Marketing:
After tonight’s class, we have one more, and that will be in Greektown. Supposedly, we should have a take-home final exam and we’ll have to do our group 20 page paper. How tough can that be? There are 6 of us. That equates to less than 4 pages each. Can’t complain about that, right?

Set a record for 1 mile:
So, I felt good today, had two days or rest instead of the normal one day or zero days of rest. Mile 1 to 2 was my best 1 mile performance, ever! I did it at 9 miles per hour, 6:40! Yippee! I really need to kick up my long runs up a notch. The long runs have been kind of weak since the 12 miler w/ Kapla!

Okay, so…this thing seemed to have grief, but after I clicked X, it seems to have worked. This UI seems a little bit cooler than Zempt’s.

My buddy, Anand, from Imetris just walked into this suite looking for a floppy. He spent about 30 minutes bullshitting w/ me. It was great. to see him!!!

Okay, now this is frickin’ sweet. I tried two other external blog posters, but they couldn’t seem to connect to my URL. This thing did, no problem. Very exciting! Let’s see if it actually posts!

Kim’s Shower:
The shower was a damn good time! Kim seemed a bit nervous, but it didn’t seem to bother her in the end. The introductions were great, the lunch was awesome. I think the girls had a very nice time. They had some pretty cool pineapple boats for a pre-lunch snack. The guys met up in the bar to get a cocktail before we headed to the Villa Penna restaurant for our lunch. Our lunch was awesome. Started off with some pasta, white sauce w/ vegetables and thin pasta with red sauce were our choices. We then had potatoes and green beans. I opted for only green beans. I had both flavors of pasta, oh, and had some break. Not bad. Not bad. I then had a piece of chicken as my meat portion of the meal. Matt gave us the information we needed for our tuxedo, rehearsal dinner, and other odds and ends we’d need for the wedding’s logistics. As usual, I put pictures up, immediately, at http://photos.filias.com.

Visitors:
We had a very nice treat of having my mom and dad come over after Kim’s shower. They hadn’t been there since we just powerwashed our deck. They were only there the last time when my dad and me put the patio set together. I was so glad to have them over. My dad helped us prune the tomato plants a bit, and coached us along the fine art of tomato growing. I asked him why the tomato plants were so big, and he said: Because you planted them in virgin soil. Vegetables had never been planted in that spot. HOW FUN! We should have TONS of tomatoes this year! Yippee!! Shortly after my mom and dad came, Gina came! We had a great visit with her. I tried to reach Dino and Danielle, but I couldn’t get a hold of them. I left them a message…hoping for the best. In the meantime, Lilly called and said she wanted to make the 20 min. trip down and see the house. We were so excited. She brought Alyssa and their neighbor-friend, Jessica. I can’t believe she’s already in 10th grade. It’s amazing how fast people grow. Especially when you don’t see them. She’s going to be a very pretty girl as she grows up. She’s now in cheerleading, and that made Gina excited. They are going to Cedar Point today, the 4 of them, Gina, Alyssa, Jessica, and Lilly. They tried to convince Michelle to go, but she needed a bit more notice than 8 hours. :) Shortly after Lilly arrived, Dino and Danielle popped in! It was great! I loved all the visitors! People, people, people!

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days:
What a great movie. We topped off our Sunday by watching this movie that my mom sent us. It’s one of the better romantic comedies I’ve seen in quite some time! Thanks, Mama!

Counting Crows and John Mayer:
This fucking sucks! I just typed two or three paragraphs describing how good the concert was. Now I have to try again. Oh well.

Michelle and I were running late, literally. We decided to do our 10 mile run on Saturday so that we wouldn’t have to worry about squeezing it in before Kim and Matt’s shower. The run was kind of weak. We barely broke 11 minute miles, but that’s okay. Just gotta work harder on the longer weekend runs coming up! The rasce is only two months away! Anyway, we got to the concert at about 7:30. The Counting Crows didn’t go on yet and we had to find Jesse (Jason) and Angela. Right before the Crows went on, we see Jesse…sa-weet! He had been there since around 5:45 and had secured a GREAT spot, near the front, stage right (facing). He’s a big kid, so the space he took up had plenty of room for us. The Counting Crows were awesome! They played all kinds of songs (I’d never rememer the titles) and the crowd loved it. The lead singer does a damn good job. He said his best friend got traded to the Red Wings, so he put on his jersey part-way through the show (Schneider).

