Getting my weight up!

No, I'm not talking about getting fat, or even building some muscle (although beginning to bulk up a more is a goal for the near future), I'm talking about blogging. It's time for me to post a little more frequently and give people something fun to read regularly. I think I mentioned something like this before, and in my opinion, I have been doing better, but I'm still not there. Be looking for more fun randomness coming soon from yours truly.

Also, either Monday or Tuesday, be looking for a year in review post from me. I know most of you have not known me for the entire year, but I think it will be good for me put down a bit of a summary of my year so I can see what all happened and, as an added bonus, it will help some of you get to know me better. Be excited!

Alright...it's way past bedtime for tonight. Be looking for the YIR post!

Long time, no post!

Well, to be fair, it's only been a week, but it has felt like much longer since I posted. I actually had trouble remembering my login name to post tonight! haha! Anyway, while I've been vacationing, it looks like you all have been reading! I don't know if it was because everyone was home for the holidays and just insanely bored or what, but I had quite a few hits last week! Maybe I should stop writing more often! j/k

Anyway, all this traffic on my site has inspired me to actually write, when I was planning to avoid the blog and pretend I was still on vacation for a few days. Good work! But, that writing isn't going to happen tonight. It's bedtime!! Look for more fun stuff soon!

Merry Christmas!!!

I'm heading out of town Sunday afternoon for Christmas. Going up to the mountains with the fam again. Oh, and my aunt and uncle will be at their house across the road and apparently after Christmas another aunt and two of my cousins are coming up too, so it should be a big fun family Christmas! This is the fun side of the family (read: the side that drinks...heavily) so lots of fun will ensue! Hopefully there'll be good stories to share when I get back. I don't know exactly when I'll be coming back. Maybe on Friday or Saturday, it depends how much fun I'm having, haha. If you haven't guessed by now I don't like to plan myself too much when I'm out of town, but much rather prefer to play it by ear and see what hits me, lol.

It will definitely be nice and relaxing to go up there, and we might even get a bit of snow, which I certainly wouldn't get if I were in Florida, but I am going to miss going home. I mean, I know I was just down in Orlando last week, but other than my one friend who came over for dinner, I didn't really get to see anyone. I got an invite on MySpace tonight to the annual gathering my high school friends and I have every year since we left for college. We all go over to a friend's house and her mom makes us lots of food and we spend all night just catching up. Over the years, the group has grown as people have brought their boyfriends/girlfriends, then their spouses, and now this year for the first time, there should be a few people bringing their new babies! It's sorta like the family getting together once a year. I'm so sad I'm missing it! Guess I'm gonna have to phone this one in from the mountains and make my presence known! haha Going to the mountains also means I won't get to see anyone from my mom's side of the family, which kinda sucks. Oooh, that reminds me, today is my grandma's 86th birthday. Guess I've got a phone call to make! Anyway...I was never really given a whole lot of choice on the Christmas destination so I guess I'll just drive to the mountains and enjoy myself.

On the topic of good stories, I have like a million posts sitting inside me that I've been too lazy/busy to get out. Obviously it's not going to happen before I leave and I won't have internet up there, so I guess you'll just have to wait.

PS -- My check engine light came back on tonight. It actually came on during the drive back from FL but went off a day or two later so I didn't bother to do anything about it. If it's still on or back on when I get back in town, I guess I'll be making another appointment at the shop. Thanks to the holidays I suppose I will actually make it until next year before I'm back at the shop. If their track record proves anything, I'm willing to bet that my O2 sensor is bad again, but maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt and let the dealership diagnose the problem.

My life is so random!

I really had nothing planned for tonight and had actually planned to skip out of work a little earlier than I have lately, go home, put on something comfortable and veg out on the couch all night. But, this afternoon my cell phone started beeping that it had a low battery. The battery life had gotten really short lately...like after about an hour or hour and a half of talk time it was telling me it was dead...and the phone is only 6 or 7 months old! The low battery beeping was really getting on my nerves so I decided I had to go by the Verizon store after work to get it taken care of. Unfortunately, the Verizon store is across the street from the mall, which is exactly where I did not want to be on a Friday afternoon 3 days before Christmas. I ended up getting a new battery out of them and went ahead and upgraded my plan since I've been running out of minutes lately.

