| 2006-08-22 22:41:11 696 So on Friday the 16th, el Presidente sends out an email that squashed our hopes of having a half work day for the South Carolina football game with the statement "University offices will remain open as regularly scheduled, although departments are encouraged to use flex time arrangements and personal leave to help reduce the number of vehicles on campus as football game traffic is arriving." Soooo they expect the hard working campus staff to use personal leave which is worth $$$ to free up parking spots. Last week I purchased my Maroon plan tickets so that I can legally get into the games and today I got my UPSed tickets. Along with them is a nice brocure with a seating chart and parking diagram that has this great bit, "Campus offices will close and classes will dismiss at 12:30 p.m. for the Thursday, August 31 football game with the University of South Carolina." Also is this biggie, "Bulldog Club lots will be available for parking at that time." Sooooo since that game day is one of the days I plan on utilizing my staff parking decal, am I going to get towed after 12:30 for parking in a Bulldog Club lot? Only one way to find out... | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-08-16 20:31:53 695 I'm getting married! We actually have a place now! Since Florida did not work out, we are going to get married at good ole historic Monmouth in my favorite town. So it looks like we will get married there on Saturday November 18 and spend the night there. Then on Sunday the plan is to catch the 1PM flight out of Jackson to Atlanta to get on down to Jamaica. The traffic is picking up in town with classes looming tomorrow. Campus is a challenge to bike across again so I had a bit of fun today. It only hit 99 today and it seemed that the heat index was a bit lower than Tuesday's wonderful 115. Some jackass tried to cut me off in his truck going north to the redlight at 182 and Montgomery today. I held my lane and he ended up with the his truck mostly in the turning lane. What made it better is that he was in a city truck. I am getting a lot more comfortable on the fixed gear. It takes a whole lot of muscle to make the thing slow down on a downhill though. I rewrapped the handlebar tape and adjusted the angle of the brake pads tonight so hopefully it will ride better around all of the students' cars in the morning. It does not do too bad for a bike that is 10 years older than I am... | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-08-12 15:12:19 694 So Cory beat me by a whole 1:03 in the the Tupelo King of the Hill Tri last weekend. So that means that it is on for next weekend's Degray Sprint in good ole Arkansas... Emily is already proving to be excellent wife to be at spending the money; purchasing a several several hundred dollar antique to put our DVD's in. It had better be pretty when I see it. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-07-30 22:59:46 693 On Friday Emily and I met up with Sarah and Cory at Anthony's in Westpoint for dinner. Cory talked me into coming over to the base on Saturday to run and mountain bike. So I got over to Columbus on Sat. morning and we ran 4.5 freaking miles. Somehow I finished. Then we went for a little bit of mountain biking around SAC lake. All was good and we made plans to go down to Cuba AL to ride the route of the upcoming Cuba Challenge road race. Instead of starting at the race start, we started in Lauderdale, about two miles from the route. We started out ok and had a massive descent and both came close to 40mph. Then I started to get tired on the rolling hills pretty quickly. Being 96 degrees and sunny didn't help much either. We crossed over I-20 toward the real race start and turned around from there. By then we were both almost out of water and I was starting to feel pretty bad. Cory was a trooper though, having to wait for me at the tops of hills. According to our map, we had two big hills to get up on the loop we were following. There was a hill that never ended and I actually pushed my bike up it. It made the "big hill" in our first tri look tiny. We ended up coming out in the wrong place on the loop from missing a turn. Luckily that cut out a few miles and we headed back to the car. I had one sip of water left when we finished and I felt like crap. Bought some water and Powerade at the gas station and we headed back to Starkvegas. After drinking a 32oz Powerade, drinking ~30oz more of water, and eating a ton of pizza, I was still 5lbs underweight from what I weighed this morning, so I was just slightly dehydrated. I can't wait until October when bike rides will be fun and cool again... | |||||||||||||||||||||
2006-07-29 18:21:54 692
