheduled it for Wednesday because I knew I would be away for the next two days for Dorothy's ceremony. Unfortunately, when I scheduled him in, I forgot that our family draft is also Wednesday night. So as long as he shows up on time, I'll have an hour to spend with the guy until the draft starts. I think I'll be okay, but we'll see. I'll set up my auto-draft just in case I show up a few minutes late. 13 August 2006 0250 EDT
13 August 2006 0250 EDT So I'm really not a very good poker player. I know this. I've lost about $100 playing online and I tend to lose every time I play against Ben and Thuy. I've gotten better, though...maybe to the point where I only lose about 80% of the time. But still, it's not good for the ego. However, tonight, I played with a different crowd over at Stora's. It was a much friendlier crowd, and I actually saw a whole bunch of people who I hadn't seen since almost junior high school back at Lanier. Marcy Siegel was there, as was Beth Murray (now Olibah, I think). We told a few old junior high stories (it's funny what people remember), and we talked a little about teaching, too, since that's what we are all doing. Well, me, I'm taking next year off. Beth happens to be doing the same, but she has a better excuse than me. Anyway, it was a really good time with good food and good company...and winning the big pot at the end didn't hurt either.

Anyway, with only about five hours to go until I have to wake up for soccer, I am off to bed. I'll catch you all up tomorrow.

12 August 2006 1445 EDT
12 August 2006 1445 EDT Well, Jane explained last night's dinner in a post on her page, so I won't go too much into that. I ended up watching National Lampoon's Blackball with Ben yesterday evening, though. It's a strange comedy about lawn bowling that ended up being a lot less funny than I'd hoped. Even with Vince Vaughn giving a decent performance, the movie was maybe a 4/10. To make up for it, though, we watched an old SNL episode I had on my DVR...the animated one hosted by Ace and Gary of the Ambiguously Gay Duo. Good times.

This morning, I hung out with Jane, Ian, and the parents for lunch. She told me how to fix my Google Calendar link so that everyone can see my calendar now. I was happy about that. My mom told us some jokes, my dad made us guess what was in the soup he made, and we talked about babies and god and stuff. Again, good times.

Anyway, I'm gonna hang out with Stora tonight and play some poker with a bunch of people I haven't seen in years. Until then, I think I may just take a nap.

11 August 2006 0835 EDT
11 August 2006 0835 EDT I actually had a really good time last night hanging out with Ben and all of his nerdy AOL friends. Gordon was there for a little bit, too. I hadn't seen him in forever. Anyway, throughout the night, karaoke jam kept on coming up. I wanted to have it next weekend, but Ben is out of town...so of course, we'll work around his schedule. I've got the invite written up in my calendar for the 26th. That should give me enough time to clean up the house. I don't know everyone's e-mail, though, so I only sent it out to about a dozen people. But if you read this page regularly, then you're definitely cool enough to be invited. Just drop me a line and I'll give you the details...like the day and my address. Oh, wait. All of that is posted already.

Anyway, I started playing around with Google Calendar yesterday and I like it a lot. Since the sisters and parents keep up with it, I can overlay all of their schedules over mine and coordinate family visits and stuff better. Plus, it forced me to actually look up when classes start this semester. I probably would have put that off for another week or so if I didn't have the calendar up already.

Yeah...wow...nothing much going on other than that. My life pretty much revolves around exercise, sleep, fantasy football, the internet, and the occasional home repair.

10 August 2006 0242 EDT
10 August 2006 0242 EDT The way the day started off, I didn't really think it was going to be a good one for me. But as the day progressed, a lot of things started to go my way.

Let's start with the tutoring session that didn't happen. It took me an extra twenty minutes or so to get out to Vienna because of traffic. Then when I got there, things just weren't going well, and I left a few minutes later. Where to go? The Home Depot. So I'm in the paint section and looking at the different stains so that I can finish the bay window that Jane got for me. I ask the guy at the counter for some advice, and he all but calls me an idiot for trying to do this myself and adds that I'll probably end up ruining the whole window. Umm...okay. Thanks. So does that mean that you don't want to help me? He said he was going to help me after his next customer...but then about five customers later, I asked another associate...who ends up not knowing much, so he asks the original guy for advice. They're in the next aisle, and I overhear the first guy say, "oh yeah. I talked to that guy earlier. He has no idea what he's doing."