On my way home, I decided I needed to stop by the neighbor's house to pick up a dish I left there after the Christmas dinner. I was going to call first, but thought I'd just pop on in if someone's car was outside. Her car was there so I get out and knock on the door. She hollered something, but I couldn't hear so I just kinda hung out on the porch for a minute. After a minute or two, I see through the window sticking her head around the corner in a towel. haha! She invites me in and then goes to get dressed. She tells me that she was actually taking a bath and waiting for Hot Crazy Girl to come over. We pour ourselves some wine as we catch up a bit and she tells me she's kinda frustrated with HCG, as she had been waiting for her for about an hour and a half by now...told ya she's kinda flakey! Anyway, the neighbor tells me that she and HCG are going to pick up a guy she went to high school with who's now a chef down in Charleston and he was going to make dinner for them. She then invited me to tag along! Considering I had been excited about going home making some spaghetti (that's about as much cooking as I do), I definitely wasn't going to pass up the chance to have a chef make me dinner!

Since I hadn't yet been home from work yet, I ran around the corner to drop off some stuff and then went back to the neighbor's after a couple minutes. HCG arrived and we headed off to get the chef. We picked him up and went to the grocery store and followed him around as he bought whatever it is he needed. The three of us split the bill (figured it wouldn't be right to make the chef pay for it and cook!) and we went back to the neighbor's where we began the cooking. And of course by "we began the cooking" I mean me, the neighbor and HCG made ourselves some cocktails and went into the living room while the chef was in the kitchen cooking. The neighbor did go in to keep him company after a while, but since me and HCG didn't know him we just stayed in the living room chatting. He ended up making us shrimp and grits. It was actually really funny b/c since he's a chef, it was actually garnished and presented in a way you'd expect to see at a restaurant, but not necessarily on your dinner table. I'm not really a big grits fan, but it was a good meal. The grits didn't seem to have much flavor, but then again, grits rarely do...you mainly just taste cheese or butter or whatever you put in them anyway. It sure was a lot better than I could have/would have ever done! We stayed chatting and hanging out until 11 or 11:30.

Just so random...a quick, unannounced stop at a friend's turns into cocktails and a personal chef! I guess that's an Only Mark story if ever there was one! I have a fun life! lol

Hmm, well I guess it's time!

I don't necessarily have anything major to post about right now, but I feel like it's probably time that I should. I haven't put anything substantive up here in a week or more! Oh yeah, I should tell you up front that the 'e' key on my laptop has been sticking lately, so if any of my words are missing the letter e, I apologize.

I never did give the promised Orlando post, so I guess I can write about that. I had to head down there with my bosses for 5 days, 4 nights for a conference with work. The conference was hosted by our parent company and was actually really good. We just became affiliated with the parent company a couple of months ago, so it was all pretty new to us, but was so necessary. It definitely got us all excited about the company and where we're going next year with it! 2008 promises to be a busy year! and the next 2 or 3 months may very well kick my butt, but they'll all be worth soon!

As I alluded (or eluded?) to earlier, the convention was actually being held at the same hotel that my high school prom was at! haha How random is that?! Fortunately, it wasn't in the same ballroom, b/c that might really have been weird, considering last time I was in that ballroom I was 18 and watching various friends and classmates bumping and grinding and doing all those things we do when we dance in high school! haha (I say "watching" but I was definitely participating, haha). Anyway, those who know me know that I'm pretty much a completely different person than I was back then. Well, maybe not completely different, but would it make sense to say "amplified"? I guess who I am now was always in me, I've just pulled it out more since high school. There are various reasons for that, but they are all beside the point right now.