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| 2006-07-23 00:48:19 691 Went to New Orleans with Emily last weekend. Stayed at the St Peter House which was an interesting place. We went to the zoo in the rain and went on a ghost tour of the French Quarter. We ended up being the only two on the tour which was sweet. On Sunday we went to Ripley's Believe it or Not and it was pretty cool too. Crescent City Brewhouse is an excellent place to eat and had wonderful microbrew beer. The Voodoo BBQ on Decatur was not so good, in fact the service absolutely sucked. The Old Absinthe House was a great place to hang out at. Emily and I talked to the manager and he showed us the back part that was under renovations with all of the neato 150+ year old antiques. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-07-20 22:19:29 690 Currently I am at the 2006 Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia convention in Cleveland, OH and it is totally sweet so far. Emily and I spent last weekend in ye olde New Orleans and had a blast. I am so freaking tired... | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-07-03 14:38:17 689 Cory and I went mountain biking in the research park on Saturday. I carried my phone in a bag along with a bottle of Powerade and the Powerade had enough condensation to kill my phone, a nearly two year old LG L1200. I went to the small Cingular place by Shep's this morning and they had no phones in stock. The Cingular place next to Kroger had the Sony Ericsson Z520a in stock and that is what I wanted anyway. The online special was to get the phone for $50 so I was expecting it to be pretty expensive in the store. It ended up only being $69 and I get a $50 rebate so it will not be so bad. I rode over to the base yesterday and Cory and I went for a ride. Rode within .25 miles of Alabama on this big loop that went through Caldonia. It was so freaking hot. According to weather.gov it was 99F at 3:55 yesterday. We drank a ton of water. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-07-01 17:15:11 688 I'm no bike mechanic. I am a bike breaker. Yesterday as I rode the fixed gear to the apartment for lunch, I came to a grinding halt. Somehow I managed to wrinkle up a steel dropout and pushed the drive side chainstay out. Since it is a steel frame, it is fixable and weldable so Emily's dad is going to help me try to straighten it out on Monday. 
Four day weekend! Yay! | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-06-24 11:31:09 687 I went on my longest solo ride ever, 36.55 according to my odometer or 37.29 according to gmap pedometer. I am exploring a route from Starkville to the Air Force base and was hoping to find a safe backroad to West Point by going over to Tibbee Road and heading north. Turns out that Tibbee turns to gravel after about a mile so that's no good on a road bike. So it looks like you can ride 182 all of the way into Columbus but that would be kinda scary. The safest route actually looks like taking Jackson/389 out to 50 and then head east and go through West Point but it is sooo far out of the way. 31 miles to West Point one way! I might tackle that one later on when I want to do a metric century. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-06-20 20:37:15 686 I'm engaged to an RN! Goooooo Emily! Emily took the NCLEX last Thursday. She got cut off at 75 questions and thought she did terrible. Her mom called her in the wee hours of Saturday morning to tell her that she showed up as an RN on the MS Board of Nursing's website. The Leader is alive. I was able to cannibalize some parts from the poor Trek like the brifters, the front derailleur, most of the cables, the pedals, and the seatpost and seat. Installing the front fork was the most fun, especially having to take a hacksaw to a carbon fiber that I paid $80 for. I had a difficult time getting the headset to seat into the frame and ended up making a homemade press from some handy materials from Lowe's. My favorite part of the bike is the crankset; I got an Ultegra Octalink bottom bracket and a brand new 105 crankset with 172.5mm long cranks. It is soooo smooth! I managed to make my 7-speed wheel fit properly by adding a spacer bolt on the non-drive side. My rear derailleur is an old Ultregra that I had picked up on ebay a while back and had used on the Trek back when I had my first "accident" and bent the rear hanger. Sadly I had bent this derailleur to work with the bent hanger, so I was semi-successful in bending it back for the new bike. So the Leader rides wonderfully and shifts pretty good too. It is a really really twitchy frame so I really need to check the alignments on everything. The next upgrades to come are a new rear nine speed hub, rear derailleur, and maybe Santa Claus will bring me a set of Ultegra brifters... Tomorrow I will be engaged to a 25 year old RN! Yay for sweet low car insurance rates! | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-06-14 09:13:53 685 I got my order in from Bike Tools Etc. yesterday of the stuff I ordered for the blue Raleigh before I destroyed the Trek. I laced the rear wheel up with a 3-cross and discovered that the spokes I ordered were a bit too long so there was no way to tighten up the wheel. So I double twisted each pair of spokes to take out the extra length as an experiment and it worked! I rode this monster to work this morning and lived to tell about it. It is hard to remember not to coast... 
