Birthday Convo

Me: I would like give a Happy Birthday shout out to my wonderful wife-to-be, Sarah, who turns ## today!
Joe Generic Guy: Wow! ## years old? That's getting pretty old.
Me: I guess. Most of our peeps in the ATL are older than us. They think Sarah and I are young.
Joe Generic Guy: How old could they possibly be that they think ## is so young?
Me: They're anywhere from ### to #$#% years old.
Joe Generic Guy: ### isn't much older than you guys, but at #$#%, I can understand why they'd consider you to be young. And getting married at ##? Now, that is young.
Me: Whatever, deuchebag. I think Sarah and I are at a good age and full of youthful exuberance. I hope she enjoys her ##th birthday...despite what you think!

Birthday Gifts

Sarah and I decided that since the wedding planning was taking up most of our time and energy, instead of getting each other individual birthday gifts (My b-day: 3/15, Sarah's b-day: 4/28), we would invest in something that we both wanted. Together we chose a digital camera: the Canon SD400 to be more specific.

My first real experience using the camera came at "The Orange & White Game", Clemson's spring football scrimmage. It was a perfect day for taking pictures: sunny, clear, and warm. There were a bunch of nice opportunities for taking the camera for a spin like the construction being done on the stadium and the play on the field. The pics came out well considering it was my first time as a photographer.

Now that I have a new camera (thanks me), a new Dell computer to locally store all my pics (thanks Sarah), and a Flickr pro account (thanks Robert), the digital photography revolution is in my grasp.

Game on!

Struggling

I am totally struggling today after drinking lots of vodka, snacking on tons of Sour Patch Kids, and eating like crap yesterday at the East Andrews Spring Music Festival. Drinking excessively on a Sunday afternoon is not usually my thing, but I had a friend in town from NYC and he had to be kept entertained. Little did I know when I signed on for this how much it would hurt my body. I guess I should have realized that any event that serves free vodka drinks from 12PM to 2PM could conceivably be trouble.

Avast!

N.C. State has elected a guy who goes by the name The Pirate Captain as their student body president. The article is not a joke, nor is this Pirate Captain guy.

I know I would vote for him just to avoid having to walk the plank.

Ducky Does It!

Over the weekend, my good friend, Adam "Ducky" Howitt proposed to his girlfriend of two years, Melissa. From her smile in the pictures, it appears that she accepted and is happy about it! Crazy girl.

I met Adam over three years ago here in Atlanta. We both did programming for a crappy pool chemical company, where Brian still works. During our friendship, I have seen Adam with his fair share of women and heard stories about past experiences. He has been down this road before, but this time is going to be different. Melissa is different than the others. And, honestly, Adam is different as well.

How is Melissa different? Well, Melissa kicks ass. She is such a cool gal and one of the sweetest people I have met since living in Atlanta. Rarely, if ever, will you see Melissa without a smile on her face. I like people like that because they make me happy. Adam needs a happy, outgoing person because he is the same way. Not only is she happy, a great person, and attractive (did I mention that yet?), she is smart! Melissa is currently going to law school in Chicago where they both now live. An intelligent, attractive, happy, good person? Where do I find myself one of those?! Oh wait! I already did. (That should earn me some extra brownie points)

How is Adam different? I am not sure if I can point to specifics, but he is. Whenever he talks about her or is with her, he seems happier. That is more than enough for me. I could go on and make more gushingly cheesy comments about them both, but I think I will stop myself before I get too sappy. I will try and save all my sappiness for my wedding in a couple of weeks.

I have always liked Adam and Melissa both individually and as a couple. They will have a great marriage and be happy for a long time. And if they do not, I will personally beat Adam's ass because it will probably be his fault!

Congrats and best of luck to Adam and Melissa!

We Got Screwed

Last night, Team Bad Guy got screwed out of a chance at a victory by an adding mistake by the umpire. Entering the fifth inning, our team had scored 16 runs. During the inning, the 2 through 8 batters came to the plate, which is a total of eight batters. Well, if you add up the three outs we eventually made and the one runner left on base, that leave four batters...THAT ALL SCORED!!! The adding-deficient umpire only gave us three runs though, thus leaving us with only 19 runs. We eventually lost the game 20-19.

Honestly, I can handle losing...sometimes. And I know this rec softball league is supposed to be for fun, but who the heck wants to lose like that? And you know what? I can even handle when people make mistakes because everybody makes them...even I do (shhhh...do not tell anybody). What pissed me off the most was when we discovered the problem, and tried to bring it up with the ump, he would not even listen to us. He asked the other team what we had and of course they said 19 runs. The ump then stopped listening and ordered everybody onto the field despite the fact that our evidence was indisputable. Thanks for taking the time to check it out, jackass!

Team Bad Guy currently holds a 1-2 record and now desperately needs a victory next week. The good news is that the entire team has been producing offensively and scoring runs has not been an issue. The team could easily be 3-0, but an error and a bad call here and there have cost us. The current cast of characters is easily the best team we have put on the field to date, and I feel confident that we can turn this around in time to make the playoffs.

Correction: We sent batters 2 through 9 to the plate. We batted 10 players that game and the last batter led off the next inning. Thus the 9th batter made the final out.

Through The Storm

With all the Masters-related hubbub over, I am now able to take a step back and relax. I took yesterday off and plan on taking Friday as well so that I can rest up. Unfortunately, I was not able to use my first day off to catch up on sleep. Since I had no free time this weekend, I had to take Tuesday to get some chores and errands accomplished. Friday should be better though.

Waiting....

As I sit here waiting for The Masters to begin (stupid rain), I would like to congratulate my fiance, Sarah, on getting into UGA's master program for Educational Administration and Policy. She received her acceptance letter on Friday and is very excited to begin her classes this summer.

The cool thing about the program is that she does not have to drive the 60 miles up to Athens for the classes. They are all given at UGA's Gwinnett campus 20 minutes up the road. I am extremely excited for her because I know how badly she wanted this. The thing that sucks is that the majority of the classes appear to be scheduled during the week from 5PM to 8:30PM...even during the summer. How does this affect me? Well, since I work until about 5PM that means I will not see her until after her class ends at 9PM! That sucks. We will be ok, though. It is only for a couple days a week for a couple of years.

Now that a close friend of mine and my wife-to-be have been accepted to UGA, does that mean that I am going to become a fan of the school? Absolutely not! Even if I decide to eventually go back to grad school and attend UGA, I will still hate most UGA people with the same fiery passion that they have for driving their pickups through the mud and shooting game. Take that!