Anyway, the hotel was definitely sub-par for our expectations and we made that quite known, haha. There were water stains on the ceiling and the bathroom wasn't all that clean at check in -- and this is at a major convention hotel at Disney World! The deal breaker for me, however was when I woke up at 9:00 one morning (I decided to be late to the 8:00 session) to the sound of drilling reverberating throughout my room! There was some horrible buzzing noise coming from outside my room and it wouldn't stop. I thought maybe it'd go away, but after about 5 mins. or so of it, I decided to handle it, haha. I got up and stumbled across the room to the phone and called the front desk. When they answered, I said:

"I don't know what kind of work you are doing on this hotel, but there's a horrible buzzing noise in my room and it has got to stop...NOW!"

Haha! I'm so charming, aren't I? Anyway, she put me on the phone with the manager who told me she'd call me back in a couple of minutes. As soon as she hung up the phone with me the buzzing mysteriously stopped! Aren't I persuasive! When she did call me back she told me that the noise was from some sort of core drilling or something that was happening on the roof as part of their renovations (which also explains the stains on the ceiling, as my room had not been renovated yet) and that it would start up again at 10am and continue until 6 that night. She offered for me to change rooms to which I replied, "Well not right now...I'm SLEEPING!" I mean seriously! Anyway, I ended up getting a new room later that afternoon on the other side of the hotel away from the commotion. Oh yeah, and they took one night off my bill too! My boss laughed at me and told me she was having me do all her complaining from now on. I guess we'll file that under the category of "other duties as assigned" in the job description.

We went to the Mall at Millenia in Orlando, which is their really upscale mall, to have lunch one day and dinner another. It was really nice to go there, partly because it was out of the touristy-Disney-family vacation part of town we were staying in and partly because it's just nice to be around people with money! I mean we only ate at P.F. Chang's and the Cheesecake Factory, so it's not like we were exactly at the upscale restaurants, but just sitting on the patio of P.F. Chang's for lunch (in December, no less, which was a treat in and of itself) and watching the people pull up their luxury cars to be valet parked while they shopped and then returning with all their purchases, haha. It's just such a refreshing change from Columbia where most of the people have no money, don't really want money and wouldn't know what to do with it if they had it, and the people with money basically have to leave town to go spend it - either to Charlotte or Atlanta. I mean in Columbia, most of the people are afraid to shop at Dillard's because they're scared of the prices! (when in reality you should not want to shop their because of the quality of the clothes! Unless you're getting a recognized name brand, like Polo or something, don't bother. And Dillard's is slowly doing away with other brands and making almost everything one of their crappy store brands...but that's a topic for another post). We walked around the mall after dinner one night and just enjoyed the shops. No one bought anything, but we liked having the options of Louis Vuitton, Mont Blanc, Gucci, Dior, Jimmy Choo, Kenneth Cole NY, Hugo Boss, etc. around to choose from. Oh yeah, and some other store my boss was all excited about...Betsey Johnson? I'd never heard of her, but apparently she's some big designer in NYC who doesn't have many stores and is pretty exclusive. Anyway, there were many other great stores there, but too many to mention. Next time when we return for a convention we'll all be ready to shop...and purchase!

I also dragged my bosses across the street to Downtown Disney just so they could experience it. They thought it was alright, but agreed that everything was overpriced and that there were too many tourists around. Oh yeah...I also noticed that they changed Pleasure Island now to where you don't have to buy admission to it. Is there just a cover to each club, like at City Walk? When did this happen? My boss also wanted to go see the Bentley dealership just to admire them so I drove across town to find it. My parents came over for lunch one day and another friend from back home came to meet me for dinner too! It was nice to be back down there and be in the energy of the city! It was a much needed break from Columbia, but made it all that more difficult to return home after the trip. Overall I had a good time, but was kinda tired of being around my bosses and missed my life as a single person where I do what I want when I want, haha.

Now that that's done, I've spent the last couple days catching up on everything from last week, had some personal stuff to take care of, and now I'm spending the rest of the week getting ready to be out all next week for Christmas! Yikes! I can't believe Christmas is in like 6 days!!! EEK! I guess I'm not getting any Christmas cards out again this year...I don't think anyone is surprised, haha.

