Sam's Randomness

Teresa

2008-09-11T12:24:00.002-04:00

Just in case you haven't heard, I've started dating the most amazing girl in the world. You may remember from last post that I'd started hanging out with Teresa. She's very cool. It's so great to see how God has placed us in each other's life. I've never met anybody who challenges me to be a better person as much as she does. I'm sure you'll all get to meet her one day. :)

She's an nurse down at Georgetown University Hospital. She works in the intensive care unit. She has a super personality. She's from Erie, PA. We met at church through some mutual friends. Mercedes has some good pictures of us, so when I get them, I'll try to post them.

I've been staying pretty busy lately. Obviously, my schedule has shifted a little bit. I'm running on less sleep than I've gotten in a long time, but I'm still going. :) I've been busy with the usual: work, archery, swing dancing. And now I get to hang out with an amazing girl. :)

Last night, Teresa and I went downtown and met up with Ashley since she was in town from TX for a couple days. I'm glad we got to hang out with her. I didn't get to see her last time she came out because she was in MD the whole time and she didn't really have any extra time. I was really glad it worked out for Teresa to go down to meet her.

There's not a lot of new stuff going on with me, other than Teresa. We've gotten to hang out a lot lately because of the way her work schedule has been. It's been super! :)

yay I have time for another post!

2008-09-04T12:44:00.002-04:00

So I've been meaning to post, but I've been busy/having computer problems lately. Fortunately, I go the computer thing dealt with, so you all get to read more of my mindless musings. :)

I've been having a lot of fun lately. I've been swing dancing a little more often. Saturday, I went down to the Kennedy Center for free outdoor swing dancing with the Eric Felton Jazz Orchestra. It was pretty cool. There were like 1500 people there, but most of them were noobs, so I didn't really get to do many of my advanced moves. My dance instructor told me that I was the best looking boy there. :) I was wearing black pants with a black pinstripe, a white shirt, black tie, black suspenders, and a black fedora. I decided that if I was going to get wet, I might as well go swimming. :) I got a lot of compliments. Teresa and Mercedes came with me, and we met up with Ana and some of her friends from her Bible study. It was fun.

The only bad part about swing dancing on Saturday was that it was right after a one day FITA. I was pretty tired, but we stayed for the whole dance (until 11:00). Then we had to drive home. I think I got home about 12:30 or so. Then it was off to church for setup at 7:30.

I've been hanging out with Teresa frequently lately. She's been a great friend, and has pointed out things to me that I need to work on. Now I just have to work on them. :) It's so nice when you meet somebody who challenges you to be a better person. I'm thankful that God has brought her into my life.

We had a DCMG LAN party last weekend. That was fun. We haven't been able to get together much this summer. Everybody has been gone so much that it's been tough. You could tell that people hadn't been practicing like they used to. A lot of people had lost some of their skills. Fortunately, I was back on my crappy old 20" TV that I learned to play Halo on, so I did very well, until the last hour when everybody else got warmed up. :) I was definitely losing my edge by that point. Hopefully everybody will have more time to practice for next time. :)

I've been starting up my home search again. I'm going to try to find something soon, so I'd appreciate a prayer whenever you guys think about it. I'm just praying that God will lead me to a place in a good location that I can afford.

I could also use some prayer for me in general. I've been kind of stressed out lately, and I'm starting to see things that I need to change in my life.

In other news, I'm looking forward to heading back to KS at the end of the month for Pat and Jenna's wedding. I'm so happy that they're finally getting married. :) And next weekend, I'm planning on going to NYC to visit Emily. It's going to be nice to get out of DC for a while.

This weekend I'm taking a "personal day". I'm skipping one of our church outreaches, and staying home to spend some time by myself. I feel like I've been needing to do that lately. I'm also going to try to get some stuff taken care of that I've been needing to do.

Hope you all are doing great! Thanks for reading! :)

Another Busy Weekend

2008-08-18T21:25:00.001-04:00

This weekend was a busy one for me. Friday night after work, I met up
with Courtney, Annie, ski, Joe, and a bunch of other people for the
Nats game. It was fun. I don't enjoy baseball as much as I used to,
but it was fun to hang out with everybody. Courtney's former roommate
of 7 years, Amber, was in town visiting, so Courtney wanted her to
meet all her new friends out here. She's a really nice girl. If I
lived with somebody for 7 years and they were as cool as she was, I
probably wouldn't move to the other side of the country. :)

After the game, we went to rocket bar in Chinatown. It was fun, but it
was super crowded. You practically had to do gymnastics to get to the
bar. I left early because I had plans in the morning.

And those plans were to run 10 miles with Elizabeth. We actually ended
up doing 11 because she was only able to get 5 miles in before she met
up with me, and she wanted to run 16. For the 11 miles we were
running, we held a 9:05 average. We definitely had a negative split,
but I'm not sure what it was. I need to take the data off my gps. We
were both pushing each other. It was great. There's no way I could
have run it like that if i was running by myself.

Saturday afternoon, I relaxed for a little bit then met up with
Abigail at the range. We shot for a while. She's improved a lot since
I shot with her the first time. Pretty soon, she'll be pushing me
along. (or else I'll fall behind...)

Sunday, I skipped church an went tubing with annie and some of her
friends. It was fun, but we had some adventures along the way. First,
we were late leaving old town to meet up with the other group of
people we were supposed to caravan out with. We ended up just meeting
them out there. When we got there, we didn't have enough time to eat
lunch, but it didn't matter in the end because there was a wreck and
the park service wouldn't let any buses come up. We had to wait for
1.5 hours before they got it cleaned up.

When we finally did get on the river, it was really fun. There were a
few rapids we had to go through. They weren't much, but they did a
good job of breaking up the trip. I've swum through worse rapids. I
went through an entire bottle of Malibu on our trip down the river.
(don't worry, it was the smallest one you can get.) :)

Today, I tried to stop by the AT&T store to get them to fix my
voicemail, since people have told me that it wasn't working. I walked
in, and there were three people working. They were all helping
somebody, so I just waited. One of them finished up and had some
people passes off to them. Then, I assume she was the manager, walked
over and asked if she could help me. I told her my problem, and she
said that one of the other two would have to help me. So I waited some
more. 20 minutes later, another guy comes out of the back an asksif he
can help me. He gives me this number to call to set up my voicemail.
And that was it.

When I got home, I tried the number. Umm, yeah. Still no voicemail. I
think I'm going to take this piece of crap phone back. There's just
too many things it can't do that you would expect it to be able to do.
Now I just need to find a phone that will work for me. *sigh* Anybody
have any suggestions for a good PDA phone?

When I finally got home, I had a snack and then ran to the metro and
went downtown and ran from foggy bottom to eastern market. It wound up
being 4.92 miles. It was a good mid week run. I met up with Mark for
dinner. It was fun to get to hang out with him. I've been a kind of
crappi friend lately because I've been gone so much. So if you've been
trying to hand out with me and haven't been able to, let me know! I'll
find time to hand out! :)

Tomorrow I have to go down to the metropolitan club to start the final
punch list. It's exciting. I'm looking forward to that one being over.
It's been educational, but it's way too time consuming.

Well, since I'm on the iPhone, I don't know how long this has gotten
I'd even if it will post with the correct formatting, but if you made
it this far, you're awesome! :) Hope you're having a great Monday!

Headed Home

2008-08-09T18:09:00.003-04:00

Well, Nationals are over. It's been a good week overall. I'm sitting in the airport right now. It's 3:30 and my plane doesn't leave until 6:48. My dad has to drive to his campsite for the evening and get it set up, so he dropped me off early. This might turn into a long wait...

Thursday it started out windy, then got rainy. At least we didn't have both at the same time. I didn't shoot well at all. I barely broke 500 for the day. My old coach, tom was around. It was fun to hang out with him. Unfortunately, there wasn't much he could do to help me since he
didn't know what my form usually looked like. I called Ruth, my current coach in the evening. There wasn't much she could do to help me either. It's kind of hard when you're 1400 miles away. :) She did say one thing that seemed to help the next day, so that was good.

Friday, I shot much better. We were closer and it wasn't windy or rainy. I think I tied my personal best at 50m and my 30m score was just average. It was higher than the first time around though.

I ended up with a 2298 out of a possible 2880 for the four days. I ended up ranked 29th.

The elimination round was expanded to a 1/64 elimination match to include all the archers. I had a bye my first round. I was supposed to shoot against one of the Chinese archers, but he didn't show up, so I got to move on to the 1/16 match. I lost that one. If I had been shooting how I usually do in practice, I might have won, but it's hard to say.

I had a good time. It's been five years since I shot at nationals. I'm glad I was able to shoot it this year.

Yesterday, after I shot, dad and I drove up to Divide and he showed me where the cabin that he used to come to as a boy was. It was a pretty drive. It made me wish I lived closer to the mountains. I hadn't realized how much I miss the outdoors. The city is fun, but I really enjoy the mountains.

I'm looking forward to getting back to DC though. I really appreciate all the support I got from all my DCMC friends. Thanks for all the prayers and encouragement! See you tomorrow! :)

First Half

2008-08-06T23:13:00.002-04:00

The first half of nationals is over. I ended up with an 1158. I suppose that's about average for me, but it's hard to say because I haven't really scores that much outside, and we've been improving my form. I'd really like to see it more in the upper 1100's, but I guess it's okay. There was a lot of wind. I'm sure that had something to do with it. My first end at thirty meters today was beautiful. It was an X, X, 10. I have a picture, buy i can't post it from my iphone. I'll try to remember to post it when i get back to a normal computer. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep it up.

My old coach, Tom, drove out here today. He got here when we had about 4 or 5 ends left. I'm really glad he was able to make it out. Dad and I took him to dinner at Red Robin. It's been fun hanging out with him.

Dad and I have been staying in a cabin in a campground about 15 minutes fromthe venue. It's been a good arrangement. There's no a/c, but there's a ceiling fan, and it's Colorado, so it's not that hot anyways.

Dad and I went to this really big house, miramar castle, yesterday. It was 14,000 sf. It was neat, but they had too much crap in it. They should take lessons from Mount Vernon and rotate things through. I didn't take any pictures because it wasn't that spectacular, and they didn't do a very authentic restoration. It seemed like the details got lost or they couldn't afford to do it right. Even so, it was worth the six dollar admission.

That's about all that's been going on. Tomorrow, I'm shooting on the afternoon again. It's the long distances, so I'll shoot 90 and 70 meters. Hopefully it won't be too windy.

Waiting

2008-08-04T23:04:00.002-04:00

My trip to Nationals has had an uneventful start. I got up a 5:00 this morning and finished packing the stuff you can't pack until the day you leave. But I just realized I forgot to pu my pj's in. Oh well. :)

My taxi was on time to pick me up. This was the first time I scheduled a pick up for the next day. It was also cheaper than it normally is. I guess we must have missed some traffic or something.

Right now, i'm waiting at the airport for my plane. I got through security really, really quickly. It was great! :)

In other news, I was pretty busy with work last week. I had a bunch of stuff to finish up before I left. Wednesday, my iPhone came in, which is the reason I can post this. :)

Friday night, I picked up my bow case. It took me two hours to cut the foam around my equipment. When I get to the point that I need to take two bows with me, I'll have to put my tripod on my backpack. Right now, I can fit everything in my case except my quiver and some tools. I could probably fit the tools, but I was tired of cutting foam. :)

Saturday, I helped josh and allison move. It went really well until we tried to get the couch in. They have an extra long couch, and we couldn't turn of through the door. We needed another inch. :( Fortunately they had a friend who could take it in for them.

After I finished helping them move, I went to the range. I probably would have skipped except Annie talked me into it. :) While I was there, I got a text from Angie that she and courtney were having a bbq, so I went over there right after the range. I wanted to take a shower before I went over, but I was already a half hour late. Turns out that I was the first one there by about a half hour. Of was a fun night. :)

Sunday was church and finishing up/starting packing. I took a two hour nap because I was tired from a late night and early morning. (just a sidenote: if you reek of incense, don't sit down next to me, and please, please don't get on a plane. Some people are allergic to that crap! I'm not, but I do have trouble breathing around it.) My nap made me not very tired, so I didn't go to bed until 11:30. I had a productive evening. I packed, made dinner, ironed while watching top gun, washed the dishes, and cleaned the bathroom.

Anyways, I'm gonna go now. My plane boards in about a half hour, and it's on time. :) I'll try to post again later this week.

Busyness!

2008-07-30T12:38:00.003-04:00

As you can probably tell from the lack of posting this month, I've been super busy.

Amy came out to visit over the 4th, and we had a great time. We watched the fireworks on the Mall, and did some of the touristy stuff. We even got out to the archery range. :) And apparently, according to the worship team's forum, "Sam's a playa". Not sure where they get that from. ;)

My swing dance class has been going really well. Last night was the next to last night of the session. I won't be able to make it to the last class because I'll be in CO for Nationals. I really, really enjoy swing dancing!

Archery has been keeping me very busy this week. I started skipping some of my usual activities so I could shoot to get ready for Nationals. The Mid-Atlantic Championships were a couple weeks ago. I shot the best score I've shot in 5 years, and it was only 5 points under my personal best. I'm really looking forward to Nationals! I'm finally back to where I used to be before we started adjusting my form!

Work has gotten busier for me. I have several jobs that are under construction, and they require a lot of attention. Two of them are really complex projects, and one is a government project, so there are a lot of pointless RFI's on that one. One of the complex projects should be wrapping up in mid September. I'm looking forward to it being finished.

I've been running more often lately. Last Wednesday, I had to stay late at work, but I still wanted to run, so I somehow squeezed in 3.5 miles in under a half an hour. My average pace was 8:05 min/mile. I was really pleased with that! A few years ago, I could run comfortable 8 minute miles, so I'm getting closer to being in shape again. :)

I'll try to keep you all updated on Nationals. Hopefully I'll have some time where I can post. Dad is going to meet me out there for it, and we're staying in a cabin somewhere about 15 minutes from the venue.

I hope you all are doing great!

Another Tournament Down

2008-07-01T12:38:00.002-04:00

This weekend, I had my second tournament of the season. It went pretty well. I shot my personal best for my new form. I'm still not back to where I used to be, but I can see some rapid improvements coming. :) It was really sunny both days, and it really wore me out. I guess I'm not quite so used to it as I used to be. :( It probably didn't help that I hadn't been able to shoot for a week because of traffic and having to stay late at work three days last week. :S I had fun though. :)

After I got home from my touranment on Sunday and sat in front of my tv for a couple hours, I went for a run to try out my new GPS watch. I've been sick or it's been raining every time I wanted to go out and use it since I got it. It's kind of big, but it helps a lot to make sure you're keeping your pace. I had a really good run. I was able to keep my pace up longer than I thought I could. :) I almost lost my mid afternoon snack as soon as I stopped running though. Fortunately, that didn't happen. :)

I'm really looking forward to Amy coming to visit on Thursday. It's going to be so great to be able to hang out with her. :D :D :D :D I just need to come up with some options for things to do...

Tonight is my swing class. I'm excited for that, too. I don't know exactly what we're learning, but I'm looking forward to it! :D

Happy Tuesday!

Sick again. :(

2008-06-24T12:46:00.002-04:00

Apparently, I need to tone down my partying when I'm out of town. I started getting sick last Tuesday. I blame it on staying up way too late. I was probably starting to get sick on Sunday because I slept an aweful lot of the trip to KC and then on the plane back to DC. I'm starting to get better, but I need to make sure I start going to bed earlier.

Work has been getting busier for me. I've been trying to get started on a project, but I keep having other stuff come up and I can't seem to get started. It's really bad because I need to get going on it. It's more involved than anything I've done so far, and it's due in the middle of July.

Work has also been really frustrating for me. My computer started hating me last Wednesday. We had to reinstall windows and everything on it, so I've been trying to get everything put back together. Firefox doesn't appear to be working on it, so I have to use Internet Explorer. It makes me ill. Firefox is so much easier to use!

Friday, I had two meetings, and after the second one, I met up with Ana. We went to the Kennedy Center for the free Millennium Performace. They have free performances every day, 365 days/year, at 6:00. It was really packed. I'm glad we got there early. The reason we went was for the free tango lesson before the concert. It was a short lesson, but we learned the basic step. It doesn't seem as hard as I thought it would be. We left right after the lesson so we could get something to eat. After we ate, we met up with Mark and company for Jazz in the Garden. It's been a long time since I've been to one of those, and it was way more crowded than I remember. It's basically where everybody goes for a cheap happy hour on Fridays. You can't really hear the music, and everybody brings in their own bottle of wine. You're technically not allowed to bring in outside alcohol, but everybody does, and they don't do anything about it as long as you're not out of control. They do sell pitchers of sangria there... :) We didn't drink anything because Mark had a VERY good night the week before. ;)

Saturday, we had a LAN party at my house. I spent all morning cleaning for it. Our house looked really good. We had 9 people on 4 tv's. It worked out very well. I put together my futon so we would have some more comfortable places to sit. It was a lot of fun. :) I was going to go swing dancing that evening, but Ana called and said that she and Adam got too sunburned to touch each other, so they weren't going. I didn't know anybody else who was going, so I decided to stay home. I should have gone to bed early, but I played Halo with my roommate instead. :)

Sunday was church. We were going to re-EQ the system, but there were some issues with that, so we decided to put it off until the next Sunday I could do it. Which will be a while since I won't be there this Sunday, and Amy's in town the next Sunday. After church, I went home, and I was going to go to the archery range after lunch, but my shoulder felt weird, and I was feeling lazy, so I just ran some errands instead.

I was going to shoot last night, but it was raining. It's a good thing, too, because I didn't have my arrows with me. :S My roommate and I went to the grocery store instead. And I cleaned up my old computer a little. I'm getting ready to transfer a hard drive out of it and connect it to my new computer. That way I can leave one of them off, and it will keep my room slightly cooler. :)

Well, it's time to get back to work. Hope you all have a fantabulous day!

Awesome Music Video

2008-06-21T09:02:00.003-04:00

So my friend Beth was in this music video. It's pretty much the funniest one I've ever seen. The audio is a little out of sync with the video, but for a budget of $0, it's actually really good.

What a weekend!

2008-06-16T12:27:00.002-04:00

Maybe I should fly more often… I seem to do better at writing posts when I fly. :) I’m 50 minutes from DC right now. It’s been a really fun weekend, but it’ll be nice to be home.

Friday, I finally got to Wichita about 10:30. Just in time to grab a couple drinks and a cookie, and say hi to all the family members. Most people went to bed shortly after we got there. All of us cousins went out to a bar near the hotel. It was fun. Except that last call in Wichita is at 1:30. Seriously, who does that? It’s so early! The night’s just getting started! So since the bars didn’t want to sell us the alcohol we wanted to drink, we went back to the hotel and stole a couple bottles of wine and a couple six packs from Kristy’s room. We went over to Collin and Janelle’s room. I think we were up until about 3:30. I got to get to know Collin a little better. He’s Janelle’s husband. They got married last year. I’ve only met him once. He’s a pretty cool guy.

Saturday, I woke up at 8:30, and couldn’t go back to sleep because the sun was streaming in our window. So I got up with my 5 hours of sleep and my hang over and started my day. :) The hotel had a nice hot breakfast. Except that the eggs were kinda runny. Oh well. It was better than cereal. They did have a nice fruit bowl. The pineapple was yummy. :) After breakfast, I went with Mom and Dad to this hat store that Dad randomly found on Friday. He bought a brown fedora, but he wanted me to go back with him and pick another one out for him. We got him a black one with a wider brim. It was more of a 20’s style. If I had a good way to get it home, I would have been tempted to get one. It was a very good hat store. I would never have guessed that there would be something like that in Wichita. After that, I just hung out at the hotel until it was lunch time. We went to Old Chicago (Ben, Rel, John, and I went there the night before so I could get some food because I hadn’t eaten since lunch). I just got a salad. My hang over was worse after we got done eating. Weird. Fortunately, Aunt Trudy had some Advil. That got rid of it. I think I get hung over from not enough sleep.

After lunch, it was back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding. Ben, John, Jim , and Abbie were playing piano before the ceremony, so they had to go over early. Listening to them play made me feel pretty great about myself (read with all sarcasm possible). I seem to have gotten the shaft on musical talent in the family. Oh well, I have other talents. Like my mad dancing skills. ;) The wedding was really good. Kristy has some friends that have incredible voices. The reception was good, too. They served a really good dinner. It was chicken and beef and mashed potatoes and asparagus. And of course, there was the bar. Free wine and beer, cash for liquor. Perfect. :) The dance was fun. It started out kind of depressing when the dj called all the couples out on the dance floor. As if going to a wedding by yourself wasn’t bad enough, he had to rub it in that you didn’t have anybody there with you. Jerkface. Aside from that, he was a pretty good dj. Well, that and the song he chose for the brother sister dance. I don’t know what the song’s called, but I’m sure you’ve heard it. It’s about love that can’t be and how you can’t be together. So not appropriate! I was impressed that my parents even got out and danced. And Abbie. She was all about the dance. That really surprised me. But I guess she’s always liked dancing (ballet, mostly). I’m starting to have more hope for her having a functional life when she gets out of high school. :)

After the reception, we went back to the hotel and changed. We closed out the hotel bar at midnight. Then we all went over to a bar across the street and closed it out at 1:30. It was a fun night. I’m not sure how much I had to drink, but I had just enough. I don’t think I could have had much more. (*yay* we’re starting out descent in to DC!) :D When we went back to the hotel, a bunch of the cousins were going to go to somebody’s room and keep drinking, but Ben and I just went to bed. I asked Ariel what time she went to bed, and she didn’t know. She was still drunk after breakfast. Lol.

