Tripping Brian

I'm hitting the air tomorrow and heading south to Atlanta for a weekend of Tech vs. Notre Dame football. Friday night I'm hanging out with Josh and Shaun and will try to take in the pep rally at Atlantic Station. I'm staying at Shaun's condo in Midtown on Friday night and will be rising early to take in ESPN College Game Day at 8:30 on campus. If you're up early on Saturday turn to ESPN from 10-12 and you may see me. I'll be wearing yellow. ;)

Kickoff is at 8 pm and the game is nationally broadcast on ABC. You should watch, do it do it. I'm not sure what I'll do between Game Day and kick off but hopefully it'll involve tailgating with some people, most likely WCF folks.

Saturday night I'm staying at Shaun's condo again and will be waking even earlier to catch a 10:00 flight to Boston. I'm heading to Boston with the family to see Emily make her official debut as student government president of Wellesley by giving the Convocation speech on Tuesday afternoon. Our plans for the trip are fluid right now but I want to head to Providence and maybe Newport, Rhode Island to see the big mansions and check RI off my list of visited states. On Wednesday I'm flying back to Raleigh and it's back to work on Thursday. It's going to be a busy few days but should be a ton of fun. I'm taking my laptop so hopefully I'll post some pics of the trip while I'm adventuring around.

Until then...happy trails!

One Year Ago

It's hard to believe but today is my one year anniversary of starting my job. It's gone quickly! I have traveled, learned a lot, realized I have a lot to learn. I still haven't closed a deal, but hopefully I'll get that checked off the list in the next two or three weeks. After a year I still enjoy my job and don't mind getting up every day to sit in front of Excel all day. The past week or so I've been missing the feeling of anticipation that has always been attached to this time of year either in starting a new school year or a new job. That will soon pass, but it says something about one's post-school life. New changes no longer occur on their own, a concerted effort to grow and evolve has to be made. All-in-all I don't think I could have asked for a better opportunity for my first job.

"It's hell getting old." - Granddaddy

Yesterday had it's ups and downs. Overall the day was very fun and enjoyable. Thanks to a great deal at the golf course, Joel and I played two rounds yesterday for $18. A total of 36 holes in 6.5 hours. The weather wasn't too hot and the lack of humidity made the day pleasant. After golfing we headed back to make pizzas with Katie and her friend from Charlotte Caroline. After pretending to be Italian we had some excellent birthday cake in honor of Joel's 24th birthday which is tomorrow. Post cake and ice cream was game time. I don't know the game we played but it involved cards with apples on them and random common and proper nouns that had to be matched with an adjective or verb. Sounds dorky plus it would help if I knew the name of the game and could describe it better, but it was really fun.

The down part of the night was at 11 as I was getting in the Explorer to head back to Raleigh and I noticed that my Grandmother had called and left a voicemail 15 minutes earlier. I listened and heard her panic voice on the phone. I immediately called back and headed to their house which is about 10 mins away from the Chalmer's apartment. It turns out that she found my granddaddy passed out on the floor in the bedroom. Of course she didn't know if he was alive or dead at that point and tried to revive him and he responded to his name with a grunt. She asked if he knew where he was and he reponded, "the wheat field." He was limp and couldn't really move but seemed to be ok and she somehow, probably adreniline or something, was able to lift him into the bed. She took his pulse and blood pressure but which were both normal. All of the excitement was over when I arrived and I offered to stay up with him over night but she told me she would and I hit the hay. This morning I woke up to find both of them watching the news. He didn't remember a thing and said he felt just fine. I even took him to eat at IHOP and he did just fine walking around and talking. Grandmother thinks he may have taken too many sleeping and pain pills but we don't know what caused it. Hopefully it wasn't a stroke and thankfully he didn't hit his head on anything. I also hope they do talk to the doctor instead of not thinking anything about it. They can be stubborn sometimes.

That quote in the subject was from a conversation I had with granddaddy a couple of months ago and it seemed very appropriate today.

Hello, how are you doing today?
I hope I find you feeling healthy
I'm so glad our paths crossed this time today
On our way into the night
- Dave Matthews "Granny"

Travels

The three day business trip to AL went well. Both groups we met with were very nice and seem to fit in the mold of many of the developers with whom we already work. They both are trying to expand to other states as well which is always a good thing. On Tuesday afternoon I gave my co-workers the $0.10 tour of Carrollton and dropped them at the Holiday Inn Express for the evening. I went to dinner with my mom at Miller's and had a great atlantic salmon and spent all of my dinner stipend but it's ok because I didn't buy breakfast. Yesterday morning I went with my dad to Dawnbreakers Rotary at the club and enjoyed seeing some familiar faces and meeting some new people. It's always good to stay connected with people and keep my name out there. The flight back was uneventful and we took the afternoon off since we arrived around 3. Overall a pretty good trip.

