I don't understand the flu shot obsession. Last night on the news they showed people (including some old people) lining up at 4am in the morning to wait in line for a flu shot. I don't know much about medicine, but I must say I think it is all pretty silly. I would think that people would catch something being out in nasty cold rainy weather all night, and that might neutralize the benefits of a flu shot. Also medically, I understand that the flu continues to mutate, so getting a flu shot will prevent the previous strains but the flu could easily have mutated to a new form.

I have never received a flu shot, but it has never been a problem for me. I don't remember having having the flu, but it's hard to say what was the flu versus some other tough colds. I feel bad for people who really need the shots, but as a silver lining to the dark cloud I am glad that the flu shot obsessed people will stop begging me to get a flu shot. People would look at me like I'm crazy because I didn't feel like getting a shot. I just don't understand the obsession. Healthy people are in panic about not getting a shot, and I don't understand why it is so important to them.

Two weeks until the election.... woo hoo.

I will have a light week this week before going up to D.C. possibly next Monday. I am betting I will do a lot less blogging when I am out on the road, so be aware the few who read this.

Our Internet connection is acting up, and we are trying to figure out if Vonage is causing the problems, or if it is unrelated... we shall see.

I slept in an extra hour today, and the traffic was horrible as expected coming in this morning. Unless I leave really early on Monday mornings, traffic is terrible. Since I don't have a ton of commitments at work this week, I thought I would just experiment and my results were as expected.

I mowed the lawn for possible the last time this season. That is a good thought, but liklely I'll have to keep doing it to pick up leaves on the lawn. My father-in-law was already telling me about what I needed to do to the grass in the spring. He knows a ton about plants and gardening, and spends way more time on it than I would want to. But he's a great resource to have.

Chrissy has to work for her internship today, and then study most all of tonight. But Kent will and I plan to meet up and we'll get to hang out while she is occupied. Otherwise I am just getting some errands done, and making Chrissy some dinner tonight. Aren't I domestic? :-)

Homecoming!!!

Homecoming weekend is fantastic. I love seeing all the people who come in town for this one weekend. People who I saw this weekend: JR, Rajiv S, Kim G, Andy O, just to name a few. Chrissy and I had dinner with some friends on Friday night, then went to Buzz Bash, and then spent the night at David and Brittney's new house. It is huge and lavish - 4 very large bedrooms all with awesome molding and nice decorations. All that and in a nice area - so I am quite impressed.

Saturday we woke up and had breakfast at Delta Chi and I saw a bunch of old guys. That was fun, and our new house is still being built and looks really nice. I am not passionate about a new house, because I never lived in the house. I actually enjoyed having all the guys, but also not being around them 24/7. But it will be cool to have the house. I just hope they are always able to keep it full, and don't have to beg/require people to live there.

The game was good - Tech won 24-7, but it should have been at least 24-0 because the Duke player fumbled on the touchdown he "scored". Our defense looked good again, and our offense looked basic. My hope is we were keeping our plays secret to pull out when needed. We shall see in our next game against Virginia Tech.

Chrissy is studying again for the most of the night, so I get to read more on my 1150 page book - The Stand by Stephen King. I'm borrowing it from Kent, so I hope to return it soon...

I got to go back to Tech today for recruiting, which was fun. We interviewed 85 candidates today for call back interviews tomorrow. I knew may 5 or 6 of them. There were a couple of nice people who I had helped get an interview, who didn't make the cut today. Quite sad, because I had the feeling that they might not make it, but I wanted to give them a shot.

I went to Junior's today, and encouraged others to do the same. It was not particularly good, definitely not as good as I remember. The chicken tenders had a larger than usual fried layer around them. That made me wonder - did I catch them on a bad day, has Junior's gotten worse, or did I remember it being better than it was?

Recruiting is very enjoyable. I would really like it if I were a Manager recruiting people to work under me where I could pick out particularly skills and personalities. That would be great - perhaps sometime in the future.

I had dinner with Chris at a new Italian place near Tacqueria that was good. It was good catching up with him, and hearing updates about school, what he wants to do, Josh, etc. As usual, Chris was way too stuffed to finish his meal, but he ate a hearty appetizer, so I won't give him too hard of a time. :-)

This should be a light week at work. A big meeting tomorrow, and then not much else. Some recruiting later in the week.

My pet peeve for the day.

Why do DJ's think they have to squeeze in as many words as possible. It is quite annoying when you are excited to hear a song that you like, and then the DJ keeps talking and talking until the first lyrics of the song. Sometimes I feel like they are just making conversation until the lyrics arrive. It's like they see it as trendy to do that, when really it is just stupid.

Oh happy day!

Tech played, by far, their best game of the season today against Maryland. We won 20-7, but it could have easily been 30-0. We gave up only 81 yards of total offense the whole game. Wow. They only scored when we had three penalties on a single drive, including a stupid penalty on the play where we had stopped them. Also, we made a field goal, and were penalized on the play which called it back (3 points missed). Then we finished the game on their 5 yard line with plenty of time, but chose to down the ball since we were going to win anyways.

Awesome, awesome, awesome. The only thing not cool was that the usual game watching spot was overrun with UGA fans, so that did not work very well at all.

It was good seeing Carter and Kent though. We played two games of Settlers, and ordered pizza when the game watching didn't happen. The Braves lost, UGA lost, and Tech won. I guess we know who is the best team in the state... :-)

"Anybody need some wood?" I am still laughing at that. Bush really used humor effectively, and I'd have to say he won this one... but I'm sure this will be debated on gtcrows.