I got to meet Ben’s new girlfriend on the way to the airport today. She seems very nice. Of course, I’ll have to actually hang out with her sometime to really see what she’s like. :) She likes swing dancing though. That’s a good sign. :)

This was the first time I’ve openly drank in front of my parents, and it didn’t cause any problems at all. They didn’t try to lecture me or anything. They didn’t really act any different. It was nice. I’m sure they’re not happy about it, but at least they’ve accepted it.

Headed to KS

2008-06-16T12:27:00.001-04:00

Once again, I’m on a plane and writing a post to my blog. I apologize for taking so long to give you guys and dolls an update. I’ve been really busy lately, and this week, I’ve only been taking half hour lunch breaks so I could make up for the time I wasn’t in the office this afternoon.

I’m headed to KS for my cousin’s wedding. It’ll be a fun time once I get there, but it’s started out a bit rough. We sat on the tarmac for a long time waiting for some bad weather to clear out. We wound up taking off about two hours late. :( When I get to Kansas City, we still have to drive like 2.5 hours to Wichita. It’s going to be a long day. I hope there’s something to drink waiting for me when I get there! :)

I guess I haven’t posted since I was on the way back from KS last time. The weekend after that trip, I went to northern New Jersey, just outside of NYC for the Gold Cup. It’s about the largest outdoor tournament on the east coast. It was a fun time. I didn’t shoot very well on Saturday, and it wound up being twice as many arrows as I was expecting. I was expecting 72, and it was 144. We usually shoot 72 arrows a day in a normal tournament. This tournament is different though, because we shot an elimination round (Olympic Round) the second day. Most tournaments don’t have enough people to do that. It was a lot of fun. The second day, during the Olympic Round, I shot much better than I did the day before. That seems to be normal for me though. The first round, I went up against another guy from Virginia. I’ve shot with him several times before. He usually beats me, but he had a bad day, and I had a good day, so I got to go on to the next round. I walked over to the next target, and the other archer wasn’t there yet, so I set up my scope, and just waited for him to come over. Aaaand one of the members of the Olympic team came over and set up on my target! I’ve shot with him before, but not head to head. It was fun, even though the round was over before it got started. :) He beat me by 5 points, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it kind is. We only have 120 points possible. I think it’s been 4 years since the last time I shot an Olympic Round. I’d forgotten how much fun they are. :) There’s just nothing like going up against somebody one on one.

The rest of my life has been spent working, hanging out with people, and trying to fit shooting in. My swing dance class ended, and I enrolled for the next one. I really, really, really, really, really enjoy swing dancing. The music is so fun, and the people are all really nice. (I’ve heard stories about jerkfaces, but I haven’t run in to any. Probably because I’m dancing with the girls and not the guys.) :)

Work is starting to pick up a little bit. But I’m still not super busy. It’s been nice being able to do things in the evenings, but it would be nice to get a little over time.

Dustin had to go to Texas for training. :( :( :( :( He left on Monday, and he’ll be gone for 8 weeks. I’ve been hanging out with him a lot lately, so I guess I’ll just have to make do without him for the next 8 weeks.

We’ve been having some issues with the sound at church, and I finally figured out what was wrong when I was there last Sunday. I’m going to try to fix it, not this Sunday, but next Sunday. The EQ is all screwed up, and I’ll have to re-EQ the whole system, including the individual instruments and vocalists. It’s going to be quite a bit of work, especially since I have to do it in the few hours before church. It’ll sound much better when I get it taken care of though. I’m excited to play with it because it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like that, and it’ll sound so good!

Oh! I almost forgot! This past Saturday, I ran my first race ever. It was the Susan G. Komen Race for a Cure. It was a 5k, and it was a lot of fun. I ran it with Annie. The walkers got confused and started with the runners, so it took us about 13 minutes to get through the first mile. At about a mile and a half, I found a hole and took it, but Annie missed it. I ended up finishing in 32 minutes, which isn’t that bad considering the first half of it took so long. I wish I could’ve run the whole way with Annie, but fortunately, we were able to meet up at the end. I really enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to my next race. I might run one on the 4^th of July, but it all depends on how much of a hangover I have that morning, because Amy is coming to visit, and she wants to go out. That one is an 8k. I asked John to order a GPS watch for me, so I’ll be albe to use it to train and get better and keep track of how far I went. Hopefully he has it for me this weekend….

Well, this is getting really long, and if you made it this far, mad props to you! I really don’t mean to always post books, but I just don’t have enough time to keep you updated on my life all the time. (And I’m too busy to try to tell you about it all) Until next time, may your days be filled with happiness, and your nights be filled with parties! :)

Manhattan

2008-05-23T20:11:00.002-04:00

So my weekend in Manhattan was very fun. It was nice to get out of town for a weekend and see some old friends. Right now, I’m sitting on the plane with nothing else to do, so this could get kinda long…….

My weekend started on Friday. I took an earlier flight than usual, so I took the whole day off work. I got to fly Midwest this time. :) Chocolate chip cookies are awesome. :) My flight was about 20 minutes late, but it wasn’t too bad. I like flying Midwest because I can just take the Metro to the airport. It’s so much cheaper than driving/taking a taxi to Dulles.

Ben picked me up at the airport, and he and I went to Korma Sutra in Westport for Indian food. It’s a 25 dollar restaurant for closer to 12 dollar prices. We got the buffet, and they brought us this peach yogurt based drink. It was good. After dinner, they brought us Chai tea. I’ve never had Chai before, but it was actually really good.

We stopped at Oak Park Mall and visited Emily at work. I haven’t seen her for about a year, so it was nice to be able to stop and say hi. We didn’t get to talk much, and it didn’t work out to meet up with her later in the weekend, but I’m glad I at least got to say hi. We also got me some new sunglasses. The ones Courtney and Dustin helped me pick out just didn’t work out, so I took them back a couple weeks ago. I wound up paying more than I really wanted to, but since I was in KS, and they weren’t any cheaper than DC, I didn’t figure I could get much of a better price for what I wanted. I might try to look at zappos when I get home, but we’ll see.

After that, Ben had me drive his old car to Manhattan. It was nice to just drive without getting stuck in traffic. I met up with a bunch of friends at Lemmy’s for pizza. It was fun. There were more people who showed up than I was expecting. I’m glad we had extra seats at our table. After dinner, we went over to Grandma’s for a little bit. Then it was down to Aggieville to the Kat House. I really, really like going to the Kat House. It’s more expensive than other bars in Manhattan, and they don’t’ mix their drinks very strong, but it’s smoke free, and you can actually hear people talking.

Katy said that she and Riggs could get a drink at all the night before, so they just went to the bar to get it. I told Katy they would bring us drinks. I was wearing a sport coat and jeans, which made me the best dressed person in Aggieville, so I knew that they would take care of us. We sat down, and about 15 seconds later, the waitress came up. She took good care of us. Every time I go in there, the waitresses are just so good. :) We closed the bar out. Amy and her boyfriend stopped by to join us. It was nice to finally get to meet him. And it was super awesome to get to see Amy.

Saturday, I got up and ran 5 miles with my Dad. I thought we were running really slow, but it only took us about 49 minutes, which is about what Elizabeth and I wound up with when we ran. I was still feeling pretty good at the end of it. I’m looking forward to running 8 or 10 miles. I’m pretty sure I can do it without any problems.

Jordan was in town for the day, so he came over after I got a shower. We caught up a little bit, and got some graduation cards. I haven’t seen him since he was in DC a year and a half ago. It was fun to catch up with him.

After that, I went to Jess’s graduation party. We ate at Famous Dave’s, and even though I got a lunch sized meal, I was still stuffed. I should’ve been thinking and paced myself because right after I left Jess’s party, Ryan and I went to Jenna’s party. Pat’s mom made a TON of food. I felt bad not being able to eat much of it. There was so much yummy stuff there! Pat’s mom is an amazing cook. We played some bocci ball and some lawn golf (or whatever it’s called). It was fun.

After that, we went to Ryan’s parents’ house and shot air rifles. That was fun. Tim and Ryan have air rifles with scopes on them. It’s amazing what a difference a scope makes. :) Then Ryan and I went to the park to meet up with Rachel, Riggs, Jennifer, and everybody else who was there. They were barbecuing, but Ryan and I were so stuffed we didn’t eat. We threw some Frisbee. That was fun. I couldn’t throw to Katy to save my life. I always threw it over her head (in my defense, that’s not hard to do ;) ) or off to the side of her.

We went to the time out corner after the park. It’s an arcade type place with an indoor mini golf course. It was fun. I hope it does well. Manhattan needs something like that. There’s nowhere else for the high school students to hang out. It’s a good atmosphere there.

Then we went to Aggieville. Ryan, Jenna and I walked in to the Kat House, and it was pretty busy. There was a private party where we usually sit, and all the other tables were full. We were just kind of standing next to the door trying to find a place to park ourselves, when the waitress we had the night before walked by. She remembered me, and she was very helpful, although unsuccessful, in trying to find us a table. But she took our drink orders anyways, even though we weren’t sitting down, which I thought was super awesome since they won’t normally do that. We did eventually commandeer a table. Uh oh, time to turn off all portable electronic devices. I’ll finish this later!

Okay, so now that it's been almost a week since I started writing this, I finally have a chance to finish it...

So anyways, after we commandeered a table, Riggs texted me and said that they were there, but they couldn't get in because it was one in, one out. I caught Allie, and asked her if there was anything she could do, and she went out, and about 30 seconds later, they let a whole bunch of people in. :) She was pretty amazing. I really hope she's there when I go back next time I'm in Manhattan. She was by far the best waitress I've ever had. :) (aside from people who I already knew who were waiting on me) :)

After the Kat House, we moved on to Tanks because Jenna loves that place. I can see why. Everybody there knows her name. It was too loud for my liking, and it was way smoky, which I'm not really used to anymore. It was fun though. I ran in to Gretchen there. I hadn't seen her for several years, so it was cool to see her. :)

Sunday, I went to The Well at the Wareham. It was nice. The band there is good. Lance is pretty much amazing. The pastor for The Well was very engaging. He moved pretty fast though. But it was good. After church, Ryan, Riggs, Katy, Jess, and I went to Houlihans. It was pretty good for the price. They were super not busy. Our waitress was really bored, so she made sure we had everything we needed. :)

Sunday afternoon/evening was Jim's graduation party. I got caught up with some of the extended family. After that, I met a bunch of people over at Grandma's for one last hurrah before I had to leave for DC again. Ryan invited a bunch of people from Real Life. It was quite the crowd. :)

Monday, Dad took me to the airport, and I flew home. I'm glad I was able to come to Manhattan to visit everybody. It was just what I needed. :)

Sorry about the length of this one... And if it's slightly disjointed. I did have to take a 4 day break in the middle of writing it. :)

More Thoughts

2008-05-13T12:34:00.002-04:00

So lately, I've been really cranky, and I don't really know why. I noticed it Saturday when I didn't get lunch until 4:00, but I just chalked it up to being hungry. But then on Sunday, I was still feeling crappy. Not sure what's going on, but it sucks. It's like every little thing that somebody says to me get spun around so that it's like they're trying to be mean to me or something. I thought maybe I needed some time to myself, but I took a little time, and still no change. It might be the weather, but if that's the case, then I'm way too fickle! :) Work has been pretty unfulfilling lately. I've been not busy at all. I spent two and a half weeks without working on anything that could be charged to something other than overhead in some way. I finally have some real work, but it's not my job. Just helping some other people out. I really need to work on my own projects again. The one of my projects that I have things to do on is really frustrating right now because the contractor can't get things right. This is the third time I've looked at their crap, and I'll still have to do it again. I've rejected it twice already. The part that is really irritating is the fact that just by looking at their drawings, I can tell they aren't looking closely at them. There are just so many obvious mistakes in it. I'm not going to be using them in the future, because they're really terrible, and waste too much of my time.

Hopefully being away for a weekend, hanging out in Manhattan will help turn my mood around. Today is sunny, so I'll get to shoot outside. I'm looking forward to that. And I get to go swing dancing tonight. I'm really excited about that. :) I wanted to go this weekend, but there wasn't anywhere to go. Since I'm out of town for the next two weekends, I'm going to miss more chances to dance. :( Oh well. Tonight should be fun.

Two in one day

2008-05-07T16:29:00.002-04:00

I just wanted to say that with all the posting I've done lately, I've remembered how much I enjoy blogging. I like it because number A: I get to write, and number 3: it's like I'm actually telling you all about the things that are going on in my life, even if I can't actually have a phone conversation with you or see you in person. :)

Like this morning, for instance. I was really looking forward to lunch so I could tell you all about last night and my weekend. :) Hope you all enjoy it as much as I do. :D

Apologies

2008-05-07T12:41:00.002-04:00

Sorry about the last post. I know it's kinda sad and depressing. I almost took it off, but I was gone shortly after I finished it, and Beth talked me into leaving it up. Courtney, sorry if it made you sad. Just think about all the people you've met since you moved out here. When I'd been here for 4 months, I knew like 3 people outside of work. That was the really tough time. It wasn't until I'd been here for about 9 months thatI started to have friends I could call and hang out with. This post should be a happier post. :)

Last night, I had my weekly swing dance class. It was really fun. We didn't really learn that much in class, and I already know what we're going to learn next week, but after that, it should all be new material. :) Dustin and I went to dinner/drinks with a couple of girls from class for the hour between when our class ends and the dance starts. I took the metro down there since I couldn't get out to the archery range because of traffic. So I was able to have a couple drinks with everybody. After we had dinner, we went back to dance. Dustin and I tried to teach Gina and Jen some new moves. They picked it up pretty well. They kept on getting stuck with weird/creepy guys though. I tried to rescue them. It worked sometimes. They were always grateful. :) I had to pretend to be Gina's boyfriend a couple times. That was interesting.... lol I got to dance a lot more this week than last week. Mostly, I was dancing with Jen and Gina, but I got to dance with Courtney a couple times, and this other girl who used to compete in college. I danced with her before. She's fun, but she doesn't come very often.

I never really posted about my weekend. It was a little boring, but there's a few things that are post worthy. :) Friday, I took my bike almost completely apart, cleaned it, and put it back together. I got my new brake/shift levers installed. They're just okay. It will take me a while to get used to them. The only thing I wasn't able to clean that I wanted to were the axle bearings. I'll have to get them some other time.

Saturday was the Town of Potomac's Centennial Celebration. DCMC ran all the kids games. I got to run Plinko! It was fun. I don't have any pictures, sorry. I was so busy giving kids candy, that I didn't even have time to get a drink for like an hour and a half. The weather was perfect! I got a little sun. :) After we had lunch, I went to the archery range and shot. I had a lesson with my coach, and we had a very productive lesson. :) When I was almost home, Hank called me and asked if I wanted to come over for dinner and a movie, so I drove down there and hung out with him and Jamie. It was lots of fun. It had been a long time since I'd been able to hang out with them.

Sunday was church, and then the archery range again. Then back to Alexandria for ultimate frisbee. That was fun. I got there late because I had to shoot, so I only got to play for about an hour and a half. After that, I went for a 15 mile bike ride. I was having a lot of trouble keeping the pedals going after 14.5 miles. It was fun though. I hadn't ridden by myself for a while. It's always nice to go at your own pace. After I finished riding, I stopped by Dustin's for dinner. We had fettuccine. Dustin makes some yummy fettuccine. :)

It was a fun weekend, but Monday was hard. I got up at 5:30, and at 5:35, I wanted to take a nap. :)

Not a normal post

2008-05-06T17:33:00.002-04:00

I didn't make it to the range today because traffic was bad. So I picked a card up for mom for Mommy's Day (it's this Sunday, if you forgot), then I went home and messed around on the internet for a bit. I had a little time to do some thinking (doesn't happen very often), and I was thinking about all my friends in KS. Then I got really sad (you know, the kind of sad you feel where if you kept on going with those kinds of thoughts you could cry). I realized that as much as I love living out here and as awesome as my friends in DC are, I still miss all my friends that are still stuck in the Kansas Rectangle. I really miss game nights at Grandma's, all day bike rides with 2fers at Pizza Shuttle with Tim, biking on the river trail, shooting pool until 2:00 in the morning, starting movies at 11:00 at night at Ryan's house on his huge tv and kick @$$ sound system, late night bike rides, and yes, I even miss Seaton Hall, where I spent way too much of my time while I was at K-State.

It's been almost 2 years since I moved 1200 miles away from everybody, and I've met some awesome people in that amount of time, found an amazing church, and have really started to think of this as home now. But I still miss everybody I left behind. I've been fortunate to be able to make it back to the Little Apple so much, but it's not enough to really maintain the relationships I have with everyone there.

In short, growing up sucks. If you have a chance to stay in school, take it! Put off getting to the "real world" as long as possible. And if you have to move to far off lands, make sure you take the time to keep in touch with all your friends. They're the ones who help you up when you fall down, and share the good times with you. So for all of you still in KS, or spread out around the country, I love you, and miss you a lot. I wish we could hang out more often, but if you're ever in DC or the surrounding areas, let me know, because I'd love to see you! And for the very few of you who live in DC and have randomly found this, I love you guys too. I thank God for blessing me with your friendship. I really couldn't make it out here without you. :) Thanks!

Still not busy...

2008-05-01T12:43:00.002-04:00

I'm still not very busy at work, yet. So you get to listen to me boring you for a third day in a row! :) Aren't you excited? :P

Yesterday, I was going to leave work at 4:00 and go to the archery range, but I got stuck in a meeting until 5:00, so I only had time to go home. :( I was bummed about that, but on the other hand, I got to cook dinner (spaghetti, which I hadn't made for a while. Yummy!), and I got to run to the Metro to go down to hang out with some people down in Alexandria. I think I wound up running a little over 4 miles yesterday. I'm starting to get in good enough shape that it doesn't kill me get out there, so I'm much more inclined to go. :)

It was fun hanging out last night. We just sat down at St. Elmo's Coffee Pub and talked, but it was nice and relaxing. I didn't get to bed before 11 though. I really need to get more sleep. :S Oh well. There's always tomorrow. :)

So I was thinking that maybe this summer I could by a condo/townhouse. But I talked to Tim about loans, and decided that it might be best to wait. I could do the condo thing, but it would be a stretch. I'll just keep saving and maybe next summer I can buy something. Maybe I can even skip the whole condo thing and go directly to a townhouse.... It all depends on whether or not work keeps going strong. It doesn't seem like I've had as much over time this year as I had last year. I should probably figure that out...

Long Day

2008-04-30T12:30:00.002-04:00

So Tuesdays are probably my longest days of the week. I get to work at 7:00 in the morning and work until 4:00. Then I drive 35-45 minutes (in traffic) out to Centerville to shoot. I usually get started shooting around 5:00, and I shoot until 6:00. (Not as long as I'd really like to shoot, but it's the best I can do.) Then I drive 45 minutes (not in traffic most of the way) to Clarendon for my swing dance class. That starts at 7:00, and lasts until 8:00. Then Dustin and I go and find me something to eat. At 9:00-ish, we go back for the dance. I get home anytime between 10:30 and 11:00. Then I have to unwind so I can go to bed. Needless to say, I get really tired multiple times during the day. Fortunately, the music is usually good for the dance, and that usually wakes me up some.

Last night, I kept trying to dance with girls, but I kept getting beat out by like 2 seconds by other guys. It was really frustrating. It's not like I was being picky with who I dance with, there just wasn't anybody to dance with, and when there was, they only stood there for about 10 seconds before somebody came along and scooped them up. The other girls that were standing around were with somebody, and you can't ask them to dance. :S It must be nice to be a girl, and get to dance all the time. I wish it worked out so well for the guys. Before I started dancing, if you were to ask me if there were more guys or girls at dances/dance classes, I would have definitely said girls, but now, I think I can safely say that there are more guys than girls, and it sucks. I think I only got to do like 5 dances last night. Maybe 6. And two of them were with Courtney. (she had pity on me.) ;)

The other sucky part about it is that all the people who stick around for the dance are WAY better than me. I keep on confusing them when I send them in to something and then don't finish it the way they were expecting. It makes me feel dumb because I don't know if what I'm doing is wrong, or if it all works, and they just are used to the "routine".