Sights of Auburn

Note to self: When scheduling and arriving at a meeting in Alabama remember the state is on Central time!

In other news, you know you're from Alabama when you can buy a gallon of gas and a gallon of beer at the same store.

Weekend Update

Friday:
1) Post-work driving range
2) Dinner
3) Katie called and they're going to the driving range and to see X Men 3 at the cheap theatre in downtown Graham and want to know if I would like to join them.
4) Pack quickly and drive to Graham to watch the movie
5) Sleep at the g-units'

Saturday:
1) Golf at Brookwood Golf Course in Whitsett (west of Burlington). I shot a 110, Joel shot 115, and Katie shot 133 from the men's tees. We're all getting better and it was very humid.
2) Ate some Mexican for lunch
3) Three games of Clue and ice cream at the Chalmers'
4) Sleep at the g-units'

Sunday:
1) Help the g-units clean up after a grease fire they had earlier in the week.
2) Emily came buy on her way back to Boston.
3) Go home and pack for my trip to Alabama

Posting for the next few days may be sparse. I'm flying to ATL this morning and driving to Auburn with two co-workers for a developer meeting. We're staying in Montgomery tonight and then driving to Decatur, AL on Tuesday for another meeting. Tuesday night we're going to Carrollton! I'm staying at home and they'll be in a hotel. We're flying back to Raleigh on Wednesday.

We are the Champions

I arrived at work today to find a trophy in my desk chair proclaiming my team as the winner of the best theme for the 2006 CAHEC Bowling Tournament. WEE HAW! One thing I didn't mention about bowling is that generally for any Fun Committee event there is some kind of theme. This time each team had to come up with something and had $25 to spend on props, etc... Generally most people are weary of the themes which makes it easy to win. Our theme was a play on The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. I was the team owner since I had to be dressed for ULI, another guy was a race driver and had a 1980s red nylon jacket covered with logos we found online and the other two members were fans with various fan accourements. The main team sponsor was Bunny Bread which I'd never heard of but apparently is cheap white bread and is a play on the movie's use of Wonder Bread. A few pics are below.

Rock and Bowl!

Yesterday was another Fun Commitee day at work and we went bowling! Yes, we went bowling in the middle of the day. I picked out a nice dark green 12 lbs ball and on my first roll, a strike. The first game I bowled a 160 which I think may be my all time high score. Unfortunately my scores progressively declined as in the next two games. I scored a 140 the second game and 137 and 131 in the third as one of my teammates didn't want to bowl the third game. We were randomly split into teams but from our department's analysis we would have blown everyone away had we bowled based on departments. Overall it was a pretty good time and nice to get out of the office and interact with people I don't normally work with often.

There was also an awards ceremony but I left early to head to Glenwood South to an Urban Land Institute tour of the new Paramount condos and networking event at Mellow Mushroom. The tour was great, ULI has a very open membership that shares how their development process went and what they learned, what went right and what went wrong. The condos were very well designed and all had great features. We were able to tour three units thanks to their owners and saw three beautifully decorated condos. The most interesting thing was that the three units we toured have abesentee owners. The biggest was a 2,000 sf three bedroom condo owned by a couple from Charlotte that use it maybe one weekend a month, most likely when in town for NC State sporting events. One of the others was owned by an architect that splits his time between Raleigh and Miami Beach. Another benefit of the ULI events is that I'm starting to get to know people and hopefully that will generate some business and other contacts for down the road.

Adventuresome?

Yesterday on my way home from work I had the radio tuned to NPR as usual to catch up on the day's news. All Things Considered had an interesting piece that I caught about half of on my way home entitled "Does Age Quash Our Spirit of Adventure." The scientist made several very valid points regarding radio station programming choices and how musicians latch on to people of a certain age and those people are fans for life while at the same time they [the fans] tend to disregard new music. This behavior is also exhibited in many other species as it relates to risk taking. My theory, and one that I'm surprised they didn't mention, was that being boring and cautious is an inate self preservation strategy. Why should a monkey try new plants when its standard fare is available? The new food may make it sick.

The main thing that I took away from the story is that it's not bad to be stuck in your ways but trying new things isn't always bad. I think I've become more willing to try new things over the last few years. Why? Maybe because I've been taken out of my comfort zone of 22 years. I guess I should take this story as a motivating factor to try something new on a regular basis.