John Mayer was the star of the night. That young man did such a great job. He has soul like most older, experienced singers have. His performance, live, was WAY better than his performance on his CD. When he sang “Wonderland”, the crowd erupted. Hell, even Jesse and I sprang to our feet to join in on the fun. John Mayer also sang a song or three that must be coming on his new CD. Show was great, company was great. Weather was even better. It had been said that it was going to rain all day, and it didn’t. I’m so glad it didn’t, as I was able to mow the lawn and go running. The only thing I regret about the day was that we didn’t go to Mike and Amy’s because we thought the weather was going to deter us from playing on the lake and we had some cleaning up to do indoors because we were having guests swing by after Kim’s shower. So, no real regrets! Thanks, Mike and Amy, for the invite.

Config file bullshit:
What a damn mess! I try to fire up the laptop to find some nice hotels or B&Bs on Mackinac Island for the 8/22-8/24 trip, but the laptop comes up and tells me that my config file might be shot. Damn it! I get to the recovery console, but don’t have the energy to deal with it. I guess I have to. I could always just reinstall XP on top of itself. That’s always easy. Man, Michelle’s keyboard is really nice! Types fast, too.

Running 10 miles:
We are supposed to run 10 miles today, but we’re super sore from wakeboarding on Thuresday evening. It’s also supposed to rain all day, but it hasn’t yet, and it’s 10:36 AM. The sad thing is that we could have come and gone and not have had to worry about running tomorrow morning, before Kim’s shower. Oh well, that’s what life is about. Choices and consequences. :D

Chutney Popcorn:
I’ve always wanted Michelle to watch Chuntney Popcorn on Sundance. It’s a movie about these Hawk sisters. One is married and finds out she can’t have children, and the other is a Lesbian. Their mates are both white. It’s kind of cool. The movie revolves around the lesbian offering to be the surrogtate mother for her sister. The movie builds around this the entire time, and the mother-who-can’t-have-no-kids eventually doesn’t want her sister to give birth, but it’s too late. The lesbian sister keeps the child for herself. It’s a good movie. I watched it when I was laid off.

Blog:
Maybe I’ll try and keep this up. This Movable Type thing is a damn good time!

Thank GOODNESS it’s Friday! He he. So I’ve got this fancy new BLOG software installed on my machine, and I’ve got a whole weekend of excitement to look forward to, yeah right, and now I have the freedom to deal with my own server when it comes to babbling about my boring life.

Wakeboarding:
We went to Mike and Amy’s yesterday and had the chance to go wakeboarding. Boy do I suck! It took about 8 tries for me to finally get up, and then it took about 3 more times of 1 success and 1 failure to finally get up about 3 or 4 times in a row. There are pictures at http://photos.filias.com – under the 2003 Albums. You can see my trials and tribulations! We got to see Sean… been quite some time. He lives in Phoenix! I wish my batteries didn’t die. I really wanted to take some pictures and pull some film of Mike doing some big air!!! Oh well.

I sure hope I’m able to import my info from Blogger. My first attempt ended in failure. I apparently didn’t set the date format properly when I exported all of my Blogger data. I’ll get to it once the pesky Blogger site is back up and running properly! There appears to be an error on their servers right now.

I think I’m going to give Movable Type (http://www.movabletype.org) a try. I’ve heard many good things about it, and quite frankly, I don’t like how Blogger is having technical difficulties right now. I’d rather rely on my own server to post my own Blogs!

