| 2006-11-26 17:17:02 726 My first post as a married man and from another rainy damned country!! Yay! |
| 2006-11-16 07:31:26 725 Saturday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 69. Calm wind becoming west around 5 mph. |
| 2006-11-15 07:40:43 724 Saturday: Partly cloudy, with a high near 69. North northwest wind around 5 mph. |
| 2006-11-14 18:24:24 723 Saturday's forecast for Natchez as of now from the National Weather Service: Mostly sunny, with a high near 68. North northwest wind around 5 mph. Yay, I'm getting married. In days. |
| 2006-11-13 22:27:42 722 Less than a week! Forecast is currently "Saturday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 69." This morning the forecast was a high of 64 so it looks like the odds of good weather are getting better. |
| 2006-11-07 22:42:35 721 Logistics. Makes a honeymoon complicated. Never had to plan this many reservations and confirmations and stuff before. |
| 2006-11-02 18:51:49 720 This past weekend was the weekend that all other weekends from here on out shall be measured against. I took off half a day on Friday, got all packed up, and Sesti picked me up. We met up with Josh and Bryan and headed south. After dark we made it to the Warwick Hotel. I checked us in and Josh found a parking garage next door. The lobby looked great and things started to go downhill from there. The elevator was one of the smallest ever; the four of us barely fit on it with our bags. The room was interesting with bad carpet and was in general disrepair. At least it was cheap. We headed out to find the Crescent City Brewhouse but missed it and ended up at Margaritaville. I had a cheeseburger covered in seafood and it was great. From there we headed back to the hotel, which was a freaking long walk. After Bryan poured Dr Pepper everywhere, we headed out to Bourbon Street. We were tired of walking so we found a place to sit down for a while. It was a late night but we had a lot of fun. On Saturday morning we went to the Cafe du Monde. Pretty soon after we went to Crescent City and I had some great crab stuffed shrimp. In the afternoon Sesti, Josh, and I headed toward the city park for Voodoo. The trolleys were packed so we started walking north on Canal. I gmaped things on my phone and saw that it was a long long way to the park. We stopped in front of the Days Inn and a cab stopped for us. Had the best of luck as the couple who rode with us were MSU alumns and gave Josh a ticket. The cab driver was nuts though. Luckily we survived the trip and got to walk about another mile into the park. After making it through security, we watched Social Distortion and then the Chili Peppers came on. It was awesome. The Peppers put on a great show. Afterward we headed out the gates and got the privilege of paying $10 to catch a bus back to downtown. Met up with Bryan and made a circuit down Bourbon to check out all of the crazy costumes people were out in. On Sunday we got up and headed to Abita Springs across the causeway. I ate a ton of fried seafood and it was great. The Andy Gator was nice too. I even bought a tshirt. Afterward we headed on back to Starkvegas. |
| 2006-11-01 22:54:26 719 Thank you Wamu for all of your advertisements and not offering accounts in the great state of Mississippi. |
| 2006-11-01 22:18:26 718 Yay, MythBusters had a Kubrick reference to 2001. |
| 2006-10-31 22:47:05 717 October is nearly over. So no more unreadable pink. Until next year! |
| 2006-10-25 19:56:45 716 So I wanted some good ole healty fried chicken tonight and did not feel like thawing stuff in the freezer. My original plan was to go to KFC but I gave up on that when I saw the drive through line coming around the building and inside was packed too. Thinking that the new place, Ravin', might be cheaper and faster, I headed there. I was completely wrong on the fast and cheap. I got the 6 piece strips with a side of hush puppies for a whopping $9.79. The hush puppies were good, but the chicken strips were not the largest or the best tasting by far. I though that this place was part of a chain, but apparently it is not as their website, http://www.ravincravin.com/, is not exactly developed as of today. Also their credit card receipt it titled with "YOUR COMPANY NAME." Next time KFC is busy, I'm going to Zaxby's. Watching World's Tallest People on TLC. Turns out there is an international Tall Club and I am tall enough to join. |
| 2006-10-24 16:12:00 715 Made some more progress on wedding stuff. Last night I stamped and sealed a load of invitations so we got them sent of at the mailing place on Main Street. Emily picked up her wedding ring at Montgomery's. It turned out really nice from the engraving that was put into it to match her engagement ring. We went to the Circuit Clerk's and picked up the license. So I think that means that almost everything is planned except finishing up invitations, Emily figuring out decoration stuff, and something else that I am sure is important. |
| 2006-10-21 10:00:43 714 Emily and I got our blood test results back yesterday applied for our license. Get to pick it up on Monday. Four weeks to the day from the wedding! Tivo got To Catch A Predator for me. It is absolutely nuts. |