But it's a lot of fun. I really enjoy dancing to swing music. And it's fun to dance with a girl who knows what she's doing because everything just moves along so much better. (even if I feel dumb)

I had a really good archery practice last night. I was shooting really well, and I was shooting 8 arrow ends (I usually only shoot 6, so it's much more tiring). I had one arrow that sounded like it robin hooded the other one, but when I got down there, it only broke the nock. It was just so loud that I thought I had broken another arrow. That would have been really irritating, because those arrows are $300/dozen, and I already ruined one. It makes you feel good, but at the same time, I can't afford to be breaking those all the time. :)

Work is really light this week. Most of my projects are quiet, but when they start up again, they will keep me pretty busy, so I can't take on many more projects. I've been working on the LEED Certification (energy efficiency/green design) for our office the past day and a half. I'm getting really bored with it. It's a lot of reading because I haven't done it before. I don't feel like I've been very productive on it, but if I wasn't working on that, I would probably just be sitting here trying to look like I was actually doing something. Hopefully I'll be able to work on a job tomorrow. If it starts up, I'll be able to spend some time on it this week, and maybe in to next week. I don't know what I'm going to do next week. I don't think I have anything coming up on any of my current projects, except for that one. :S I might be bored...

This is getting a lot longer than I was expecting for just having one day on it.... I'm going to stop writing now, and go back to listening swing music. :)

Some Random Title

2008-04-29T12:44:00.002-04:00

I'm sure that you're all shocked, but here I am, posting again, and it hasn't been a month. :)

Friday, I got to go for a bike ride. Courtney and I met up Friday evening for a bike ride/picnic. It was super fun. I'm so glad we were able to get out and enjoy the weather. We rode about 14 miles, I think (Courtney, do you remember?) Maybe it was 13.5 or something.... *shrug* It would've been nice to stay out a little later, but it got dark on us, and I didn't have my light. (I took it off and left it in the car. Genius!) It was exciting riding back in the dark with the headlights blinding us so we couldn't even see the trail...) :) I need to clean my bike up and give it a good tuning, but I don't really have a place to do that. :S

Saturday, I went to the archery range, and shot outside in the amazing sunshiny weather we had. And then I went down to Ray and Summer's to help build toys for the kids at the Town of Potomac's Centennial Celebration this weekend. I rode my bike to the Vienna metro and took it down to Braddock road, near their house. That was fun. I think the coolest thing we made was Plinko (or Thudo, since it was made of wood). :) There were like 8 of us out there building stuff. It was fun, and the weather was super! Until it came to be time to go home.... I made it to the metro right before it started pouring. Which means that when I got to Vienna, I got to ride home in the rain. Now I really need to do something about my bike. I think it washed some of the dirt off of it though. :)

Sunday, I did the usual church stuff. After church, the Unofficial Young Adults group met at IHOP for lunch. That was fun. I got to meet some new people. I've been told that I'm the leader, so I feel like I need to try to get out and meet everybody. Angie and I are trying to get them to help out with the Town of Potomac thing on Saturday.

After we got done eating, Courtney, Dustin, and I went to the Pentagon City Mall and tried to find some sunglasses for me. Apparently nobody makes sunglasses for under $150. :S After failing at the mall, we went to the Sports Authority and I found some there. I'm happy about that because I've been trying to find some for like over a month now. Thanks for your help Courtney and Dustin!

Last night, after I got home, I went running. I ran 3.66 miles in 30:59. That's an 8:27-ish pace, which I am quite pleased with at this point, especially since I was running by all by my onesie. :)

Busy

2008-04-24T12:52:00.002-04:00

Sorry I've been MIA lately. I've been really busy/sick lately. I'll try to keep this short so ya'll don't have to read a book. I've been spending a lot of time hanging out with friends lately. I really enjoy doing stuff with friends. It's one of my favorite things to do. :) The only bad part is that most of my friends live in Alexandria, and I live in Vienna, which is about 20 miles away. One weekend, I drove 200 miles and never left the city. I think a normal weekend is about 100 to 120. But it's worth it. :)

Last week, I was really busy with work. I had a project that my bosses didn't think I would be able to finish, even though I told them I could. I finished it, but I got sick in the middle, and couldn't really stop working because it was too late to pass it off to somebody else while I slept. Last Wednesday was the worst. I woke up with a fever, but still had to go to work to finish things up. When I sent it out on Friday, I felt really good about it. It felt like the end of the semester when you just finished your last final, and you have nothing else to do. I probably could've started working on something else on Friday, but I didn't really want to start something with just a couple hours to focus on it. I wound up putting in 50 hours last week, and I left an hour early on Friday. :)

My swing dance class started up on Tuesday. It's going to be kinda boring for the first little bit. There's not very many cute girls in our class. Most of them are cougar age or mom age. There's probably only 4 or 5 out of the 48 people in the class that are close to my age. Dustin's taking it with me, and he was complaining about it. It kinda sucks, but oh well. :) A lot of the people there have no idea what they're doing. They're all like trying to lead, or doing the steps wrong or something. I'm glad I have a little experience going in to it. :)

Those are the big things that have been happening recently. I'm sure there's some others, but like I said, I'm trying to keep this short. :) Happy Thursday!

Happy Easter (a little late)

2008-03-24T22:28:00.003-04:00

Hope you all had a happy Easter. Mine was good. But I'm still kinda tired. I should probably be sleeping right now instead of posting, but I have to get some arrows fletched so I can shoot them tomorrow.

I guess I'll start with last weekend. Friday afternoon, Dustin texted me and asked if I wanted to go swing dancing with him and Courtney. I didn't really have a good reason not to, so I went. It was fun, but there were more performances than usual. It was a memorial dance for this guy who had a big impact on swing in DC. I got mauled. (by cougars) But it was still fun.

Then on Saturday, I hung out with Andrea. We toured the Sidwell Friends new middle school building. It's the first LEED Platinum school, and the first LEED Platinum building in DC. It was really cool. It didn't look that hard to achieve LEED, if you don't mind spending a little extra money. (LEED is a rating system that rates how energy efficient (life cycle efficiency) your building is. Platinum is the highest of the 4 rankings) After that, we walked down to the National Cathedral since we were close, and I hadn't seen it before. It was neat. I'll have to go back sometime and take more time going through it. While we were there, Nick called me and asked if I wanted to play ultimate with them on the Mall. I thought that sounded like fun, so I went down there. Of course, to get there, I had to walk through Georgetown to the metro. So that made about 3 miles of walking at that point in the day. When I got to the Mall, everybody was running a little late, so I just laid in the grass by the Washington Monument. I got to play with them for about an hour. I was really tired after that, but I needed to get home so I could get a shower to go swing dancing (again). I met up with Dustin and Andrea, and we went up there. It was much less cougar-ish Saturday night. We had a lot of fun, after Dustin and Andrea decided it was okay to step out of their comfort zone. I was basically dead by the time we were finished.

Sunday, I helped set up for church, then ran sound. I decided to tough it out and go to the archery range, even though I was really tired. Gerald let me borrow some of his arrows, so I tested them. They work really well, so I bought a dozen on Tuesday. (Those are the ones I'm fletching right now... Better go glue another one on... brb) I'm back.

Monday was a toaster in the bathtub kind of day. I didn't even hear my alarm go off. I KNOW I set it, because I distinctly remember it. I woke up 10 minutes I'm usually at work. I still got there before most people showed up, but it was irritating. Christine and Ed got into town Monday night. It was nice to get to see them. They stayed with me until Friday. I hadn't seen them for a long time since they were in Canadia over Christmas.

My week at work slowly got better. It was kind of frustrating at the beginning. I got my new arrows on Friday, but I haven't really been able to do much with them until tonight. I guess I'll cut them while I'm at the range tomorrow.

So now we get to this weekend... Friday night, I met up with Mark, Dave, and Andrea at Porter's. Mark proceeded to get completely wasted. Andrea and I were much more responsible, but we weren't really sure what to do with Mark. He was over the edge. It was fun though. I think I got home between 11:00 and 11:30.

Saturday morning, a bunch of us helped Dustin and his roommate move. They have a really nice new place down by the GW Parkway. You could throw rocks at the bikers on the trail on the other side of the parkway from his front porch. After we got them moved, we went over to Hank and Jamie's to celebrate Dustin's birthday. It was fun. We played video games and ate food. :) There were quite a few people who showed up. Dustin, Courtney, Chris, and I were going to go swing dancing, but we didn't make it.

Sunday, I was super tired, but I made it to church at 7:10 to set up for service. We had a good service. There were probably another 40 people there, which is about a fifth more than we usually have. I went over to Courtney's for Easter lunch. She and her roommates had a potluck. Dustin, Chris, and Angie were there, and some people I had met swing dancing last weekend, and a bunch of people I didn't know. After lunch, Courtney, Chris, Dustin, and I sat around trying to come up with something to do. Eventually, we decided to go for a walk through Old Town. Dustin decided he was too tired, so he went home. It was a really nice day for a walk. Courtney and I spontaneously started swing dancing on the pier. It was super fun, and moderately out of character for me. I should do that more often. :) I was really tired when I got home, but it was a fun weekend.

Today, I worked late and then came home and ate dinner. I finally watched Pirates 3. It was pretty good, but there was just always something going on. They could have developed certain parts of it better. It's almost like they were trying to cater toward an ADD audience.

And now it's about time to go to bed. Sorry for the super long post. I've just done a lot lately (and not posted enough) :)

Update

2008-03-09T21:27:00.002-04:00

So I never had to go in to jury duty. I was kind of hoping maybe I would get to do it, just to see the process. And Jess wanted me to go so I could tell her about it so she could tell her class... :)

Last Saturday, I went over to my old Bible study leader's (Fidel) house for breakfast/brunch/early lunch. It was yummy. Chocolate chip waffles, eggs, and sausage. mmmm. :) Then I went to the archery range and shot. In the evening, we had a party for Terry and Ana since they got married out of town and none of us were there. It was fun. Summer planned it, and did a great job. There was a lot of yummy food. :D And I got to use my pool cue for the first time in about 6 months. It was getting kind of lonely. I feel sorry for it. I hardly ever play anymore. I didn't play that well because it was a 9' table, and my angles were off a little bit. But Ray and I were on the same team, and once we started playing, we never lost. :) It was great!

Last Sunday, I helped set up for church, then got to run sound. The band is getting really, really good. And Pastor David is getting better with his delivery and his jokes, so it's good. There's definitely a huge difference between now and when the church first started. Tige, from my old Bible study, came to visit. He skipped out on his signing duties at his other church to come. :) I'm glad he was able to make it. We've been trying to get him to come for quite a while now. After church, my small group got together for lunch at whatever that Mexican place next to church is.
Everybody was there except for Wade and Kelly. It was fun. It's always nice to get to hang out with people and get to know them better. :)

Tuesday, when I went to practice, my shoulders were really tired from all the shooting I've been doing. I was going to go on Wednesday since small group was canceled wo we could go to First Thursday (a prayer and worship time that DCMC has on the first Thursday of the month). I was on the way out there, and I was talking to Hank, and traffic was really backed up, and he was playing Call of Duty 4, so I decided to skip archery practice and go play video games. (yeah, I know, real responsible) I guess it turned out for the best because the range was really crowded, so I would've been frustrated with that anyways.

Thursday, I went to First Thursday. (yes, it was Dustin (Ralfie) who talked me into rearranging my shooting schedule so I could go). It was really good. I'll go next time, if I'm around. I just need to make sure I leave a little sooner. Traffic was really bad getting down there. I was surprised at how much longer it took me to get there than it does to small group, which is really close to it.

Friday, after I got off work, I played COD4 with Ralfie until about 12:00, even though I had to get up and drive to my tournament. We had a lot of fun. And then, like usual, we sat and talked for about 45 minutes before we finally stopped. We're really bad about that. :)

Saturday, I drove down to Harrisonburg for my tournament. It was NAA Regional Indoor Nationals. I shot really, really, really, really, really bad that day. I barely broke 500/600. I think I wound up with a 507 or something dumb like that. I ate dinner with Stan and Lois at the Texas Roadhouse. Evan, Frank, and June were supposed to meet up with us, but apparently they wound up at the Texas Steakhouse. Who would've thought that there were two "Texas" restaurants in the same area... We had good food. :) I'm pretty sure ours was better than theirs, because our restaurant was actually busy. :) I went to bed at 8:00 Saturday night. I'm glad I was tired because there's not a whole lot to do in a hotel room by yourself. :)

Today, I got up at 8:00 (after the time adjustment). A whole 11 hours of sleep. I can't remember the last time I got that much! It was nice though. :) I shot a whole lot better today. I think I had a 541 or something. That's much more normal for me. I was happy with it. I think I could've shot a little bit better, but given how much of a recovery it was from yesterday, it was really good.

For those of you who were wondering (Raybert, if you're reading this, it was mostly for you...), the reason I had to delete Rachel's comment was because it was a clue to my age (basically, she told you all what it was!). Hope I caught it before it was too late! I don't want it getting out before I say something! :)

And Rachel, as for the Olympics, 2008 isn't in the cards. I'm still rebuilding my form from tearing it apart about 2 years ago. I'm getting really close to being back where I was, but it's been a long time coming. It seems like it comes in stages though. My goal right now is 2012 in London. The food'll be better there anyways, and they have cooler accents. :)

Busy Weekend

2008-02-26T12:50:00.002-05:00

I had a really busy weekend. I was probably home for about 5 hours when I wasn't sleeping. It was fun though. It started with a good night's sleep on Friday. I was playing Halo with Hank to get ready for our LAN party, and I just got really tired at 10:30, so I went to bed.

Saturday, I got up early and got to the archery range about 9:00 so I could shoot. It was the only time I had when I could make it out there. The Queen Ann JOAD was in there, and it was organized chaos. It was a little frustrating trying to shoot with them in there, but I was expecting it, so it wasn't so bad. After I finished shooting, I drove down to fats0's house for the LAN party. I got there about 12:30 or so. We cooked burgers while we were playing. It was fun. I had a really good day (or else fats0 had a bad one.....) :) I think I got home about 9:30 from that, and I was really tired. Eight hours of video games will do that to you. :)

Sunday, I got to church at 7:30 to help set up. It was a good service. The band played really well, and we were able to make some adjustments on the sound so that it sounded bassier. I talked Ana into coming with me, so that was fun. After church, Ana and I met up with Hank and Jamie for lunch, and then Hank, Jamie, and I went out to the archery range. It's been a long time since I got to shoot with somebody I actually hang out with away from the archery range. I had a lot of fun shooting with them, and I got to shoot 120 arrows. :) I think I might have to up my poundage soon.

After we finished shooting, we went to my house so I could let them borrow some movies. I called Mark on the way home, and he said he was going to be at Tyson's in the evening, so I met him there. We did a little shopping. I got a couple new shirts for work. Then we had dinner and watched Jumper. It was a good idea for a movie, but they could have done a better job developing it. I was expecting something a little different. It was good though. Hopefully they'll expand on their idea. But they're going to have to get a better screenwriter if they want it to be any good. This is one movie that the sequel could be better than the original. :) I think I got home about 10:00 or so, and I went to bed soon after that.

Mom called me and said that she and Dad are coming out to visit me for my birthday. That should be fun, I think. It's a good time of year for them to come. Hopefully the cherry blossoms will be in bloom by then. *crosses fingers* :)

I forgot

2008-02-21T12:50:00.003-05:00

I forgot to mention yesterday that I updated my profile on here. Not a lot changed, but it's been a long time since I did it. I also just finished updating my facebook profile, if you're on there. Ana told me I needed to since I still had that I was interested in "Random Play" on there..... :)

Last night was Bible study. It was John and Julie, Hank and Jamie, Josh and Allison, Wade and Kelly, and me. Nothing makes you feel awkward like going to a Bible study with four married couples............

Okay, I'm done. It wasn't really that bad. But that thought did cross my mind. They're all really cool people. I enjoy being around them. John and Hank are part of DCMG, and I think we talked Wade into coming this weekend. Josh already had plans, but maybe we can get him to come sometime. :)

Archery Tournament

2008-02-20T12:37:00.002-05:00

I had a tournament this past weekend. It went really, really well. The 2nd half of the tournament was the best I've shot in probably 3 years. I'm really happy about how it went. I also have more motivation for practicing now. :)

I had a three day weekend this week because we get President's day off. So Friday, I had some people over for dinner. It was a very last minute kind of a deal. Mark emailed me Friday morning asking what I was doing this weekend, and I wound up inviting him and some other people over for dinner. :) I made south of the border casserole, corn pudding, and chocolate peanut butter pie. Everybody really liked it. There weren't any leftovers. :)

Saturday, I had my tournament in the morning, and then in the evening, I went to dinner with Hank and Jamie. We went down to Old Town to King Street Blues. It was pretty good.

Sunday, I helped set up for church and ran sound. I tried to get my Air FX to work with the sound board, but I wasn't very successful. I'm trying to figure out how to connect it so it will work the way I want it to. After church, I went over to Hank and Jamie's for lunch, and then we went down to Mount Vernon. It was fun. I thought the basement was going to be open, but it wasn't. :( Maybe someday.

Monday, I got to hang out with Tige. I haven't seen him for probably 4 months or something. We went to Bertucci's for lunch, and they took so long getting it to us, we got it for free. :) It was good to catch up with him. After lunch, we went back to my place and played some Halo. :)

This week, I'm on call for Jury Duty, so Doug didn't assign me much work, just to be on the safe side. I haven't run out yet, and I'm not getting called in this week. I have to call on Friday to see about next week. Hopefully, I can make my work stretch through the next week and a half (or hopefully Doug can find some more work for me). :)

This weekend, we have a LAN party with DCMG. It should be a good time. :) I'm trying to decide if I should leave early to go swing dancing since the next time I'd be able to go would be like the 4th week of March or something... I guess I'll call Claire or Ana tonight and see if they want to go. Or maybe Gina would want to go......

Mark emailed me a flowchart to find out if you're a douchebag today. Here's a link to it. It's kinda small, so you might have to download it to get it bigger.... It's really funny. :)

Sick

2008-02-01T14:54:00.000-05:00

So I've had to take 3 days off of work this week because I've been sick. :( Today, I'm feeling better, but I'm still at home. I'm hoping to be able to go back to work on Monday. I really don't like being sick, especially when it messes up my plans. For instance, tonight I was supposed to go hang out with a friend. And I haven't shot in over a week. :(

Sorry about the title for the last post. I guess maybe I got your hopes up a little too high... I'll be more careful in the future. :)

I haven't really done much lately, except being busy with work and trying to stop being sick.

I really need to go to the grocery store. I'm out of bread, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables (baby carrot), and I can't remember what else, but I know I need to buy a bunch of stuff.

Looks like I might be getting to play Call of Duty 4 with some guys from church tomorrow morning. :) That'll be fun. There's a lot of us that get together fairly frequently. We had some t-shirts made up. I should be able to pick mine up on Sunday. :) They're pretty awesome!

Hope you're sitting down....

2008-01-21T12:25:00.000-05:00

Look at this! I'm posting again! And it's only been a few days instead of a few months! :) The LAN party on Saturday was a lot of fun. We had a pretty good turnout. And we're finally going to be putting in an order for t-shirts. They're pretty freakin' awesome. :) Smack did a fantabulous job designing them. They'll even have our gamertags on the back. :) samthearcher strikes again!

Before the LAN, a few of us helped a guy move some stuff to storage. It's always nice to meet somebody new. He came to the LAN after he finished up some other things.

Sunday, I went to church. We had a good message about how God blesses you when you're obedient. You can listen to the podcast here if you want. I really felt convicted to start spending more time with God. I know, it may now seem like that kind of a message, but that's what I got from it.

I got to talk to Annie after church. I hadn't really gotten much of a chance to talk to her since before Christmas, so it was good to catch up with her. A bunch of us when to lunch at Hops together. It was fun.

I even made it to the archery range on Sunday. I shot alright. I'm still getting my strength back from taking some time off over Christmas. I really need to work on that.... :)

My apologies to all you who still check this

2008-01-18T19:53:00.000-05:00

So I have been very busy lately. I've been working alot and trying to still shoot and have a social life. I got to go back to Kansas for about 11 days at Christmas. It was a good trip. I got to see a lot of friends (I couldn't see everybody, but maybe next time.)

I've started going to a new church. It just started in September, and everybody there is really friendly. We're having a LAN party tomorrow and playing Halo 3. There's quite a few guys there that come.

I've started learning how to swing dance. It's a lot of fun. There's a place in MD that has live music and good lessons. I really enjoy going up there. I need to take some lessons to learn some new moves.

I have the whole house to myself this weekend. One of my roommates is in El Salvador, and one of them went to visit his girlfriend. I just need to figure out what to do with this new freedom...... ;)

That's all I've got for now. If you have any particular questions you would like me to answer, feel free to post them. (that would also let me know that there are actually people who read this still....:) )

Finally posting

2007-08-16T12:50:00.000-04:00

So it's been a long time since I posted last... Let's see... What have I done... The week after I went rafting in WV, I went to CO for Grandad's 80th birthday party. It was pretty fun. I wasn't there very long, but all the aunts and uncles were there, and my cousin from OH was there. We went horseback riding on Saturday morning, and rafting Saturday afternoon. Then in the evening, we had Grandad's party. Sunday morning, I drove back to Grand Junction to catch my plane back to DC. It was a very quick trip.