7 miles was fun:
Michelle and I had a fantastic run lats night! Weather was 95% perfect. Temperature must’ve been in the low 70s, sun was setting, and the humidity was dropping by the minute! Michelle actually had a weight class at the gym from 5 to 6, so by the time we ran at 8pm, she was pretty tired to begin with. I envy her drive, and I actually forgot that she had already expended a great deal of energy in that class. We were supposed to take the first mile easy and then progress into a sustained, fast clip. I boo boo’d and started us off without taking into consideration our previous plan. Sorry Michelle! Irregardless, we had an awesome run! We did sub 9 minute miles, averaging 8:54 per mile. It was awesome. Felt like cruise control from mile 2.25 to mile 7! Thanks, Michelle, for converting me into someone who enjoys the challenges of running (MOST of the time)!!

SOB:
Real excited to see Sean this evening at Abdella’s! If the weather front that is approaching actually stays north of us, like they said on the news this morning, we should have weather good enough for wakeboarding! Only did it once, and that was last year. I hope to try it again and get past my fears of going up and through the wake this time! Michelle didn’t have that fear when she first tried it a few weekends ago! Sean is visiting Michigan from Arizona to spend some time with his family and do some fishun up North, near Ludington, and probably some other locales. He’s pretty excited to see us, too…I hope.

Car:
Did I mention that I LOVE the Saab? It’s a damn nice ride. I love getting into it every single time I start a new road adventure!

August trip:
So, Michelle and I had planned to go to Traverse city the weekend of August 22-24, to spend a bit more time up there. We went for a day this July 4th, and thought we’d go alone and spend some quality time running, shopping, and hopefully doing some sea-kayaking (one of the reasons we want to go up there). It should be awesome. In the meantime, I started looking at alternative vacations, like surprising Michelle and taking her to Mackinac Island and actually staying there. Wow, what a shock. I think the cheapest place up there is about 170 per night. Hell no… not really, but man…not a great value. So I started looking online to find a place we could fly to, somewhere different, somewhere new? My research yielded Myrtle Beach, SC. Michelle actually went there when she was 14, so she wouldn’t really remember it. I found two roundtrip tickets leaving late Friday (6pm) and returning late Sunday (10:45pm)…that would give us two full days plus some time on Friday night to check out the strip and maybe catch a cocktail. The tickets were only $320, and that’s for the both of us! The hotel was going to be about 180 for two nights, per my buddy, Gord’s, suggestion. Captain’s Quarters. We’d just have to find a car for two days. Thought it’d be great. I guess I forgot the scope of the original idea. We wanted to go back to Traverse City, enjoy it longer and also try sea kayaking. So, Traverse City it is. That was our first goal, and we should stick to our guns. :) Thanks, Michelle, for keeping me “in check”! Oh, and we’ll get a chance to take the Snab on a road trip!

Humpday:
Happy Humpday! Not much to talk about today. Gina is starting her job in three weeks. She just found out her pay rate, and all seems to be falling in place. I’m very excited for her! Got my protein drinks yesterday from DPS Nutrition, as well as my free T-shirt. I already cut that bitch up this morning, to be fully converted into a lifting shirt!

School:
Our presentation went very well yesterday. We were the first to present. I was a bit nervous, and didn’t read and talk about ALL of the information I wanted to for the slides I was responsible for. Oh well. Live and learn…I keep livning…and keep learning. I heard other students talking about how awesome our presentation was and how we raised the bar. That makes me and the rest of the team feel fantastic! Yippee!! We also found out our final is going to be a take-home test which we’ll bring back to Greektown’s Exodus Club for that final class session, August 12. I’m very excited about it! All we really need to do now is to write our 20 page paper, as a group. Shouldn’t be very difficult. We’ve already got the major foundation completed with the information in our presentation! After this, two more foundation classes. EXCITED for the Winter!