My day actually got a lot better after that though. I had my pad of notes from yesterday with all the things that I needed to fix, and I went through all of it one by one until about three hours ticked by. In the end, I spent about two hundred dollars and bought what I'm hoping will help me fix just about everything except the drywall. I got all of the stain I think I'll need, I picked up some stuff for my gutters, a kit to resurface my bathtub, a new bathroom exhaust fan, and lots of little stuff. I'll keep you posted about my progress.

After that trip, I dropped all the stuff off at my old house, where something was camouflaged by my front door. It was a huge 2' x 2' x 5' box with my welcome mat draped across the top. You gotta love those UPS guys. I guess it's policy that you have to disguise packages, but seriously, people. Anyway, after about three months, I finally have my water dispenser back. That made me so happy. After I hooked that up and cleaned up around the house again, I took a quick 30-minute nap before soccer.

I met up with Ben at the field and I had an awesome time. I started off a little slow but ended up scoring the first four goals for our team. Not bad, huh? After the game, I took a quick shower over at Ben's and he slipped some of his sausage between some buns to serve me for dinner. It was good and we chatted for a few minutes before I drove a few minutes down the road to the theater to cash in my free movie ticket before it expired. I watched Superman Returns!!!

I know the reviews haven't all been so great, but I loved it. Interesting notes follow. Brandon Routh was just so enjoyable to watch as Superman. He looks so much like Christopher Reeve, it's amazing. Kate Bosworth was enjoyable to watch, too, but she comes second to the Man of Steel in my book. I liked how they made the bad guys seem so campy, too. Kevin Spacey is a good Luthor, and the inclusion of Kumar from Harold and Kumar was a nice surprise. I haven't kept up with the comic books in a few years, so I don't know so much about the situation with the kid, but the rest of the story was pretty classic Supes. The most disturbing scene was Superman getting absolutely pummeled by some thugs after being weakened by the green kryptonite. I almost had to look away there. I mean, it wasn't all that graphic, but it's Superman, you know? Oh, and I wouldn't have minded some more Clark Kent scenes, but I won't complain. I'm sure we'll see more of him later on in the series.

Anyway, I wrapped that up around 0100h, and came home to get a small workout in while I watched the Daily Show and another episode of Mythbusters. It's bedtime now.

08 August 2006 2301 EDT
08 August 2006 2301 EDT So I just got off the phone with my mom and I think she's probably a little disappointed by the slowing progress of my home repairs. I'll be honest here. I went through the house with a family friend today, taking note of all of the things that have to be fixed...and though I've written all of them down before, I was mostly of the mindset that someone else was going to do all of the work. But now that I know that I'm going to be doing it myself, it's a bit overwhelming. Almost so much that I've stalled my progress. On top of that, I just got my bill for tuition from GMU today. I will get my money back eventually from the Army, but I kinda have to front the bill now. And in my head, I'm doing all of the calculations for school, repairs, and the mortgage while I linger on fixing the house. And just now, it strikes me that I might have to get a job again.

I don't know...I've had a lot on my mind these days. And while I don't think that I've been completely lazy - I've been doing a lot of cleaning, reading, tutoring, and working out - I think my priorities have been a bit skewed. It'll probably take a few more days for me to get over this slump, but I think I've at least reached the inflection point.

08 August 2006 0500 EDT
08 August 2006 0500 EDT Lately, I've had some interesting conversations with Ben. I guess it actually started about a year ago, but he's been much more open and honest with his criticism of me lately...which isn't a bad thing. I'm just not used to having people like that around me, as most nerds are rather insecure and introverted. What struck me the most was about a month ago when he mentioned that I was bad at listening. The comment surprised me, as I always thought of myself as a good listener. So after my pride took a few moments to recover, I, being the good listener that I am, heard him out as he tried to cite a few examples from our recent past. In the end, I did take one point away from the conversation, and I've been working on it since. I do get frustrated when people talk slowly to get a point across, and I never really noticed in the past when I would cut people off when I thought I got the gist of what they had to say. As a teacher, in fact, you have to do that a lot in order to keep certain students from monopolizing the class. It's just for the good of the whole. In the military, too, there are times when decisions have to be made quickly without reaching an agreement by committee. But coming more from the business side of things, Ben's point got me thinking a little more about the people I deal with day-to-day. And since then, I've been trying hard to refrain from interrupting people in the middle of arguments or debates.

