Friday, September 29, 2006

I'm starting to think it might be a 3-day weekend that no one's told me. The parking lot was much more empty than usual when I got to work this morning. Dave's out all day for a golf tournament. Emily's off work today to take her GRE's for the first time. A bunch of other people have already left for the day. It's like somehow they've all gotten everything done that they needed to do before the end of the fiscal year. Thought I sincerely doubt that to be the case, I suppose anything is possible. I'm not even close myself. On that note, back to work. At least I have a fun-filled weekend to look forward to. =)

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Dammit. I'm out of Skittles. I thought I had a few left in the bag in my desk, but no dice. I really wanted to taste the rainbow too. Oh well.

This is the best idea ever. I've had at least as many sinus infections as birthdays and probably double my age of ear infections by the time I was 8. What I wouldn't give to never have another sinus infection. My ear infections all but disappeared after getting tubes put in when I was 6, but the sinus infections plague me to this day. I've been lucky recently about catching colds in time to prevent them from developing further, but I'm certain another sinus infection is always just around the bend. Bring it on medical science! Maybe my kids won't have to suffer like me!

Emily and I had dinner at Mike's in Springfield last night. We went there a couple months ago because we had a good coupon, but once we arrived we realized our coupon was only good M-Th and not the Saturday that we were there. But thanks to a salad snafu, we got free dessert and a reduced bill anyway. Since our coupons were expiring at the end of the month, we ventured back over after work. They were fresh out of the entree I wanted, so I got a ribeye steak instead (which is hard to complain about), but I really wanted the other thing and Emily had halibut which looked really yummy. Our salads arrived this time, and they make a darn good caesar salad over there. Then we tacked on two desserts. But with our coupons, and including tip, we got out of there for $40. That's a pretty good deal, and the food is pretty good, but I don't know that I would ever go there again without similar coupon savings. Fortunately, the service this time around was way better than the first time too. It's just that they have a relatively limited menu to begin with and then when things on it are unavailable, it's a little dissapointing. Or it might be worth going just for salad and dessert. I dunno. But we had a good date night and certainly got our money's worth out of them. Now I'm all hungry again. Good thing it's lunch time!

Monday, September 25, 2006

I was supposed to meet my parents for lunch on Saturday. I got up at 9:30 and had a bowl of cereal, then decided to crawl back in bed for a little while and all of a sudden it was 3pm. Whoops. Guess I was a little in need of sleep! After fully reviving myself, I watched some football (included a retarded comeback by UGA when Colorado should have had the W) and got myself cleaned up. Emily and I headed down to Dupont to meet up with Laina and Josh for dinner at Raku (my peanut chicken skewers were yummy) and hanging out for a while. We didn't get home until 1 I think, but fortunately, our flag football game wasn't until 12:30 on Sunday. I braved driving downtown and didn't get lost or wrecked or carjacked and didn't drive down any streets the wrong way. I even parallel parked and later managed to get back out without incident. So I drove on a curb a little bit. *shrug* In any case, we had a ton of people show up for our first regular season flag football game, so I didn't personally get a lot of PT, but I feel like I was a valuable contributor when I was on the field (including an intentional penalty which completely threw off the other team). Long story short, we beat FSU 23-15 (I think) and played well as a team. We only gave up one really big play right at the beginning of the game. There were a lot of penalties and the referees were terrible. Our ~1 hour game took nearly two hours and involved an excessive amount of standing around waiting for all the officials to confer and agree. The funniest part of the whole thing is that the UGA refs basically seemed to be on our side most of the time. Not too much else exciting. I updated my rankings to reflect games played during week 4. Tech is moving up in the world, we're up to 33 I think. This weekend when we go to Blacksburg is going to be a huge game for us. If we can win, I think we have a shot at the ACC Championship. If not, we need to get ourselves in gear again right quick before Maryland shows up. I just hope we can come out with a respectable performance and not get annihilated like last year. If the defense can hold for 4 quarters, we have a good chance. Yay football!

Friday, September 22, 2006

It was fun to see Laura and Greg last night and Emily's green chili was pretty yummy. GT jumped out to an early lead and managed to hold onto it. I thought we might be able to pull off the shutout, but the defense finally yielded in the 4th. We still have a lot of work to do on offense, but things are looking better. I think we have a legitate chance of going 8-4 this year and 6-2 in conference. We still have to play at VT and at Clemson, which (even though I think CLEMSO N is over-rated) will be tough games. We get Miami at home and they seem to be in a slump again this year. Then we close with a tough game at UGA, but the last two years, that game has been closer then in years past, and they're missing a lot of talent from last year, so maybe we have a good shot. As long as the team doesn't look past "easy" wins at UNC, at NC State, or Maryland and Duke at home, I really think we could have a good year. I'm trying not to get my hopes up though, cause sure enough we'll do something like wollop VT, then turn around and get blown out by Maryland. I'm getting all pumped up for tomorrow since I didn't get to watch much football last weekend (other than the flag variety, which is fun too). It feels like fall outside, and there's football on, what more could I want?