Sunny Florida

Just checking in from beautiful central Florida! The conference has been going great so far! Some fun random happenings, including a room upgrade, good food and some great shopping! Anyway, I'm not getting into everything now, just wanted to say hey! I'll be back in SC by the end of the weekend. Enjoy yourselves!!

Here today, gone tomorrow!

Alright readers, I'm off again! Early tomorrow morning I'm heading to Orlando for a convention for work. Me and the bosses are heading out for the rest of the week and won't return until Sunday. Don't worry, we're not taking another trip in their defective car! Thank goodness!

We're staying at the convention hotel which is a Hilton right near Downtown Disney! It's a really nice hotel and, I won't be positive until I actually see it but, I'm 75% sure it's the same hotel we had my high school prom at (not me in the photo, but quite entertaining, huh?)! haha! How random is that? Anyway, it will be nice to get back into FLA for a few days and hopefully even get to relax a bit.

Plus, Orlando isn't that far from where I grew up, so I'll probably even get to see my parents for a minute or maybe another friend or two from back home, it just depends who can make it over to O-town. I'll have my laptop with me, so I can check e-mail and read all your comments which just pour into my blog every day (AHEM! *Not so subtle hint*). I may even find time to eke out a post or two, but I make no promises! Catch you on the flip side!!

I have the fingerprints of a 70 year old!

Yesterday I had to go by the police station to get fingerprinted for something at work. No, I didn't commit any crimes! I needed them for a background check by the state for the license I took the class in Charlotte to get. Anyway...in true Mark form, this could not be done easily. I was trying to rush the process as soon as possible so I could get it out of the way. I took the test I needed Saturday and, after passing, got my fingerprint card. My goal was to get the prints done that day and overnight the forms to the state. I head down to the police department to get printed and kinda assumed they just had the stuff up at the desk and about anyone could do it...oh silly me! Apparently there's only one person there that does fingerprints, meaning they can only be done M-F, 9-5.

I went back Monday to get them done and, naturally the woman is at lunch when I get there! Geez! I have a few other errands to run downtown so take care of those and come back. When I get back on my 3rd time, the lady is apparently there (finally) so I'm thinking, oh good, someone's gonna bust out an ink pad and take care of this. Not so much. First the lady at the front desk asks me "Have you filled out your card yet?" No...so I fill out the card. Then when I'm done I look at her and she says "Well have you paid and all yet?" Paid?! I have to pay them for this kinda thing? Is paying my taxes not enough to earn some ink on my fingers?? So I ask her how much and she tells me $15!! I mean I realize in the grand scheme of things that's not really all that much, but still, I didn't know I had to pay at all! She makes me walk over to another window to pay (behind which were four women leaned back in chairs talking, clearly getting nothing done), then I have to go back to her and show my receipt before she'll call the fingerprint lady (gotta love the inefficiency of bureaucracy!) She calls the lady and tells me to have a seat.

10 mins. later I hear someone from around the corner scream "Fingerprints? Come follow me!" I get up and walk in the general direction of where the voice came from and finally found the lady. We went up stairs and she began the fingerprinting. To be fair, she was a very nice lady with a lot more personality than I expected to find working there. She took the fingerprints and was disappointed with how they came out on a few of my fingers. She re-inked them really good and tried again on another piece of paper, but still they weren't very clear. She just concluded that I'm one of those people who doesn't have very good fingerprints. She said "You know, a lot of people think it has something to do with age, but really, some people just don't fingerprint well. Guess you're one of them!" haha

So I'm a freak...oh well, no news there! At least if I do want to commit a crime I stand an above average chance of not getting caught...well, as long as I don't leave DNA traces either (not that that's on file anywhere). Also, I guess it would help if I were selective with which fingers I used, since some are worse than others. Ehh, I guess it'd just be easier to don some Isotoners OJ style.

Well, I made it just over a week!

