Bitter-Sweet

After exactly two years of working for Phillips Architecture here in Raleigh, I'm moving on. I have made so many great friends there and loved my work very much, but an opportunity came up at MI Homes that I could not pass up. So now, instead of Commercial buildings, I'll be working on residential homes.

Here's to good friends and a smooth transition.

Cheers. [clink]

The Flying Saucer

Today, I became a member of the Flying Saucer's UFO Club.

My first beer was a Breckenridge Vanilla Porter on tap. It's listed as "an ale that has all the chocolate and roasted flavor of a classic Porter with an enigmatic surprise thrown in for good measure, real vanilla bean. Smooth, roasted and chocolate with a creamy vanilla finish."

Very interesting. I'm not a Porter-guy, but it wasn't bad.

One down, one hundred ninety-nine to go. Ah, an explaination is in order...

The Flying Saucer is a bar in downtown Raleigh. There are ten other Flying Saucer locations scattered throughout the U.S. as well. They have over 200 beers in house from all over the world. Some friends and I went there a month or so ago and sampled about 20 beers alone. We ordered a Ireland sampler, a UK sampler and a North Carolina sampler. Each sampler plate had 8 large shot glasses of different beers from that area. Needless to say, that was a very good night.

One of the cool things about the place is that the walls are absolutely plastered with gold plates (they look like drum cymbals). If members of the UFO Club drink 200 different beers, you get your name on a plate which is mounted on the wall and they give you a free $100 bar tab for the night to celebrate.

So, as I said earlier... one down, one hundred ninety-nine to go.

Action Shot

I just got this photo in the mail from my rafting trip.

I LOVE IT!

I'm sitting right in the middle and hamming it up to the camera right in the middle of a Class V.

Right before this picture was taken, we went over a five-foot drop.

Awesome!

Kid's School Pictures

Family Star Wars Trivia

Jude & Kerrigan are in full-blown Star Wars interest right now. Jude is reading excellently, so he reads all the trivia questions. I can't tell you how happy I am that they are finally getting into it. Jude loves Jawas, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan, Anakin, Luke, Han and the Ewoks. Kerrigan likes R2-D2, Princess Leia and Ewoks. I can't tell you how hard it is to find Star Wars action figures for them to play with. The new ones in stores now are expensive... I have some of my old ones that I gave to them, but if anybody sees any at garage sales or anything, let me know...

No more training wheels

We took the training wheels off Jude's bike this week... He was off on his own on the first try.

Whitewater Rafting on the Gauley River

This weekend, I went Whitewater Rafting in West Virginia with some of the guys in our church. What a blast! (The guys above from left to right are: me, Shaun, Bob, Blair, Brett, Jennings & Taylor.) We rafted the Lower Middle Gauley River which had several class III rapids and also several class IV & class V's. I did Jump Rock, about a 20-ft cliff, into the Gauley which was excellent. I was able to sit in the front seat for half the trip. All eight of us on the raft were able to jump out on the swimming rapids and float down for about 1/2 mile.



I took some beautiful pictures while out there... however, digital cameras and white water rapids are a combination doomed for failure. I thought I was prepared; I had the camera in a zip-loc baggie, but the water seeped through half-way through the rapids and the camera was dripping. I was able to salvage the memory card from it, so all the shots I took to that point were saved. So, could we have a moment of silence for my Sony digital camera that has brought memories to my family for the last five years?

-sigh-


That's me & Jennings above, and below is the last picture I took with my ill-fated camera. It may not look like much, but the rapids past the big rock in the center of the picture was the point where the water got into it. If you think, 'What rapids? Water looks a little calm to me!' you are correct. The only time I had to take pictures was when we were in between rapids. If I had shot any pictures of when we were in the middle of the Class III's, IV's, or V's my camera would have been tanked from the beginning. :) If you want to see some rapids footage, check out this website, its a few action shots of our group on the Gauley. I don't know how long these pictures will be up on that website, so I won't be surprised if the link is broken after a week or so.

Image seven-thousand five-hundred... I guess I won't be posting any 'new' photos until we buy a new one. Until then, I have plenty that I can post.

2007 Fantasy Football Draft Complete

I just got done with a 4-hour draft for the fantasy football league I am in. I made this logo for my team about 10 years ago and still use it.

For those of you interested in these sorts of things, here are the players I drafted by position:

QB: Donovan McNabb (PHI), Brett Favre (GB), & Tarvaris Jackson (MIN)
RB: Brian Westbrook (PHI), Edgerin James (ARI), Vernand Morecy (GB), Chris Brown (TEN), & Chris Henry (TEN)
WR: Anquan Bolden (ARI), Plaxico Burress (NYG), Joey Galloway (TB), & Greg Jennings (GB)
TE: Ben Walston (NE)
K: Jeff Wilkins (STL)
DEF: San Diego Chargers

Not a bad draft considering it was a keeper league.

I'm sure this season will be full of frustration and bad moves like they always are. I always seem to bench the guys who go off and play the guys who lay an egg...

Kerrigan's First Day of Kindergarten

Doesn't it just seem a few months ago when I posted a picture Jude's first day of Kindergarten????

Me and Jones

Just me and my little man.

Practice Making (Almost) Perfect

Jude and I have been practicing off a tee in the backyard.

This is Jude's first year playing on a city league. There are a lot of more-talented kids on the team, but he sure does have the best attitude! In this picture I'm having him practice off a tee, but the league is coach-pitch. Last practice, he was batting and took a good fifteen cuts without hitting a fair ball, but when he grabbed his glove and ran out to me by the shortstop (I'm Coach Doug) he yelled, "Isn't baseball awesome?!"

"Yeah, it is!", I called back to him. I'm so proud of him.

Special Day

Last Friday night, Amy took Kerrigan to see 'My Little Pony' live at the RBC Center. They had a great time together and Kerrigan was beside herself when she saw the ponies onstage...

Kerrigan's Birthday

Happy Birthday Kerrigan!
I can't believe you're five.

Kerrigan's Birthday Cake

Amy's amazing creation for Kerrigan's birthday was this 'Day at the Beach' cake. It was a standard yellow cake, but all the decorations were to make it look like a beach. The water is blue jello, the inner-tubes are candy, the palm trees are pretzel rods with green frosting for the leaves, the sand is crushed vanilla wafers, the bears are teddy-grahams, there are also goldfish decorations on the side.

Hat's off to you, babe. This one was awesome.

NC Museum of Art visit

Today, we took the kids to the North Carolina Museum of Art for the first time. It was also the first time that Amy and I went as well. It is actually a very good museum. In fact, they are currently undergoing a renovation/new addition that will make it one of the biggest art museums in the South. That's what they boast anyway... Now, I'm not a particularly wise connoisseur of art museums, but Raleigh's was okay. Not brilliant, but it did have some impressive items. There were three Monet's and an excellent Ancient Greek exhibit with a marble bust of Marcus Aurelius and several other excellent marble sculptures. Not entirely kid-friendly, but the kids did have fun, albeit they did want to move along quicker than I would have liked, but what could have I expected??? They both wanted to come back again and that is something.

First day of baseball practice

Last Monday was Jude's first day of baseball practice. After all the kids were dismissed we let them run the bases for a bit. Jude did great!

Carolina Beach II

At Carolina Beach

We went to the beach on Sunday and had a blast.

My Girl

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