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| 2006-06-09 16:27:10 684 My poor Trek 1400 has officially died. Yesterday the derailleur hanger finally broke off as I was riding back to work after lunch. At least a year ago I had a small accident that basically sucked the derailleur into the rear wheel and bent and slightly cracked the hangar. By forcing it back into place with a big crescent wrench, I was able to get something that worked. In January I noticed that the threads in the hanger were non existant so I drilled out the hole a little bigger and put a steel insert in it to screw the derailleur into. This worked great until yesterday when the small bit of aluminum finally broke off. It actually broke my poor little low milage 105 derailleur in half. What makes it worse is that the Raleigh that David gave me is out of service too, as I took wire cutters to the rear wheel spokes just last week. The new spokes for it will be in Tuesday of next week. Of course I have already ordered a new frame, a Leader 735R and it will be here on Wednesday. A new bottom bracket, fork, headset, and stem are on their way too for later in the week. Right now I am bidding on a sweet 105 brand new crankset on ebay. The only other thing I need is for my slightly narrow 7-speed wheel to have enough axle to fit on this wider frame... Going to Natchez for the first time since Christmas this weekend! | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-06-05 22:26:33 683 I was sleepy last night and did not finish the weekend. After the 5k Cory and I ate breakfast/lunch at Cracker Barrel with Sarah, her mom, and her grandmother. After that I headed back toward Starkville on the Trace. Took the 389 exit and ended up in Montpelier and eventually made it to Pheba and back to Starkville. I wanted to keep driving so I picked up Emily and I drove to Artesia because I had never been there. Turns out that Artesia is not that impressive. I kept south on Alt 45 and turned east toward Alabama. We got some lunch at a gas station and ate it at the Tom Bevill Dam and watched the boats go up and down the Tenn-Tom. We went to the visitor's center which is in a fake antebellum house. It had some neat wildlife exibits in it and there was a retired river boat, U.S. Snagboat Montgomery, that we got to explore too. It turned out that its airhorn was functional and that was pretty neat. On Sunday we decided to go to the water park at the casino with Sesti and Kallie. We stopped for lunch at Wendy's in Louisville and had the dumbest Wendy's person everj take our orders. It took her 10 minutes to get the orders, but at least she got them right. We had Applebee's coupons for buy one get one free tickets so it wasn't expensive to get into the park. It was my first time at a waterpark and I had a lot of fun, I even did the freefall slide that Emily wouldn't do. At 6:00 when the park closed we decided to get something to eat at the former Hard Rock place next door. We won't make that mistake again as the food took an hour to get to us even though they were not busy, we were covered in flies, and our waiter really really sucked. Sesti and Kallie claim that there is a curse of bad service that follows them everywhere. Today I decided to go on a long bike ride because the water park yesterday screwed up my schedule by a day. My goal was to try and make it to Pheba and back. Turns out it is right at 14 miles to Pheba from my apartment. I ate a Hammer Gel for the first time and it really did make me feel better halfway through the ride. I finished the first 21 miles in 1:06 of riding time which is not to far from my goal of being able to do 21 miles in an hour for the next triathlon. It was a 28 mile round trip and I added a loop through campus to put me up to 33. Also this put me at 900 miles exactly for the year. