Vacation wrap-up.
Vacation was excellent.
Thursday: Drove down to Atlanta (*shakes fist at construction at Barrett Parkway*), picked up phoeclipse and aveareya from PB, then made it down to St. George Island, Florida in decent time. Got to goob about KG plotty stuff. Saw a black bear in Tate's Hell State Park! Decided it was called Tate's Hell since it appeared to have places that spontaneously caught fire, but didn't burn out of control.
Friday: Day at the beach! Great weather, lots of fun. Beach quota is fulfilled for the year. SAM had so much fun! Ate at a tasty (if poorly serviced) restaurant for dinner.
Saturday: Drive back to Atlanta. Make it back in decent time. Head to a hibachi place for dinner. Get the teriyaki chicken - very tasty, but next time I'll get a double order of fried rice. Then get ready for the party and head over.
Eclipse party gets its own paragraph. OOP, I had a huge amount of fun. In-play was a little more rough than I expected (Jakoby kind of surprised me again). Still, had an awesome time and really happy for the hang-out time. Got to get to know several people more, and that's a good thing. Parties are always a little odd for me since I don't drink, but wasn't as odd this time. Some thoughts from the party:
- Never argue with a woman wearing 3/4 of a skirt.
- Damn the Meurlain Abs.
- There is much power contained in those hips.
- It's not Stomach Pump - it is Stomach Pump Cleaner.
- Du Hast once gets people to dance. Twice keeps them dancing. Three sends them running. I think that 4 in a row might kill.
- Complicated isn't bad.
Sunday: The Dark Knight. Huzzah for motivational speeches that break through my jaded exterior. Holy crap. The Joker was awesome. It has surpassed the first movie in my mind. This was as good a sequel as Spider Man 2 was a good followup to Spiderman (and I really like spiderman 2). I'll have to see it again, but TDK is easily withing my top 10 favorite movies. Probably in the top 5.
After the movie, we resisted the goobity well (think like a black hole powered by goobing) and actually made it onto the road pretty quickly. Drive wasn't too bad, pretty standard drive from Atlanta. Confirmed that the recirculate setting is the best way to get decent mileage in the hybrid when the AC is on.
Then, we decided to go to hibachi again on the way home (I really wanted filet, and we had forgotten our leftovers in Atlanta). Was tasty, showed some restraint and have leftovers.
Got home, unpacked a bit, and then curled up and watched all the Avatar episodes except the finale. So. Good.
Monday: Not really on vacation - back to work. Got my allergy drops though, and am starting on that. Had a tasty sammich/wrap for dinner with the family, before Leslie travels back to Hawaii. Got home and watched the series finale of Avatar. I'm so glad that I didn't watch it on Sunday - between that and The Dark Knight, I might have OD'ed on Win. Probably would have if I watched the Doctor Who episode on my Tivo (it is the one with Billy Piper in it). But, that will have to wait for tonight. Still have a bunch of other awesome stuff to watch also.
Despite not working out and not doing well on my diet, I only gained about a pound last week. The damn Meurlain abs and the powerful hips (not Meurlain) have renewed my motivation to get healthier. Maybe some day I'll even try dancing without feeling totally embarrassed (though it is likely that singing will come first). Here's an interesting article on the different kinds of fats. I tend to get confused, and this is a decent reference it seems like.
Going to do more weight work in the mornings now also. I think I'm going through something resembling a midlife crisis - except instead of trying to relive my youth, I'm trying to be physically better than I was when I was young. I'm devoting a lot of time, effort, and money into becoming healthier. Hopefully I'll see some more benefits to it all.
Another quick note - my allergy doctor mentioned that there is some groundwork being done for allergy drops for insect venom, and stuff for food allergies, particularly peanuts. It's not quite broad yet, and the food allergy one doesn't completely remove it, but the study that was working on it showed that it shifted the allergy from 'lethal' to pretty much inconvenient. Still couldn't eat the foods directly in larger than small quantities, but could deal with some minor exposure (e.g. could eat foods that said 'may contain nuts' or 'processed in a facility that processes tree nuts').