You can listen to the story here: Click Here

RATS

Today was the Triangle GT Club Freshman Send Off gathering. I don't recall being invited to such an event when I started but I know the West GA club holds one now. There are 12 freshmen this year from the Triangle which is a decent amount of out of staters. Five of the twelve were at the reception today and they all seemed like very bright kids and were eager to head out. One of the girls is going to be a swimmer and another was on a three time national champion jump rope team. I also didn't really notice any of the freshman jitters in them that I know I was feeling at that time. They all were pretty mature as well. I also learned that Tech has started optional summer reading to "may be" discussed in Psych 1000 or GT 1000 as they called it. Overall a great crop of RATS.

One interesting story from the event was talking with the father of one of the freshman. He's an electrical engineer that works at IBM in the park. He's of East Asian decent and I think he's a first generation immigrant. I spoke with him at length at the recruiting dinner earlier this year about Tech and what his daughter could expect. We remembered each other and were speaking in a group in the kitchen when one of the current students in attendance asked if I used my Public Policy degree. I said not directly and went onto elaborate how it was good for essentially designing my own major, critical thinking, etc... I also said I enjoyed taking the sciences and math classes also. The father said something to the effect of it's good that politicians don't know calculus, at which I said political science and public policy are different and I proceed to try to explain why. He said I know you didn't go to school to be a politician but it's good that they don't know calculus. So I asked is it because if they know calculus they should be doing something else and putting it to use? He said yes. I then told him I disagree and went into how Tech's experience taught me how to think logically and solve problems and those skills are exactly what I want in a politician. He seemed to have the short sighted view that is somewhat pervasive at Tech in that science and engineering are the supreme disciplines and if you have those skills you should waste your time on other pursuits. Anyway, I think I started convincing him otherwise but we changed the subject and he got really interested in real estate and me trying to explain tax credits so it worked out.

It was also interesting at both events seeing how thedaughter, who clearly has taken on the American culture, interacts with others compared to her father.

No Recipe, Baby

Today was a no recipe day! It feels good to prepare something without a recipe and have it actually come out tasting pretty good. For lunch I had some chicken nuggets from Wendy's and forgot to get honey mustard and as I drove home I was thinking I bet I can make some honey mustard. So I went at it, I figured honey + mustard = honey mustard. I was correct! I squirted some mustard into a small bowl and then put an equal part of honey in and stirred it up. It was still a little too mustardy so I had some more honey and whamo...honey mustard! I was pretty proud of myself.

Tonight I was contemplating dinner and didn't want the standard George Forman grilled chicken so I decided to attempt some tomato meat sauce for spaghetti. I had a 1/3 of a jar of plain Ragu tomato sauce in the refrigerator, a pound of ground beef in the freezer, and an onion. I browned the meat and then added the chopped onions. I tasted the meat and onions and it was fairly plain so I added some garlic powder, a pinch of kosher salt, and some fresh ground pepper. Adding that made a big difference. A few minutes later I added the tomato sauce and it was not nearly enough. I then immediately rummaged around my cabinet and luckily found a small can of tomato paste. I put two spoonfuls in the pan but it didn't help much so I mixed the remainder with some water and stirred it up and poured it over the meat. I ended up being the perfect consistency and tasted pretty good. Two recipe-less meals in one day, I'm proud of myself. I like cooking.

This morning I went running like last Saturday when I woke too entirely early. It was great morning for running as it was in the low 70s and not too humid (I opened my windows and screen door this afternoon and didn't even need the air conditioning...I'm ready for Fall!). I am actually starting to see a cardiovascular and lung function improvement from riding my bike which is a great feeling. I don't like to blame asthma for things but when your lungs at their best only are 80-85% of capacity it's nice feel some improvement. I think I've figured out that it takes me awhile to get warmed up, the first 10-15 minutes I feel like I'm ready to stop but once I pass that barrier I'm good to go. I just now need to work on my legs to make them want to keep going.

Overall it was a pretty good day and I even cleaned my apartment.

It's Game Day!!!

Well almost. Tech kicks off the football season on Saturday September 2 at 8:00 PM nationally televised against long time rival Notre Dame. The reason I'm excited, other than it should be a great season, is that my tickets came today. Thanks to a nice season ticket holder on the Hive named Tim I was able to get a mini pack with two tickets to the Notre Dame (9/2), Miami (10/28 and homecoming), and Duke (11/18) games. The seats aren't that great but that's fine because I'll be there.