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-06-04 23:05:27 682 Had another wonderful weekend. After work on Friday I drove to Tupelo (yes I actually drove somewhere in my own car!) and met up with Cory. We checked into our favorite Tupelo hotel and walked across to Vanelli's and saw Philidelphia Plowden's comedy act. On Saturday morning Cory and I got up pretty early and got across town to Veterans Park. Joe, who ran with us in Jackson and the volksmarch with us, was there and had came with another Air Force guy, I think his name was Jake. Anyway Jake was out running the course as his warmup when we got there because he is one of those super crazy running people. The race started a little after 8:00 and Cory, Joe, and I started way back in the pack so that we would not get passed by as many people in Jackson. The course was fun and made a strange series of circles so that Cory and I could see the fast people (Jake) completing the third mile as we were in the middle of the second. Cory and I had enough in us at the 3 mile marker to sprint to the finish so that we both finished in 25:04. His goal was to break 15 and mine was to do better that my Jackson time of 28:48ish. Anyway it turned out that Jake won the race, and he and a few other of the speedy guys ran the course again to cool down! | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-05-28 23:58:56 681 So yesterday was the tri it on triathlon (or YTRI) in good ole Birmingham. As soon as I got off work on Friday afternoon Emily and I headed towards Birmingham. I dropped her off at the hotel and met up with Cory at the information meeting where they pretty much rehashed everything about tris that we had learned from the internets. Cory's Air Force buddy Jessop was there too and I got to meet him. So we signed in and got our packets and got a few decent goodies but nothing really super. Cory and I drove the bike course one more time and then picked the girls up and met with Jessop and his lady at the Macaroni Grill to load up on pasta. After that Emily and I hit the Bruno's at the Summit (the awesomest grocery store I have ever been too and a reason in itself to move to B'ham) to buy me breakfast for the next day, a banana, Pop Tarts, and Gatorade. I did not sleep very well and had pretty much woken up at 4:30 AM. Cory and I got up at 5 and I made myself eat. We got everything down to Emily's car and got the bikes racked up (we had the bikes in the hotel room to keep them safe.) The parking lot was actually starting to fill up when we made it to the race site at 6:00. We got our stuff carried up the hill and started setting up our transition areas. At some point I got body marked which was kinda wierd having someone write numbers on my arms and legs. Guess if I died on the course they would know who I was :) There was another "meeting" that went over the rules right before we moved to the pool area to get the race started. Out of all of the tris that I plan to do, this one had the strangest swim setup. The distance was 200yd which is 8 laps in a 25yd pool. So they took a 5 lane pool and halved the middle 3 lanes to make 8 lanes total so that to make 200, you would swim the length of the pool, switch lanes and come back until you had crossed every lane. This sounds wonderful on paper but kinda gets out of hand in practice. Also our race numbers were assigned on our estimated swim time when we registered and it seemed that most people had lied about their ability. The first guys that started swam like fish and freestyled throught the whole swim. At about #30 things started going downhill with people bunching up and a few guys even walking a bit through the pool. Stupid me had submitted 6min as my swim time because I had no idea what I could do so I was in with the slow people. In the first 25yd I caught up with the guy in front of me. After the second lap he let me pass at the wall and then it did not take long to catch up with the next girl. She was so slow and would not let me get around. So finally in the last length of the pool, a whole lane that was not divided, I swam around her and the two people in front of her. The freaking ladder climbing out of the pool was the worst part of the swim. I ran to my bike and of course I had screwed up the placement of my gear and put my shirt in the wrong place. Got it on, my helmet, and glasses and headed out and saw Emily and Sarah taking pictures right at the edge of the transition area. I was doing the "shoes already attached to the pedals" trick so it was easy to run to the bike line barefoot. The bike was a blur. I passed a ton of people and no one ever passed me. The "hill of doom" was not nearly as bad as I remembered it being when Cory and I rode it the first time. I made it back in on the bike and was feeling ok when I headed out on the run. The first mile of the run was all downhill and I managed to run almost all of it. After the turn around I was hurting and really really hot so I would run a little and then walk a bit. Somewhere around then Cory went by his bike. When I got back close to the spectators again I started running and managed to run all of the way to the finish line to finish in an official time of 0:53:26 to meet my goal of under 55:00. Alas but Cory ended up beating me in 51:00 with his speedy running legs.