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Well this is just a swell idea. I can't possibly be the first one to draw this comparison, but does this administration strike anyone else as a parallel to Moby Dick? Now, admittedly, I never actually read the book (though I did enjoy the version by reknowned illustrator Bill Sienkiewicz), but I still think I can paint Bush into an Ahab role trying to track down a basically unimportant white whale. Sure, Osama is evil or whatever and (indirectly) committed (or at least claimed some responsibility for) a great injustice upon us, but you can't really think that he's still a relevant threat enough to warrant chasing him from country to country blowing the crap out of the entire middle east. Or can you? I won't put anything past W. Besides, he fights terror because he's a terror-fighter. There's something to be said for revenge when well executed (see: Count of Monte Cristo or Inigo Montoya), but I'm not sure there's many people who can point at our recent military campaigns and say "now, that's well-executed revenge". Regardless of how you feel about the ideals of being at war with whatever we're at war today (it's islamofascism now, right?), you have to admit it hasn't been well run. As I've said before, you can't fight an idea or an object; you have to fight people. You can kill Nazis; you can kill Vietcong; you can't kill Terrorism because it's not an easily-definable group of enemies. Look how well the War on Drugs went. You might as well declare war on Gravity.

The problem with this weather is that when you sleep with the windows open, it's a bit nippy in the morning and it makes my already low desire to get out of bed all that much lower. At least I got a really good night's sleep though. Just the whole getting up thing was a touch on the difficult side.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

It smells like fall! =) It's starting to cool off and a few leaves are changing colors, but that's all pretty easy to ignore. But walking out of my office tonight, it definitely smells like fall. I'm sure we'll have our typical cooling off followed by a few really warm days and then the rain and cold will be back to stay. In any case, I'm excited. Fall means all my clothes are finally back in fashion. ;)

Monday, September 18, 2006

It was a pretty eventful weekend. After my muscles finally started feeling better, I was able to work out a bit and get loosened up Thursday and Friday, which I think was really helpful for Saturday. Our preseason flag football tournament went well. We got trounced by William and Mary in the opening game, but almost all their scorign was in the first half. The second half, things started to come together on defense. The second game was against Purdue and between our defense and some huge special teams plays, we came out on top, so at least we weren't relegated to last place even after landing in the loser's bracket. Our first regular season game is on Sunday, and then we play both Purdue and W&M again later this season, so we'll be better prepared next time. After getting rained on at the game, we headed home from Anacostia to shower and nap and watch a little football (M - go Blue!) before heading up to Merriweather to see Jon Stewart. That guy cracks me up. The opening act was pretty funny too - Mike Burbiglia (or something to that effect). His bit about bears in Alaska had Emily and I in stitches. Jon talked for about an hour and a half, mostly about politics, but there was a good mix of other topics thrown in there as well. His bit at the end about his dog Monkey was spot on. After we found our way out and sat in traffic for a while, the drive home was smooth and then it was straight to bed. Sunday I slept in, updated my Chaos Rankings, added some additional features to the software, and then went over to my parents. The wanted to celebrate my promotion, so I suggested Outback cause I wanted to eat half a pig. No one told me I was supposed to save room for dessert! Dessert was yummy, but a bit too much food. Then we played with the girls and went to bed. And I'm not ever that sore today. A little stiff, but nowhere near as incapacitated as I was this time last week.

Friday, September 15, 2006

My "long overdue" (according to my managers) promotion, which has been pending for 2 full months, came through this week and took effect on Monday. This is about 7 weeks later than everyone was hoping, but without going on a big corporation rant, I can't really explain why it took so long (much less why it was originally rejected 8 months ago). So I'm going to hold my tongue this time and just be happy with tacking on "senior" to my job title and a sizeable chunk of change to my paycheck. Now I need new business cards! =)

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

How is it that rockstars always manage to make the worst decisions? I mean, I know I'm very resistant to mass media and main stream culture, but I like to think that I know a little something about music. I was dissapointed by INXS picking JD over Marty last year when Marty was clearly the more talented and more savvy choice. So much so that I bought his CD instead of INXS. This year Supernova has been all about how awesome Lukas is, and I just don't see it. His voice is annoying and his spastic antics are retarded. I think he's really a Tazmanian devil. Oh wait, the one from down under was Toby, who was clearly the better choice to front the band. He has a better voice, better looks, better stage presence, and I think is a better fit with the other bandmembers personalities. But then, what do I know? At least now I don't have to be dissapointed that they're not coming through DC on their tour. Stupid rockstars.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

I meant to post this over the weekend, but I've been busy and things have gotten hectic. Anyway, Michael Schumacher is leaving Formula One at the end of the season. This is huge. No one has been a more recognizable face of the sport than Mr. All-time-winningest-driver. After Alsonso's engine failure in the final laps of the Italian Grand Prix, Michael is only a couple points behind him in the hunt for one more driver's championship, and his win vaulted Ferarri ahead of Renault in the constructor's championship. With only 3 races left in the season, it's going to be a close finish. Speaking of Finnish, Kimi Raikkonen is tied for 4th and still in the hunt for 3rd. He almost won the last race, affirming Ferarri's decision to sign him to their team as Michael's replacement. It's going to be an interesting season next year, kind of like when Jordan "retired" the first time. Makes me wonder if Schumacher will stay retired or move on to a different field (like curling) before a second racing stint. Only time will tell. In the mean time, my F1 hero Kimi has everything coming up roses for him, so yay Finland!