Another interesting factoid comes from Good Eats (one of the best shows on the Food Network) with Alton Brown. Besides being filmed in Atlanta it also goes into detail in a fun loving way the science of cooking. This interesting and surprising fact came from an episode I DVRed about water, yes water. Alton was discussing how water filters like the Brita pitcher filters work. There are two media inside the cartridge some plastic ball thingies and activated charcoal. Here is the interesting part, one gram of activated charcoal has the same surface area of two, yes two, tennis courts. That's 5,616 square feet or 6.02 apartments like mine squished down into something that would fit in tablespoon (you have to come visit me to figure how much that is) and a lot of surface area for one gram of carbon to have. That's how it catchs all the nasty things in the water. Pretty cool stuff that makes water good eats.

I've got a golden ticket!

Watermelon

Encasing green rind
Ruby flesh bearing black seeds
Tasty summer treat


I like watermelon! I look forward to cutting into a chilled melon every summer and hearing the crack of the rind and wafting the sweet smell of summer. The one problem, it's so frustrating to eat around the seeds. I guess, as the saying goes, things worth doing take effort (or something like that).


In other news, some of you know that I was interested in trying to partner with my grandparents earlier this spring to buy a junky house to live in and flip since my apartment lease expired. I found a house but it took me awhile to get my grandparents on board and when they finally did I'd already signed the lease on my current apartment. It turns out somebody else had the same idea for the house I was targeting. If I recall correctly, it was listed for $115,000 and probably worth $105,000. A flipper bought it in April and sold in it in mid-June for $152,000. I'm not sure how much they paid since the sales history wasn't listed on the property tax record but they probably put in $10,000 to $15k max into it so they probably made $30,000 in two months. It's frustrating but it's also a nice confirmation that I have a decent eye for real estate.

Saturday

Today has been pretty lazy. I woke up rediculously early for a Saturday about 6:30 and decided to go running since the temperature and humidity weren't insane as they have been. It was good to get outside for a change instead of riding my bike on my cycle trainer inside. The rest of the day involved some movie watching and a little cleaning.

While flipping channels I saw that Because of Winn-Dixie was on so I stopped to watch it because Dave Matthews is in it and it turned out to be a really good movie (I saw about half of it). I give the movie a definite rent or maybe try to catch it on HBO.

It seems like I generally try out new recipes on the weekend and this weekend is no different. Today's special is another one from Simply Recipes (thanks personalized Google homepage) and it's Sesame and Cilantro Vermicelli Salad. It was very easy and quick to make. I'm not too big a fan of cilantro so I may try some other kind of herb next time I make it. I also couldn't find green onions at Kroger so I left them out and I think that would have provided a little more flavor. This recipe gets a thumbs up. It would be great to take to a covered dish event or picnic. The only problem, as usual, is having a lot leftover and hopefully not letting it go to waste. Anyone want to be my cooking buddy?

Work?

Yesterday one of the accounting firms my company uses took five of us to play golf down in Southern Pines at Pine Needles which is the home of the 2007 Women's US Open and a Donald Ross course. We arrived around 8:45 and hit the range and practice green while immediately starting the sweating that was the unifiying characteristic of the day. We had two threesomes and one foursome and played best drive. It's amazing how much a decent drive helps your game. Unfortunately it didn't help mine that much as I ended up shooting my average of 114. On the positive side my drive was used probably at least a third of the time. As far as the course goes, it wasn't the most difficult I've played, the fairways were fairly wide with the greens offering the challenge. Although it wasn't the most difficult it was by far the most expensive course I've played.

We finished our round a little after 2 and hit the clubhouse for some lunch and cooling off and then headed back to the office. I'm definitely a fan of golf outings during a workday even if it is 100 degrees outside.

Fore!

I played golf with two guys from work yesterday at Brevofield Golf Links in Wake Forest as a warm up for the golf outing with one of our accounting firms on Thursday in Southern Pines. We teed off around 5:00 and it was definitely a warm (thinking postively) afternoon. Luckily I tend to pick people to play with that are about the same skill level as me. Phillip shot a 97 plus probably a 12 on a hole he stopped playing, I shot a 120 (too many drops on the back 9), and Johan shot a 130. If I could cut down on the one or two blown holes per round I'd be pretty happy. The course was pretty decent for $17 with a cart and the greens were surprisingly fast.

I really like my new driver, I do think I have picked up some yardage off the tee. My second shots were absolutely horrible which stinks after having semi-decent drives. It was pretty dark when he reached the 18th tee box around 8:45 and when I hit my ball I saw sparks! Pretty cool if you ask me.