Today, we ended up at Starbuck's for a little study session after having dinner at the Tortilla Factory in Herndon. I was trying to read the Adonis Complex again, and Ben was studying for his GMATs when we eventually wound up in a semantic discussion. I forget all the things we argued about, but we ended up talking about test scores. He said that it's hard to get an accurate gauge for the GMAT because it's an adaptive test, and there is no actual scoring in the practice book. Then I said something along the lines of how it can be very accurate as long as he answers all of the questions correctly. Am I right? Hehe...you don't have to answer. Of course I'm right. Finally, as we were walking out the door, I made a comment about standardized tests and how I wasn't average. He took it as if I thought I was better than certain people because I scored better on tests, but all I said was that I wasn't average. I'm not a better person, but I think that I'm better at doing certain things (performing math operations, researching fantasy football, shoveling snow, writing physics carols, throwing grapes in the air and catching them in my mouth, etc). If he wants to infer that those things make me better than everyone else, then who am I to argue? Of course, there are also things that I'm not so good at. I just can't think of any right now.

Anyway, as I was folding laundry tonight, I thought back to the discussion and started to think of all of the failures in my life. I know, great choice of topics, right? Well, when I got down to it, I found that I've had a rather successful life. In fact, my list of failures was actually quite short. Now, I don't know if it's because a) I'm just really good at everything, or 2) I don't challenge myself enough. But either way, here's the list. You can give me some feedback if you can think of anything else to add. Don't worry. I can take it.

1994 - Missed the cut for my high school soccer team (first rejection ever...not counting girls)
1998 - Rejected for an RA position after a group interview
1999 - Failed Dr.Blecher's second semester Intermediate Electricity and Magnetism course
2000 - Failed the Combat Water Survival Test at the end of OCS
2001 - Flight school orders rescinded after 20/100 vision test during my flight physical (they did a prostate exam anyway...which I passed)
2005 - Rejected at South Lakes after initial interview (they ended up hiring me anyway)

Oh well. At this point, there is no reason why I should still be awake. Good night.

07 August 2006 0800 EDT
07 August 2006 0800 EDT I was out like a lamp by 9:00 last night, so I apologize for taking two whole days off from writing here. I was just so tired though. It's tough going two straight days without a nap. How do people do it?

It was a good drill weekend though. I had a lot of fun writing an operations order and then overseeing some of the civil disturbance training our guys were going through. That was probably the highlight, with the three and a half hour training meeting running until nearly 11:00 on Saturday night coming in at a close second. I know that sounds a little sarcastic, but I do actually have fun at those, mainly because I get to hang out with all of the officers I spent so much time with overseas in Afghanistan and at OCS. Other than that, things were business as usual. I made a few phone calls each night as I drove home just because I was starting to get drowsy behind the wheel. The nine+ hours of sleep last night helped though, and I'll get some more with a nap this afternoon. Does anyone else have it rough like me these days?

04 August 2006 2318 EDT
04 August 2006 2318 EDT Have you ever been shopping when you see something that you really don't need and say to yourself, "I could really use one of those?" That was me today as I walked through Dick's sporting goods when I saw the SlingHopper. You see, yesterday morning, after staying up until 0230h or so conducting my fantasy research, I decided to get back up at 0530h to play tennis with my family. I was a little tired, but it was a good time, culminating in a left-handed match between my brother and me. Trust me, not even in the special olympics will you find tennis of this caliber. Anyway, throughout the match, I noticed that the grip on my racket was on its last legs. I've had the racket for what must be ten years by now (purchased at what used to be known as the Price Club, now Costco), and it was probably on it's fourth or fifth set of strings/grips. So that was my mission today...to get a new grip for the racket. It was then that I thought to myself that I should probably pick up some balls, too. And it was then that I saw...dun dun dunnnnn...the SlingHopper. It's basically an oversized fanny pack designed to carry up to twenty balls at a time. But it hangs over your thigh in such a way that it doesn't interfere with your swing, forehand or back. It was on clearance, too...for just twenty dollars. Plus, it came filled with twenty balls. Had I purchased the balls separately, I would've paid 10-15 dollars, so I was practically getting this thing for free. How could I resist, right? I didn't. Now I just need to find someone to play with.

