This was always a good one…
Heroes
http://67.15.182.229/heroes.html
And here’s some new, zany fun from the animator extraordinaire…
Captain Capitalism
http://www.captaincapitalism.com/
come on, weekend!!!
I don’t know if it’s because of my travel-filled Monday or just a lot of stuff going on right now, but I’m sure going to be happy when the whistle blows tomorrow evening…whenever it actually gets around to blowing, that is… 🙁
Router Issues Solved?
I finally hooked up the new router and switch that I ordered earlier this week to replace my horrible, unreliable old one and so far, so good. It took a while to kick everything back over to DHCP because they were all running static IPs because my last router was stupid, but so far I have yet to see a single drop and at this point, I really do think that the root of my problem was simply that I had a bad router. I’m not exactly ready to set everything in stone yet, but right now I’ve got a 1.5 GB linux distro downloading on bittorrent as a test to see how stable this thing will stay and so far it’s been doing a constant 350k/s down and 25k/s up without dying on me. I’m going to let it sit through the night and pray that I don’t wake up having to reboot like the old days … keep your fingers crossed!
To Disney, and Beyond!
Black-out dates for my pass kick in in about three weeks (June 10th, I think?), so today I started planning our next trip over to Orlando. I think we’ll be doing MGM Studios this time – an arguable favorite of mine, for the movie lover in me – and it should be a great time. I’m particularly looking forward to the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular because I haven’t seen it in such a long time, and even the Aerosmith Rockin’ Rollercoaster because I’ve never been and Sara will likely persuade me to turn my stomach upside-down with her! Of course, Fantasmic is by far my favorite of the park … maybe I’ll have to look into one of their dinner packages this time around.
Weekend Busy-ness
Saturday:
– company garage sale at 10am, with hopes of finding a new box to house my server pc and bring it back online
– plant shopping at Target in South Tampa to pick-up hopefully the last of the palms for my swank balcony hideaway
– visit Bright House office to swap current cable box for HD DVR to eliminate even one more reason for Sara to ever actually spend any time at her own apartment 😉
– kick back and watch a movie, in an attempt to forget all of the chaos of the previous week
Sunday:
– finally finish and mail in freaking income taxes (only a month late…)
– finish up this month’s paid writing assignments and search out some new ones
– package up and ship Mom’s real cool Mother’s Day gift that just sort of got lost in the shuffle last week
– …and this is pretty much as far as I’ve thought things through…
leaving … in a car, and then later this evening on a jet plane…
Great trip.
Beautiful wedding.
Good times with family.
Will post pictures, stories, etc… in a few days when I get back and settled!
a yummy side note
P.S. Note to self – must schedule visit to Magic Kingdom in the near future to enable a visit to the Main Street Confectionery.
Mmmmm … fudge.
just passing time…
Waiting to get picked up to go to wedding rehersal now.
Very glad that I didn’t drop $200 for a rental car!
Maple fudge is to die for. Seriously, I can’t compare the sample from Marshall’s with Disney fudge because it’s been too long since I’ve had it, but damn … still almost painfully delicious!
New Zealand IS NOT for sale…
Just thought you might like to know!
Online auction site eBay rules that New Zealand not for sale
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/international/news/20060512p2g00m0in033000c.html
I clearly need to blog more…
…but in my defense:
A) I am on vacation
B) I haven’t really done all that much writing as I had hoped this week, anyways, so why should this place be any different? :O
It’s hard to believe that it’s Friday already – I’ve been here for five days already and in only about three and a half more, it’ll be time to pack things up and head on back down to the balmy, no-rain-in-sight environment that is Tampa, Florida! It’s been a really good week, in fact – very relaxing – and although I didn’t get done half of the things that I’d brought with me to work on, I really don’t feel all that bad about just taking some time off to reassess and whatnot. I’ve done a little writing while I was here (emphasis on a little), but I’ll sort things out when I get back and everything will be just ducky.
So just what did I do over the past week??? A modest summary, at best…
Family Time
That’s really what this trip was all about, anyways – getting to spend a it of time with the family that I pretty much only get to see once a year. I spent a good deal of time chatting with Lori that didn’t require a cell phone, met her soon-to-be husband and officially gave my seal of approval, and even got to see their house that they’re trying to purchase right now … a somewhat scary endeavor, as I both tried and failed down that avenue last year! I spent Tuesday afternoon up visiting my Grandparents with my Dad, which was nice both on the generational level and simply because they’re pretty cool people whom I wish I got to see a little more often, but hopefully with any luck things will work out here in the near future and maybe something like that will actually happen. Of course, the bulk of my time was spent just sitting around Mom’s house and I know that she appreciated having her son around for a change. Note to self: I really need to work on getting her down to Florida for a vacation this fall…
Maintenance
Of course, one thing about being the son that returns home only once a year is that despite having a million things that I wanted to do over the course of the week, I also wanted to do anything and everything I could to help fix some things up around Mom’s house that I’d normally do on a regular basis … if I didn’t live some 1500-miles away, that is! And I’m not going to gush here with the details, as I actually wrote an entire article about it in my Travelogue for this trip (also, the phrase gush applies more than I’d like to admit when plumbing was concerned!), but let’s just say that after seven arduous hours of having the water to the entire house shut off, Mom’s finally got the new faucets that were long overdue. I was told late last night that a little work on the tub fixtures would be appreciated, too, but I make no promises at this point!