The next weekend, I went to Atlantic City with Mark, Phil, and Andrea. It was fun. We went to the casino's and walked along the boardwalk Saturday night. Sunday, we laid on the beach for a while, after sleeping in. :) Traffic was really bad coming back. I didn't get home until 11:30 at night!

The next weekend, I had an archery tournament. I did better at it than I did at the one I had earlier this summer, but I didn't place. It was fun though. I learned more about my shooting while I was there, so that made me happy.

Last weekend, I went to Baltimore with Mark, Andrea, and Gretchen. We met up with Renee and went down to the Inner Harbor for happy hour and the jazz festival. It was a lot of fun. Sunday morning, we went to church with Renee in Baltimore. It was a nice Lutheran church downtown. I finally understood the whole concept of the old cathedrals trying to make man feel small, because as we walked toward the front of the church, it got a little narrower, and just made you feel tiny. I really want to go see a cathedral in Europe. :)

Other than that, it's been the usual. I've been working a lot still, and shooting. I have a tournament coming up at the end of the month that I'm a little worried about actually being able to finish. It's going to be what I would normally do in two days in one day. I'll be very tired after that's over. I've been trying to shoot more and working out to get ready for it. Hopefully I'll be able to keep my working out going even after the tournament. I really need to keep that up. I want to start running sometime to build my cardio back up...

Randomness for the Day: Architects are very frustrating. Especially when they have nothing better to do than email you. :S

Lots going on!

2007-07-10T12:29:00.000-04:00

I've been pretty busy lately, but I'll try to keep this short (mostly because I have like 5 minutes before I need to get back to work...) I've decided that I'm not posting often enough because I actually had to back and look at my last post to remember what I posted about...

The weekend before the 4th, Gretchen came down from Boston to hang out with Mark and me. We had some good times. We celebrated their birthdays since they're both about this time of year. For the 4th, I met up with Mark and some other people to watch the fireworks on the Mall. We had a really good spot in line to get on to the Capitol Lawn to watch the concert/fireworks, but a thunderstorm rolled in, so they told everybody to leave. We went back after it started raining, but the line to get in to the Lawn was probably an hour and a half long, so we just watched the fireworks from the Washington Monument.

Oh yeah! I also moved that weekend when Gretchen came down. I have way too much stuff! I filled up a 10' truck with all my crap! It was kind of unbelievable. But we got it all moved in and then celebrated birthdays. :) My new place is kinda small. I'm packed into my room pretty tightly. It'll work though. The rent is definitely a lot nicer than my last place! :D

Last weekend, a bunch of us went rafting on the Upper New River in WV. It was a super awesome time! It was some of the best rafting I think I've been on. We got to do several Class IV and V's. We even got to swim a couple of the smaller rapids. There was one spot where you could jump off of a rock into a whirlpool and let it suck you under and take you for a ride. That was fun! :) And then of course, there was the jump rock, a staple for any rafting trip. This one was an 18' drop. It was kinda scary. :)

Well, I need to get back to work now, but hopefully I'll get to post a little more often... Hope you're all doing great, and don't forget to call every now and then!

Randomness for the Day: So I didn't wear sunscreen while we were rafting, and I'm definitely burned. It's worse than I thought it would be... It still kinda hurts a little.... :S

Wedding

2007-06-29T12:24:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, I went back to Manhattan for Tim and Hallie's wedding. It was a really fun time. I got to see a bunch of people I hadn't seen in forever, and I got to hang out with all you cool people back in KS. I was the best man, so I had to plan the bachelor party and stuff. I hope Tim enjoyed it. We wound up just going to Grandma's. I was hoping to do something a little more out of the ordinary, but all the things I looked in to didn't work out. :S Oh well. We definitely got the car decorated really well, and Tim and Hallie totally weren't expecting it! Ryan and Katiee have some pictures of it up on facebook. I'm working on getting my pictures up there, but facebook isn't liking me right now. :S

This week has been really busy for me. I had a job go out on Thursday. I had a lot of work that had to be done on it this week. I didn't get quite as much finished up as I wanted. I guess it's okay that there are some holes in it since it was just a 90% submission, but I wish I could've finished up a few more things. I couldn't work too much extra on it because I've been packing stuff up this week. I'm going to be moving tomorrow morning. I'm looking forward to saving money, but I'm not sure how having roommates is going to work out... I've never done that before... I guess we'll just have to see how it works. I don't really know the two guys I'm going to be living with either...

Gretchen is coming in to town tonight. I'm picking her up at the airport. Her birthday is next week and Mark's is tomorrow, so we're going to celebrate. I'm not sure if I'll be able to go out tonight. I need to get everything packed up tonight so it's ready to move. I hope I don't have to move too many more times before I buy my own place. It's kind of a pain in the butt.

Randomness for the Day: Today has been a really good day. It was the 3rd payday of the month (usually there are only two). And we got bonuses today. I got over twice as much as I was expecting! Woohoo! :D

Postin' from the office...

2007-06-13T12:48:00.000-04:00

Things have been a little less busy for me this week. I haven't worked any extra in the evenings at all yet. It's been pretty nice. I started doing cardio stuff again. We'll have to see if I can keep it up when I get busy again.

Saturday, I had people over for dinner. I made lasagna. It turned out pretty well. Everybody like it anyways. :) My chocolate cake I made on the other hand.... That was pretty disastrous. It tasted fine, but it definitely fell apart when I took it out of the cake pan. It started getting even more torn up when I started frosting it, so I wound up just glopping some frosting between the layers and then some on top. I didn't even do the sides. :S

I had an archery lesson on Sunday. Ruth said things were looking pretty good. She gave me some new things to work on. I tried to shoot last night, but it started thundering, so I stopped. I only shot 6 arrows. :S It was nice weather though, even though it was raining. If there hadn't been any thunder, I would've shot in the rain.

I'll be in Manhattan in a week. If anybody else is around, I'd love to hang out with you! Just give me a call and let me know! (If you need my new number, it's on facebook.)

I'll be moving in about two and a half weeks. I'm looking forward to it. I'm going to be able to cut my rent in half!

Randomness for the Day: Sunshine is a happy thing! :D

Memorial Day Weekend in the City

2007-05-29T21:52:00.001-04:00

So my brother came up to visit me this weekend. We had a lot of fun. I think I saw more of the touristy stuff in DC this weekend than I've seen since I've been here. It was a busy weekend, but here's the cliff notes.

Friday, Ben got here around 11, so I got to leave work early. :) Friday afternoon, we went downtown to the Museum of Natural History. They had the Hope Diamond on display there. It's kind of a big diamond. It was very sparkly. (I don't think it would have looked very good on me though....) Then we went over to the Air and Space Museum. I'd been in there for about a half an hour before, but we got to see the parts I hadn't seen before. Then we went over to the Museum of American Art - West Building. We were kind of waiting for Becca to call me. She's one of Liz's friends that just moved out here, so I wanted to make sure she wasn't alone for the whole weekend. She called about 4:30-ish, and we made plans for dinner (and where to meet up since I had no way of knowing who she was). We met up down in Clarendon and were looking for the Taste of Morocco (she said that she loved Moroccan food), but we never found it. We ate at Mister Days instead. None of us were ready to call it an evening, so we went over to the Clarendon Ballroom and hung out. That was super fun. :) I'm really glad that Liz had her call me. She's a super cool girl. :)

Saturday, Ben and I went to Mount Vernon to see George Washington's house. I really like going down there. It's so much quieter there and it's really pretty. Life just kind of slows down while you're there. It's kind of hard to find places like that around here. After we finished up there, we went out to the Dulles Air and Space Museum. They have the Enola Gay and the Space Shuttle Enterprise on exhibit there. They also have a Concorde there. It was really cool to see all the stuff they have out there.

Sunday, Ben and I went to the zoo. We invited Becca along, but she was going to church with some friends in the morning. I told her to call me when she got finished with church if she wanted to hang out. We were still at the zoo when she called, so she came and joined us. It was a lot of fun. We didn't get to see the whole zoo. (Ben and I spent quite a bit of time in the Bird exhibit taking pictures in a futile attempt to be artistic before Becca met up with us. I'll post my feeble attempts at pictures on facebook sometime...) I'll have to go back to see the rest of the zoo sometime. We saw signs for the National Cathedral around the zoo, so I'm going to have to go up there to see if I can find it sometime. I hear that it's really pretty. Sunday night, Ben and I went to Frontline since I wasn't practicing. It wasn't as good as normal because Stephanie wasn't leading worship. She's really good. The guys that led worship just made an album of hymns to a modern beat. It was good, but not really my kind of music.

Monday, Ben and I just hung out at my apartment until I had to take him to the airport. I beat Halo on my new XBox 360 Elite. (My DVD player died, so I had to replace it and instead of buying just a DVD player, I decided just to get and XBox so I could play with Pat, Ryan, Riggs, and Tim) :)

That's my weekend. It was super fun. I had a blast hanging out with Ben, and I made a new, really cool friend. :) (Thanks Liz!)

Randomness for the Day: You would think that I'd have plenty to write here since I haven't posted for like three weeks, but I got nothin'! :S

Staying super busy!

2007-05-11T12:27:00.000-04:00

Hi Everybody! I'm finally posting again. All the people I usually eat lunch with are either gone for the day or working though lunch, so I have a little extra time to post! :)

Life has been really busy for me. I'm still working 45-50 hours a week. I have a project that's going out on Monday, and it's not finished yet, so it could be a late day today. At the end of the day yesterday, I had already worked 40 hours this week.

I'm still shooting about 5 days a week too. I didn't shoot last night because I'm starting to get sick and I thought I should probably get some extra sleep. Archery keeps getting better. We're finally shooting outside, and I've been shooting 90 m. It's awesome! I have a tournament in June. It's just a local thing, but it'll be fun.

I've been able to hang out with the guys from my Bible study quite a bit lately. We've been trying to make an extra effort to spend time together. It's been a lot of fun. Ben's going to come visit me over Memorial Day weekend. I'm really looking forward to that. It'll be a blast! :)

I put in my 60 day notice at my apartment complex. I'll be moving out on June 30. I'm still looking for a new place. I've seen some stuff that looks like it might work, but I haven't contacted anybody yet. I've been looking on my church's website. I'm trying to cut my rent in about half.

Well, I better get back to work. I hope ya'll're doing well (I think I just made up a new contraction). Don't forget to call/email/facebook/comment!

Randomness for the Day: "Did you know that old motor oil could be used as fertilizer? -Courtesy of the EPA" - Fight Club

Spring is here!!!! :D

2007-04-23T12:26:00.000-04:00

So spring finally got here this weekend. I had a super fun time outside in the sun. :) It started out Friday night with some really nice weather. I went bowling with my small group + significant others. It was a good time. After we got done bowling, 4 of us went down to the Four Provinces for some more to drink. It was a good time. I got to know a couple of them a little better. I had some Irish Whiskey that was A-mazing! It was really sweet. It would be really easy to get in trouble with that stuff!

Saturday, I went hiking in the Shenandoah's with Stephanie. We hiked about 7.5-8 miles. We got to see a couple waterfalls and enjoy the sunshine. I got a little bit of a sunburn, so it was a good day. :)

Sunday, I was going to give my car a bath, but the car wash station at my apartment complex isn't open yet. :( But I did get to shoot outside. It was super fun! There were 9 of us shooting, and we had a cookout with hamburgers, hot dogs, and brats. Yumminess! I even got to shoot 90 m. It was the first time I've done that in about 3 years. :) I got an archer's burn while we were out. It was super fun times! (I had to call Tom and Rhonda twice to rub it in) ;)

Randomness for the Day: Sun is good for you.

Yes, I'm still here

2007-04-03T23:01:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I was seriously in the middle of writing this like 3 days ago, and I got interrupted, and then Rachel told me I needed to post... So here's what I was going to say....

So it's been over a month since I last posted... I'll try to keep this as brief as I can. I've been really busy, and I have a lot to update you on.

Work has been crazy busy pretty much since the first of the year. I think I've had a couple breaks in there somewhere, but I can't really remember anymore. A few weeks ago, I was at work until 3:30 in the morning finishing up a job for the Department of Justice. I really needed another week to work on the job, but I didn't get it. It was kind of a crappy deal. I was even back in the office at 7:00 to send it out. I left early that day and tried to sleep.

About a week and a half ago, I was at work until 6:00 in the morning working on the same job. The only thing different about this time is I was there because I chose to be there because I was feeling nice. I emailed Jeremy at 11:30 to find out how things were going, and from where he said they were, I'm pretty sure that he still would've been working on stuff past when the job was supposed to go out. I took half of Thursday off after that... The paychecks are really nice after a week like that though...

Let's see...... What else has happened in my life since my last post that was so very long ago... I got to shoot my new bow. It's really sweet. I really like it. It looks really good too. I'm super impressed with the awesomeness of it's visual appeal.

Nationals was in March. It was SO much fun! I really enjoyed myself down there. I gave Stephanie a ride down there. It was really nice to have the company (and somebody to tell me where to go since she went to school there). The tournament was a really good size, and was run very well. I got to hang out with Stephanie quite a bit over the course of the weekend. She let me tag along to dinner with her family twice, and she took me to the JMU archery team's party Saturday night. That was fun. Except for the hangover all day on Sunday. :S I shot a point better on Sunday than I did Saturday, so maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all. ;) I didn't shoot as well as last year, but I've been changing a lot in my form, so I didn't really expect to.

A few weeks ago, Riggs and Katy came to visit me. They got here on St. Patrick's Day at like 10:30 at night. Of course, we had to go out since it was St. Patrick's Day and Katy's an alchie. ;) (j/k....... maybe) They stayed until Thursday. It was really nice to get to hang out with them.

The day after they left, I went to Manhattan for Grandma and Grandpa's 60th Anniversary. They didn't know I was coming, so it was a nice surprise. :) It was cool to get to see all of you that I got to see. (I wish I could've seen everybody, but I was only there for like 2.5 days.) That reminds me, I need to post pictures from that still........ crap! So much to do and so little time...

This past Saturday, I went out with some friends to play pool and celebrate my birthday (except most of the people I invited had no idea it was my birthday... funny how none of them came....) lol. It was a lot of fun. I had a blast. It was an expensive night though... Pool ain't cheap. (wow, my spell checker just told me that "ain't" isn't misspelled................)

Yesterday, I went for a bike ride after I got off work because the weather was so amazing! I went for a normal 2o mile ride, and it took me 2 freakin' hours! I'm so out of shape it's ridiculous! I really need to work on that. It really shouldn't have taken more than an hour and 20 minutes. Oh well, warm weather is on it's way!

We got new laptops at work, so I can work from home now. It's a very awesome deal. It's much better than having to go back to the office after I go to the range and eat dinner. I just need to get a wireless router now... :)

Randomness for the Day: In some countries, pigs can fly.

New Cell Phone

2007-02-28T22:04:00.000-05:00

So about that whole being able to keep my number thing...... Apparently, they lied to me. :S So I have a new number. It's different from the one I told some of you because in the 3 or 4 days or whatever it's been since I got it, I've gotten 3 wrong numbers, so I had them give me another one today. If you want to know what it is, email me, check MSN, or check facebook. I'm going to shut off my Kansas number tomorrow, so you'll need it to be able to call me.

Last night, Stephanie came and shot with us. It was really fun to have somebody my age to shoot with. Especially somebody who has been shooting for a while and could probably beat me. :) I'll have to work to stay ahead of her. But I do get shoot more often than her because of our work schedules. After we were done shooting, she and I went to Olive Garden for dinner. It was really fun. :) I hope I get to shoot with her more often. We're going to shoot on Saturday, too.

Archery went really well tonight. I just shot with my eyes closed the whole time, but things felt a lot better than they have for quite a while. My shoulder wasn't hurting too much. I hope it's getting better. (Now that I've decided I need to go see a doctor about it... ) :)

I still haven't shot my new bow yet. :( But I should be able to tomorrow. Evan was going to grind some screws down for me so I can mount my sight block on it. He's a really cool guy to do something like that. :) I'll have to buy him a beer or something sometime (since that's what he's always wanting to shoot for....) :)

Randomness for the Day: Tonight at small group, we were telling something that we hadn't told the others before. I told about the time we had a high speed chase running from the cops on our tractor... That was stolen... I guess I came up with a pretty convincing face for it, because then they started asking questions like, "what did the cops do when they caught you?" Then I had to tell them that I just made it up. :) It was really funny though. :)

Another crappy tournament

2007-02-26T18:41:00.000-05:00

So my tournament on Saturday was just as crappy as my one last weekend. It was really frustrating. I just don't know what's been wrong with me lately. I scored really well in practice, but I just couldn't do it in the tournament. I know I'm better than this, my coach knows I'm better than this, I just can't seem to shoot well. :(

I did get a new bow though. :) It's really pretty. I really like it. I just have one little problem I need to work out before I can shoot it. I'll take in and show it to Ruth on Tuesday (tomorrow) and see if she has any suggestions. There are a couple screw holes that aren't quite deep enough for me so I can't attach my sight to the bow. :S It's kind of important.

It snowed on Sunday, so I was able to drive around without much traffic. It's not like the roads were bad or anything. It was so warm that it melted really fast. We were supposed to get less than an inch, but we got over 3". I went for a bike ride, but I waited too long and too much snow had started to melt on the roads, so it was just slushy.

I got a new cell phone on Sunday! :D I'm super excited about it. Tomorrow, I'm going to call and see if I can switch my number over to it (that's when my contract with Alltel is up). So, I'll keep ya'll posted on that one. I really don't want to have to switch my number... I got a Sony w810i. It's really sweet. I really like the way it looks, and it's supposed to be a really good phone. It has an mp3 player and a 2 megapixel camera. And it has a memory card that you can keep mp3's on. I need to get a bigger one though. I got a bluetooth headset to go with it so I can be a little safer while I'm driving. I even got an extra $50 off since I got it yesterday. :)

Randomness for the Day: My phone has the funniest ringer! I laughed really hard when I listened to it. It's one of those ones that's really funny, but you could never use as your ringer because everybody would make fun of you. It's a song and it goes like "Someone's callin' you, You got a phone call! Come on baby pick it up!" or something like that. It's the kind of ringer that would make you smile every time you heard it, then look around and make sure nobody heard your ringer. :)

Mormons...

2007-02-23T17:13:00.000-05:00

So the Mormons called me while I was at work today... I had told them that the best time to reach me was between 7:00 and 8:00 in the evening.... Yeah, they called at like 10:30 or so. It was really kinda funny because my phone started ringing and I was talking to Susan and I was like "Who the crap is calling me?" I looked at my phone as she started to walk away, and I saw that it said "Don't Answer (Mormons)" and I told her that's who it was and she just laughed. We continued our conversation and then my phone vibrated again saying that they had left a message. And she laughed even more. We had to listen to it. They tried to tell me that I had agreed that they could come over and share their message with me... It was really kinda funny.

When I got home from work today and checked my bank account, it was a lot higher than I was expecting. (It was payday today) I got to looking at it, and I got my tax refund today. :D It was a very, very nice surprise. :) *grins and rubs hands together* I wonder what I should buy.... :D

Over all, it's been a pretty good day. :)

Randomness for the Day: Would you rather be hideously disfigured for the rest of your life OR be married to somebody who was hideously disfigured? (Don't know where that came from....)

Last weekend's archery tournament

2007-02-22T23:13:00.000-05:00

So my tournament last weekend that many of you are probably wondering about didn't go so hot (which is probably one reason why I am just getting around to posting about it...) I was shooting like crap for no real reason at all. I did get second place though................... Only problem was, there were only two people in my division! :( Oh well. It turns out that part of my bow was breaking during the tournament and it was helping my arrows not go where I wanted them to go. I don't think that it was the entire cause of me shooting poorly, but it definitely contributed. (I have since replaced the breaking part with a much nicer part, and it works much better. I'm still not shooting as well as I would like, but tonight was a good night.) :) I scored tonight and shot a 552/600 which is about 40 points higher than I shot in the tournament. :)

I have another tournament on Saturday, so we'll see how that goes. Hopefully it will go better than the last one. This one is at my home range, so it will be pretty laid back for me.