Running:
I tried to set a record this morning for 3 miles, but I guess it was a bit too early or too cold (62 degrees) for me. Strange, though, as I set a 6 mile record last week, on the same course, for the most part. It’s the new outdoor course I’ve made near my gym. I start near the gym, run down a hill, into apartments, back out to the road and into a Catholic cemetery which is very beautiful and peaceful. I run for as long as I feel necessary in the cemetery and head back to the gym. I usually have to run around the gym parking lot or sidewalk for a while to make up the remaining mileage. I think the hills on the road killed me this morning! I would LOVE to have had the same drive I had on Friday morning at Stony Creek instead of the gym road course… I would have possibly done even better, since the hills at Stony aren’t even close to the ones near the gym. All in all, an awesome run for me: 23:14 for 3 miles.

Check engine light:
The check engine light went on at some point during the day on Sunday. It stayed on until this morning. On my way to the gym and on my way to work, the light was off. We have a service appointment on Friday morning at 7:30. We still can’t program our HomeLinkTM rearview mirror with our garage door opener. We had no problems programming the Buick Rendezvous, and it’s HomeLinkTM, so maybe something is wrong with it. We also have something wrong with our OnStar VIU as reported by the OnStar tech we called on Sunday. There are a few small, horizontal scratches at the bottom of the trunk that Saab said they’d buff out, and last, but not least, the driver door vibrates when there is a decent amount of sound coming from the door speaker. It has something to do with the seals, the way the door closes, or the way the speaker is mounted. When you push on the door with a little pressure, or pull on the door handle, the vibrating (bzz bzz) goes away. Should be an easy fix. So far, the car is awesome, though. Absolutely!

Skoo:
Slacker, slacker, slacker. I have a presentation today in class, with my group, and I’m still not done with my slide or three or with finalizing the actual Powerpoint file. I’ll get to it today, though. :D

Family is home!
My mom, dad, brother, and Danielle (brother’s fiance) are home from Greece. My parents went for one month and my brother and his fiance went for two weeks. They all had a fantastic time, as usual. My dad wishes he had a car of his own there, so that he wouldn’t have to rely on others to drive them around everywhere! I was so exited to surprise them and be there… funny, Michelle and I were the only ones there to greet them. Danielle’s dad was to be driving around the internatial arrivals area, so he was all set, but Gina was quite late. I don’t think she was lost, I think she was just late. Irregardless, my family was excited and surprised to see us. The most exciting part was when I went to get the car, and when Michelle said to look out in the road for me, they all looked around, lost. They finally saw me in the new car and were bewildered. They thought I had someone else’s car. Anyway, in the end, they loved the car, and Michelle and I drove my mom and dad home since their Ford Ranger has a broken A/C, and they had been plagued with very hot weather in Greece, and NO air conditioning, anywhere! So glad they are home.

Running was tough:
Michelle and I did our 13 mile run yesterday morning. Super humid. It wasn’t hot at all, but it was humid. I’d say it was damn near 100% humidity. I was actually hoping it would rain so that it would cool off and “dry” up. It didn’t. It took us 2:19 to run 13 miles. Over a 10:00 mile pace. Oh well. Keep on training.

Weekend:
The weekend was great! We worked on our schoolwork this weekend. We have a presentation to put together and present on Tuesday for our marketing class. It’s kind of fun working in a group. I haven’t worked in a group since my software engineering class. It’s kind of nice when you don’t have to do all the work. We also went out to dinner in Mexican Village on Saturday night with Pinche (Ricardo). He took us to the Del Rey Taqueria! It was AWESOME, as usual. I am so glad I was able to show Michelle this gem of a restaurant. She loved it. We went home and rested before our 13 mile run.

Speakers:
My Klipsch ProMedia 4.1 speakers blew for no reason. I guess 2.5 years is their lifespan. :( Let’s hope they have a warranty still. If not, cheaper Logitech 2 channel speakers for me.

Weekend!
I can’t wait for the work day to be over. We have a pretty busy weekend planned. Working on client work tonight, school project tomorrow, shopping in the morning, and dinner at night. Running 13 miles on Sunday and also surprising my parents, brother, and Danielle at the airport. They only think that Gina and Danielle’s dad are picking them up. I also want to surprise my parents and brother with the new ride. :D