Entries Tagged 'Vacations' ↓

First, we’re back from Arizona. And I must say, it was an excellent trip, to put it lightly. Desert shooting, Teeth, my first beer in some four months and seeing the ol’ runnin’ crew; this trip had it all! In total, we have almost 900 pictures from the trip too. I’ll get those up as soon as I settle on some gallery software for sure. I’ll say it will happen soon, but let’s face it, it probably won’t.

I’m now pretty stable at 160 pounds, which was my target weight. Along with all of the fat, I lost a lot of muscle mass too. To help with this, purchased and now regularly use a set of Pushup Pros, an Ironman Double Ab Wheel and an SPRI medium strength resistance band. I’ve managed to get some muscles back in my arms and chest (more than I had before, in fact), but I really need to focus on my stomach now. I’m much thinner, but I’m still pretty flabby around the mid section. Hopefully I can get into some crunches/ab wheel/yoga routine, but we’ll see; the running should help once I start that back up too.

And that brings us to the title of the post. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve had to buy all new clothes. This is fine, and it’s something I pretty much needed to do anyway, my clothes were old and I needed freshen up the wardrobe. Unfortunately, this also means that my kickass leather jacket no longer fits. Continue reading →

I’m back again baby! Chillin’ in Arizona right now, fresh out of the drive-through liquor store where I bought my first beer since I started my diet (and it was delicious). I write this up now from the hotel room via the ol’ n800 using the iGo bluetooth keyboard. This is actually the first time I have broken the thing in too, and it works pretty damn well.

Anyway, I’ll be getting a ton of pictures up in a while. For now, it’ vacation time brothers, vacation time brothers, vacation! Go Cubs!

First off, let me say I didn’t spend $1500.00 on the 4th. That figure is a figure split up by a friend of mine’s family and spent exclusively on fireworks. Yes, they spent $1500.00 on fireworks and lit them all off in one shot. It took 4 people with propane torches and a good amount of setup time. Was it worth it? I think so! Continue reading →

The fourth and final installment of the Vegas trip. Enjoy.

The next day Dr. J and I headed back down to the pool again, this time spending a little more time down there. After about an hour or so, Dr. J headed back up to take a shower and ready himself for the day and I stayed in the sun for a while more. I was loving the ~98 degree weather and I was hoping to get some color from the sun. However, the SPF 45 sunblock we got from Klye made sure that didn’t happen, but at least I wasn’t burned either. After Dr. J got all cleaned up for the day, he came back down to get me, we grabbed Klye and headed out for the day. Knowing we couldn’t find a nice cheap Buffet, we decided to hit up the A&W/Taco Bell that we saw the day before. Dr. J was not pleased about the plan for 2 reason; it meant he had to drive and we could hit that up anywhere. But, as Klye pointed out, there aren’t many A&W/Taco Bell’s around, so he likely couldn’t hit it up anywhere. In protest, he took us over there.

On the way there, we were reminded of the indoor shooting range and gun store, which was called……. wait for it…… “The Gun Store”. Continue reading →

Part 3. You know how this works by now….

The next day Dr. J and I got up around 10am and headed down to the pool. Looking at the pictures on the website, I was pretty excited as the pool looked pretty kickass. It was a nice area, but the pool was 3ft deep….. everywhere. Needless to say, no swimming and not much enjoying the water. We went in the pool to cool off a little or get a better look at some of the better looking ladies down there, but that was about it. An hour in the sun and we were pretty much set. We headed back up to the room, woke up Klye and went out looking for something eat.

After walking around for a while trying to find a reasonable buffet (and even calling my Mom to see if she knew of any since my parents go to Vegas a lot), we eventually settled for a small cafe in the Luxor. After eating, Dr. J decided it was time to get some shoes and ditch his crappy sandals which gave him some blisters from the walk the night before, so we got in the car and headed out. Continue reading →

This is part 2 of the Vegas trip with Klye, Dr. J and Aaron. It would make sense to read all of Part 1 before reading this part, but I guess it’s your call…..