Besides that, fantasy football has already started to take over my life. I took a few short breaks today to do some more yardwork with mom and to head in to the armory to get some things ready for drill this weekend. I got my boots and uniforms ready too.

I also got back into lifting after taking a three-day respite. I started to take protein supplements today too. A while back, I told myself that I would never turn into a gym geek and do that. But I've found that I've been spending a lot on some high protein products for no reason at all. Why not just buy some cheap protein powder and then eat regular food? Wouldn't that be easier? And after my vitamin C encounter, I've been much more open to dietary/nutritional supplements than I've been in the past. Anyway, I just wanted to warn you guys because I'll be huge when you see me again in a month.

Alright, that's it for now. Time for bed. I need to rest up for civil disturbance training tomorrow.

03 August 2006 0220 EDT
03 August 2006 0220 EDT I'd like you to take the following four things into consideration before reading today's entry:

1 - I love winning
2 - I hate losing
3 - I am a nerd
4 - I don't really so much have a job

With that said, I just spent the last twelve hours performing some of the most intense fantasy football research ever, culminating in two comprehensive cheatsheets and a series of maps of draft possibilities. The first cheatsheet I worked on was to take into account preseason rankings from four different sources, to include Yahoo!, Sports Illustrated, another very good fantasy football site, and Yahoo!'s average draft order for every Fantasy draft conducted so far this year. Each had somewhere around two hundred players, and the final product took somewhere around three hours to complete, even though some creative cutting and pasting trimmed it down by an hour. For the second cheatsheet, I went ahead and compiled the depth charts for each offensive position for each team in the league on one page...this is mainly for me to reference near the end of the draft, after pick 150 or so. I also went ahead and included footnotes for all of the off-season moves and acquisitions as well as injuries that might affect the season.

With all of that, I went ahead and created my own preseason rankings for 2006. Then, in one league I am participating in, I already know that I will have the ninth pick. So I took a look at the three most likely situations I will have in front of me on draft day, and I went ahead and did a full mock-draft on paper for each of the three possibilities, mapping out bye weeks and everything. For each of the earlier rounds, I left myself between two and four choices, while I left anywhere from four to ten for the later rounds, so I could account for the variations in who might be left. In the next few days, I plan on updating all of these as well as mapping out one more level each day...until draft day, when I should have at least my starting line-up (plus or minus two players) drawn up for nearly every possible draft outcome.

Umm...yeah, I should go to sleep now.

02 August 2006 1416 EDT
02 August 2006 1416 EDT Yeah, so I didn't blog yesterday because I kinda decided to take a quick impromptu mini-road trip to attend the Clearfield County Fair with Jennifer. It's been somewhere around three years since I saw her, so it was well worth the seven or eight hours of driving I did yesterday. Some positives to road trips include: Sheetz and good gas milage. I picked up a Powerball ticket for the $178 million pot while crossing through bumsville, PA, and I'm on pace to get about 450 miles on this last tank of gas. I know I've blogged about it before, but boy does that give me a good feeling inside - when I look at the odometer and see myself averaging above 25 mpg.

Other stuff...For some reason, Ian and my sister were talking about diamonds the other day, and they brought up this concept of creating diamonds from carbon extracted from human remains of loved ones. Anyway, I finally looked it up the other day and found two companies that did this, Gem Smart and LifeGem. It is a great idea, but also an expensive one, with prices ranging from about 5K for a 0.25 carat diamond to 20K for a full carat. The process also takes about three or four months to complete. But if you've got the time and money to spend from a nice inheritance, I guess it'd be much more reasonable. From an adult's remains, you can probably squeeze out twenty or so diamonds. They do it for pets, too, in case anyone is interested.