Monday, September 11, 2006

In the immortal words of one Mr. Murtaugh, I'm getting too old for this shit. Really, I'm too out of shape, but we'll just pretend it's cause I'm old instead of lazy. Although we have been working out pretty regularly the last couple months. We had out flag football practice on Saturday, and after spending most of Sunday curled up in pain on the couch, I'm definitely still feeling it today. Naturally, playing football requires a lot more flexibility and muscle movement (especially the fast-twitch) than running on a treadmill. So of course I'm quite sore. Just walking is a chore, but at least I can get in and out of my car and office chair with less difficulty than yesterday. On the plus side, it's all my muscles that are sore and I had very little problem keeping up with the other teammembers during our scrimmage with Johns Hopkins. To top it all off, I got burned pretty badly because like an idiot I forgot to put on sunscreen. So I look like a cooked lobster and feel like a 90-year old. Hooray! I can't wait for our tournament this weekend. We're guaranteed to play 2 games and may play up to 4. Should be fun though!

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

The Week 1 Chaos Rankings are now available. Please ignore the grossly inadequate formatting issues. I'm having some problems with tables that require my attention.

I've exceeded the bandwidth of my free website again. This time it took 4 days. *sigh* I think it was all the post-Brickfest web searches that turned up my 2005 photos that killed my bandwidth allocation. I think perhaps I'll start looking for a new webserver. What I really want is to host my own (I've certainly got the equipment for it), but Cox won't let you. Bastards.

It's been a whirlwind weekend. After some (non-weather-related) delays at Dulles, I finally arrived in Atlanta. Marta has done away with tokens! They now have a one-time use card that may as well be a token. *shrug* It got us to the hotel, so whatever. I miss the tokens though. We definitely saw a pimp on Marta. They upgraded us to a suite at the hotel for free, which was nice. The hotel was certainly adequate for our needs. Not the nicest place we've stayed (Greenville Westin), but we slept well. Saturday we walked down to campus, checked out the bookstore, wandered past the College Game Day set, had lunch in the new Student Center area, tailgated with Brian and his Notre Dame "friends" and then with Kenneth and Erin and Emily's parents, and did the usual pre-game stuff. I even made it back to my watching wall, which has increased in popularity somewhat. For that reason, I've decided that when I die, I'm giving Tech $1000 to put a plaque on that wall naming it the Adam Bever Memorial Football Pre-Game Watching Wall. Most people want whole buildings and have to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to get them. I just want a brick wall (that isn't even load-bearing) on the corner of Bobby Dodd and Brittain. That can't cost that much, right? Anyway, the game was awesome. We had fireworks and an F-18 flyover (we'll never see either of those again) before kickoff and the stadium was totally packed with screaming fans wearing gold. We gave them a good fight, but eventually the defensive adjustments they made at half time were too much for us. Even though we lost, it was a good game and I love playing good programs to open the season. It gives us a list of things to work on as opposed to mopping up a I-AA team and thinking we're invicible. I could go on about the game for an hour, but other people have already summed it up pretty well, so I'll spare you. I talked to Darren briefly after the game before walking back to the hotel. Emily and I decided we walked easily 5 miles that day. Sunday Emily's parents picked us up for breakfast/lunch at Front Page News and then it was off to the airport. I flew up to Pittsburgh, rented a car and drove to Erie. The memorial service Monday morning was really hard. Mr. Gregory (Pop-pop's long-time hiking partner and our other Chilkoot Trail companion) and my dad gave the eulogy portion. My dad had been listening to everyone talk about Pop-pop over the last few days and distilled it all down into a very eloquent set of vignettes that captured who he was perfectly. And it was really nice to see some of his old friends and all the family and be able to share experiences and so forth. Tuesday morning we had a small service at the cemetary which included a 21-sparkler (instead of guns) salute and as always with our clan, a bagpiper. The drive home was longer than it should have been, even with no traffic and nice weather. But at least I was greeted with friend chicken and roasted potatoes and green beans and very messy (buy yummy) ice cream sandwiches.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Well, I'm off to the airport to head down to Atlanta (provided the airport hasn't been washed away by Ernesto's wrath!) Actually, my flight has already been delayed for some reason, even though the flight that left 20 minutes was on time and the flight leaving at 8:30 is still scheduled to leave on time. Weird. In any case, as long as I'm on a plane to ATL tonight, I guess I don't really care, I'd just feel bad for making Emily wait if her flight gets in on time. Oh well. The important thing here is that I'm at BDS at 8 pm tomorrow for kickoff.
GO JACKETS!!!

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  • I'm Rev. Adam
  • From Oakton, Virginia, United States
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