On Monday, I got the day off because of President's day. It was really nice. I was able to catch up on some things that I'd been meaning to do. I baked a chocolate peanut butter cake (the same one we made when I was in ABQ, Grace). This is the second time I've made the cake, and it turned out much better this time. I made a layer cake out of it instead of using a 9x13 pan, and I think that probably helped. I tried to find a new coat and a hat on Monday, but I failed miserably. I did spend about two and a half hours in four stores in the same shopping center though... That was kind of amazing. I picked up a couple DVD's and a couple Plain White T's CD's. I really like the sound of their band. I can really relate to some of their songs. :)

This week at work hasn't been the greatest. But hopefully it will get better tomorrow. I'm in a position that I'm not very comfortable being in, and being asked to do somethings that I really shouldn't be asked to do. It's not like I'm being asked to do unethical stuff or anything, I just don't feel qualified for what I'm supposed to do. It's a really long story, and this post is getting a little long, so I won't tell you all about it, but it kinda sucks. :( I think it'll get worked out tomorrow though. (I hope... *crosses fingers*)

Today I got a call from my friend Callie down in FL (Fish Lake). It totally brightened my day. :) I haven't talked to her all year, and so it was really awesome to get to chat with her in between her busy schedule... Now if only I could convince her to move up here...... :) (Thanks a lot Callie!)

Randomness for the Day: I didn't have to wear a coat to work today because the weather was that nice. :)

Unstuck

2007-02-16T17:23:00.000-05:00

So my car's unstuck now, but it took the 4 guys from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints pushing on it to get it out... So then I had to talk to them for a while. They're going to call me sometime, but I'm going to try to remember not to answer. (If they call from the number they gave me, I have it in my phone as "Don't answer") :) Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate their help, but I have no intention of converting to Latter-day Saintism (Mormonism) because of it. As hard as they were pushing, I'm pretty sure that I couldn't have gotten out without their help.

heart day

2007-02-16T12:52:00.000-05:00

So I think I had the best Valumtimes day I've ever had this year. It was a lot of fun. I mean, like I said in the last post, pool, happy hour, lovely ladies... How could it be any better?! I definitely stayed out a lot later than I had planned. I think I was playing pool for a good 3 hours. Not like solid or anything, but I played several games. (I would always take the girl who didn't know how to play for my teammate, and we usually did pretty well.) I met a lot of cool girls, but I didn't ask for any numbers. There was really only one that I was that interested in, but I didn't get a chance to talk to her until right before my ride was leaving. She seemed like a pretty cool girl.

Yesterday, I was going to go to the archery range to get one more day of practice in before my tournament this weekend, but I tried to get my car seems pretty happy to just sit in the parking lot. :( There's about 12" of ice/snow in the behind it from the snowplow and about 4" of snow all the way around it. I tried to dig it out with my scraper because I don't really have anything else, and that didn't work. I'm going to try again tonight.... maybe. It's supposed to get up near freezing today so maybe some of the snow/ice will melt in the sun. It's like there's snow with ice on top, but it's melted just enough to refreeze and just be ice for a long way down. I don't even sink in it when I walk on it. Even on the grass... It's really weird.

Randomness for the Day: I'm looking forward to getting a new cellphone next weekend! (Like, seriously, you have no idea!) :D

I'm a slacker...

2007-02-13T12:36:00.000-05:00

So I'm kind of a huge slacker when it comes to posting on here, I've decided... I'll try to do better.

I've been staying really busy. As I said in my last post, I started my SPT's. They're really hard. I couldn't even finish them the first time I did them. But I've gotten stronger, and my coach let me up the draw weight on my bow. :) I can still finish my SPT's even with the added weight, although some days it is a struggle. I've been working a lot on my form lately, so my scores/groups have been suffering a little bit, but once I get everything worked out, I'll be better than before. :)

I've pretty much just been going to work, going to the range, doing SPT's, and sleeping for the past couple weeks. I did order a new bow though. :) Hopefully it'll be here late this week/early next week.

Sunday, I got to shoot with a girl that was actually my age. (I know, that sounds like a strange thing to be posting about, but it really doesn't happen very much). It was a lot of fun. She seems like a nice girl. She works for the CIA. I tried to talk her into coming out during the week some, but we'll see if that happens. She works some pretty crazy hours.

Right now, it's snowing/wintery-mixing outside, so I don't think I'll be able to go to the archery range today. :( I'm a little bummed about that, but I do have a lot of work to do.

Well, I'm out of time, so I hope you're all doing great, and that life is good. Hope you all have a great time celebrating your coupleness/freedom tomorrow. (I will be celebrating my freedom with a group of "lovely ladies at happy hour at Buffalo Billiards") :D

Randomness for the Day: Orange is a brighter color than brown. (has anybody ever seen "hot brown" before?)

Finally have time to post...

2007-02-02T21:33:00.000-05:00

So I've been super busy this week. It all started last weekend when I drove up to Jersey for an archery seminar...

I left work early Friday afternoon and drove up to Morristown, NJ. It was about a 4.5 hour drive, I think. It wasn't too bad except for the part about $13.10 in tolls! I knew there would be tolls (because I was taking the Jersey Turnpike), but I had no idea. One of them was freakin' $5! It WAS kinda nice to just get out and drive. It's been a really long time since I've done anything like that. There's just no place around the city that you can drive for an extended period of time without slowing down to almost a stop. :S

Anyways. So I got up there Friday night about 7:00-ish, and I checked into my hotel. The person coordinating the seminar took care of the reservations. I think it was a Summerfield Suites. It was really, really nice. I think it was about 2/3 the size of my apartment! There was a kitchen and a king size bed all for me. :) It was a really comfortable bed too. :D After I got my stuff up there, I asked the girl at the desk where a good place to eat was. (I probably should've asked her if she wanted to eat with me....) ;) She suggested this one restaurant, The Firehouse; the name made me think of back in the day when I helped out with the Westview Youth Group. It was an Italian place, and I drove down looking for it (she couldn't remember exactly where it was). I got to drive through the sort of downtown district. It kinda reminded me of Mass St. in Lawrence. It was really nice. (the whole town was really pretty nice) I couldn't find the restaurant, but I saw another one that looked decent, so I parked and started walking over there, when I saw a sign for The Firehouse. I'm glad I saw it. It was a nice little (and I do mean little) restaurant. I had some manicotti. It was very yummy. :) After that, it was back to the hotel for some sleep action.

Saturday was the archery seminar/clinic thingy. It was SOOOOO awesome! It was very motivating, and I learned a whole bunch. The National Head Coach was there, and he gave each person some pointers. I spent pretty much the whole day shooting. I only shot 90 arrows, but I did a lot of work with a stretchband. I was really, really tired by the end of the day. I thought that I would be the only one there that wasn't high school or younger, but there was a girl there from UConn. She was only a freshman, but I didn't feel quite so old. :)

Sunday, I was really, really sore. I was going to go shoot and try to get some muscles stretched out, but I had too much I had to do (get the oil in my car changed, get groceries, laundry, clean my apartment, etc). I was going to start some exercises since I couldn't go to the range, but while I was stretching out for them, I got a cramp in my trap. I've never had one there before, and there's not a lot you can do about it because it's kinda hard to reach back there and massage it... (If only I had a girlfriend....) ;) So I just stretched myself out some.

Monday, I started doing SPT, Specific Physical Training, a.k.a. Severe Physical Torture. It's a could archery specific exercises that are really, really hard. I couldn't even complete them the first time I tried them. It was really, really bad. I'm doing better now. I just need to work on doing them with proper form the whole way through now. I've been working on the new things Coach Lee showed me this week. It's a slow process, but I'm sure I'll get it eventually and things'll get better. I have an archery lesson with my coach on Sunday, so hopefully we can work some things out.

Between work, archery, and sleeping, I haven't had any time this week. I've been going non stop all day everyday. I haven't slept in my bed all week because I've had to start watching a movie to slow my mind down so I could sleep and I've just been sleeping on my futon. About the only thing extra I did this week was do my taxes. Hopefully that check'll come quick... :) Looks like I can get the new bow that my coach wants me to get. :D

Well, this post is really, really long (and probably really, really boring, so if you read it all, you have my sympathy), and I'm going to shut up now.

Randomness for the Day: I got a new haircut today. Anybody want to see pictures?

Fun Times :)

2007-01-21T20:21:00.000-05:00

So Friday, I got to hang out with my friend Mark who is going to be moving up here in February. He's here this weekend looking for an apartment. I hope he finds something cheap that he likes... Housing is really expensive here. We went to Carpool and played a few games of pool. It was a lot of fun. I had two random girls tell me I had a nice scarf. :D I'm telling you, it's a babe conductor... A logarithm for the ladies. (this would be my long scarf, not the one of the pink variety. I'm a little scared to wear it around here, although in Manhattan, it is perfectly acceptable) :)

Saturday, I went to the archery range. It was fun. I just keep getting closer to being back where I used to be. I'm looking forward to being back there. Saturday night, I went to a "Southern Outreach to Northern Virginians" Party. It was a southern themed party (hence the name). It was so much fun! Almost everybody brought food and a few people brought drinks, so we had plenty to eat and drink. We had grits, collared greens, fried chicken, biscuits, red beans and rice (very yummy, BTW)... It was super. And then there was all the dessert..... But I was too full from all the "real" food so I didn't really have any. I met some really cool people there. It was very awesome. :)

Today, I was going to go to the archery range, but it was snowing, and I decided that the drivers here probably wouldn't be able to handle it, so I stayed home. I also stayed home from church. I was going to go, but I got my car cleaned off, and drove out to the main road and decided that with traffic backed up as much as it was, I was just going to stay home. It was going nowhere really fast.

Randomness for the Day: I don't like snow. It really screws up plans, plus if there's snow, that means it's cold outside.

Archery Tournament

2007-01-15T23:06:00.000-05:00

So my tournament went pretty well yesterday. I scored a lot higher than my last tournament, and I had quite a few shots that just felt really awesome. (I was going to write that I didn't know how I placed, but I just looked....) I somehow managed to get first. I have to admit, I'm a little surprised at that because there was actually some competition in my category this time. That makes me smile. :) I had my first experience shooting with somebody in a wheelchair at the tournament. He was a surprisingly positive person. I would hope that if I had to be in a wheelchair that I could stay as positive as he is. He shot pretty well too. He took 4th out of 6, but he hasn't been practicing much lately, and he came without a sight setting. (or so he said....) It was fun to shoot with him. :)

Tonight, I went down to the rec center and rode the exercise bike for about 45 minutes after I got off work. I need to do that more often. I'm really out of shape. Maybe I can start doing it 3 times a week. It's just so hard to get motivated enough to go down there. It's really boring riding a stationary bike... At least there's a tv though. Toward the end, I was starting to get past that point where it's really hard, and things were going easier. Then I started my cooldown sequence and started to feel the burn again. It was close to cramps (yeah, I'm that out of shape, can't even ride for 45 minutes). I have a feeling I'll be a little sore in the morning.

Cool things about today: Izumi came to visit me and Maria, and my friend Liz called me. I haven't talked to her in probably over a year. (she hasn't called me in longer) ;) I couldn't talk to her for very long because I wasn't getting a good signal, and she couldn't answer when I called her back, but hopefully I'll get to talk to her again soon. :)

It was fun to see Izumi. I got to get the update on her life. We decided that we needed to keep in touch a little better. She's a lot of fun to be around, but she lives out in Leesburg. That's like 45 minutes away. :S Her boyfriend is gone during the week a lot, so her weekends are taken up with hanging out with him, so I haven't seen her since she stopped working here at the apartment complex.

Randomness for the Day: In my 45 minutes of biking, I only burned like 150-ish more calories than were in my piece of cheesecake... I gotta get rid of that thing before I get fat!

Cheesecake

2007-01-13T19:34:00.000-05:00

So right now I'm really bored. It's Saturday night, I'm stuck at home because I don't know anybody to call to hang out with, and I can't be out too late anyways because I have a tournament in the morning. I'm a little tired because I got a lot done around the apartment today. I did 5 loads of laundry and a load of dry cleaning, and I made a cheesecake. It's the first one I've ever made. I think it turned out pretty well. There are a couple things about the recipe that I wasn't sure if it was the best way to do it, but I did it that way anyway. I might try something else if I ever make it again. (That point is still in limbo since I made the mistake of adding up how many calories there are per serving.) There are 515 calories per 16th of the cheesecake! That's so much!!! I feel fat and I've only eaten one piece! (Doesn't help that I felt fat before I even ate it....) ;) I took some pictures and put them up on my picture website (see link on the sidebar).

I still need to finish fixing my arrows for tomorrow (I'm almost done). And I need to straighten them. That'll probably take about a half hour or so. I'm not very fast at it yet. :S But other than that, I don't know what to do with my evening. :(

Randomness for the Day: If anybody wants to help me eat this cheesecake, just come on over! ;)

Internet!

2007-01-12T20:23:00.000-05:00

So last night, I finally got an internet connection in my apartment. Hopefully, for all you faithful readers out there, that means that you'll get more posts. (Sorry about that slacking in that department. You guys really deserve more.) :)

I've been staying busy with the usual. Archery, work, making dinner and stuff. I've recovered from my shoulder injury from before Christmas. And my shooting has recovered from the two weeks off at Christmas. Tuesday and Wednesday I was shooting very well. It felt really awesome too. I was super happy about it. I'm excited about where things could go from here. I have a minor tournament on Sunday. It should be fun.

The past few weeks at work have been a little slow, but things should be picking up next week. I keep on taking on more projects and stuff, but I'm still getting everything done. I hope that I have a very productive week next week.

My friend, Beth, told me about this song by the Plain White T's. It's super funny! It's called Hate (I really don't like you). It's awesome! It's really catchy, really funny, and I can really relate to it. :)

If you all are looking for a good action movie, I would highly recommend you check out Crank with Jason Statham. It's sweet. From the beginning to the end of the movie, it's non-stop action. I like it a lot.

I was watching Tristan and Isolde this evening, but it started making me really sad, so I came in here to mess around on the net. :) (seriously, there were almost tears)

Randomness for the Day: So I almost had to go witness a flow test for work next Wednesday at 10:00 pm! Luckily, it got postponed. :) That's just cruel to make us go out there at that time of day! (er, night.)

Happy New Year!

2006-12-31T12:51:00.000-05:00

In just a few short hours, 2006 will be over. I have one less hour than most people to enjoy this day because I'm flying back to DC today and switching time zones. But I'm looking forward to going home. It will be nice to sleep at my own house.

This is probably a good time to look back on the year and its highs and lows. It started out pretty high with me finding a girl who at the time was cool. My archery was going great, and I was probably shooting my best ever. I was in my last semester of school, trying to decide where to work.

As you all know, I decided to work for Girard Engineering in DC. My last semester of school was really the most fun out of all of them (really the last year was) because I've known all the people in my classes for 3-5 years, and going to class was just like going to hang out with friends. A little after Spring Break things became a little rough because that girl who used to be pretty cool turned into a little bitch.

My last few months in Manhattan certainly could've been better. I didn't really feel much of anything for a long time. I couldn't get excited about graduating. I wasn't excited about moving to DC. It was just another thing that had to be done. I did get to hang out with some of my super awesome friends a lot in the last few months I was in town. I really miss all you guys.

In June, I moved to DC and started living on my own. I had a "real" job now. Things were starting to get better. In late June, I started shooting again after a break of about two months. I lost a lot of strength in that time. I was certainly not shooting very well compared to what I was. Luckily, I got started with a new coach. She started changing my form and we started the rebuilding process, which is currently in process.

As I had time to be away from What'sherface, I started to feel happier. My work was really fun, and I started to get to know the people I work with. They're pretty cool people. The projects I was working on at work were pretty fun. Some of them more so than others. I got to come back to Manhattan in August for a wedding reception for my friends Ryan and Steffanie. I also came back for Thanksgiving and got to see a lot of friends. The year is certainly ending much better than it was back in the spring. Next year should be pretty awesome.

Right now, I'm at my parents' house getting ready to leave for the airport to go back to DC. Being home for Christmas has been great. I've gotten to see a lot of friends. Almost all of them that I wanted to see that were still around. I wish I could've gotten down to Wichita to see some of my friends from school, but maybe next time. I've really missed being able to just hang out with people like I used to when I was here. It's fun to come back and do it some more.

As I look ahead to the new year, I'm excited for the possibilities. I have a chance to start fresh. (some would argue this point, I know, but you have to have sometime that you can feel like you're starting with a clean slate.) This year, I'll have plenty of time to work on my archery (as long as I can keep from being injured.) I'll be able to go to some tournaments that I've been wanting to go to for a few years but haven't been able to. I'll meet more people this year and start building some new friendships. Some of my friends from school will be moving to DC, so I'll be able to hang out with them. I met a girl last night who is going to be moving out here in February. :) I'll learn more things at work, and I'll work on more exciting projects. I'm excited. :)

Randomness for the Day: I think I might break down and get internet at my apartment, so when I do that, I'll get some pictures from Christmas up on facebook, and maybe my picture website too, if there's people who want to see them but aren't on facebook. (sorry that wasn't exactly random, but it's all I got today) ;)

Back in Manhattan

2006-12-23T17:35:00.000-05:00

So I'm back in Manhattan now. I got here at, like, 9:30 last night. I've been staying pretty busy so far. This morning, I made sugar cookies with my mommy, then got to hang out with Ryan for a little while. We went over to Grandma's to play some pool. Brad was there, and we invited him to play with us, but he decided to eat something instead. We talked to him for a little bit before we left. Right now, I'm waiting on Ashley and Jess to get here so we can hang out. :)

Yesterday, as I was getting ready to leave the office after a morning of being super busy trying to get a job finished up, Dan came over and handed me my bonus check. :D Good times. (cha-ching!) I decided to run to the bank and deposit it before I left. I only had an hour to go to the bank, eat lunch, and get everything together to leave. I hadn't planned on going to the bank, so I was a little short on time, but I made it anyway. I was trying to shut my computer down when the taxi got there (it wasn't really cooperating), so I just left it.

I got the airport with a little over 2 hours until my flight left. It only took about 7 minutes to go through security. It's always so quick at that airport. Unfortunately, my flight got delayed for an hour and a half, so I was stuck waiting in Dulles for a while. Then when we finally got on the plane, I had an overweight dad with his baby son next to me and some little girl that kicked my seat and kept calling for superman the entire flight. The baby did great. He slept pretty much the entire time. I wish that girl's parents would've made her sit still or something. They should have a special section of the plane for people travelling with small children. It was like the never ending plane flight. I thought we would never land!

Randomness for the Day: So it's really nice to have an internet connection whenever I want it... :D

Does anybody still read this?

2006-12-18T17:53:00.000-05:00

So I'm finally posting again... I know, it's been a super long time. I've just been really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, busy lately. I've been working 45-50+ hour weeks for a while now. (yes, the paychecks are nice) :) So between that and archery, I haven't really been able to do much of anything. So, sorry it's taken me so long.

Archery has been going very well for me. I've scored a couple time since my last couple tournaments, and I did much better. I'm getting back up to where I was before I moved out here. I have a tournament in January, and I might get a chance to work with our national coach at the end of January. *crosses fingers* That would be a pretty rockin' awesome time. :)

Work's been keeping me really busy. I've finally gotten a routine down that I can be happy with. I go to work at 7:30, work until 4:00, leave for the archery range, shoot, come home, make dinner, and if I have to, I go back to work around 8 or 9 and work until 10 or 11. Last week, I worked 52.5 hours. It was a pretty long week.

I have a fun story for you guys this time. At least, I think it's fun and cool. :) So a couple weeks ago, our pastor was talking about God's will for your life, and how he really does care about the little things. He said that whenever he would go downtown or to the mall with his family, one of them would pray for a parking spot. He said that he's gotten some AMAZING parking spots. So the other day when I went to the mall, I was like, "I'll give this a try." So I just said, "God, I need a parking spot." Then I proceeded to enter the parking garage. I drove to the second to last row (second closest to the entrance) and drove down it. I got to one of the intersections and saw this girl getting in her car. I drove around the line to come around to get it, but I got stuck behind this van waiting on another car to leave. It probably took me about 2 minutes to get back to the spot I saw. I was thinking it had to be taken by then, but there it was, right there on the end of the row, right next to the stairs that go up one level to the mall entrance. You couldn't ask for a better spot! It really made me think.

Randomness for the Day: If tin whistles are made out of tin, what are foghorns made out of?

Finally Posting...

2006-11-28T21:20:00.000-05:00

So I've been meaning to post for over a week now. I've just barely had time to sit still long enough to write one out. I guess I'll stick with the big things that've happened. I went back to Manhattan for Thanksgiving. That was a lot of fun. Pat and Ryan picked me up at the airport, then we went to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with Jenna, Beth, and Ben. It was a super awesome time.

I stayed over at Grandma's since that's where all the excitement (food) was going to be. :) I'm pretty sure I ate way more than I should've on Thanksgiving (well, all weekend, really). Thursday night, I hung out with Pat for a while, then we went over to Riggs' house to play some pool. I got to play several games with Mr. Riggs. He even let me win one. :)

Friday, I just kinda hung out with different people. Friday evening, I went to Old Chicago with Pat, Ryan, Rachel, Caleb, and R.E. It was a lot of fun. I surprised Rachel because she didn't know Caleb was even in town. It was just great to see her reaction when he was sitting there in Old Chicago when we got there. :) She started crying. It was priceless. :) Saturday, I got to hang out with Ryan for a while. I got to see his new crib, and we played some xbox.