31 July 2006 2137 EDT
31 July 2006 2137 EDT I just got back from dinner with the family, and it was pretty cool. Everyone was there and everyone was happy...blah, blah, blah. There were some interesting developments that came up as well, all mainly positive. But what was interesting to me was that this was the second time in two weeks that I've been instructed not to blog about something. I don't know...for some reason, that doesn't really sit well with me. I mean, if something's a secret, then just tell me it's a secret and tell me who's in the club. Believe it or not, I'm actually really good at keeping secrets.

Speaking of which...my volunteer gig at the Alternative House has just gotten a little more serious. I have a big folder of papers I have to sign now, including confidentiality agreements, requests for criminal background checks, child protective services...the list goes on. Well, apparently, I've been volunteering so much that I have to go through the whole volunteer process now. I donated $11 to Fairfax County this afternoon when I went in to the County Police Department to get a fingerprint sheet made ($5) as well as a copy of my criminal arrest record ($5 - no arrests, btw). The last dollar was for two hours of parking since the fingerprint guy was out for about an hour while a small but ruly crowd gathered at his desk.

I don't know...I guess I'm not really upset about all of this extra work because I know everyone is just following policy. But it is a little frustrating. While I was standing around waiting for the fingerprint guy to come around, I started thinking about all of the money I spent on gas going back and forth to the tutoring sessions. It's kinda funny. For the amount of time I've spent teaching, I could've made a good thousand dollars or so whoring myself out as a private tutor. I didn't do the math until just now because I love teaching, and I have no problems with donating my time. But paying for gas...that's a different story.

Oh yeah...last thing. I have poison ivy, and I really need a hug.

31 July 2006 0344 EDT
31 July 2006 0344 EDT I was tossing and turning quite a bit when I went to bed tonight, so I decided that I just wouldn't go to sleep for a little while. Instead, I went back to the Perl and CGI book that Ben lent me a few months ago for my grad school tech project, and I told myself that I just wouldn't go to bed until a) I finished writing a comments section for my page or 2) ummm...until I got tired enough where I would just pass out instead of tossing and turning in bed.

As luck would have it, (drum roll, please) option 'a' won out. Granted, it's a bit of a ghetto comments section, but I wrote it all by myself and I'm really proud. I know a lot of people have suggested this in the past (including sisters, Brandee, Willow, Lucy, etc.), but I haven't really been able to focus like I was able to tonight. Again, it's nothing fancy. I know I'm not a programmer, but I have flashbacks of high school all the time, and I kinda like the fact that I hand-jam all of the code for this page. At the same time, because this page isn't automated, I don't have separate files for each entry and therefore don't have separate comments for each entry either. It's just a big LIFO chain. I figure I blog enough where that probably works out better anyway.

I'm looking at my computer clock right now...0343h. I don't think that's a mistake either. Maybe I'll be able to fall asleep now.

30 July 2006 1212 EDT
30 July 2006 1212 EDT Yesterday was fun. It started off with nice workout while I watched old episodes of Mythbusters, followed by a quick trip to the grocery store to get all of the ingredients/supplies for Jane's birthday cake. I met up with Ben later and we did the mallrat thing for a few hours before circling back to the house to watch the Rundown while piecing together Jane's cake. It was a good time. Jane took a digi-pic of it, so hopefully, she'll post it for you to see later. Anyway, after that, there was the requisite hour or so of karaoke before we were on the road.

Jane's party was pretty nerdy, as I believe eight of the attendees were former TJ students...plus, all of Jane's friends are pretty much nerds anyway. So, not only were there the usual computer/internet jokes, math jokes, and engineering jokes; but there were physics jokes, linguistics jokes...umm, regular, normal people jokes too? Yeah, it was such a good time that Jane got in trouble when the neighbors called twice to tell us to quiet down. There weren't any cops involved, but it was enough to get everyone to whisper for the last hour and a half of the night.

I rolled in a little after two in the morning and then went straight to bed to rest up for soccer this morning. That was fun, too, but I think I'm ready for a nap now.

29 July 2006 0349 EDT
29 July 2006 0349 EDT So Ben and I went to Herndon to see Gonzo's Nose perform again tonight. Their playlist wasn't as awesome this time, but it was still a good time. We followed that up by listening to some Avril on the way to the Tortilla Factory. I didn't realize how good of a mexican place it was. We ordered our food and it showed up like two minutes later. We ate it all in maybe ten minutes tops and were out the door in no time. That's how it should be.

