Thanksgiving

For the last few years, my immediate family has gone out to Longmeadow (where my Grandmother, Aunt, Uncle, and cousins live) for Thanksgiving. It's always a good time, but this year was particularly good for me because Amanda was brave enough to come with us. It was the first time she had missed Thanksgiving with her parents as well as the first time I had brought someone along, so it was a pretty big deal. As far as I've heard, Amanda had a great time and everyone loved her. That's exactly what I expected, but it's always nice to be right about that kind of stuff.
The plan right now is for Amanda to do Christmas Eve with my immediate family (another first), and for me to do Christmas Eve with her and her extended family. Sounds like a pretty good time to me.

Dodgeball: Week 2

Tuesday was our second dodgeball night. Two of our players couldn't make it, but since we have 11 total on our team, missing two wasn't devastating. Having said that, we got absolutely pummeled. There was a lot of conversation after last week about how to play to our strengths and essentially win more games, and we all gave it a solid shot this week but only came away with two wins, putting our season record at 5 - 15. I feel like I personally played pretty well, and I'm still pretty confident that we can get our act together and start winning more regularly. We get next week off, so hopefully coming back off of some rest will help.

Sick

This was weird...
I don't normally get sick, even when stuff is going around, and basically the only exception is my every-other-year flu that usually lays me up for a few days.
This past Friday afternoon I started feeling pretty tired at work. I didn't really think anything of it, I had a pretty tiring week as it was. Friday night Amanda and I went out for some dinner, and I really didn't feel well. I barely touched my food, and my stomach was making some weird noises. Sparing the details, I ended up actually getting sick (like the verb, not the adjective), and for damn sure it wasn't a good time. By Saturday I felt much better, although my stomach was still a little pissed off until about Tuesday.
Weird stuff, and not fun.

Dodgeball

A pack of us decided to play in a dodgeball league this season, and yeah it's as much fun as it sounds like it would be. It's six-on-six, played the length of a basketball court, and it looks a little like this:

The video is not of our team, but should give you some idea of what we're doing. We were a little disorganized on account of it being our first night, but we went 3 - 7. Not horrible, but with a little coordination we should be able to regularly win games. There are 30 teams in the league and I'll be happy if we can finish in the top half.

Cold Paintball

A little more than once a month for most of the summer and fall a crew of us have been heading to Friendly Fire Paintball in Upton, MA to get shot at, worn out, and dirty for six hours. We've had good luck with weather all season, but this past Sunday was cold. A couple of us got there at about 8:20 am and it was in the mid- or upper-30s.

As the sun came up, so did the temperature, so by mid-day it was perfectly comfortable. We had a pretty good day as a group, and I had a pretty good day individually. I definitely had a couple of "kills," although usually I measure my worth in total effectiveness. If I'm the first one to the flag, for example, it doesn't bother me if I can't hit the broad side of a barn.

I managed to only get shot in the head once (compared to five times last time out), and Mike, one of the guys with us, won the big shootout at the end to get a free pass. None of us have ever done that before, and it's pretty impressive to be the last one standing out of literally about 100.

It was probably the last time out for us this season. Too bad, although honestly kicking out $60 every couple of weeks is a little tough. Either way, I'm sure we'll be back at it pretty early next season.

Apartment Hunting

Put this one in the "Significant" file: My girlfriend Amanda and I are looking for apartments. My shaky financial situation (I blame four weddings and four bachelor parties in eight weeks) means we probably can't do anything for a few months, but the wheels are definitely turning.
The timing will be a little dicey, finances aside, as we need to make sure my current apartment stays full, but I'm pretty sure we'll figure something out without too much fuss. Frank, my current roommate (etc.) is simultaneously looking at houses in Westford (MA) and jobs in San Jose (CA), but stuff like this has a neat habit of working out pretty well. We'll see...

Intro

I'll admit, I'm horrible at staying in touch with people. It's an embarrassing side-effiect of wanting to do more than I have time for.

We all have friends that will occasionally hit our inboxes with "Let me tell you what I've been up to" e-mails, and while I don't like the idea, I am usually interested in the content.

I think something like this is more appropriate than a MySpace blog (since everyone is on FaceBook now anyway), so here it is. There won't be daily updates, and you won't find any "exclusive" info here, but if you're wondering what I've been up to, this is where to find it.

Please feel free to leave a comment. I get an e-mail every time someone does, so maybe I'll be better at getting back to people this way.

Thanks for your interest!