I forgot to mention, on my flight out to KS, I had to climb the steps to get in the plane. I thought you only had to do that in like third world countries. And then when I got back to DC, I had to walk down the steps, then up the steps into the normal gate thingy. It was kinda weird. The trip back was the most empty flight I've been on for years. There were lots of extra seats. I got to move up in the plane a little bit. (They needed people to move forward to help balance out the plane for take off.) I wound up sitting next to this Army guy who had been back for a couple weeks because he got a piece of metal through his leg. He was getting ready to head back to Iraq. We talked most of the entire flight home. I hope he makes it home safely. He has a kid that was born just before he left for his first tour in Afghanistan.

I've been really busy with work so far this week. I left work at 5:30 last night, came home, worked out, and ate dinner, then went back in to the office at 8:00 and worked until 10:30. I thought that was going to happen a lot this week, but some of the other things on my schedule went away. I still have 3 things going out on Friday though. I need to make sure I get a lot done tomorrow...

Randomness for the Day: So I was so not worried about flying back to DC that I had my dad drop me off at the wrong airline. It wasn't even in the right terminal! Guess I should start caring more...

Another archery tournament

2006-11-13T20:26:00.000-05:00

So I had another tournament on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. It was up in Reading, PA. I rode up there with my coach, Ruth, and we made a pit stop at Lancaster Archery Supply. :) It's, like, the biggest supplier of target archery equipment in the nation. I got a couple things there. The tournament was good. I shot my second worst score in like 5 years. (last weekend was the worst). But I had a lot of fun, and as Ruth put it, it was my personal best using my new technique. There were some college teams at the tournament. It was really cool. I wish that there had been an established team at K-State when I started. I think I would probably be a lot better than I am now if there had been, but I love the team that I got to shoot with for the little bit of time that we were together. :)

Since our office moved, I've been walking to work. It's about a 3 minute walk. It takes so long. I don't know if I can handle it. ;) It's pretty rough. But now that I'm getting that little bit of exercise, my body is telling me that it's not enough and that it needs more. I did some pushups and situps last night, and I went down and ran on one of the treadmills tonight after I got home from work. I'm feeling pretty good right now. Hopefully I can get to the archery range this week. That'd be really nice.

Randomness for the Day: So while I was down playing pool this evening, there were a LOT of chicks that came in to use the fitness center. One of them was pretty pretty.... I might have to start spending more time down there........... ;)

Really Busy!

2006-11-07T22:35:00.000-05:00

So I've been just a little busy the past few days. Lauren came into town this weekend. It was awesome getting to hang out with her. Saturday, we walked around downtown and did random things like going to the Statuary Garden, the International Spy Museum gift shop, and the National Portrait Gallery. She and Nina really wore me out with all the walking around they did. I think Lauren was trying to pay me back for last summer when I took her on super long hikes. ;) Sunday, we didn't get to hang out that much, but we did go the the Cheesecake Factory. :) I even had leftovers for lunch on Monday. It was really bad though, there were 3 of us, and we almost didn't eat the one piece of cheesecake we ordered.

Sunday afternoon, I had an archery tournament. I shot the lowest score I've shot in probably 4 years. I wasn't really expecting a whole lot though. I'm changing my form, and I've been too busy to really shoot much lately. I got first though, but that's because the other person in my division hasn't been shooting for very long. It was his first tournament.

Monday, I left work at 5:30 to get my hair cut. Then I went home and ate dinner, then went back to the office to work for a hour. I guess I forgot to mention, on Friday, our office moved, so now it's only a 3 minute walk away from me! :D I'm so happy! Now I can leave work at 4:00, go to the archery range, come home, eat dinner, and go back to work if I need to, rather than just staying late and skipping archery. Hopefully it works out better for me. :) Tonight, I went back into the office at 7:30 and worked for a couple hours finishing up some stuff for tomorrow. I'm really tired right now, so I think I'll go get ready for bed. :)

Randomness for the Day: How do you tell how much a fish weighs? You look at its scales! (these are the kind of jokes I come up with when my brain is exhausted, and it's 10:45 at night.)

Stuff

2006-11-02T22:21:00.000-05:00

So Jordan came to town this week for some training. I got to hang out with him on Monday and Tuesday. I've really missed hanging out with friends. Monday, we went down to the waterfront in Georgetown. That was pretty cool. I got a couple pictures of the lighting on the Kennedy Center. I'll post those later tonight. Tuesday, we went to the ESPN Zone and had dinner. Then we wandered around downtown looking (unsuccessfully) for some ice cream. :S I really need to get more familiar with downtown.

This week's been pretty busy at work. I haven't gotten to go to the archery range at all. :( Hopefully, I can make it out there tomorrow. I have a tournament on Sunday, so I hope I can get out there. :S We're moving the office tomorrow, so that's the last day I'll be driving to work. :) I'm pretty excited about that. I'm not really sure how much work I'll be doing tomorrow. I feel like I'm going to be doing more standing around than actual working.

This weekend, Lauren's coming into town. I met her in ABQ last summer, and I never expected to see her again, so I'm super excited. She's pretty awesome. Hopefully we'll get to play a game of Screw Your Neighbor. :) I miss playing that game.

Randomness for the Day: I got Just Friends in the mail yesterday. For some reason, I just really feel like I can relate to it so well. Especially since I'm 1200 miles away from all my friends, and I won't get to see them very much....

Another Post

2006-10-29T22:08:00.000-05:00

So I realize that I've already posted today, but I just watched Van Wilder, and it's making me think, so you all get to listen to the thoughts in my head.

In the movie, a point is brought up that maybe Van is afraid to graduate and face the "real world". This got me thinking about what I'm doing with my life now that I'm not in school anymore. I've spent all my life up 'til now working to learn stuff so I would be able to get a job and make a living on my own. Now that I'm here, I don't really feel any different. It's just another day. Maybe it has to do with the crappy circumstances I was in when I graduated, but I don't know. I just thought it would be different.

As I was thinking about where my life is headed now, I realized that I don't really have any huge goals like graduating from college. That one sort of encompasses your entire life. I mean, sure, there's my goal about making the Olympic team, but that doesn't take up my whole life. At least, it can't be allowed to take priority because I have a job, and that takes precedence. Someday, I would like to get married, but right now, I hardly know anybody. I have a whole bunch of awesome friends in Manhattan, but there's not really anybody here. I know a couple guys, but no girls. I only really hang out with one of the guys. He's cool, and it's always a fun time when we hang out, but I dunno. I guess it just makes me sad that I went from having a lot of really good friends to having practically none at all that I can just call up some evening and say, "Hey, you wanna watch a movie?"

But I still have this question: what am I living my life for? What purpose am I serving here? I know that these are questions that get asked a lot in Christian literature, but the answers that get offered there really don't mean a lot to me right now. They would say, "Oh, you're supposed to live to get to know God better and do his will." Or "you're supposed to show Christ's love to the world." But honestly, that doesn't mean a lot to me. There's no end to that. There's no time where you can say, "I've met my goal. I accomplished what I set out to do."

So what am I here for? What goals am I working toward? Retirement? That's way too far in the future for me to think about without getting depressed. Marriage? That's not exactly something that you should have as a goal. That's something that should just happen when it happens. The Olympics are out there, but like I said, that's a small portion of my life. To make money? That seems really superficial. There's nothing THAT grand about making money. You don't get that satisfied feeling by doing that. And if making money is your goal, when have you met it? No matter how much you have, it's never enough.

Maybe I'm a little behind the curve asking these questions. Maybe all of you out there have already thought about them. I know that I'm a little behind in growing up. Living at home all during college will do that to you. What the crap am I doing with my life?

(Sorry about the randomness of this post. I just wrote as I thought. This IS called Sam's Randomness for a reason.) :)

Halloween

2006-10-29T15:01:00.000-05:00

So last night, I went out with Jason, Annick, Jason's roomie, and one of Jason's friends. We were over at Jason and Pete's for a long time while Pete finished up his costume. (It was worth the wait. His was freakin' awesome! He was the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Annick was the Killer Rabbit.) It was a lot of fun. Jason was already lit before we even left the apartment, then we went downtown to one of Pete's friend's place. That part wasn't quite as much fun as hanging out at the apartment, but it was still fun. I went as a pirate, but I don't have any pictures. (sorry) It's really hard to see when you're wearing an eye patch...

This weekend's been pretty relaxing. I did stuff around the apartment, and spent a lot of time on the internet. :) It's so nice to have it again. It makes me really happy. :D I should've gone to the archery range today, but I decided to be lazy instead. :S

Randomness for the Day: So I'm pretty sure that if you have a blog, you should switch to the new Blogger. It has some pretty cool new features. BTW, I'm looking for suggestions on the new aesthetic appeal of my blog, so tell me what you think!

New Features

2006-10-27T20:25:00.000-04:00

So I've converted my template over to the new Blogger Beta format. I also changed where I'm posting pictures (thanks to Little Brother). It's a lot easier to post them here, and I was finally able to add a picture to my Profile. *small cheer* So check out the link to "My Pictures (New)"!

New Blogger

2006-10-27T18:08:00.000-04:00

So after I had decided I was going to have to actually PAY for internet (who would think of doing such a thing?!), I woke up one morning, and found a sweet network to log into. :) It has a better signal than the other one that I was using (until I stopped being able to get a strong enough signal), so I'm pretty happy about that. :)

Now that I have a good connection, I decided that I would try out this new Blogger Beta thingy. It was a pretty seemless transition. I haven't converted my template yet, but I suppose I will before the night's over.

Katy said it was time for me to be posting again. It's just been really hard to post without internet at home, so now that I have it, here's a post! :)

I haven't really done much to post about lately. I've been working quite a bit. After I got back from the wedding last week, I got sick and worked, like, 47 hours or something. Pretty much, I was just getting up at 6:30, going to work, staying until I couldn't stay any longer, coming home, eating dinner, and falling asleep on the couch while watching a movie. I think the latest I stayed up unit Friday was like 7:30 or something. Some days, I fell asleep at like 6:30. :S But I'm better now.

I got to have a coaching session with my archery coach. It went really well. I have a lot of stuff to work on though, and I have two tournaments coming up. I'll just be going to have fun at the tournaments. I really can't expect a whole lot.

Today, I had to go in to work at 6:30 to go on a site visit. It was a pretty fun site visit. I got to see a lot of stuff. The air handlers in this building are huge things that are built on site. We walked around inside them, and Dan showed me all the stuff about them. It was really windy (obviously, because there's a huge fan at the end pulling air through it). There was one part, where the outside air comes in that the air was moving so fast that it created a bit of a vacuum and it felt like the air was being sucked out of your lungs. It was really weird.

In a week, our office is moving. Then I'll have a 5 minute walk to work. :D I'm super excited! It'll be a really nice work environment. We're getting all new furniture, and the finishes are pretty nice. Everybody will be able to see a window if they stand up, which will be a huge improvement over the current office. The partitions between the cubes are really short though, about 51 inches, I think. Just high enough that you can't see over them when sitting down.

Well, I think I've rambled enough. Hopefully it won't be so long before I'm able to post again. :)

Randomness for the Day: Internet is awesome!!!!! :D

Orlando!

2006-10-18T12:31:00.000-04:00

So I guess I haven't posted for a while. My internet still doesn't like me. I might have to actually pay for it. :( If I do that, I just might have to get an Xbox so I can play Halo with Pat and Ryan... :)

This past weekend, I went to Orlando for my cousin's wedding. It was SOOOOO much fun! I got to see 3 of my cousins and a bunch of aunts and uncles. The wedding was really nice. It was in a big church with a pipe organ. :) And then the reception was at this country club. Just so you get an idea of what this country club has to be like, Tiger Woods is a member...

As we were driving to the clubhouse, we were driving past all the houses that I'm guessing probably cost like $20 million! They all had tile roofs and stuff, and they were HUGE!

The only downside of the trip was that I got sick. I've been sleeping a lot lately. Hopefully I can get rid of this cold and get on with life.

I'm scheduled for 50 hours this week, so I better get back to it! By the end of today, I'll already be at 29 hours. (that'll be a nice paycheck!) :)

Randomness for the Day: I've finally gone to a wedding that I actually had fun at. :) It's really nice. :)

5000 visitors!

2006-10-02T12:48:00.000-04:00

So I've reached the 5000 mark on my counter, thanks to all you wonderful people who read this. :) Sorry I haven't been posting very much. My internet doesn't really let me post when I want to, and when it does work, I don't have time for anything.

Saturday, I went to Mount Vernon to see George Washington's house. It was pretty sweet. I always wanted to go there when I was little, but we never went. I'm glad that I was finally able to go. I spent about 3 or 4 hours there, just wandering around.

Sunday, I got to hang out with Gretchen and Carlin. Gretchen came back to give a presentation to the company she worked for this summer, so we all got to go out and do some sightseeing. We went to the African Art History Museum, and the National Archives. We got to see the Magna Carta, signed in 1215 and one of the 4 existing original copies. And of course there was the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and some other important documents. After we all went our separate ways, I walked over to the Jefferson Memorial. It's a long walk over there. I can see why Gretchen didn't want to go now. :) I should've waited until I had my bike with me. :)

Randomness for the Day: I'll put some pictures on facebook whenever I get around to it (and my internet decides to be nice to me). :)

Internet...

2006-09-27T12:53:00.000-04:00

So I kinda wish I had more reliable internet so that I could post more often. I've been kinda slackerish about it lately. I have a few minutes here at the end of lunch, so I thought I'd give you all an update.

I went to a church out by the archery range on Sunday. It was a methodist church, so it was a little more like something I've been around before. There weren't that many people in the service, but apparently, the church is 3000 people. I don't know where they all were though. There's no way that the sanctuary was big enough for that many. I'll probably go back there next Sunday. They have a young adult singles class on Sunday mornings, so I'm going to try that. I'll probably go shoot after church, and just have a late lunch. I wouldn't mind finding a church out that direction since I'm planning on moving out there anyways when my lease is up.

I didn't do much this weekend, just did stuff around the house that had been piling up. I stay so busy with work and archery that there just isn't much time to do stuff at night, so it just has to wait until the weekend.

Archery's been going well for me. I'm feeling really good about my new form. My coach said she was definitely going to put together that advanced class, so I'll have even less time here pretty soon. I was stuck at work for an extra half hour last night, so I tried going a different way out to the archery range. I took the toll road instead of 66. It took about an hour, but if I'd taken 66, it probably would've taken at least an hour and a half. I think I might start going that way. It's only 1.25 for the toll. I just need to get one of the speedy pass thingys :)

Randomness for the Day: So it's kinda weird, it's actually fall weather here. It didn't go straight from 80 degrees to 30 degrees over night! :)

I'm still out here....

2006-09-21T22:48:00.000-04:00

Don't worry, I'm still alive out here. I haven't been gotten hit by any cars lately. Nobody's tried to shoot me... The taxi drivers haven't tried to abduct me....... I've just been lazy, that's all. :)

I've been having fun out here. I went to a concert with one of the guys from work last Thursday. It made for a late night. I was actually supposed to meet one of my friends from Bible study, but he lost his phone a while back, so communication's been kinda slim. I never did find him, but I just happened to be standing out front when Andy showed up, so I just hung out with him all night. I kinda forgot that the Metro doesn't run as late during the week though. I'm glad Andy was there to give me a ride home. It would've been an expensive taxi ride...

Sunday morning, I went to an Episcopal church. It's the church that my city was named after (Falls Church). I went to the "contemporary" service. It was praise and worship of the mid-nineties style with all the traditional stuff you would expect to see in the rest of the service. :) It was interesting though. I think I'll try somewhere else this Sunday. It would be nice to find a smaller church where it would be easier to meet people.

Work's been going pretty well. I'm starting to get more projects. And more of them are turning into "my" projects. Where I'm the lead mechanical on the project, but I have somebody I can go to to ask questions and when the job is finished, they'll stamp it.

I've been customizing my AutoCAD commands a little bit more. I "fixed" all our schedules so they look better. And I've been tweaking a spreadsheet I have to calculate heating and cooling loads. It'll be pretty sweet whenever I decide to stop working on in. Whenever I'm using it and I think of something that I wish it did, I program it into the template for next time. :) And I've been trying to document how it works so that other people can use it.

Randomness for the Day: I might have less time than I do now soon, if my coach starts up this advanced training program she was talking to me about... It sounds pretty awesome, but it'll be a lot of work. I'm sure I'll get a lot better though.

Staying busy

2006-09-10T21:55:00.000-04:00

So yesterday, I went to the archery range. Ruth was out there, so I got to talk to her for a little while. She's going out to the Olympic Training Center to learn some more about the form she's trying to teach me. She'll be out there all week.

Friday night, I went to see Crank. It was freakin' awesome. A little graphic, but it was still good. One action scene after another. You all should definitely go see it.

Last night, I got to hang out with a friend from Bible study and one of his friends. It was a lot of fun. I was going to go shoot today, but I didn't wake up until 11:00 this morning, so I kinda ran out of time.

So today I realized that tomorrow it'll have been 5 years since 9/11. It's hard to believe how much has happened in my life since then. I was just starting college when that happened. How crazy.

Randomness for the Day: So between the start of this post and the end, I've managed to get depressed, so sorry that there's nothing mildly humorous here. :S

Comments...

2006-09-08T19:52:00.000-04:00

So I don't really have that much to post about. But I do want to reply to a couple comments I've gotten... Unfortunately, they either don't have blogs, or they have blogs that don't let just anybody comment on them. Guess I'm not special enough...

First off, Katy! I never would have thought to hear you say that! What have you done with my friend!? Just because you meet some guy, you think you can change? What's up with that!? ;)

Grace, I did use logic in my comment for Riggs. She was blonde, and she proved the stereotype correct. Of course, she could've been a sorostitute... That would've been even better..... And since you brought it up, of course you're a bad driver because you're a girl! How could you think any different? I thought you and logic were like binary and computers. ;)

In other news, police closed down the Beltway going both directions to coerce two car thieves from their car. A herring was found swimming in the Tidal Basin. Sam Weaver got a raise. Two men reportedly tried to carry a VW bug to another parking space. A young K-State alum has a date with a blonde sorority alum on Saturday night.

Randomness for the Day: Actually, maybe it should be "Disclaimer for the Day:" If you find this post offensive, just remember if you had a cool blog like me, I wouldn't have to talk about you on here, I mean, just remember that it's all in fun. Picture the words coming out with a smile on my face. And just because it's written on here, doesn't make it true. Unless I said it, in which case it would be true because I'm never wrong. Or something.

Back to work

2006-09-05T20:41:00.000-04:00

So after a 3 day weekend, it's back to work. I wasn't too busy today though. I hope that I don't run out of work this week... :S It seems to go in waves like that.

I went to the archery range today, but it was closed due to inclement weather. The INDOOR archery range was closed due to inclement weather. No archery for Sam Weaver today. :( I'm starting to go into withdrawal. I shot on Saturday, but it wasn't for very long. I got too tired and couldn't make my body do what it was supposed to do. :S So I started doing push ups to try to get stronger. But I'm going to take it slow so I don't injure my shoulder. That seems to happen too often. I started doing crunches too, just because. Maybe I can pick up some chicks now..... ;)

I didn't do anything exciting this weekend. Pretty much just sat in my chair and read. I talked to people online a little bit, but mostly it was just reading. I probably should've gone for a bike ride or at least taken the Metro downtown... What can I say, I'm a lazy bum.

Randomness for the Day: So I actually burned chocolate while I was making scotcharoos on Sunday... or was it Monday.... Better make a note for next time...

Rain

2006-09-02T22:12:00.000-04:00

So Ernesto hit DC yesterday. I was working on some drafting for Lyndon, and the power flickered, then flickered again, then went out completely. Luckily, we all have UPS's for our computers. I worked for a while, but Tom came and told me they were shutting the servers down, so I had to stop. That was at like 1:30. At 2:00, they told us we could go home.

I tried to go to the archery range, but everybody and their mom was leaving DC then. In 45 minutes, I got maybe a quarter of the way to the archery range. :S I turned around and went home. I did get some laundry done though. :)

Today, I went to Fidel's for brunch. We made pancakes, eggs, and sausage. It was pretty good. The pancakes were a little tough. (I can say that, I made them. But I didn't pick out the box... I would've made them from scratch anyways.)

I was looking at condos on craigslist.org today. They're really expensive. I might be waiting a while before I can buy something. Then I started looking at personals on there... That got kinda interesting. Like the one chick that was looking for favors without anything in return... Some of the people might've been nice, but it's really hard to tell...

I posted some pictures of my apartment and the Shenandoah's on facebook today. If anybody reads this and isn't on facebook, and you would like to see the pictures, I'll put them on my other site too. Just let me know. I'm feeling kinda lazy, so I might just have them up there unless somebody can't see them.

Randomness for the Day: Anybody have any great ideas for how to meet new people?