| 2006-10-18 16:02:42 713 Got my test for the syphilis today. Emily did too. A whole $13 each. It took all of five minutes to do us both after we got to wait almost an hour at the health department. We get to pick the results up Friday morning and then hopefully go ahead and get our license. Pass the three day waiting period (like it is a gun) and we get to pick up the license. Our reception invitations came in yesterday so Emily is going to try and get a start on them today. I ordered stamps yesterday too, the most I have ever spent on freaking postage. It has been a week of bike issues for me. I got a sweet ~1977 Raleigh frame from eBay for cheap and built it up with my fixed components last Thursday. Then I decided to up the gearing by putting a 52t chainring on the front. Test rode it and everything worked well. I rode it to work and during the day the chain jumped off. When I headed home for lunch it jumped off again around Coconut's. By then the chainring was bent and it did not work very well so I had to walk the rest of the way home. So I put the original 42t chainring back on and everything seemed good. Yesterday morning I headed to campus and felt some strange slippage. I thought that maybe I had somehow loosened the cog and that it had tightened itself. At the second stop sign on Montgomery it slipped so bad I was spinning the pedals and not going anywhere. So I coasted back down to the apartment and got my car. It was raining so I didn't want to get the good bike out. At lunch I was able to get the cog off and found that I had managed to do the worst possible thing, stripping the threads from the hub. Lucky for me, my hub is fixed on one side and has a free wheel on the other, so I flipped it to the free wheel side and rode back to work. When I built the wheel, I tensioned it for the fixed side so there were a lot of poppy noises. Everything rode wonderfully and I was thinking about leaving it as a single speed forever. So today after lunch I am riding back up the big hill and hear a pop. Yep it was a spoke. The wheel was out of true enough that it brushed the frame, but I did not think it was too bad and started coasting back to the apartment. Should have walked it because at the bottom of the hill the tire completely blew out. So now I have a seriously out of true wheel and a shredded tire. Yay! Had to ride the good bike back this afternoon and made it in less than ten minutes. I am going to cannablize a tire from Emily's bike because it is a 27" setup too and I have a few spokes left to fix the wheel. |
| 2006-10-12 21:58:38 712 Don't fear the reaper! Oh yeah, Memorial Hall's fire was just a steam pipe exploding. Nothing like good ole arson in Dorman less than 12 hours before. |
| 2006-10-12 11:03:24 711 Campus is burning. Someone tried to burn Dorman last night so it is taped up with police tape now and no one can go in. The construction workers set off the fire alarm in Lee around 9:00 this morning. At the same time there was a fire in Memorial hall. Steve, Kevin, and I rode around campus to see the fire trucks at Memorial and Dorman. |
| 2006-10-10 22:05:14 710 Ran five miles with Kevin at a new personal record for me today. 44:17 in a loop starting at Hartness and University running through campus to 182, back down Engineering Row, in front of Perry, and then back to the start. Makes me happy seeing that it was taking me more than 20 minutes to run a mere two miles in March. We are certainly on track to run the Mercedes half marathon in Feb in under two hours. I got to see the Five Browns last night. The chapter got to usher the concert. I got there at 6:00 and the first floor of Lee was already full. At 7:00 we let people in. For the first time there was reserved seating so Sesti and I got to guard a section of seating. Sesti was great at getting people to the right seats because he had done it before at the Pyramid. They started the program with Rhapsody in Blue on five pianos which was freaking awesome. Also in the first set was Aaron Copland's Simple Gifts which is a great song and plus he is a Sinfonian. After intermission Lehman and I passed microphones around the audience for a question and answer session. The next song was Scenes from Westside Story and I had to stay for that since I got to see the Cleveland Orchestra play the same thing this summer. They were wonderful, but I was tired from having to stand up most of the time so I got out of there then. |
| 2006-10-09 09:46:32 709 This weekend was the Heel and Crank Duathlon in Huntsville. Emily let me have the Accord to drive over there but she had driven back from Memphis on Thursday and left it covered with bugs and with no gas. So during lunch on Friday, I ran by the hospital to eat with Emily and managed to get the car clean, loaded, and gassed up. I took off at 2:00 to get a good start and picked Kevin up at his place. Drove to the Air Force base and picked up Cory at the gate. We travelled a backwoods way that headed more directly over to I-65 instead of looping south to get through Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. It was a nice pretty drive with a lot of super big hills. Made it to Huntsville around 7:00 but our directions to the hotel were not working because google maps said it was on "Airport RD SW" instead of "Airport RD" and we were looking for the wrong place. So we gave up and found an Italian place called Tellini's to eat at. Completely randomly we managed to sit next to the race director who gave us good instructions on how to find our hotel and the race site. After eating we drove around the race course some and found that it was pretty much flat. Found the hotel and the room was super nice with two queen sized beds in a different room from the pull out sofa. We got up at 5:15AM and got ready to leave. There was only one guy with a bike in the