Yeah, so remember last week when I took my car back to the shop to have the CV joint re-replaced? I mentioned that my goal was to go the rest of the year without having to go back to the shop. Well, I was off to a good start! Last Sunday, my check engine light came on again! It had just been on like the whole time I was out of town for Thanksgiving, but went off the day before I took it to the shop so they couldn't look at it. When it came on again, I decided to give them a call and have the dealership check it out. The call went something like this:

Receptionist at the Dealership: Nissan service.
Only Mark: Hi, my name is Mark [Last name]. I don't know if you remember, but I had my Maxima in there last week and you commented on how often I'm up there. I told you my goal was to get through the end of the year before I had to come back.
Receptionist: Uh huh?
Only Mark: Yeah, well uhh, I need to make another appointment! haha
Receptionist: Hahaha! Okay, when do you want to bring it...

It would appear that my frequent customer status is starting to pay off though! I had made my appointment for Saturday morning but then later found out that I was going to have to do something I'd hoped to do on Friday. So Friday morning I called and told them I couldn't make it at that time and offered to bring it later on Saturday. My service advisor said they wouldn't have enough time, as they close early on Saturdays. He also added "I'd say bring it next week, but didn't you tell me you were leaving town next week too?" I was so impressed he remembered! He told me to bring it in that afternoon (same day service...no appointment? Word up!).

I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to take it in that afternoon b/c my bosses had made an appointment to get their car looked at for the head light/windshield wiper issue and I was going to be their ride to and from their dealership. Of course their car had so many issues, they almost just left it there and bought a Hummer. Since they were considering buying the new truck (which they later decided to hold off on for now) the salesman let them take it to drive around for the day. Now that we had a car, I could drop mine off to be fixed!

Turns out, the rear O2 sensor went bad in my car. I don't know exactly what this does, but it has something to do with the air-fuel ratio or maybe the something about my exhaust and emissions. Anyway, whatever it was it was also covered under my warranty and the actually had the part in stock for once, so they were able to fix it that day for, as usual, no charge! I definitely think I go there too much, though, because when I call there I recognize everyone by their voice on the phone! haha

When I went to pick it up, Dave, my service advisor, told me that I definitely picked the right warranty when I was buying them. Apparently some people get ones that are very comprehensive, but have a deductible, so like they'd have to pay $50 or so each time they brought it in, even if the work was covered! I would've had to take out a second mortgage buy now if I had to pay a deductible every time! I did laugh and tell Dave that after all this work under warranty, the dealership about had more invested in the car than I did and asked him if they'd rather just buy me out soon! haha

I'm hesitant to say it, but NOW my goal is to make it the REST of the year without a visit to the dealership! (20 days!) Say a prayer for me!

PS - While writing this post, I noticed online that, not only does this seem to be a fairly common problem for Maximas (and actually making 75k miles before it happened seems to be pretty good) but that the repair work would probably have cost me around $300-$400 to get done with out the warranty! My $1100 warranty purchase which was added onto the financed price of the car has now given me well over $6,000 worth of repairs. Yikes!

It's like some sort of parallel universe!

Normally I'm one of those people who's really good at directions. I'm kinda a visual thinker and so it's easy for me to sorta draw a map of wherever I am in my head and think logically about where I need to go. I've always been one of those people who can go to a new city and find my way around fairly quickly. Normally when I'm lost, people who are with me don't even realize I'm lost because I can get back to where I need so quickly.

I think there's probably a few reasons this works for me. First off is the one I mentioned above...being a visual thinker. Also, growing up, my dad got lost a lot when we would go on vacations. Well, to be fair, we just referred to it in my family as "taking the scenic route," but same concept. Getting used to watching us drive through random streets in attempt to get back to where we need I guess wore off on me. Also, if it's somewhere I've ever been before I'm almost guaranteed to find my way. Along with my visual thinking, I have a very good memory. Like if I see a building or intersection once, I'm probably going to recognize it again for the rest of my life (crazy, I know). Also, I'm one of those people who, if I get any amount of time in a city, I just drive around the streets checking them out and learning where they go. I get familiarized with cities really quickly!