Back in VA

2006-08-31T12:42:00.000-04:00

My trip to Manhattan was pretty awesome. I suppose I don't really need to write much about it since most everybody who reads this crazy thing was there, but I'm going to anyway. :)

I got in to Manhattan around 9:20 after driving through a pretty awesome thunderstorm. I went to Old Chicago with Pat, Ryan, and Jenna. It was a lot of fun. We gave our waitress a rough time. :) Saturday, I saw the family. Mom made manicotti and two apple pies! (yummy) I got to hang out with people a lot on Saturday. Sunday, I went to church and saw Emily and Elena. After church, a bunch of us went to Chili's. I ate so much that I didn't eat for about 24 hours because I wasn't hungry. :S After lunch, I picked up Jessica and went to Topeka for Ryan and Steffanie's reception. It was cool to see them. I'm glad that Jessica went with me. It made it much more fun. :)

Monday, I spent most of the day on campus. I stopped and talked to all my teachers, saw some friends, saw somebody I didn't really want to, ate lunch with Riggs... It was fun, for the most part. Tuesday, I ate lunch with the fam, then tried to fix Grandma's toilet. (I think I made it worse, but I didn't have time to finish it.) :S My flight home went really well.

This week hasn't been as busy as I expected. I had one job go out this morning, and another one that's supposed to go out this afternoon, but it should be pretty easy to get them finished up.

Randomness for the Day: Is a zebra black with white stripes or white with black stripes?

A Long Week

2006-08-24T22:48:00.000-04:00

It's been a really long week this week. Not that it's gone by slowly or anything. It has more to do with the fact that it's only Thursday and I have 46 hours on my timesheet.... But in less than 24 hours, I'll be in Manhattan! :D I'm looking forward to it! I miss all you guys. I'm excited to get to hang out with everybody again. Well, I'm gonna go to bed. After a 12 hour day, I'm exhausted.

Randomness for the Day: Tomorrow I'm going to take a ride in a taxi... Never done that before... Hopefully it won't be too traumatic. ;)

Happy Hour...?

2006-08-19T22:15:00.000-04:00

Sooo.... I'm not sure why it was called "Happy Hour" because we were only there because it was Rachel's last day of work, and that's a pretty sad thing. :( It was fun to hang out with people though. Later on in the evening yesterday, we went down to the waterfront in Georgetown. It was fun. The place we went to was called Sequoia. It was a really nice club. You could throw a killer party there. :)

Today, I got up at 11:00, went shopping for groceries, went to the archery range, went to target, went to the pool store, made dinner, played pool for over an hour... It was pretty awesome. :) I got a tool at the pool store to shape/loosen up my cue tip. It's a lot easier to put english on the ball now.

Archery's going good, even though I'm still paying for taking so long off. I got another blister, but it was on a different finger. This sucks. I can't wait for my callouses to come back!

Randomness for the Day: 6 days 'til I'm back in KS! :D

Post #200!

2006-08-17T19:29:00.000-04:00

Hard to believe that I've actually had 200 posts. Especially since I've been SO good at posting lately. ;) So to clarify about getting hit by a car... Riggs asked how my car was doing. It's doing great because it didn't get hit. I got hit by a car! (I'm doing just as good as my car, for all you who were wondering).

Archery's going good for me, even though I haven't been able to shoot much because of my finger. (got a blister under a callous... twice). Yesterday was really awesome. Everything felt better than it has for a long time, and the weather was perfect. Shooting outside... In the shade... Without swarms of mosquitos... :D

This morning, I went to work early because I had to drive down to DC to survey a building I'm working on. It was my first experience driving downtown. It wasn't too bad, really. I made sure to print out directions for both ways because the streets around here suck. You'll be going along and you'll come to an intersection, and all of a sudden, you're driving on a different road even though you went straight... Craziness. Makes it a little difficult to backtrack...

I have a really busy week and a half at work before I leave for Manhattan. I have a job that's going out next Friday, and I have another one that's going out the Thursday after I get back. I'm going to go in early tomorrow. I can't stay late because it's Rachel's last day :( and we're going to happy hour to say goodbye to her.

Randomness for the Day: Hope all you people in KS are doing okay... It's been like 85 degrees here... Hasn't really gotten hot. :P

I'm still here....

2006-08-14T12:35:00.000-04:00

Sorry it's been so long since I posted last. I've either been busy or haven't had anything good to say. The last two weekends, I went hiking in Shenandoah National Park. It's really pretty out there. This past weekend, I went with a group from church. It was fun. I'll put pictures up sometime soon (I hope). I've been shooting 4-5 times a week. I need to start putting more time into it. My coach is really cool. I finally got into a small group at church. We'll see how that goes. Hopefully I can make some friends through it. I'm looking forward to seeing everybody again. I hope you're all ready to party. :) I'll try to start posting more often.

Randomness for the Day: So, I got hit by a car on Friday... Stupid DC drivers. (that's about as random as it gets) ;)

Archery!

2006-07-19T22:28:00.000-04:00

I went to the archery range on Saturday. It was a really nice range. The coach I've been meaning to email for the past 3 months was there, so I got in touch with her, and I'll call her soon to set up a program for her coaching me. Maybe I'll call her tomorrow.... I went and shot again last night, and she was there. She invited me to go to dinner with a group of them. I didn't get home until 11:30. :S It was a pretty late night. I'm a little sore today. But it's not bad. It's just been so long since I shot.

I forgot to write about the Nat's game that I went to last weekend. Gretchen got some tickets from somebody at work, so she invited me along. They got beat, but it was fun. We had pretty good seats. We were on the third base line about where the net behind the plate ended. We were probably 20 rows up or something.

I've been staying pretty busy at work lately. I went down to one of my jobs today to meet with the owner to discuss our design. So now I have even more work to do. :) The architect is coming up from Atlanta on Friday to talk about another job I'm doing. That one is a pretty cool one. It's for a country club, and I'm sure it'll be super fancy when it's finished. :)

Randomness for the Day: If I'd started shooting again a little sooner than I did, I would be able to shoot in a tournament this weekend... Oh well. :S

Another Week...

2006-07-14T22:43:00.000-04:00

I've survived another week. I really wish I knew more people here so I could hang out with people. I miss that a lot. I'm starting to see what Katy meant when she said that she's starting to get used to her talking to herself... I seem to be starting to do that... It's kinda scary. Talking to one's self is not a sign of mental stability.......

Work was really slow at the beginning of the week. I got a new project sometime earlier this week, and it's given me something to do. I might run out of work next week though. I guess I'll just have to memorize pi some more... ;)

I'm still playing quite a bit of pool. It hasn't been quite as good this week as it was last week. Tonight, I just couldn't get a good shot, and then when I did have a good shot, I screwed it up. :S Oh well, I guess there's always going to be days like that.

I'm going to try to get out and enjoy the outdoors this weekend. I might go to the Shenendoahs, but I might just stick around here. It depends on the weather. It's been raining a lot lately. (As I'm sure you've heard if you watch the news at all.) If the weather's too crappy, I might just go exploring the roads. I haven't done enough of that, really. I know my area pretty well, but I haven't gone too far from here.

I got my table last Saturday. It's really nice. It pretty much fills up the rest of my apartment. I'll take pictures and post them sometime soon. Now all I need is a coffee table. :)

Randomness for the Day: Necesito mas amigas. Estoy un poco solo. Echo de menos de mis amigos.

Time to post again

2006-07-07T23:11:00.000-04:00

So on Tuesday, I went downtown to meet up with Gretchen, Carlin, Brian, Haven, and Frank. I met up with them on the Capitol West Lawn. PBS was doing a live broadcast from there, and Stevie Wonder, Vanessa Williams, Elmo, and some other people were singing. And best of all: the National Symphony Orchestra was playing. :D It was pretty cool. It started about 8:00, but I got there at 3:30 or so. Everybody else was already there. We sat out there in the sweltering heat until like 5:00, when everybody got evacuated. It was kinda sucky because when we came back, we didn't have the awesome up front, center stage seats that we had. We were still close though. Just a little off to the side. The only bad part about the night was that when the fireworks started, either the trees or the stage was in the way. That was kind disappointing, but I'm still alive, so I guess everything will be okay. ;) It didn't take me as long to get home as I thought it would. I got home by 11:00.

Work has been really slow this week. I don't have anything to do on my projects, and nobody else has anything for me to do, so I've been reading ASHRAE Jounals and HPAC magazines. :( When I ran out of magazines, I started reading the International Mechanical Code. (talk about boring!) When I started falling asleep reading the code, I took a break and started memorizing pi. I'm down to like 17 digits... Let's see.... 3.1415926535897... I had 4 more digits, but I don't remember them... If I don't have much to do next week, (hopefully I'll be super busy) maybe I'll get those digits down. :)

I've been seeing some improvement in my pool game. I ran 11 balls the other day. And a couple days ago, I ran 9 balls and then later in the night I ran 8 balls. It was pretty awesome!

Randomness for the Day: Here's a good website for finding out what pi is... You can search through the first 50,000,000 digits!

Is it really almost the 4th?

2006-07-02T16:39:00.000-04:00

Somehow, it just doesn't seem like it's almost the 4th of July. Maybe it's because I'm not going to be in Manhattan for it. (It's a pretty big deal in my family... All the extended family that lives in Manhattan goes over to Joe's to blow stuff up.) I've been seeing a few fireworks trailers around for the past couple weeks, but there's really not that many of them. I'm going down to the Mall for the fireworks display on Tuesday, but it just doesn't seem like it's really that time of year...

I haven't done that much the past few days. I've been pretty busy at work. I went for a bike ride on yesterday. It was really fun. It was the first time I've ridden since I moved here. I went with Andy from work. But before he met up with me, I rode to work, just to see how long it would take. It takes about 15 minutes to drive there, and it took me about 15 minutes to ride there. Granted, I had a tailwind for part of the way, but still, on a normal day, it would only take about 20 mintues to get there. And there's a shower in the building. I think I might start riding to work. That way I can get a little exercise. I feel much healthier since I went for a ride yesterday. :)

Today, it's been a pretty lazy day. I'm going to church in a little while. I'm trying a new recipe for dinner tonight. :) We'll see how it turns out. *crosses fingers*

Randomness for the Day: Friday was my first paycheck for actually working... It was a good day. :) :D

A new post

2006-06-28T18:56:00.000-04:00

So I've been pretty busy lately... (I've been saying that a lot lately, it seems like.) I've been staying busy at work. I went on three site visits in the last week (Friday, Monday, and Tuesday). That was pretty fun. Especially since now I have a lot of work to do. :) It's way better than being bored.

On Saturday, I went shopping for a table for my apartment. I found one. It's not as cool as the one I found at NFM, but it's still pretty cool. Unfortunately, it was twice as much. I got it anyway though. Hopefully it'll be delivered next weekend.

Saturday night, I went to a house warming party with Lizz and Izumi. It was a housewarming party for their brother's fiance's mom. It was pretty fun. We left about 10:30 or so to go dancing. I think I was about the only white person at the club we went to. There were a couple black guys. And there was a black transvestite, but most everybody else there was Hispanic. I felt a little out of place. Lizz and Izumi got me out on the dance floor. Izumi has decided that she's going to teach me how to dance. :) I pretty much suck at it. :S

I stayed at their house Saturday night (Sunday morning) because we were going to ride bikes Sunday afternoon, and they live about an hour away. The room I slept in didn't have a window, so I wound up sleeping until 12:30. I felt like a bum. :S

Unfortunately, our bike ride didn't work out because it was supposed to rain. It didn't really rain until later in the evening, but when it did rain, it poured! (as I'm sure you've all heard) I haven't really seen much flooding, but there's a lot of places that they're evacuating people and stuff. I know they've declared a state of emergency for DC, and I think there's one for Northern VA, but I'm not sure.

Sunday, I went back to McLean Bible Church. I really like their evening service. It was kind of funny this time... The thunderstorm started while we were in the middle of the service, and then, the power went out - right before the pastor said, "I wish you all could have seen it!" It was pretty funny. :)

Tuesday, while I was playing pool, I ran 11 balls. That's the best I've ever done. Unfortunately, most of my games are much suckier than that. I think I'm improving though. I still need to practice though.

Wednesday, I made a chocolate peanut butter pie before I went down to play pool and see Izumi and Lizz. I told them to come up and have some after Izumi got off work. I also invited Raj, Mathila, and Maria. We had a lot of fun. They all thought it was really good. :) I tried using more peanut butter this time. I really like the way it turned out. It definitely had more of a peanut butter flavor.

My Spanish class is going pretty good. It's good to get to actually hear somebody talking in Spanish. It really helps me feel more comfortable speaking it. I ordered a Spanish book that I used in HS off Amazon the other day. It's a really good book, and I think it'll help me get back my vocabulary. Hopefully it'll get here soon.

Randomness for the Day: I went to a Target today that had a pay-for-parking booth in their parking lot. If you're there for less than 2 hours, it's free, but if you're there longer than that, you ahve to pay... It was weird. Welcome to the City, I guess. :)

Having Fun

2006-06-20T19:07:00.000-04:00

I've had a lot of fun the past few days. I've been too busy to post, too. (sorry about that) Saturday, I went to DC and hung out with Gretchen, Carlin, and Allison. We had a lot of fun, even though it was really hot and we walked a ton. I was really, really tired by the end of the day. We walked by the Capitol, went to the Eastern Market, and saw lots of other stuff. I took a few pictures. Maybe next time my internet decides to start working, I'll post them. It's been being really mean to me lately. :(

Sunday, I went to church at McLean Bible Church. It's a huge church. Probably 10000-15000 people. I didn't really like the morning service, but I noticed that they had a service in the evening for younger people, so I went to that. It was pretty awesome. They had a newcomer's meeting kinda thing, so I went to that to find out a little bit more about the church. I met a girl there, and wound up going to Taco Bell with her and another guy and 3 other girls. Most of them were pretty cool, but a couple of them were just plain weird. :S (and a little scary...) But they were all really nice.

Katy, you'll really enjoy hearing about this... The senior pastor has a 14 year old girl who is severly mentally disabled. So naturally, the church has a soft spot for mentally disabled people. They're planning on building a care center (including over night care) for mentally disabled children. It's a $40 million project. It'll have a dentist, after school care, and a bunch of other stuff. It sounds like a really cool idea.

Monday, work was a little slow. I don't have too many projects yet, so when I get finished with something, I have to wait for somebody to look at it before I can really do much else. It's kinda frustrating. Today was a little better, at least at the end of the day anyway. I got a couple new projects that will be starting up soon. At least I have something to do tomorrow morning.

Last night, after I got off work, I went shopping with Lizz, Izumi, and Mathila. We had quite the adventure. We went to Ross. We were there for 2 hours! In the same store! And without dinner!!! :( But we made up for it. At about 10:30, we got some pizza and ate it in a gazebo in the middle of a lake. Then we ordered another one and went back and got it. It was really good pizza. I had a lot of fun even though it was a late night, and I didn't get to eat until really late.

Randomness for the Day: If you freeze a smurf, what color will it turn?

Staying Busy

2006-06-14T19:51:00.000-04:00

I'm starting to get busier at work now. I have a project at a pretty nice hotel. I like being able to stay busy. I was getting pretty tired from concentrating toward the end of today though. I'm taking some hand drawings (1941 with a revision in 1986) and putting them on CAD. It's not super fun work, but at least I'm getting my AutoCAD skills back. :)

Today, I left work early to go get my car insurance taken care of. I think I have all my business stuff done now. :) Now I can just focus on making money! :-D

I spent most of last night hanging out down in the business center talking to Izumi (the concierge). I played a little bit of p0ol too. Liz is going to start her Spanish class today, and I'm going to take it. I hope I learn a lot. This evening, I baked peanut butter cookies before I went down to play pool. I didn't have any brown sugar, so I just used an extra cup of white sugar. They turned out alright. I think they're better with the brown sugar instead. I brought some down for Izumi and Liz and whoever else happened to be around. They all really liked them. :) (they were really impressed that I could bake) :)

Randomness for the Day: Happy Flag Day! (Today is the day that way back in the day, the stars and stripes was adopted as the national flag.)

First Day of Work

2006-06-12T22:21:00.000-04:00

Today was my first day at Girard. It takes about 15 minutes to drive there, so that's not too bad. I spent most of the day reading the personel guide and doing the first day of work paperwork (taxes, insurance, etc.). I went to lunch with a couple people. It was fun. I share a cube with Jorge. He's pretty nice. (he only tried to bite me twice throughout the day) :P Our cubicle is divided in half by a low bookshelf. Later in the afternoon, I started reading some of the correspondence on a job that is kind of just getting started. It's an apartment complex downtown. I think I'm supposed to work on that as it gets going.

This evening, I went downstairs to play pool and Izumi and Liz (finally found out her name!) :) were down there. I guess that Liz had been really looking forward to playing pool with me again. We played a lot of games. She started showing some improvement as the evening progressed. I stayed down there and just hung out with them for a while. I showed them both the pictures I uploaded to facebook. Izumi was really interested in all my friends (you guys). :) They kept asking me, "Is that your girlfriend?" It was pretty funny. I just kept telling them no. They were shocked to hear how young people get married in the midwest. That was pretty entertaining. :)

Randomness for the Day: I wish I knew what the trick to getting an IP address on a wireless connection was. I keep doing the same thing, but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. :S

Exploring

2006-06-10T21:21:00.000-04:00

So today, I went exploring a little bit. Right after lunch, I drove down to Woodbridge. There's an Ikea there. Tracee has been telling me to look there for furniture for my apartment. I didn't find anything, but it was a pretty cool store. It's enormous! Probably Nebraska Furniture Mart size. But it's not open like that. It's got lower ceilings and walls and stuff. I like NFM more as a giant store. I'll probably go back down there sometime. They have a lot of kitchen stuff and some lamps. Might have to browse around for a little longer.

When I got back, I rode the Metro downtown. I wanted to get a Smart Pass or Smart Card or whatever they call it. It's cheaper to ride the Metro with one of those. It took me a little while to figure it out, but I got one and got on the right train. I got a map from the Information Center in the Ronald Reagan building and went toward the monuments and stuff. I saw the Washington Monument (again), the WWII Memorial (again), the Lincoln Memorial (about the only part of my trip to DC when I was really little that I remember), the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial (never seen it before... It's huge - in a different way), and the Albert Einstien Memorial (pretty cool. I took a picture; I'll post it when I get to a computer I can post from).

When I got back to my apartment, I started to cook some chicken to make tacos with when the power to the entire apartment complex went out. At least I hadn't actually started cooking it. I just started getting my George Foreman grill warmed up. I sat in my chair for a while, trying to decide what to do, when I remembered that I have a gas stove. :) So I found some matches and burned my thumb and got my stove lit. I got my chicken cooked and stuff. It was pretty good.

I shot pool for a while this evening. I didn't play too great though. I probably played 8 or 9 games. I had a couple good runs, but I missed a lot of really easy shots. I eventually got bored with it and started writing on here. :) So now I guess I'm out of things to talk about. :)

Randomness for the Day: I'm really looking forward to starting work. I'll at least be able to be around people then. :)

Running Around

2006-06-09T15:04:00.000-04:00

Today, I've been running around trying to get stuff all done for my car. This morning I got an emissions test and a safety inspection. (I passed) *huge sigh of relief* ;) I also went to the DMV to get my title, registration, and driver's license. I guess I'm now officially a resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia. My driver's license picture is pretty crappy. :( I'm not gonna go back and get another one though. It's too long of a wait.

I got up at 6:15 this morning so I could drive to work to see how long it would take. I left at 7:30 and got there at 7:45. I wonder how long it would take if I left a little later... It's a pretty stress-free drive.

I've met a couple people here. The first day I was here, I met the concierge and her sister and her friend. They're all really nice. They helped me figure out the busses and the metro a little bit. (enough so I could tell Gretchen how to get here.) The concierge's name is Azumi. She's really friendly. She and her sister talked me into taking a Spanish class here at the apartment complex. It'll only last 6 weeks, but hopefully I'll be a little better at speaking Spanish by the time it's over. I wish I could remember what her sister's name is.... She played a couple games of pool with me last night. I think I might play again today.

I'm not really sure what to do with the rest of my afternoon. I have most of the stuff I needed to get done finished up. Maybe I'll get the pictures taken off my camera and maybe posted online. Tracee's been asking me for a while to get them up. :) I wish I had internet in my apartment!

Randomness for the Day: If you were stuck in a bear trap and the only way you could save yourself was to cut off your leg, would you do it to save yourself and live the rest of your life with only one leg? Or would you just cut your throat and die instead?

Moved in :)

2006-06-07T21:37:00.000-04:00

I'm all moved into my apartment in VA now. I'm pretty tired though. But I thought I should pr0bably update whoever reads this crap on what I'm up to.