Anyway, I've rehydrated since my evening of soccer and week of yardwork, gaining back all of my water weight. I've been eating a lot more and lifting too, putting on almost ten pounds in the last two days. Tomorrow will be hanging out and Jane's cool birthday thing, followed by Sunday morning soccer in Herndon again. Oh yeah...did I mention that I slept for about 12 hours on Thursday and maybe 9 hours today? I know, this is a rough life I've living these days. Envy me.

27 July 2006 2310 EDT
27 July 2006 2310 EDT I know how much everyone likes to backseat shop with me, so here is what I purchased during my four-hour, post-nap shopping spree today. Beginning with Target, where I cashed in a $50 debit card courtesy of the National Guard, I ended up only having to dish out about ten dollars for the following:

- 4 boxes Kashi GoLean cereal
- 4 boxes Kashi GoLean Crunch cereal
- 2 boxes Post Raisin Bran cereal
- 1 pair cargo shorts (on clearance!)
- 4 pair underwear (boxer briefs, also on clearance!!)
- 3 lbs of Planters honey roasted peanuts
- 1 lb watermelon Twizzlers
- 500ct 500mg vitamin C supplements (I ran out...go figure)
- cool little teacher thingy

From there, I went to Toys R Us, where I successful refrained from making any purchases. Then I went to Bed Bath and Beyond, where I picked up some cool LED lights for my living room, mainly stuff to help navigate when the room is darkened for movies. I stopped by Linen N Things afterwards, too, where I picked up a pair of awesome black leather curtains that will block out all sunlight.

Oh, and I can't forget my last stop...Taco Bell. I spent $4.90 on my beef grilled stuft burrito and two spicy chicken burritos. Next?

26 July 2006 2336 EDT
26 July 2006 2336 EDT As much as I've enjoyed all of the QT I've been spending with my mom these last few weeks, I am very happy that I don't have to wake up at 0500h tomorrow morning to get started. She and my dad are heading South for Stora's little sister's wedding. So with that said, I will be sleeping in until at least 0900h tomorrow. I still have tutoring and then I need to buy Jane a birthday present (shhh...don't tell her.). Actually, Ben and I are going to make something pretty cool for her on Saturday...and if I can't find a good present, I'll just go to the ATM and withdraw whatever the max is and give it to her in a creative way. It's the thought that counts, right? If only I played Animal Crossing, then I could've given her a completely worthless item and she would be happy.

I ended up joining a cool group of guys for a game of pick-up soccer this evening. It was awesome. Final score was like 6-4 or 6-5, with yours truly getting a hat-trick. On my second goal, I accidentally flipped the ball up in the air; but I ran under it and made it look like I meant to do it. And when I headed it into the goal, everyone went crazy. It was awesome. I just met these guys through a random Craigslist ad, and now they think I'm awesome at soccer. If I didn't have so much fun, I'd almost not want to go back so that my first impression wouldn't be tarnished. But yeah, good times. I must've burned over a thousand Calories in the two hours of playing in the heat. I have a couple of big hot-spots on the bottoms of my feet, which I am hoping will heal up by the next game on Sunday morning.

Anyway, not going to bed just yet. To reward myself, I ate all but six of the golden oreos left in the package, and I think I'm gonna heat up some corndogs before turning in, too. I don't want this sudden surge in cardio causing me to lose any more weight, you know?

25 July 2006 2340 EDT
25 July 2006 2340 EDT I was tempted not to blog today, in favor of going to bed with an extra half-hour or so of sleep. But then I thought to myself how disappointed my sisters would be when they didn't have anything to read at work. So here I am.

In spite of my decision to go for a three-mile run just a tad after midnight yesterday due to a bout of insomnia, I pulled myself out of bed at 0510h this morning to join my mother in some more yardwork at the house. Since last week, we've put somewhere around twenty hours into cultivating the exterior appearance of my former residence, starting every morning at 0530h. Of course, whenever I finish with that and my tutoring, I take a nice afternoon nap in my oh-so-inviting bed.