That brings me to the title of this post, however. Charlotte must exist in some sort of parallel universe! There's some sort of Kryptonite or something around that city that renders my super powers useless! I don't know what it is about that city but every time I go there I just get lost! What makes it even crazier is when I've asked for directions in the past, the people who live there can't even give me the right directions to major places! For instance, when I was up in the city last May, I just wanted to find the South Park Mall. I think everyone pretty much knows that place and where it is, but yet, I couldn't get there. I ended up driving for about an hour or so once I got in the city trying to find it. I stopped and asked directions at least 3 different times before I got there! The directions that finally got me there were from a 15 year old girl (the previous person's directions led me up a dead end road that ended in her high school parking lot, so I just asked someone there, haha). What's the most frustrating is that I'm usually no more than 5 miles from where I need to go, but just can't manage to get there. I drive in circles for half an hour or an hour at a time!

Even last time I was up there a week ago, I couldn't get anywhere. After my seminar was over I wanted to go to a couple of places around town, including the same mall. Even though I knew full well where the mall was, I couldn't figure out where I was! I basically again, drove in circles for about an hour or an hour and a half just trying to get there! Then, after leaving the mall, I decided to back uptown to hang out for a bit. I had just been uptown and knew exactly where I wanted to go. I was excited because, for probably the first time, I could get where I wanted without getting lost. Or so I thought! There was some sort of big high school football game going on up there which caused the road I wanted to be on to be closed. I drove around trying to find another street running parallel to it or one I could use to intersect my road later...but alas, nothing. Again, I spent another 30 mins. literally driving in circles in what was about a 10 block radius of where I wanted to go! (well, except for the time I ended up on some random freeway that I couldn't get off of for about 2 or 3 miles).

Ugh! Oh well, point is, I did eventually make it home, just probably drove an extra 50-100 miles and used half a tank of gas. I get so annoyed and frustrated every time I go up there because that is the one city I just can't make it in!! Pretty town...horrible roads! :)

Lazy Blogger

Sorry for the complete lack of posting lately. I'm just gonna churn out a quick update since it's late and I have an early morning tomorrow.

Yeah, I've been a bit lazy lately, I guess. No running, no posting...what have I been doing?

Let's see, since last we met, I went to the tree lighting for my town, which they conveniently held across the street from me. Of course, they later moved the tree down to city hall, but I guess they've decided to start doing more community events by me. There's a mall across the street which is undergoing a major rehabbing (read: vacant) but it has a big parking garage which, due to a lack of customers, is pretty much always empty, so the city likes to host it's events on the roof of the garage. Works for me! I grabbed the neighbor (her roommate had oral surgery earlier in the day, so was out of commission) and we headed over. It was a good time. Free food, some strange calypso band playing non-Christmas music (random) and a million people. Well, okay, maybe a thousand or so (at least a few hundred) but considering within the city limits of where I live there's only technically about 10,000 residents, that's way more than I expected. Actually, I'm kinda surprised the city does a big tree lighting at all b/c my city has a very strong Jewish Community (both of the major Temples in the Columbia area and the Jewish Community Center are located within our city limits). I told the neighbor we needed to find me a girlfriend. She replied that we needed to find her a boyfriend. Always the practical one, I recommended that we just pool our efforts, find a cute couple and split them up. That way, we each get one but only have to do half the work. Plus there are WAAAAY more couples around here than single people anyway, so I'm sure it won't be that hard. She did bring up the point that if we did that we probably couldn't be friends anymore since significant others would hate us. I told her I was willing to make the sacrifice. :)

Friday, I mentioned that I had to go out of town for a seminar for work. I did. The seminar was, like all work seminars, informative, but overly so. I was done taking in information long before they were done talking. Plus, it started too early in the morning. Ugh! Oh well, it's done and taking that class will be making me a lot of money soon. :) Instead of burning up the highway to get back home, I decided to hang out in Charlotte for the rest of the evening. As always, I enjoyed myself there, but that's a story for another post. Hopefully I'll put that up by the end of the week.