Saturday, I left Manhattan at about 6:15 in the morning and got to Rel's house in Cinci about 7:00 Eastern time. I made pretty good time for driving a big old truck. I haven't added up how much gas it took to get to VA, but I think it's probably around $500. I had dinner with Aunt Trudy Saturday night. Rel had to work until 10 and didn't get home until 11. Her friend Taylor came over and we went to a bar where a guy they met the night before was. That was pretty interesting. I'm still not sure exactly what was going on because he called Taylor and told her where he was, but when we got there, he never said anything to us.

Sunday, I went to church with Rel and Trudy. I've come to the realization that Methodist churches are a lot like Catholic churches in that they both have tons of traditions and rituals. We went to Chipotle for lunch. Rel had to work at 4:00, so we didn't really do much that afternoon. Trudy and I went to the mall looking for some black pants for me. I probably tried on about 10 pairs of pants and none of them really fit me. I think that for most brands of slacks, I need a 31/33, which they don't really make. :S After Rel got home from work, we just kind of hung around the house watching movies. Taylor couldn't do anything and Ariel doesn't really know many people that are still in town.

Monday, I was going to drive to DC, but Trudy and Ariel talked me into just waiting until Tuesday to drive out there. I'm glad I stayed with them an extra day. It was a lot of fun. Rel and I went to the mall. We ate lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. Then we went looking for pants for me. We actually found some. They were expensive, but they're really nice pants. I could probably wear a suit with them. They're black with a black pinstripe. It's pretty sweet. When we were leaving the mall, we picked up a few pieces of cheesecake to take home. Rel and I didn't eat dinner because we ate lunch really late. We just had cheesecake. :)

Tuesday, I got up at 5:00 and drove to DC. I got there at about 3:15. I got most of my stuf f moved in by myself. Gretchen came and helped me carry the stuff I couldn't carry by myself. (Thanks Gretchen) :)

Today, I got my truck taken back. I'm really glad to be rid of it. It's a pain in the butt to drive around in traffic. Especially with all the "no trucks" streets. :S Now all I have to worry about when I'm driving is staying out of the HOV lanes. I went to Target and Safeway this afternoon. I got a George grill. It'll be pretty sweet once I get to use it, I think. I got a lot of stuff unpacked this evening. I got my futon put together and my TV hooked up. I watched a movie while I ate dinner tonight. :)

The only thing I wish I had was a wireless connection. I bought a wireless USB adapter, expecting to have millions of networks to connect to, but there's only one and it's too far away for me to be able to use it. :( If anybody (Ben the computer genius) has any suggestions, let me know. :)

Randomness for the Day: I'm really mean to the shoes I'm wearing right now. I've spilled water on them and probably some food. Somebody spilled beer on them in Aggieville one night. And today, I spilled gasoline on them. :S

All Packed Up

2006-06-02T16:41:00.000-04:00

Today I took apart my computer. That means that tomorrow I'm leaving for DC. I got a 16' truck from Penske with a car carrier. It's pretty much the biggest thing I've ever driven. Everybody helped me load it up. And now my room is pretty empty and I'm pretty bored.

I'm going to leave tomorrow morning at like 6:00. It's going to be a long drive... I'm going to stay with my aunt and uncle and my awesome cousin Rel. :) I'm soooo looking forward to seeing her! :D

Well, I'm going to go now. My brother is telling me about computer stuff and things I don't really know about....

Randomness of the Day: I'm leaving tomorrow!!! *dances around the room* :D

Goodbye's

2006-06-01T14:07:00.000-04:00

This week has been a week of saying goodbye to all my friends before I leave to go to DC. Monday, I went up to the archery range for the last time. Since it was like 95 degrees outside, it was like 80 degrees in the range. Not gonna miss that. :) I am going to miss my coaches. They were the only ones that came (other than Pat... He slept on the couch while I shot). I'm glad I got to say goodbye to them.

Tuesday, I had lunch with Rachel and Erin and her two kids. It was fun to hang out with them. We hung out in Arby's for like an hour and a half or two hours. I'll miss them. They've been good friends for a long time. After I hung out with them, I went to KC to see Amy. We were going to have dinner together, but she got sick so I just sat there and talked to her for a while. It was really hard to say goodbye to her. She's such a great friend to me. She's always around to support me. I was going to visit Ben while I was in KC, but he didn't feel his phone ring. So I just left the chocolate chip cookies that mom sent in his mailbox and went home. When I got back,
Ryan, Pat, and I went to see the Benchwarmers. It was pretty funny. I kept looking for where the twist in it would be, but I couldn't see it until it finally came.

Wednesday, I packed up my DVD's. That's a big milestone because it means that I'm about to leave since they're one of my favorite sources of entertainment. :) I had dinner with Kjersti and her family. It was nice to get to hang out with them before I left since they're like a second family to me. At least Kjersti will be going to K-State so I'll see her when I come back. After that, I went over to Grandma's for a final get-together over there. It was fun. I said goodbye to more people. :( Hopefully I can keep in touch with them all. *crosses fingers*

Today, I packed up the rest of my stuff in the morning. I was going to get up and go to breakfast with everybody because it's Grandma's birthday, but I was too tired. I'll have to go over there and wish her a happy birthday. Riggs and I ate lunch at Chili's. Sometime today, my Grandad is going to be coming into town. I didn't even know he was coming until this morning. I guess I haven't been around enough...

Randomness for the Day: Who would win in a fight? Strong Sad or the Cheat?

Good times, bad times

2006-05-30T00:51:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I had to cancel my order for my table. It got back ordered until August. I tried to find something here in town today, but Manhattan doesn't have any cool tables. I'm a little bummed about that, but I'm sure I'll find something in DC.

Last night, instead of camping, we went over to Ryan's and had a cookout. We made green chili cheese burgers. They turned out really well. I was kind of experimenting with seasonings on the hamburgers, and I'm really happy with how they tasted.

Today, I got to see Robyn for a little bit. I said goodbye to her. She's not too happy that I'm moving. I got to hang out with Tim, Ryan, Pat, Jordan, and Jenna today. I was hanging out with somebody from about 10:30 this morning until I got home at like 11:00.

I went up to the range tonight. Tom and Rhonda were the only ones up there. I was hoping Erin would be there, but she wasn't. I got to say goodbye to Tom and Rhonda though. I'll miss them. They've been a pretty big part of my life for the last 7 years.

Randomness for the Day: What is your favorite food?

More Packing

2006-05-27T20:16:00.000-04:00

Today, I spent most of the day packing up stuff. I got all my books packed and almost all of my closet packed. There's really just my DVD's and my computer stuff left. I think I'll finish up with that stuff on Wednesday or something.

Robyn is in town this weekend. She brought a "friend" home with her. He's really freakin' tall! And that's saying something coming from somebody like me who's surrounded by giants. I'm sure I'll get to hang out with her sometime this weekend.

I don't know what I'm going to do tonight. Pat and Ryan are at Andy's wedding. Maybe I'll go play pool or watch a movie. Or maybe I'll just go fly a kite...

Randomness for the Day: If you were a color, what color would you be and why?

Google

2006-05-24T17:46:00.000-04:00

YESSS!!! Google finally lists my blog first when you search for "sams randomness"! Now I just need to get it to where it lists it when you search for "Sam Weaver"......

Pandora

2006-05-24T17:28:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I read about a free online radio station. It's pretty sweet. It's called Pandora. It's really cool because of the way it figures out what you want to hear. You just type in the name of a song or artist, and it goes and finds music that's similar based on the musical characteristics. There were a bunch of music experts that listened to all this music and categorized it based on over 400 different musical elements. They say that there's going to be commercials in the free version like most places, but there aren't any yet. :) You can customize like 100 different radio stations and it saves them all. I really like it. You can read more about it here.

I packed up most everything else on my walls yesterday. And all my pictures. It's getting really empty in here. Today, I packed up some stuff I had sitting in the hallway. I didn't get around to working on my wooden box. Maybe I'll get another coat of varnish on it tomorrow.

Last night, I went over to Grandma's with Jessica, Pat, Jenna, Ryan, and Tracee. It was fun. We played some pool. I hadn't played for a few days, so I was starting to go into withdrawal.

This afternoon, Ryan F. and I went to Chipotle and then went over to Grandma's to watch the new Final Fantasy movie that came out a while back. We also played some pool. I wasn't playing very good. Hopefully that'll change whenever I play with Pat and Ryan.

Randomness for the Day: Is there anybody who still reads this after my extended period of silence?

Packing

2006-05-22T22:21:00.000-04:00

Today, I packed up some of my tools. That must mean that I'm getting close to moving..... I also packed up my targets I had hanging on my walls and the ones I had hiding behind stuff. My walls are kinda empty now. :( So's my closet. Although there's still a lot of stuff in there.

I put the second coat of stain on that wooden box I'm making presentable. Tomorrow, I'll put on some varnish or something to make it look shiny.

I started looking at what I would have to do to get mom and dad's car transfered over to my name today. Virginia has a really good website for finding out what all you have to do/have to get your car title, registration, and driver's license. Kansas isn't so good on what you have to do to get the car title transfered. I need to do that soon though.

I went up to the range and shot a little bit this evening. I think the equipment I'm using right now cost maybe a third of the stuff I usually use. Oh well. That's what I get for changing my form. I think I'm coming along okay though. It's feeling pretty natural. I should probably start shooting 5 days a week again sometime...

Randomness for the Day: I'm almost caught up on my ASHRAE Journal reading. Only four more to go. :)

MHS Graduation

2006-05-21T22:28:00.000-04:00

Today, I went to MHS's graduation. It wasn't as boring as I was expecting. And it was only 2 hours long. I was expecting about 2.5-3 hours. I looked for Kjersti's family when I got there, but I couldn't find them. About a half an hour after it started, I found them, so when they started reading names, I got up and sat with them. I knew a lot people graduating. Kjersti was graduating, and so were all my guys that were in my Bible study that I've known since they were in like 7th grade. I got to congratulate a few of them. After graduation was over, I went over to Kjersti's house for her reception. It was good to see her and her family. I don't get to see them very much any more. They're like a second family to me though. I'm going to miss them when I leave.

We didn't get to go camping last night because it was supposed to rain. I don't think it did though. But there was some lightning late last night. Maybe we'll go next weekend. *crosses fingers* It'd be fun to go.

I got pictures of my graduation posted if anybody's interested. They're on my picture website. There's a link on the sidebar. --->

Randomness for the Day: I need to find more to do in the next two weeks! I might go crazy being stuck here in my room !

I'm still alive...

2006-05-19T15:19:00.000-04:00

So I realize that it's been over a month since I've posted. Just for the record, I did have one post in April. I haven't really had anything good to say for a while, so I just haven't said anything. But now, I've graduated, and I'm getting ready to move, so maybe I have a few things I can say.

Last weekend, I finished a chapter in my life. After half a decade of being in college, I finally graduated. Not that it took longer than it should, it's just that I've been going to school for a really freakin' long time! It was nice to see all the friends and family that came to congratulate me. I'd like to say thank you to you all. I found out early last week that I was going to graduate Cum Laude. That made me happy. I didn't think I did that well at school.

As I look back over the past five years, a lot has happened, and I've changed a lot. When I started college, I was a pretty quiet kid with few social skills. Now, I'm not quite as quiet, and I have a few more social skills. I don't always have to hang out next to the walls. :) I've included more variety in my clothing selection. I don't just wear jeans and a t-shirt all year round. I've aquired some taste in decorating a room (although some would probably argue otherwise).

I've learned a lot of new things in my stay here at K-State. I've learned that just because somebody is a teacher doesn't necessarily mean they know what they're talking about. I've learned that there are lots of people out there to help you when you need it. I've learned how to make buildings function to keep the occupants safe and comfortable. I've learned that although it hurts a lot when people betray your trust, you're still better off trusting people than trying to make it on your own.

Right now, I'm preparing to move to DC. I'm working on packing stuff up and getting things all set up for leavning. I'll be leaving Manhattan on June 3rd. I start working on June 12th.

I found a kitchen table a couple days ago. It wasn't in stock though, so I don't have any pictures of it. It should be in by the end of the month. I hope it is, otherwise I'll just have to get something in DC. It's a pub height table, 54"x54" with an 18" leaf. When the leaf is out, it is 36"x54". It comes with 6 30" barstools. It's a dark cherry finish. I think it looks pretty sweet.

I'll post pictures of my graduation party soon. I'll let you all know when they're up.

Randomness for the Day: Isn't is amazing how much people change in 5 years. Just ask anybody who's known me for a long time. And yet.... Some things never change.

Posting again.... Finally

2006-04-06T14:12:00.000-04:00

So I realized that I posted 3 times in the month of March. That's pretty sad. But honestly, not that much has been happening.

School's been pretty uneventful. I've been sort of busy, but not really. (I feel like a slacker when I look at all my friends and how much work they're putting into stuff....) The weather's starting to get warmer! I'm pretty stoked about that.

The other day, I got a new rear deraileur and a new saddle for my bike. I've been needing those for about 2 or 3 years. I've only put 3200 miles on them. :) I upgraded to an XT deraileur. It's really nice.

I had my birthday last week. It was nice. My family gave me some stuff that I was needing for when I move out. Jena threw me a surprise party on Thursday. She had a bunch of my friends from school over. It was really fun. :)

I'm going to start shooting again on Sunday. It's time to start getting ready to shoot outdoors. I think my break has been going on long enough.

Today, I'm leaving for DC to go apartment shopping. I have a few places I want to look at. I hope I can find something I really like. It should be a lot of fun. I'm supposed to take a lot of pictures.... :)

Randomness for the Day: People DO NOT get sick from cold weather; it's from being indoors a lot more.

Bored

2006-03-24T21:40:00.000-05:00

So Riggs tells me it's time for an update.... And I'm really bored right now, so I guess I can do this. :)

Last weekend, I went to Louisville, KY for an archery tournament. It was fun trip. Amy, Eric, Jena, and Erin all shot there too. :) I hope everybody else had as much fun as I did. I got to see Tim again. He's one of my old friends from when I used to live there. There weren't as many of the top recurve shooters there as there were last year. I shot better at this tournament than I did at the last one though. I shot a 290/300 the first day. That was good enough to put me in 4th place, but I didn't shoot as well the second day, so I ended up in 6th. I was happy with how I shot. I had fun, which was the main goal. I got to shoot on the same target as two of the Olympians from the last Olympics the second day.

That's pretty much all that's happened to me lately. Mom had surgery this morning. She's feeling a lot better than she thought she would be. She'll probably get to come home on Sunday or Monday. Aunt Sharon's really taking care of us in the food department. She brought over a huge platter full of fried chicken and a couple pies. :)

I've spent most of my spring break sitting in my room reading, watching movies, or playing video games. I'm ready to be doing something again.

Randomness for the Day: You know you haven't done much when you've read like 4 books, watched several movies, and beaten a couple video games.

I guess I should post again...

2006-03-08T11:54:00.000-05:00

So I guess I haven't posted for a while. My tournament was kinda disappointing. Hopefully I'll do better in a couple weeks. My partner for Senior Project, Adam, is amazing. I left a bunch of stuff for him to do on Friday while I was gone, and he got almost all of it done. He's pretty much the best partner in the world.

Yesterday, I left my jacket in Union Station, and didn't remember it until I was getting ready to go home. I went back over, hoping that it would be there, but of course it wasn't. So I decided that I would go up this morning and see if somebody turned it in. So I learned that there is a lost and found on the 3rd floor of the Union. I'd never been up there before. There's just a back stairway that goes up there. It was like walking up to the third or fourth floor of Cardwell.... Except the people actually had social skills. They didn't have it, so they sent me over to the bookstore because sometimes the get stuff there. So I went all the way back to the ground floor and asked the nice lady at customer service, and she had it. I was really happy. I really like that jacket. :)

Randomness for the Day: So I'm starting to eat more healthily again. I've been cutting out sweets at lunch and subtituting fruit. Oranges are really yummy. :)

Leaving

2006-03-02T17:00:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow morning, I'm leaving for an archery tournament in Illinois. It'll be nice to be shooting in a tournament again. I haven't shot in one for about a year now. I'm looking forward to it.

Yesterday, the weather was awesome! It was like 83! On March 1st! I loved it! :D I got to ride my bike a little extra. :)

I haven't really done a lot lately. I've shot some. Tried to work ahead on school. That's really about it. I hope you all have a great weekend. I'll see you when I get back!

Randomness for the Day: Over 10,000 birds die every year from smashing into windows.

KC

2006-02-26T17:45:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I went to KC to visit Ben. It was a lot of fun. I haven't gone to visit him for about 2 years. I got to play on his new piano. It's really nice. :) We went to Best Buy, and I finally spent my $50 gift card that I got from B&P at the end of the summer. I was going to save it until I graduated and use it on a digital camera or something, but I got one for Christmas, so I went ahead and used it. I got the second season of Orphen, The Usual Suspects, and Thelonious Monk cd.

Gamenight was pretty fun. Katy and Christine came. I hadn't seen either of them for a while. It was cool to see them. I invited a friend of mine from Bible study, and he got to come. That was fun. :)

This morning at church, they approached the whole tithing issue from a different angle. Instead of the pastor speaking about how God will bless you for tithing and stuff, the had 3 people in the congregation speak. I thought it was a good idea, but none of them really said what a difference it made in their finances. I tithe (when I have a job), and I know that God provides for me to make sure that I have enough money to pay for stuff.

I started re-ripping my music to my computer. The only reason is because I don't like the way the file names are set up. Right now, I have them set up to be track number, artist, song title, but I want it to be track number, song title, artist name. I don't really feel like changing every file name, so I'm just re-ripping them. I think they're a higher quality too, because the file size is about 3 times what it was for some of them. It goes a lot faster with windows media player than it does with the piece of software that I used the first time. I think I can rip about 4 songs in the time it took the other program to rip 1. And I can listen to the cd with it's working. :)

Randomness for the Day: I'm so glad that I don't have much homework this semster. :D

Beautiful Weather!!!!

2006-02-24T16:00:00.000-05:00

So today, it's like 66 degrees! :D I'm super happy! I love spring weather. :) I was going to work on my bike, but Mom's gone with the car, and I kinda need it so I can put my bike rack on the back and tune my brakes and deraileurs and stuff. That makes it a lot easier, so I think I'll wait until she gets back.

Today, we turned in the plumbing portion of Senior Project. It feels good to have that finished. I don't really like plumbing all that much. Nothing like sizing a pipe to carry poo from the toilet through the building and to the sewer. I have a little bit left to do for my controls class, but that shouldn't be too hard to finish up on Monday.

Well, I'm gonna go enjoy this awesome weather. :D

Randomness for the Day: What's your favorite season of the year?

One year of blogging!

2006-02-22T18:30:00.000-05:00

So I just realized that yesterday had been a year since I started this silly blog thingy. In that year, people have come to my blog 3405 times. That's pretty cool. :) Thanks to all you people out there that actually read this. I know it's pretty pointless sometimes, but it gives me something to do.

Today, I actually had to go to my 9:30 class again. Our teacher was gone on Friday and Monday. He got our tests graded though. I got a 92.5, so that's good. There were a few questions that I just kinda guessed on.

Kjersti called me today, and she's going to come up and shoot with me tonight. That'll be fun. I enjoy shooting with her. :) It brings back good memories.

Adam and I almost have the plumbing part of Senior Project finished. We just have 3 drawings to finish up. I have a lab due on Tuesday in Controls. That shouldn't be too horrible. (Not as bad as the people that are taking Advanced Lighting have, anyway.) :)

Randomness for the Day: Did you know peanuts are an ingredient in dynamite? Maybe I should stop eating them.... I don't really wanna blow up. ;)

Sam's Randomness

Teresa

*yay* I have time for another post!

Another Busy Weekend

Headed Home

First Half

Waiting

Busyness!

Another Tournament Down

Sick again. :(

Awesome Music Video

What a weekend!

Headed to KS

Manhattan

More Thoughts

Two in one day

Apologies

Not a normal post

Still not busy...

Long Day

Some Random Title

Busy

Happy Easter (a little late)

Update

Busy Weekend

I forgot

Archery Tournament

Sick

Hope you're sitting down....

My apologies to all you who still check this

Finally posting

Lots going on!

Wedding

Postin' from the office...

Memorial Day Weekend in the City

Staying super busy!

Spring is here!!!! :D

Yes, I'm still here

New Cell Phone

Another crappy tournament

Mormons...

Last weekend's archery tournament

Unstuck

*heart* day

I'm a slacker...

Finally have time to post...

Fun Times :)

Archery Tournament

Cheesecake

Internet!

Happy New Year!

Back in Manhattan

Does anybody still read this?

Finally Posting...

Another archery tournament

Really Busy!

Stuff

Another Post

Halloween

New Features

New Blogger

Orlando!

5000 visitors!

Internet...

I'm still out here....

Staying busy

Comments...

Back to work

Rain

Back in VA

A Long Week

Happy Hour...?

Post #200!

I'm still here....

Archery!

Another Week...

Time to post again

Is it really almost the 4th?

A new post

Having Fun

yay I have time for another post!

heart day