We did pretty good, in the male beginner 25-30 category Cory placed 3rd so he got a little trophy and a couple prizes and I ended up 5th with nothing but the knowledge that I finished 5th but could have been 3rd as a clydesdale... Out of 316 finishers, I came in 74th and Cory was 55th. The whole experience was so much fun for me even though I didn't manage to beat Cory. We will not race together again until August so I have a little bit of time work on getting better. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-05-16 16:38:46 680 The last week and a half has been nuts. I survived my exams, Emily's pinning and graduation, and a cruise. My stats final was Friday afternoon. Immediately after it I headed to Columbus for Emily's pinning. I got to meet Sarah's family and Cory's mom and sister there. Afterwards we waited for a table at Harvey's and finally got to eat. MUW's graduation was Saturday morning and Emily and Sarah both walked. Cory and I got good seats in the balcony so he could video. Afterward we went out to the base and had Little Dooey's. Emily and I came back to Starkville and I spent the rest of the night and Sunday studying for formal languages. On Monday morning I took the exam and it was kinda strange being my first oral exam. Almost like the old days of the Boy Scout board of review. I did good enough on it, and then I headed back to the apartment. Russ and Emilie showed up a little early so I went ahead and packed my stuff in their Escape. Of course we got to Emily's earlier than she expected so was not even ready to go. We did get on the road a little after 9:00 and Russ drove like an idiot so we got to Mobile early too. We found the cruise terminal without much trouble and started getting checked in. It was way more efficient than the New Orleans terminal was last year so we got on the Holiday pretty quick. As for the cruise, the Holiday is tiny, old, and smells in places. The food in the dining rooms at night was awesome but the buffets were not so great. There were a lot of scheduled events that did not actually happen or at least it seemed that way. The comedian did not make the boat for the first two nights and a massage class did not happen either. We did go to two art auctions mainly for the free champagne. On Wednesday we did not get to dock in Cozumel and had to ride the little boats in. Emily, Sarah, Cory, and I went on the same ATV excursion that Emily and I did last year. At least it was billed as the same but turned out to be a lot different. The path was freshly cut through the woods and was super rough. The beach we went to was not rustic like last year and had bar at it. We did not get to go snorkeling because the "ocean was too rough." We did play in the water some but it was not a very good beach. On Thursday we went to Play del Carmen and had a great day on the beach. I apparently covered my entire body with sunscreen except my lips, my shoulders, and the inside edges of my shins. On Saturday we rode back with Sarah and Cory and made it back to Starkville pretty quick. It was a great trip because we knew people on the boat, but if Emily and I ever cruise again, it won't be with Carnival. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-05-04 21:08:29 679 Emily has an interview at the Oktibbeha County Hospital ER tomorrow! Yay! If she gets a job there and can work there instead of Tupelo, we will save like $10k in gas money in two years. "If you cut me in half, I wouldn't fight with my legs, I'd try to work with 'em and get us to a hospital." "I have some very cool apps that are bundled with me. Calculator. Clock." Yes I am an Apple stockholder and I do own an iMac (even if I got it from eBay...). | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-05-01 16:17:15 678 Somehow Cory, Joe, and I finished the Volksmarch on Saturday morning. Turns out that it was a 10.7 mile loop around the airfield on the base. We ran the first 5.5 miles, walked 2 to the 7.5 mile water station, and then ran the 3.2 left back in. I was still feeling good at the end so I picked up a the pace a bit on the last 3/4 mile and beat Cory and Joe in by a minute or so. My final time was 2:09:49. Cory grilled for lunch and then we spent the afternoon making our "training" video. The first part of it is here on Cory's website. Emily and I spent the night at Cory and Sarah's so we could get up early and head to Birmingham. We found the Mountain Brook YMCA where the tri is going to start. We drove around the course so we would know where to go. The weather was starting to look bad so we got out on our bikes as quick as we could. The