Speaking of which, I acquired a rather nice queen-sized bed frame this afternoon thanks to Craigslist's Free Stuff ads and a very generous donor. I've been scouting Craigslist a lot recently, to be honest. So far, I've found a roommate, a bed frame, and possibly a pick-up soccer game in the area. Of course, that would definitely cut into my nap time. I think I'll wait until I'm done with the house stuff before I start with the extra exercise.

I actually started keeping an excel spreadsheet of my physical activity at the beginning of this month, and I'm doing well so far. Since July 4th, I've only had three days without some sort of lifting, running, swimming, or yardwork. Most of the days are relatively light with less than an hour or so of exercise. But there are also five or six heavy days in there too. I just need to configure my diet now in order to pull everything together. There was just a little too much taco bell and Chinese delivery last month. I need to get back to my lean meat, tofu, and health cereals...of course, I say this after consuming a thousand Calories of golden oreos for lunch and another thousand Calories of corned beef hash for dinner. Don't worry, I still managed to squeeze in my 8000mg of vitamin C. The last thing I'd want to do would be to sacrifice my health.

24 July 2006 2304 EDT
24 July 2006 2304 EDT It's kinda funny how we tend to follow the same patterns of behavior over time. I guess that's why they call it human nature, right? Every once in a while, I make a conscious decision to reinvent myself, to transform into thenewsonny, usually due to some traumatic event in my life or after making some revelation, divine or otherwise.

I feel myself on the precipice right now, though I'm still not sure which way I'm going to go. Recently, there have been parts of my life where I've been taking immense risk; but in others, I've kept both feet on solid ground, playing it even safer than normal. I signed up for AAA today. Last month, when I moved, I even paid for insurance on the truck. When I was down at Pickett last month, I signed up for my VA health insurance benefits. And while all of these things seem like perfectly reasonable decisions, they also symbolize something more.

Is this what growing up is about? That we start worrying so much about what might happen, that we do what we can to cushion the blow? Part of me thinks that it's all just a part of growing up...but another part of me feels like it's a concession of some sort. I want my innocence back.

23 July 2006 2156 EDT
23 July 2006 2156 EDT I started off the day not doing much of anything productive, so I figured I would head over o Ben's place where I could do the same in the company of friends. I ate about a pound of hamburger meat within half an hour of my arrival. That was followed by a quick stop at Starbucks on our way to Blockbuster to buy some movies. I didn't really intend to spend a lot of money at first, but ended up with nine DVDs in my bag somehow. Go figure. In no particular order, they were:

- Transporter 2
- melinda and melinda
- Match Point
- Spanglish
- House of Sand and Fog
- Jarhead
- the Rundown
- Wedding Crashers
- Constantine

Now, I know some of you are concerned that I might be wasting money. I assure you that you couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, I saved a lot of money...because it was such a good deal. It cost me only about $52 after tax.

Anyway, from there, we went back to Ben's to watch movies. In five hours, we completed Team America, Deuce Bigelow 2, and Transporter 2. As you can probably tell from the selection, it was a very intellectual kind of gathering filled with hilarity and puerile comments about our respective maternal ancestry. Next...

22 July 2006 2232 EDT
22 July 2006 2232 EDT Today was just full of activity. I started off by getting up a little after 0800h this morning, and got moving immediately. I had laundry going as I went to Giant to pick up the last of the ingredients for my lasagna. It took me a little over an hour to prep after that, and then it was a quick haircut and shower while everything baked. From there, I packed up a few things and was on the road just a tad before noon to head over to Jane's for family time.

I had a great time and actually spent the rest of my day over there at Jane's. When the family finally disbursed around mid-afternoon, I pulled out the boarding shorts Lenny and Steph got me during their Hawaiian vacation and went swimming for a few hours with Ian and sis. Cool trick Ian showed me was how to blow ring-shaped bubbles in the water. Good stuff. I also got a little tanner as I killed off my insect bites with the chlorine. After that, we went to Springfield Mall in order to try on jeans at American Eagle in return for free movie tickets. That was fun. And then we went back to Jane's to eat some lasagna while watching part of the Fugitive...also at which point I excused myself because I was just exhausted. I already went one day this week without a nap (Thursday) and this second day was starting to take its toll.

And with that, I am off to bed. Good night, moon.