What is the Date Again?

And I thought I just had a bad dream about Aliens.

Since my last post a few things have changed (other than now being an intergalactic traveller). I am soon to be an employee of Best Buy. This process required three separate interviews, a drug test and a background test. This is more hoops to jump through than Brittany getting a job with Watson Wyatt. That is not it either. I now have three weeks of training ahead of me starting on Sunday where Brittany only needed two. Moral of the story, it is harder to work at Best Buy than be an actuary.

I also postponed my Rescue Diver class by about a month. It will now take place on October 20, 22, and 25 so you will need to wait a little longer to read about being a Rescue Diver, sorry about that.

Finally, I submitted my registration form to Divearth to begin the final arrangements of my internship in Honduras. So if all goes according to plan I will plan on flying down on January 10th to begin my training to become a dive instructor.

Fall Begins

Although it may not feel like it everywhere, fall is beginning in Missouri. With the rain from Gustav, the temperature has dropped and this weekend my family did two things that help close out summer and begin fall.

The official close of summer for my family is the closing of Barney's Bar-B-Q. It is a restaurant that only opens on the weekend during summer. It closes this weekend and we went there twice to bring the summer to a close. The second night the owner's whole family was at dinner the same time we were. This is the family that hired me to firebreath last summer and it ended poorly. We had a good time reliving the experience and hearing about how the whole incident made me a hero. If you do not know what happened you can see the experience here.

The second event of the weekend was apple picking. This is another family tradition. We went up to Principia College to pick up my brother just to find out that he could not make it because of a survey. So my sister, dad, mom, and I went to Yate's Apple Orchard to pick apples. Last year they did not have very many apples at all and told us that whatever we could find we could take. This year the apple crop was much better. We picked a bushel and a half of apples and then went back to the college to get Michael for dinner. On the way back the Garmin led us in a new way that we had not driven before. On the way, I saw the place where I asked Brittany to go on a date with me, just one date that is all, and she denied me, shot me down right where I stood. We drove up to Pere Marquette for dinner where we had a family style dinner of fried chicken although it was the sides that made everyone happy. They brought out rolls at the beginning of dinner that they could not keep filled. They also had cole slaw, mashed potatoes and gravy, and green beans. And yes Brittany, I ate some green beans for you.

So now it is officially fall and I can smell the apples being baked already, apple pie and apple sauce.

Repulican National Convention

I watched the Republican National Convention this evening. I came in during Rudy Giuliani's speech. and stayed through voting for the Republican nomination. Governor Sarah Palin made a very strong speech. She had a good time making fun of Obama and promoting McCain. It was a speech that was very entertaining.

When they got to the point where they started the voting I was excited to hear Alaska give five votes to Ron Paul. If you don't know, one of my friends and roommates in college was a strong supporter of Ron Paul and was very vocal supporter whenever a political conversation came up, or really whenever he brought up politics. Since I got to hear all about Ron Paul all the time I became interested in his campaign. Hearing him get votes made me happy. Anyway, Alaska gave five votes to Ron Paul. Then voting continued for a long time. It made it to Montana and McCain was only 21 votes from clenching the nomination. Every single state and territory was called and passed so that Arizona had the right to cast the final votes to make McCain the nominee. As the rest of the states continued in their voting, a few states voted for other candidates. The lady responsible for repeating the vote counts must have been falling asleep. She regularly messed up in repeating the vote count. When all the votes were counted McCain obviously won, but I was disappointed when the final count did not match what was said by the delegates. They only awarded the 5 votes from Alaska to Ron Paul and 2 to Mitt Romney. I know for a fact that Ron Paul received 12 votes, Romney 2 and I missed where 4 votes went. If they felt it was important enough to cycle through all the states before going back to Arizona and wasting a lot of time, why do they not feel it is important to at least get the vote count correct. I know it is a minor detail but it is disturbing the poor math skills demonstrated with this vote. It is ok very shortly afterward there was a movement to make the vote unanimous. It was an oral vote, most people voted yes. When they asked if anyone opposed there was a very distinct no in the background. Followed by, "Then the vote is unanimous." I just think that it is funny since there was a loud no right before saying the vote was unanimous.

Anyway that is how the Republican National Convention voting process went this year.

I Visit Brittany

This weekend the tables were turned. Instead of Brittany flying in to visit me, I flew to Dallas to visit her. The plan was for her sister to pick her up at Dallas International then for her to pick me up later that day at Love Field. That was the plan until her flight was rerouted to Oklahoma City due to storms. So I ended up landing first and driving with her sister to Dallas International to pick up Brittany.

Saturday was spent relaxing. We went to Costco to eat lunch and free samples. After that we went to Dick's Sporting Goods so that Brittany could buy a tennis racket. Then we went home and spent more time relaxing. We ate dinner and played pitch. Phil and I beat Brittany and Courtney. We started out down two games to none and then came back and won three straight to take the series.

Sunday was the beginning of the much more active part of the weekend. We left at 7:30 in the morning to drive down to New Braunfels, Texas to go to Schlitterbahn, the largest water park in the United States. We made it there right around noon and started at Schlitterbahn West. This portion of the waterpark used only water from the local river. Fittingly, all the rides modeled fast flowing rivers with drops in them. We then went to the other side of the water park to Blastenhoff. This was a more convential water park. It had the most popular waterpark in America called the Master Blaster. It was not all that impressive, especially with over an hour in waiting. The best part of this side of the waterpark was the lazy river wave pool combination. It had a very strong current and big waves to play in. After the waterpark we went back to the Westin where we were staying for free dinner. Actually it was free hors'devours but it worked for dinner for us. After dinner we played pitch again. This time Brittany and I played against Courtney and Phil. Brittany and I were on our way to make a comeback when Brittany made a daring 4 bid that did not work out quite as well as she hoped. So we ended up losing game 5.

Monday morning Brittany got to use her new tennis racket. After tennis we went to the Comal River, rented tubes, and floated down the river. Very shortly after starting our float we found the best ride of the weekend. Whenever the river had little drops or waterfalls, they would build a chute to bypass the sudden drop. The water still had to fall the same distance, it just was spread out a little more. If we had more time, we would all have liked to ride that portion of the river a few more times. We continued down the river and had two more drops, not as good as the first but still exciting. We got off the river and started our drive home. We thought we could do it in under 4 hours, but it took almost 5 due to traffic and congestion most of the way home.

Unfortunately, I had to leave on Tuesday and Brittany had to go back to work so we did not have any time for more exciting adventures this weekend. So until next time.