wind was terrible at the start. Our camera crew got ahead of us and got some good footage. Somewhere around mile 3 it started raining but we kept going. Between miles 4 and 5 is a monster descent that we were both constantly braking to keep under 30. It was scary because my brakes don't work so well when they are wet. Luckily the mother of all hills was coming up to slow us down at mile 5. According to the Gmap Pedometer the ascent is somewhere around 130 feet in less than half a mile. Nothing in Starkville even compares! The best hill that I can think of to train on in Starkville is on Garrard Road from west to east where it rises about 90 feet in a mile. Anyway we finished up in a little more than 30 minutes, Cory beat me in at the end. I am ok with 30 minutes because of the crappy weather and the 10.7 miles on foot the day before. The entire triathlon is going to be less than the Volksmarch! I will have to pace myself a bit better, I went up the first hill to fast and barely had enough steam left to make it up the hill of doom. So we got cleaned up at the Y and then went to Stix to eat. Was my first time for hibachi. Went to the shopping center behind the Galleria for a while and the girls shopped for clothes. After a while we went to the Summit and Emily and I looked for a linen shirt for me to wear at the wedding. We found some potentials but did not get anything. Cory and I both got more triathlon reading material at the Barnes and Noble and then we headed home. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-05-01 13:04:19 677 Thanks Northand for my quickly changing IP! I am going to have to put my script back up to auto update. Right now it has changed back into the original net , 69.59.104.167. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-04-28 08:34:53 676 Too much school work this week! Sucks when I have tests and projects stacked up when I am only taking 6 hours... 600.4 on the bike odometer for this year. Comes out to a not so massive 5.13 miles per day. I think that is pretty good because there have been many a day that I did not even touch the bike. I finally figured out the identity of the bike David gave me, it is a Raleigh Reliant. Funny thing is that mine started out being red and now it is the same blue color as this guys original paint. I did commute on the Raleigh for a week or so, but then I had the bright idea to convert it to a single speed. Everything is so close to working, but the axle will not quite hold against the direct strain. Looks like I will invest in a single speed bolt on hub when I get done buying tri stuff. Everything is on track in my triathlon training except the swimming. Early tomorrow morning Emily and I are going to Columbus to do a Volksmarch with Cory on the base. Apparently we are going to run/walk 10 miles and our goal is to do it in 2 hours. Emily and I are going to spend the night and then we are getting up Sunday morning to go to Birmingham so that Cory and I can ride the bike course for our first tri. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-04-25 21:05:46 675 Had a stats test this morning and I think I did pretty good on it. Formal languages is tomorrow... | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-04-22 14:03:53 674 The offical results of last week's 5k are here. I placed high at 122nd place with an offical time of 28:49. For some reason I pulled a new ip from Northland, 12.183.52.119. Yay, new ip. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-04-17 16:26:13 673 The 5K was loads of fun. Cory and Sarah picked me up around noon on Saturday because Emily and her mom had gone down early to Jackson to shop for wedding dresses. Made it down and we ate too much at Corky's. We killed some time by dropping the girls at the "mall" on Lakeland while we went to the Bike Rack. They had the most assembled tri and road bikes that we had ever seen in one place. I made a purchase, some more red bar tape to put on before my first tri. We picked up the girls and headed downtown and got to park within a couple blocks of the race. We got all signed in and Emily started slathering one of the free sun screens on me. It made a good photo op for the Clarion Ledger lady and we ended up making the paper. There were at least a couple hundred people there to run. Cory, Joe, and I got in the mid right of the pack at the start line. The girls got some good pictures of us taking off. We did the first mile in 7:30 which was way to fast. At about 1.5 I fell back from Cory and Joe. The 2 mile water station seemed like it was closer than it should have been. After it was High street which was awful. You could see the huge hill that goes up into downtown from more than a half mile away. In there I walked a bit, but I did run up the hill, and then I walked a bit more. I thought that the finish was coming up quick because the Capital looked like the building we were going to end up at but it was still a ways away. Anyway I finished in a super slow unofficial 28:48. Cory finished somewhere around 26:30 and Joe was around 28:00. So I almost kept up and that made me happy. My only real goals were to finish and to do it under 30 minutes. Our first tri (a mere 200yd swim, 8.5mi bike, 2mi run), is coming up in six weeks so I've got to get out and work hard starting tomorrow. Four weeks after that one I am going to do a real sprint tri that has 1/3mi swim, 18mi bike, and 3mi run. