The Blog

First of all - I'm on twitter now: http://twitter.com/alanrii - Feel free to follow me as you'll get more often short updates that way or facebook - I try to sync the 2 but twitter is where I post more nowadays.

So let's get to it. Holy crap I suck at updating this thing. The latter part of this year has shown me what real work is like. I was allowed to slack off so much at IBM it's almost humurous - no wonder they let so many people go - tons of dead weight. Instead, I now work for a smallish startup and bust my ass to get everything done....the work is never done here. It's much more fulfilling and even though the hours are long, I'm still the happy guy at the office, for the most part.

The holidays are upon us and it has me wondering where did this year go. I feel like summer flew by - maybe the old people are right when they say they have no idea where the time went. All in all though this has been a great year. It was started off with the Europe trip and looks like we'll be bringing in the New Year at my parents' house in KY.

We're heading up to Raleigh for Thanksgiving and I wish we were already there (instead I'm taking a few minutes out of my work day to type this - coworkers ignore this!). Unfortunately I zoned in on a pothole last night and Lora is at Discount Tire having my flate tended to right now - after driving me to work. If I could drive her car we'd probably be better off, but alas I am a male that can't drive a manual car. The plan is to head out of here by 2pm and work from the car for a bit while Lora drives. We'll be doing Thanksgiving dinner/lunch/whatever at Lora's parents' house - she's excited to meet her brother's girlfriend - everyone else has met her except Lora I guess. Lora is even making my grandmother's famous broccoli and cheese casserole - woohoo. We'll be staying with Lora's sister this week(end) so she can have plenty of time with the nephews - even though they are great kids it's still a form of birth control. On Saturday - the day the Wolfpack will play (and more than likely lose) to the Tarholes, we're heading to Wilson to see my dad's side of the family. We'll spend the night there and then head home on Sunday. So far we have no big plans other than Lora wants to see her best friend's new baby - the opposite of birth control.

Other life updates include Lora getting Lasik - she followed in my footsteps only a month after I went under the laser. So far, everything has gone smoothly for both us.

We have everything locked in for South Africa - Lora did everything except book the rental car. I did that with her looking over my shoulder. We're in the market for a DSLR camera and I think we're locked in to the Canon T1i but we'll see as it gets closer. We plan to buy a HD camcorder as well but we're waiting until the last minute to purchase that one.

I'm going to try harder to update this thing but I get overwhelmed by how much I want to say if too much time goes by.