Saturday I slept ridiculously late b/c I got in from Charlotte late and because I pretty much had no sleep Friday night. The no sleep was partly because of me staying up to get stuff done and partly due to a 3 AM random phone call from a friend. While it is a funny story, it's not mine to tell. When she gets a blog and posts about it, maybe I'll link to it for you! After I woke up, I went to the condo of my suitemate from freshman year for a big holiday dinner he started doing a couple years ago. He invites a bunch of us over and has a big turkey and various other "fixin's" and we just catch up and relax, family dinner style. It was good, but I certainly did not know as many people as years past. That also reminds me of another observation I've made about many of my friends. But again...for another post. I had plans to go to an event with some other friends later in the evening, but was really just too tired. I decided I needed a night in for a change. I did catch up with a friend later in the night at like 10:30 or 11 or so and he wanted to come over. We rented a movie and hung out for a bit. I popped some popcorn and finished off a bottle of wine I uncorked the other day. It was nice. Between the Holiday dinner and the movie, however, I probably had about 1 and a quarter bottles of wine on Saturday though...oops! :)

Sunday again I slept in. I don't know what it was about this weekend, but I guess I needed some sleep! I ran a few errands in the afternoon, tuned into our weekly conference call for work and snuggled up to my Sunday night shows...here and here. (Don't think I've forgotten about What's in Mark's DVR...they're still coming, just delayed. I'll probably have time for that when we run out of episodes next week thanks to the stupid writers' strike! Grrr!) Oh yeah, during these shows I also pulled out my Christmas decorations and started some light decorating.

Monday I went to work, came home, went running, then went to buy a Christmas tree. I only use real trees every year! A fake one just doesn't cut it for me, I don't know why. Plus, the smell is nice. I was very pleased with the tree I ended up with - and it was pretty much the first one I grabbed! Maybe someday soon I'll begin sharing with you old Christmas memories and family "traditions," if you will, of how things normally go at Christmas. I'm much more low-maintenance around the holidays than my family is, so it's always a nice refreshing change to me. Anyway, now the house is all decorated and I'm pleased!

Today was work, got my car washed, went running, met a friend for dinner (same one as Sunday night) then came home to my TV.

Oh yeah...as far as my pledge last week to run twice on Wednesday and Thursday...didn't happen. I did manage to make it out once on one of those nights, but I just went about a mile or so around the neighborhood. Yesterday when I went, I ran two miles around the neighborhood which was intense, considering I'd been on running-sabbatical for so long, but I was proud I could do it. Oh yeah, also when I run in the neighborhood, I have plenty of hills here, as opposed to the park, which is relatively flat. Today I ran at the park, but decided I needed to try for 2.5 miles since I could obviously survive 2 miles on hills. I'm very proud to say I did it, but it probably wasn't the best idea. My legs were already a bit tense from pushing myself yesterday, and so about a mile and a half into tonight's run my knee started getting a little sore. I definitely felt every step from then on, but I persevered! It wasn't an unbearable pain as long as I kept it moving, but after sitting down for dinner and what not, it's actually quite sore now. Argh! Hopefully a good night's rest will heal it up, but no running tomorrow! I guess it's my first exercise related pain, which is kinda cool. That means I am pushing myself, so mission accomplished! Although, I am a bit disappointed in you, readers! Only one of you actually held me to my pledge of running like I asked you to! And to be fair, he only asked me once! What kind of friends are you?

Well, I guess the post wasn't all that short per se, but it was fairly quick for me to write. I think that's all I promised. I did somehow manage to create at least 3 more posts in my mind during this one though. I guess I've created more work for myself!

It promises to be a busy week at work this week and the weekend has plenty of plans too, but I'm going to try my hardest to get lots of content up for you since next week I'll be out of town for almost the whole week. Details will come later....crap, now that's 4 posts I have to write! I'd better stop!