Today was a good day. My company had a big community service day at an Atlanta inner city Middle School. We had 1200 volunteers on site to help with a variety of tasks: scraping, painting, building, and some carnival games for kids. Due to some company politics, I felt the person assigned to planning it did a poor job, but fortunately had some people underneath them that had it turn out well. It was definitely the worst planned that I have been to, but also it was for 2 to 3 times as many people as in the past. They didn't even do a general solicitation of team leads, so I was MUCH less involved than any of the past.

I was building a "book nook". The school had given very vague directions - take this area of the library and make it a "book nook". Our team lead is a good guy, but bought some random wood to make a fence, to literally fence that area off. We did a very nice job considering the time, supplies and team, but I think building some book shelves would have had a much bigger Impact.

Despite studying all day, Chrissy already had dinner started up since I got home late. We are looking forward to watching the debate. Hopefully Bush will do better this time, and build on how well Cheney did.

Work this week has been pretty unproductive. I was working on a proposal all week that was just postponed another week. So yesterday was pulled into another proposal. I have a feeling that one of these options will sell, but it is often hard to tell which will be the better project to do. I had a former team lead who has now left the company to raise her child, and she took the philosophy of never trying to get on a project because she had seen "good" projects go bad and vise versa. She felt she didn't have a right to complain about it if she asked to be on the project. ;-)

I've taken MARTA for three days in a row. It is definitely slower than driving, despite working almost on top of a MARTA station. I hope in the future there is more telecommuting. In most white collar jobs these days there are definitely days where people could work from home. If jobs could allow telecommuting one or two days a week that would seriously reduce traffic, pollution, the need for more roads, and use of oil. That's my dream for the day.

Well my current project is ending next week, so we shall see where is next for me. Who knows, but I think a change would do me good.

I rode MARTA today, so I can make progress on my book. Also because gas prices are continuing to rise. A simple pleasure in life - they are opening a QuickTrip on the way home from work on a corner with two other gas stations that are usually overpriced. I like the QT because it brings more competition and cheap gas prices. All the gas is pretty much the same anyways. So it will open this week, and will be really convienant. I expect it will become my new regular gas station.

Liz rode in with me today, and it was good to have someone to talk with on the drive in. That made it seem much shorter, but it actually was significantly shorter since I rode the HOV lane. It was fantastic. I need to pick up a hitchhiker on the way in on Mondays just to cut 25-30% of my drive time.

Last night was fun, with dinner and card with Chrissy, Kent and Liz. I had the worst grilling accident of my life, and my salmon caught on fire. Fortunately it was the scaley side that I was able to pull off the burned layer. It was actually good, but I probably need to clean out the grill now.

As a side note, I finished Harry Potter 5, which was good but has lost some mystery. There have been so many parts added to the story. Like why can't they use the clock to go back in time and stop things from happening like they did previously? It is still interesting and enjoyable to read, but I feel like she is having to stretch more to write the stories. I have borrowed The Stand by Stephen King from Kent. It is the unabridged version with 1150 pages or so with a lot of text per page.

We picked up Liz at the airport on Friday night, and then went to Doc Chey's - making it two nights in a row for Chrissy and I. Liz wanted that or Tacqueria, and Chrissy is not a big Tacqueria fan. It was good catching up with Liz since it had been so long. She is a great person.

We woke up on Saturday and went to the Tech-Miami game. We were going early to tailgate, and had agreed to get there at 11:30am to save a spot. Chris was buying a ticket for us from Josh, and he wanted it Friday but I didn't have it with me. So he asked if he could meet us right as the ticket window opened at 11:30 to exchange two tickets for handicapped seats. They slept in, and didn't arrive until after one. Everyone was a late arriving crowd, but I know how that can be - I rarely arrive at the time I want to start tailgating. So it was just me for a while, and then Randy and Lauren and Lauren's parents arrived.

I finally met Josh after hearing so much about him. He was quite boisterous, and had a Southern accent. He told us not to think he was stupid simply because of his Southern accent, but I know too many very smart people with Southern accents to make that judgement. I can imagine it was hard for him entering a group where he doesn't know many people, and particularly when we are all standing up that he might feel left out of the conversation. Both with him and Lauren's parents, I was concerned they weren't having a good time since they did not know everyone.

The game was bad. Reggie threw 3 INTs again, and we lost the turnover margin 4-0 which is an easy way to lose a game, particularly to a top 5 team. I was ok with our defense, but our offense really dissappointed me. I wish we had Ralph back to create scheme to re-ignite our offense.

Liz, Chrissy and I got dinner at CrackerBarrell on the way home, and Liz got to see our house. We got up this morning and went to church to show Liz the local southern preacher. We gave her a tour around town today, but I didn't realize how much walking we would be doing so I wore random sandals that cut into my feet. I was reminded of why I always pick comfort over fashion. ;-)

Kent is coming over for dinner - we're going to grill out which should be fun!

It has been a long week working on some non-fun, non-rewarding work. So that has been dissappointing, but I get to work from home today which is a nice change. My friend Katie was nice enough to stay in the office to let me work at home, although she we were both told we could work from home.

Liz is flying in tonight which should be fun. It's hard to believe Chrissy and I haven't seen her since the wedding some 14 months ago!! We have talked on the phone and emailed, but still. She is recruiting at Tech on Monday, so she worked out a trip beforehand to come see us, our house, and the Tech-Miami football game. We will also do a tailgate beforehand which should be fun, but I think everyone will have different expectations of what they want out of a tailgate.

Tomorrow I will be away from a computer all day, so I won't get to post...