Missing Home, Etc…
This is a unique trip for me, primarily because it’s pretty much the polar opposite of the one that I endured last year when I came up for my sister’s graduation. I won’t really go into the grubby details, but let’s just say that I both loved and feared the idea of going back to Florida after my trip last year because of some personal things that were unfolding at the time. It was a rough year and I was down for an awful long time, but this time it’s a little different and I kinda like it. I’ve only been seeing Sara for a few weeks now, but I’ve really gotten attached to that girl over the time that we’ve spent together and being away from her for the past week has been really tough. And at the same time, there’s just something about having a caring soul waiting for me at home that makes so much easier for me to enjoy my time here with the family as well. I guess I don’t really know how to explain it, except that I’m really looking forward to walking through that gate at TIA Monday night. 🙂
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a bit of fudge to purchase for friends, neighbors, and maybe even a little for me…
Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness…
Ok, so where did I leave off???
It’s hard to believe that I went this long in between updates, but I suppose in the grand scheme of things I’ve just been really busy lately … and for the first time in quite a while, such busy-ness has been completely void of happenings online. “Real Life,” here we come…
So where to start? I’m actually posting this from Michigan, where I’ll be visiting for the next week in honor of Lori’s wedding. Yep, the little sister is getting married and that’s a pretty exciting thing – maybe I’ll look into doing it myself in a few years! But in the meantime, I can live vicariously through her because she seems to be doing well. She’s excited about one of the biggest days of her life, which although pretty much expected, is still cool to see; I met Ray, the fiance, for the first time last night and he seems pretty cool … I’m definitely glad that she’s not marrying a creep; and overall, it’s just good to be home for a while. Living on the other side of the country, I don’t get to see my family all that much, so I guess that just makes times like these all the more special.
Back in Tampa, things are certainly going very well for me, and of course, by that I mean that the previously-mentioned Sara is still around and needless to say, I’m very, very happy. At this point, we’re officially in a relationship together and even though we’ve only been seeing each other for a few weeks, it feels like we’ve known each other much longer than that. I think communication is the key to that because we really seem to mesh together well – we might not always agree on a given topic, but it’s refreshing to be around someone who can not only carry on a discussion without getting offended about having opposing viewpoints, but who’s also ultimately not dependent on sharing the same opinions. The openmindedness is really something that I welcome and it’s just made it so much easier for us to grow attached to each other so quickly…
Also, she’s absolutely adorable, but that’s a post for another day! Maybe if you’re lucky, one of these days I’ll talk her into taking a picture of both of us together that can be posted here.
Anyways, life is just really good for me right now. Not everything is perfect, but who can honestly ever expect it to be? At least for me, it seems like having the right person around just makes all the difference when dealing both good and bad, and I hope it keeps up because it’s really a feeling that I could get used to. Over the next week, I look forward to getting myself back into the swing of writing again…again…starting with some tales of the very vacation that I’m on right now, so that ought to be a good time. I’ll try to make it a point to post more often, but just in case there’s any doubt, I’m doing well.
🙂
It was the best of times, it was the best of times…
So I haven’t posted in a few days, but this time I have good reasons that don’t include putting off my taxes or getting mass quantities of blood withdrawn from my veins. That’s right, folks – hold onto your hats … there’s this girl that I met…
Her name is Sara and she’s an eighth grade science teacher. Surprisingly, we met online just before I took another break because most people are too rude to be on those dating sites, but we kind of struck up some similar perspectives last weekend and started chatting, first via e-mail, then a few days later over the phone. Our first date was Thursday night – we went out for dinner and ended up talking for quite some time … things just really clicked between us and by the end of the evening, I knew that this was a girl who I needed to get to know a little better.
Talk about the understatement of the year!
For our second date, today we spent the afternoon at Epcot and I don’t think that we could’ve asked for a better day if we’d even wanted to – really one of those days that just makes you stop and think … one that you’ll be comparing all others to for a long time. This was the first time that she’d ever been to Epcot, so I knew that it’d be a blast simply because it’s always fun to see someone experience a Disney attraction for the first time, but I would’ve never expected it to be this good. It’s been said that the key to it all is having the right person to share times like this with and although I don’t want to jump to conclusions and jinx it just yet, I’ve got to say that we might be on to something here because today was hands down the best trip to Disney that I’ve ever had, and I’ve been there an awful lot!
There’s just something about this girl that just makes me feel good – I can’t describe it, but needless to say, I really like it. She has this wonderful, bubbly personality and a smile that I could just get lost in – she’s the kind of person who smiles with her whole body and brightens the whole room wherever she goes (I know it’s kind of cliche, but hey – it fits). One of the highlights of my day was the movie in the Energy Pavilion with Bill Nye the Science Guy and Ellen DeGeneres because it was quite clear that she was having the time of her life watching Ellen bounce from one quirky line to another. I could’ve tuned out the movie and just watched her watch the movie the whole time, and still had a ball – what a great way to spend 37 minutes. Of course, that’s not really an accurate measure because really, my whole day was like that … it was as close to perfect as anyone could dream.
Like I said, I don’t want to go too fast and mess things up, but I just feel absolutely amazing right now and Sara is 110% responsible for that. Not to set my expectations too high, although I guess I do because that’s what I’m in it for this time – I really hope this develops into something because I love the way she’s made me feel about myself and that’s exactly what I need in my life right now. Today was probably one of the best days of my life and I hope that we share many more in the days to come. Keep your fingers crossed for me…
Pimp My Snack
http://www.pimpmysnack.com/projects.php
This. Is. Awesome.
I should soooo do a project for this website! Of course, I wouldn’t be able to actually eat it…