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-04-11 23:55:12 672 Emily spent most of last week at St Jude's and got back late Friday night. On Saturday we went to the Maben fair in the park. I bought a wonderful caramel cake from a lady. Later on we went over to the Air Force base and Sarah got us on. We went and looked at all of the cargo planes for "Career day." Cory stayed busy most of the time taking care of the Thunderbirds. Later on we got to go to a hanger party and it was pretty interesting. On Saturday morning we got up and started walking with Sarah to the airshow. We got picked up by a bus before we made it too far. We found a good spot and set up the chairs, but after a while Cory called because he managed to get us VIP tickets. So we got to migrate into the VIP area with its free food and beverages. The airshow was great, there were so many awesome planes. I got to see a B-2 flying for the first time. There was also a flyby by a B-1 and a F-22. The Thunderbirds were pretty good but the stunt pilot Jim Leroy in a biplane named the Bulldog was a whole lot more entertaining. The Thunderbirds were a little much "hey look at us and our mighty precision" and Jim Leroy was like "I am going to fly the crap out of this plane sideways and freak everybody out." Anyway I got plenty of sun and am a bit burned on my face and arms. I put the most sunscreen on my neck and just a little on my face. Just days until the 5k! | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-04-07 01:11:32 671 The Wailers were like a 3/10. Not a good show at all. Juliette Lewis was in a My Name is Earl episode. The world is complete. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-04-06 19:51:51 670 Apple closed at 61.17 on Tuesday. Apple announced Boot Camp which allows Intel based Macs to dual boot XP. Apple closed at 71.24 today. Gooooooooooo stock market! Idiots, if they think running Windows is a good thing, I don't care who speculates on Apple stock. I am still down on the investment however because I was still buying in January at 84.87. That hurts. Emily is at St Jude's again this week slaving away for free. She absolutely loves it though even though the stories she tells me are really really sad. Looks like I will be living in Memphis in the next few years. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-03-29 21:09:40 669 Yay stock market! I made a whole $28.30 today; my Apple came up 6% and my Ford is back where I bought it. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-03-29 14:45:15 668 So I set up my NCAA bracket on facebook but didn't join any pools with it. So right now I have 113 points which puts me #24 at MSU. I had the Final Four picked except that I had Tennessee making it over George Mason. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2006-03-29 08:03:45 667 It's been a week. This past Friday, Sesti and I got out of town to go to Delta State and check out their FMA chapter. It was fun, ate at a neat place called the Airport Grocery in Cleveland. On Saturday we met with the chapter a little more and then headed up to North West. Stopped in Clarksdale and went to the Ground Zero Blues Club for lunch. I can't wait to make a special trip back some weekend night for the music. The North West chapter had it together. They have pretty nice facilites too; a band hall that is way nicer than the garage MSU has. After their inspection, Sesti and I made a swing through Southaven to pick up some Boddington's and then headed back to Starkvegas. Last night was Emily's induction into Sigma Theta Tau which she had forgotten to tell me about until the last minute. It was the lamest "initiation" ever. They got pinned! Then they got so sign a book! Woo! Took 20 minutes to go through ~30 women and then we got out of there and went to Little Tokyo with Cory, Sarah, and Joanna. Emily ate her smoked salmon again and really really liked it. For a girl who won't eat corn because of the texture that is amazing. So Emily starts her preceptorship with St. Jude's tomorrow so she is going to head up to her aunt's tonight. She has to work a couple twelve hour shifts this week. |
