Sydney woke Jennifer and I up this morning – we aren’t used to that. Jen started to freak out because she couldn’t find any coffee in the house and had to leave right away to go find some. She came back a little while later with some coffee and some doughnuts for me. How nice!
We sat outside on the back deck and talked. It was a nice morning out but there was a lot of smoke in the air form the huge fires in south Georgia. Jen made plans to go over to Scott’s house to help him paint. She asked that I stay behind and keep and eye on the dogs. I’m all for that!
So I played Gears of War again for hours and made it all the way to act 4 but then got tired of playing. So I switched over to Guitar Hero. All day long the dogs slept. Is that all they do is sleep all day long? Next I worked on the laptop some. OpenVPN works great – it’s like I’ve never left my home network (only that access is slower).
I packed up and went home. Jen was still at Scott’s house so I worked on laundry and did some work on the PC downstairs. Jen got home and we went out to dinner. First we tried to go over to M&T but they are closed on Sunday so instead we went to Marlow’s tavern in vinings. It was nice out so we sat outside.
It was a pretty busy day today. It started out with Jen and I doing a step class at our gym. Once we finished that we went home, showered, packed up, and headed over to the Barett Parkway area to do some shopping. Jen returned some items to T.J. Maxx and I got a haircut with Tami and Studio 8 Salon. She did a great job as always! Once that was done Jennifer and I looked at court shoes at DSW but didn’t see anything that we liked.
Next we went over to Katie & Chris’s house. They are out of town and we are dogsitting for them. I helped Jennifer hang some shelves and then played Gears of War for a while. Later we went over to the neighborhood tennis courts and played some tennis. It was very hot outside but still fun. We played three sets.
Lisa was having a party tonight so we went over to her house. The party went from 7:30pm till 11:30pm. I had some hotdogs. We went back to Katie’s house where I proceeded to stay up very late playing Gears of War on Chris’s Xbox 360. I don’t have one so this was a fun treat.
It was quiet at work this Friday and I worked on system test ‘string testing’ (connectivity) items. I also met with Ningyu today and feel that this promotion thing is an uphill battle.
When I got home I was pretty tired and took a quick nap. Jan, Sandy, and Scott came over for dinner. We had salad and grilled salmon with fresh-baked cookies for desert. It was a nice time.
Later in the evening I set up openvpn on the laptop and published photos from the recent St. Maarten trip.
We decided that we are going to cancel our LA Fitness gym membership. I did a bit of research and read a lot of horror stories about people having a difficult time canceling. So I printed-up a cancellation letter & cancellation form. I mailed off the cancellation form as a certified letter with a return receipt. It was sort of expensive but I don’t want any trouble at all. I also faxed the letter to the local location that I go to. It was very hard to track-down their fax number – almost as if they are trying to hide it.
Tonight at Midtown Athletic Club we had our last session of the tennis lessons and then got to play some doubles. Afterwards Jennifer and I signed-up for membership. It’s going to be very expensive but this is a very nice club, Jennifer loves it, we have disposable income and no kids.
Next we went over to Blue Moon Pizza with Katie and Chris. I had a pizza with the candied bacon & pepperoni. It was awesome! I was up late working on stuff for work. I also ordered from B&H the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens – the holy grail of Canon lenses as far as I’m concerned. It’s amazing how much of a difference is with the quality of images captured from that lens vs other lenses.
Chris and I rented the ball machine this afternoon for an hour or two. It was a great way to practice. I got to try a lot of net and baseline shots.
Later Jennifer and I grilled out some salmon fillets. It was gorgeous outside so we ate outside on the deck and had a lot of fun. I love evenings like this!
After getting home early today before Jen, I noticed that it was really nice outside. I had flashbacks to when I used to live alone in the apartment and decided that it would be fun to go out to the pool and lay in the sun. I quickly changed and went down to the pool. I took along a bag of kettle-cooked jalapeno flavored chips and listened to my audiobook as I laid in the sun.
I ended up eating too many of the chips and got really full. Jen and I made plans to meet at the gym for a workout class this afternoon so I dashed over there to join her. During the class I started to feel very sick from the excessive jalapeno kettle-cooked chips. As a result I cannot eat those types of chips anymore.
The sun seems to comes up very early in this morning time time of year in the caribbean. Jen and I slept in late, taking our time. Eventually we woke up and ambled over to the ‘Dragons Gate’ Chinese eatery/store for breakfast. They have outdoor seating and it’s really nice and half as expensive as the crappy hotel breakfast place.
After breakfast we planted ourselves at the boat bar which sits on the other side of the beach as the sunset beach bar. It’s nice to see the beach & incoming planes from a different vantage point. We took some photos and enjoyed the warm morning.
Later we went back to the hotel because Jennifer wanted to lay out by the pool. Eventually it was time to change and check-out. Jennifer wanted to go back over by the pool so I used my 100mm macro lens to photograph the planes coming in over the bay. It wasn’t a great spot to photograph.
Finally we went over tot he boat bar and hung out for about 2-3 hours having some drinks. It was a nicer more friendly atmosphere than the sunset beach bar. A couple of German guys were there too also plane-spotting. One of them, a travel agent, had a schedule of all arrivals so he gave me a heads-up before each plane was due to arrive.
The Delta flight came in a little early so we hopped a taxi and went to the airport. Literally in about 5 minutes after leaving the bar we were checked-in, through security, through immigration/customs, and at the gate. It was crazy-fast!
The flight was pretty empty and we sat next to each other. We watched a movie on the flight back. When we finally got home and got to the car, Jen was hungry and grumpy. We went home, had something to eat and finished laundry. I uploaded photos and went to bed. It was a great trip!