For the drive I called shotgun, which was a good call because Klye and Aaron both slept a while on the trip so I got to make sure Dr. J stayed up. We drove through a ton of mountains and over the Hoover Dam, which was pretty fun. At the highest elevations, the temperature was only in the 80′s which was also entertaining. It was also up in the higher parts that we saw a car on fire. Not just smoke from under the hood or anything, the entire front of the car was engulfed in flames. I got an awesome shot of it which you can take a look at in the gallery yourself.

After about 3 or 4 hours or driving, we stopped for gas and Dr. J asked if I wanted to finish off the trip. His car was also a stick shift, so I jumped at the chance. Continue reading →

I think it’s about time I put something up about the Vegas trip Aaron, Klye, Dr. J and I all took. I mean, I’ve been back from Vegas now for, what, a month now?! Man I’m slow. I just hope I recall things the way they happened.

Anyway, Aaron and I flew into Phoenix to meet up with Klye and Dr. J. From there we drove up to Las Vegas in order for Aaron to hit up the eBay conference he was invited to attend (at a reduced fee of course). His work put him him in a hotel and covered his trip expenses so all we needed to do was get him there and pay for our own food. Klye and Dr. J covered has to and from Vegas since Aaron and I (well, I) has to pay for the flight. We stayed at the Excalibur since it was connected to the Madalay Bay (where the conference was) and it was also one of the cheapest rooms we could find close to the place.

When we landed in Phoenix, it was 104 degrees Fahrenheit. I thought it was perfect weather, nice and dry and the sun had about 2 hours before it went down. Continue reading →

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. That’s mainly because I haven’t been up to a whole lot lately. That’s not to say things have been boring, but they haven’t been all that great either.

First, earlier this month I was playing volleyball with my roommates and some people that one of them works with when I rolled my ankle. Those of you who don’t know what that means, basically the foot folds over and the outside ball of the ankle hits the floor; not fun and very painful. Here’s a link to a video showing what it looks like when it happens. I’ve been using crutches for a while as a result and I only recently started walking on it again.

Continue reading →

Alright, I guess it’s time to make my corrections on Part 2. This time, it’s because I left out a key part of the Sasquatch vs. Dan fiasco. I wasn’t there to see it, but I had heard the story; basically, they were making out for a little bit and then she took off (to go rub up on some other poor, unsuspecting fool I imagine). I guess Jay and Emily were there to see it all go down, and when done, Dan turned to them and said “I’ve never had so much tongue before.” Well, it was something to that effect, but you get the idea.

Now, then Jay told me this story, 2 things happened. First, I was pretty repulsed; Dan did make out with Sasquatch after all. Then I replied something to the effect that it made sense since her tongue was probably proportionate to her overall size; enormous! Now, this in itself was good for laughs since it was very true. What made it better was when he told Aaron about it he replied exactly the same way. You had to be there for the full effect I guess, but it was good for some laughs.

Before I get into the party, I want to mention something else since it was also a bit of a running issue with the day. After I had taken my nap, I woke up with a little bit of a headache, but nothing too terrible; the problem was that no matter how much I kept drinking, I couldn’t get my buzz back. Jay had the same issue. This isn’t to say that I wasn’t less inhibited or anything like that, but I couldn’t get my buzz back….

Continue reading →

A few quick corrections from Part 1. Well, 1 correction; Emily had to leave the bar early for work and in fact did NOT nap with Jay. Poor Jay, yay….. uh….. Boston Store? Anyway……

So, back to where we left off. At this point, Emily had joined us again, Money was gone, the beer was iced and Aaron offered to drive us since he had a parking pass for the parking garage near by. This was key since there was no parking anywhere nearby. Earlier, SS and Dan had reported that McGillicuddy’s was so packed there was a line out the door and all the way to the corner. As we drove past the bar, we soon learned that the line had not died down; there were chumps lined up nearly around the corner waiting to get in that joint. What a bunch of jackasses!

As we approached the Guitar Bar (which is a couple bars over from McGillicuddy’s) I thought it was quite hilarious that we would be walking right through the line and into the bar. And, that’s exactly what we did; no covers, no waiting in the cold, and we didn’t even have to hunt for or pay for parking. Man, people are dumb! Continue reading →