transition area before we got there. It was so cold that after we hung our bikes up, we sat in the car until the sun came up. There was about 100 people in all racing and at 8:00 we started as a mass. The three of us hung together running about 8's until we got to a hill and Kevin and I a little ahead of Cory. Kevin beat me out of transition because he did not have to change shoes. I caught up with him pretty quickly though. He made the second turn too sharp and struck his pedal on the ground. That almost made him totally go down but he saved himself. After a while I realized that my race number was coming off of my back so I moved it around to my front and partway stuck it in my shorts. I could always see Cory just a little behind me and I saw Kevin a little while after I passed the turn around. I rode like a crazy person back through the neighborhood on the way back. Coming into transition I got my right foot out of my shoe but couldn't get the left so I clomped on through, racked my bike, switched to my running shoes and took off. I made it a couple hundred yards and realized my bike helmet was still on. So I carried it for the whole two mile run. Cory managed to fall coming into transition on his bike and busted his knee up. Like usual a bunch of old guys pass me on the last run, but unlike my other races I managed to run the whole thing. Anyway I ended up finishing in 1:04:40 where my unrealistic goal had been 1:06. Cory was about 30s behind me and Kevin came in within another minute. Kevin and I ended up placing in our age group too. So it was a good race and I had a ton of fun. Kevin and Cory got Hammer Gel jugs as door prizes so they pretty much broke even on the entry fee. Kevin and I got $5 gift certificates to a running place in town so we checked it out after the race. There they sized me and had me run on a treadmill while videoing my feet. Turns out I am a slight over pronator so the lady found a shoe that would work for me. I ended up getting Mizuno Wave Inpire 2's. They are so light and feel a lot better than my Asics. Cory ended up getting some near racing flats too. After that we got cleaned up back at the hotel and headed home. |
| 2006-10-02 17:25:27 708 Yep, gone Pink for October. Save the boobies! |
| 2006-09-27 22:45:34 707 Sold my Apple stock yesterday. I did not quite break even. Of course it gained $2 per share as soon as I sold it. But it is paying for my honeymoon airfare so it is another kind of investment that can be much much better. |
| 2006-09-27 22:29:32 706 Thank you 7-Eleven for dropping the evil Hugo Chavez's Citgo. Too bad there is no 7-Eleven in Starkville or I would be buying gas from them now. On another subject I ran a spending report the other day and found that I have only spent $360 on gas for my car this year. That includes a couple trips to Natchez and Jackson which are the most expensive part. I have put $300 into Emily's car. Sadly this has let me spend $1800 on bike parts so now at least I have a super racing bike and a great get to work every day bike too. |
| 2006-09-23 11:14:25 705 Nope Starkville Electric service is still sucking. After work yesterday Emily picked me up and we drove out to the far side of Caledonia and picked up her altered wedding dress. The lady that altered the dress had her daughter take pictures of Emily in it that she is going to use in a newspaper advertisement. On the way back we were both starving and decided to try out Fire Mountain. That place is at the root of American society's fat problem. It was good though; I ate pretty much nothing but fried seafood and carbs. Well since I ate so bad last night, I got up this morning to work it off. I ran a three mile route to the office to get my fixed gear. Rode home the normal short way and decided to try and run a couple more miles. Headed south on Montgomery and took a right onto Critz. Came up on Jackson and I crossed over to the sidewalk. Then somehow I managed to trip over a freaking sidewalk crack. I've got the tuck and roll manuver down so I took a lot of it on my left shoulder. I was bleeding pretty good from my left elbow, a little bit from my calf, and my left ankle bounced off the concrete pretty good. So I cut my route short and jogged straight home. I'm all good now except my elbow stings a bit and my nurse is at work. |
| 2006-09-20 21:13:24 704 Bill's been off for a couple days now. Apparently Starkville Electric has been having issues on this part of town with a lot of near brown outs every couple of minutes. I think they fixed whatever was broken this morning. In the meantime I have gotten a new IP from Northland, 69.59.126.52. |
| 2006-09-11 09:31:01 703 My post from 5 years ago today: Today has certainly been interesting. Being the responsible human being I am I got up early this morning and took my band uniform pants (which were somewhat muddy) to the dry cleaners. Sesti called me and told me that the Pentagon was on fire and smoking a lot. So I came back to the apartment and the World Trade Center was on CBS news. I saw a the hole in one of the towers and my first thought was how did somebody get a bomb that high up in the tower? Then after about five more minutes a plane (the second plane) flew in and hit the other tower. When I saw that plane, I was thinking it was around the size of a private jet and not an enormous Boeing. So I wasn't even thinking that there could have been THAT much damage. Then it was time for class, so I went to CS and was bored for an hour and a half. When I left class I heard on