What to do for the 4th?

June 30, 2003

I don’t really have much more to say, but I thought I’d squeeze in one last entry before the end of June. Gotta get my money’s worth on my domain name, right? Speaking of domain names, my Dad got his own just to have his own email address from the domain name much like I do, but he’s not going to run a website. I think you should, Dad. It’s not hard, and I’m sure you could put something on it. You don’t necessarily have to run a personal site like I do, but I’m sure you could think of something. Plus that way, you could link to my website and I could retain my number one Google ranking.

This week promises to be a little more exciting than past weeks. Thursday is my sister’s birthday, and I’m sure it will be fun. Heather said that she was going to go out that night and I was invited to come, but with my slim pickins for money, I was a little hesitant. The rest of the family was talking about doing a BBQ kind of thing, a combined Heather’s b-day and 4th of July thing, but if I remember correctly, she decided to postpone it so that means that we can break in my Mom’s grill that she bought last summer and we haven’t used yet. I like gas grills for how fast they heat up, how consistently evenly they cook meat, and how little cleanup there is, but the taste of charcoal-grilled meat is such a great taste. Mmmm. That should be a lot of fun. Maybe I’ll even use my cameras and add to the stack that’s still growing.

As for the 4th of July itself, I’m still undecided. I haven’t done anything for quite some time, but I think this year that may change. My Mom and sister are going out, and my Dad and stepmother occasionally go and see fireworks, but I’m going to do one of two things. I’ll either go to the baseball game at PGE Park that night and watch the fireworks they set off after the game, or I’m going to buy a substantial (not grand like I used to) stack of fireworks and set them off myself, something I haven’t done in about five or six years. The 4th of July is all about eating meat, drinking beer, and blwoing stuff up. I wouldn’t want to be un-American. Heck, going to the baseball game would be a pretty good way of celebrating the 4th since it’s technically still our national pastime. Viva America!

My Mom and I finished “Band of Brothers” finally. She enjoyed it as much as my Dad and I did (this was time number three for me, and at more than ten hours in length, that alone should be testiment to how good it is), and now she wants to read the book, though I enjoyed the series more. In all honesty, there was more information in the book, but the series actually took longer to work through, and was more enjoying. At least now with my substantial DVD collection I can move on and watch other things with her if she wants to.

I’ve been tooling around with various computers this weekend, too, taking stock of what I have and what works. I have a lot of computer stuff. I think I may put some of it up for auction on eBay this week to clear out some of it, even stuff that doesn’t work (after explaining that it doesn’t, of course). I could use the pocket money, and of course, getting rid of my piles of computer parts is always nice to do. I have cables and cards coming out my ears. Some of it I don’t want to get rid of for one reason or another, but a lot of it is expendable and just taking up room.

My almost daily exercising continues. For those that remember, I lost about 30-35 pounds last summer in a struggle to drop weight, and I ended up around 185 pounds. At Christmas break, I had lost some of my muscle and dropped to 175. By May, I was back up to 185, but it wasn’t in muscle weight. After exercising a great deal–not as heavily as much as last summer, sinceI’m doing this to tone up and not lose weight this time around–I’ve only dropped about 5 pounds down to 180. Better than nothing. My pants are fitting better again, though, which is what I was shooting for. Last summer, weighing 185 pounds, I was able to comfortably use the third hold on my belt with pants, but by May I was on the second, the first if I ate a lot. Now I can buckle in the third hole again, though it’s still a bit snug. I still have some work to do, I can see. I’ll keep working on it. I look forward to when I have the money to join a gym and be able to go fairly frequently so that I have the whole range of equipment to use and not just a few things. My sister offered my a two-week membership for free to Bally Total Fitness, so I may take her up on that just to see the kinds of stuff they have there, but with only two weeks I can’t imagine that I’d be able to do too much more than what I’m doing now (or rather, not able to have any long-term effects other than what I’m doing now).

Well, that’s about all for now. I think I’ll have a bowl of cereal and then go work out for awhile, since I haven’t down anything since Thursday. Have a good week, everyone. I won’t be doing much, so I do envy those of you with lots to do.

Almost time for a shave again.