happy birthday to me

i guess i'll use that as an excuse for accidently skipping a week (ok 13 days) of posting lol. in the meantime, lance armstrong has put on an impressive veteran performance of staying near the front by simply riding really good and not making any mistakes. he hit the alps today and pounced like a tiger onto the lead after intentionally relinquishing it early in the race. i found this crazy interactive about him and if it's true, it's astounding.

kg's been rolling with the posts on his website and he's been getting more comments - i think it has something to do with those nice little "i've posted!" alerts :-) jg even got converted over to the wonders of mt too!

as for me, i've just been doing the same ol' same ol' except that i stayed home a couple of days last week with a sick jake and i went to a bible study on friday nite that turned out really well. saturday i helped lead a men's breakfast and workday at church and i had a blast cooking breakfast.

my parents are coming to visit soon (dad 7/25-8/1; mom 8/5-9) and we're all really excited.

here's me imac

mmm... b-e-a-utiful

great weekend

i'll get those imac pictures up asap - they're downloaded to the mac, just have to upload them to the site tonite (hw took priority last nite). speaking of the mac, i got a linksys router from L's mom (didn't need it anymore) so now both my pc and mac have internet access and can access each other's files and i have a hardware firewall and can stop using a software firewall (at least i hope haha).
we drove down to knoxville after L got off work on thursday, grabbed a snack after we'd been on the road a bit and then had a 10pm dinner at bob evans in wytheville, va (where? i dunno). mmm... good food. we made it to k-town a bit after 1am (yowza!). after sleeping nearly the whole way in the car, jake was confused and woke up at 3am haha poor kid. we fed him a bit and he went back to sleep.
on friday, we lounged most of the morning and then went to lunch at quaker steak and lube with L's mother and brother and our good friends dawn and shane and their 9 month old son tucker (we're currently planning on going to nyc with the three of them around labor day). quaker is a great wing place and they have about 15 different sauces. that afternoon we just hung out around the house and visited with friends and family who would drop by. that evening we went out with friends to a great little mexican place in alcoa, tn. we decided against playing cards (ugh...) in order to get jake to bed and not have a similar experience as the nite before. after getting him to bed we finished watching 50 first dates from netflix (just started a free trial a couple of weeks ago and we decided to stay with it for a while - it's fun!!). we had started it last weekend.
on saturday, L had numerous shopping-related errands to run at the mall and i had reading to do for school. instead of just sitting around the house where the computer and tv would be temptresses, i had her drop me off at borders while she did her thing. she picked me up a bit after 2 and we went to chili's for a bite to eat with the friends and family L was shopping with. we ran a couple more errands before going home to meet my mom who was passing through town. we visited for about an hour and then went on to actual dinner at aubrey's (yeah i guess we eat out a lot haha it's fun and delicious though!!). me and L weren't that hungry so we shared a spinach pizza. after a good visit, we went home, put jake to bed and watched mystic river - great, well-crafted movie and very deserving of the oscars and nominations. afterwards, we hit the hay as well.
sunday included church (which included a great july 4th sermon advocating voting for the multitude of social justice issues instead of 2 or 3 moral issues), getting stuffed cooking out with family (where i got to spend the afternoon with dad who came up to see us), waddling to an evening cookout with friends, and coming home and crashing.
monday we got up, packed, and hit the road a bit after 10:30. we got home around 7pm and i had to work on hw after we unpacked a bit. going back to work tuesday came way too quick and late evening hw wasn't as fun as spending time with L in the early evening. not really looking forward to a full evening of hw tonite either....

office

so here is the new look of the office after we repainted and rearranged it the weekend before last. new desk is much simpler and provides a much bigger work area and the new papasan chair in the corner is intended to entice L to hang out with schoolwork scooter :-)
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Pictures of the new imac to be up soon. hopefully.