the radio that the planes were full of passengers. Until then I had th had thought that some crazy people had just taken some planes off of the ground and taken off. I watched ABC and CNN news from 11 when I got out of class until 5 when I had to go to band. So far the game is still on for this Saturday at least until we know for sure if the BYU people will be able to fly. After practice everyone who wanted to prayed on the 30 yard line of the practice field. I was really impressed because almost the entire band was there. In Starkville (in Natchez too because I talked to my dad) there is a gas shortage scare apparently started by rumors with people waiting in line 10 cars deep to get gas. Luckily I had a full tank of gas from last night so I didn't even worry about getting more. I just hope that all of the markets stay stable Thursday when they open. I am pretty sure that everything will be ok. If we go to war, that will help our market even more, but I hope we don't really go to war. Just as long as the US can figure out who helped and then bomb the hell out of them and not have a draft. That would be fine for me. Anyway I have a Linear Algebra test tomorrow (it hasn't been cancelled yet) so it's sleepy time for me. |
| 2006-09-08 22:38:07 702 So I was watching the movie Bottle Rocket that Tivo got for me. I heard a somewhat familiar tune and after some research found that it was the song Alone Again Or by Love. Turns out I have heard the Calexico version on World Cafe, but lucky for me, both versions are on iTunes. This is one of those great songs, good trumpets, good lyrics, equals good music. |
| 2006-09-08 09:36:43 701 Yay! Post 700! Yay! So the University Drive bike lane may be on the chopping block just so the St Joseph parishioners can have a few more parking spots closer to the church. What they are asking for sounds somewhat reasonable, just that the bike lane serve as parking from 8 to 8 on Sundays. Apparently the problem is that the way the road is currently painted, this might make the center line move which is a "bad thing" and would result in the bike lane having to be removed permanently. Also since there are plans for other bike lanes in Starkville, this would set a precedent where any business or church could ask for a similar disruptive setup. This would be like Wendy's asking for the right lane of HWY 12 to be used for parking every day at lunch! Originally I thought the bike lane was crap as I had no problems riding in the road, but now it does make me feel a little safer. The biggest benefit is that it has encouraged more recreational riding. This is great because everyone who gets out and rides some puts off heart disease by just a little longer and will help everyone's health insurance go down. So the Bulldawg Cycling email list has been lit up with concern about this issue and plans have been made to attend the Alderman meeting. Mike Murphey from the bike shop offered up a bike rack to solve the parking issue. Robert McMillen found a quote from one of last fall's Reflectors : Rev. Jerry A. Mattingly said. "We hate to relinquish parking spaces, but we support the greater cause of improving the community." |
| 2006-09-03 19:21:05 700 The Jurassic 5 / Dave video for Work it Out is the most hilarious ever. It is pretty typical super liberal fare and stereotypes of the Bush administration. Bush jogs and abuses free water and poor Cheney even has heart failure, imagine that. Plus Condi has some sweet workout moves. |
| 2006-09-02 12:58:59 699 All of my tri training is finally starting to pay off. Last week when I got new pants, I moved down to 36x34's from 38x34's. First time to wear a 36 in a few years. This morning I rode almost 29 miles on the bike out 389 and County Lake RD and when I got back my semi dehydrated weight was 210 which is the lowest I have weighed in about 5 years. Yay! Over the next month I am going to up my bike mileage and alternate with short runs. Cory and I are on schedule to start half marathon training in November, and then I will have to cut back on my bike mileage. The MSU / South Carolina game was entertaining for the first half. I had great anticipation for the band's halftime show since the Mario theme is one of my favorite pieces of music. However the band either did not put off much volume, I was sitting in the wrong place, or everyone around me was too loud. I was able to see some of the shapes they formed and it was kinda cool. The third quarter was not so entertaining and Emily and I were bad fans and left at the beginning of the fourth. |
| 2006-08-30 09:25:21 698 I went to Natchez this past weekend. The trip home was good until I was about 30 miles out on the Trace and hit a deer. It flew off to the left side of the road, so I made a U turn to see if it was dead. As soon as I got turned around, it hopped up and took off. My headlights were pointed to the left, but I managed to get home ok. On Saturday I went shopping with mom and got me some more work clothes. When we got hom, dad had already gotten the front end of my car pulled out kinda straight. Then we just had fun getting the hood latch to work and the passenger side headlight in straight. Yesterday Emily told me that someone had been run over on a bike and died. Details were sketchy so she didn't know for sure. Turns out it was a guy walking down Blackjack before daylight. |
| 2006-08-24 21:10:16 697 Theta Tau Interet Sessions, thank you Shannon Arnold for assuming that I might be intereted in Theta Tau. Or would that be interetted? |