Well, my parents left yesterday and I am sad. Honestly, in all the times that we have visited, this has been the worst time to say goodbye. They were here and visited for a week. I cannot express in words how good it was to have them here. It’s amazing how good your mother’s cooking or your father’s advice can be after they have not been within close reach for a good while. I honestly choked it back for about 3 hours after leaving the airport yesterday and have been in somewhat of a malaise today. I hope I see them again soon… = (

Anyway…

I went back to kung fu tonight and learned some new things. It is really tough getting back even after just one week of being out. I felt very behind, almost like I have not been practicing enough. All in all, I feel like I am a little off track. The whole week my parents were here, I was relatively in active and did not eat all that well. In that way, I sort of don’t like the holidays… why do we have to wait until these times to do these things.. to get together with family… to make the foods that we love? Why all at once? Oh well… I don’t have any answers.

I know that I have not written in a while. I have been so busy b/c of the holidays, work, and now my parents are here.

For about the last 2-3 weeks, a lot of time at my job as been spend working on a site presentation on debugging. That took a lot of time to get right. I was also working on completing my certifications and finally, it’s the end of the year, so getting my end of year review stuff was time consuming as well.

I have gotten most of my shopping done, thank the flying spaghetti monster. I think I might want to get Steph maybe one more thing, but not sure about it yet. I am entertaining the idea.

My parents visit has been really great. We had our Christmas together here this morning. Here’s a link to some pics.

Parent’s Visit – Christmas

We have done other fun things since they have been here. Mostly, it is just good to see them. It is the best present that I could have asked for and if I got nothing else for Christmas, I would be happy.

Since my dad had never been there, we went to the Hula Hut:

Hula Hut – 12.14.2006

We also went to The County Line for some good BBQ and saw some interesting sites:

County Line – 12.13.2006

Tonight, we are going to see “Die Hard” at the Sinus Theater @ The Alamo Draft House downtown.

Last night, we went to see the trail of lights at Zilker Park. That was really nice to see. I enjoyed it a lot.

Trail of Lights – 2006.12.14

Finally, so far for Christmas, I have gotten:
– New silicon potholders ( yes! )
– Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy ( book )
– Armin Van Burren ( Trance CD – Double )
– A Mandolin Slicer
– New wirless keyboard and mouse ( Logitech, totally sweet )
– Old Navy Pajama Pants
– A splatter guard for cooking
– A microplane
– A gift card for Target

… and it’s not even Christmas yet!!!

Alright, alright, so I was looking for a clip from this past week’s south park that dealt with religion and teaching either Intelligent Design or the theory of evolution in schools to children. It was hilarious and definitely had some social merit.

Personally, I do not think that religion has any place in schools ( or in government for that matter either ). I think that VALUES and MORALS from religion are good to teach, but not under a religion pretense i.e. don’t be a good person because Jesus said or because you will be rewarded in the after life, be a good person because it is the right thing to do.

Anyway, in the South Park episode, an Atheist is talking to Ms. Garrison and says that she would be great if she wasn’t into this whole “God thing”. She says that she believes in God because his existence cannot be disproved. The Atheist then says to her “what if I told you that there was a Flying Spaghetti Monster? Would you believe that just because it cannot be disproved?”. She then becomes an Atheist.

I thought this was absolutly hilarious. As we were talking about it at work yesterday, a friend of mine mentioned that the FSM was from a website… and in fact it is!! Check out http://www.venganza.org. In particular, read this guy’s letter to the Kansas City School Board.
After that, check out this article on Wired.com -> http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/atheism.html.

I personally am not an Atheist. I think that there are many things that do in fact exist that cannot be proven or explained. I however, am not religious, nor do I understand why people believe what they do believe. Then again, just because it is not right for me does not mean that it isn’t right for someone else. The problem that I have is when others try to force their beliefs on others when they clearly want nothing to do with it. This has happened throughout history and continues to happen today ( see: almost any war ).

Why can’t we all just believe what we believe and let others do the same?

Today was a good day.

We woke up this morning around 8. Nanny and Papa had eaten breakfast already so I made a smoothie for Steph and I. Steph left for work and then we three went to the Capital for a bit and then to County Line for lunch. Mm…. I loooove BBQ.

After lunch, we just kinda hung out at home and waited for Steph to get off work. When she got home, we all hung out for a bit. After she left to go to UPS, I went to fill her car up at Costco ( she took my car to work ). When I got back, I decided to go to the gym. Here’s the funny part: for whatever reason, I decided that I wanted to jog there. I found out that I did not have a problem and that I kind of liked it.

After I worked out, I jogged back… still not a problem. I discovered that I can infact run and like it. I just need to not run fast. If I run at a comfortable pace, it’s not bad. Anyway… when I got back, I practiced my stuff for kung fu and tai chi. I think I want to take my green belt test on Saturday after I drop Nanny and Papa off at the airport.

Anyway… time to go get dinner ready…

I got this from the weekly newsletter from my kung fu school… this is so god damn funny…

So, finally, the temperature has dropped below 60 here. It was so nice to see a 57 on the screen this morning and then to feel it when I went outside. I think that it’s the first time in a long time that I have actually had to use the heater in my car.

Driving to work though, it DID remind of the time when I moved here and I started to miss everyone really badly… it made me really sad. It also made me very homesick. The feeling to go back is very strong today.

Anyway, this is my favorite time of the year. Unfortunately, here in Austin, it lasts for about 2 weeks. Then it gets cold… well.. cool hehe.

We have about 2 days until Nanny and Papa come to visit. It has been too long since I have seen any of my family or friends from NYC. Speaking of which, I was talking to Alex yesterday and I realized that it has been 2 years ( almost… on 10.24.2006, it will be ) since I have moved to Austin and not one of my friends has come to visit. The one exception is Vinny. He stopped on the way through to San Diego…

So today was not so bad. I had a relatively easy day at work, came home and chilled out for a bit. Jose has been asking me for a while to try playing the goal keeper for his soccer team, so not being one to say that I don’t like things without trying them, I went and played from about 630PM -> 8PM tonight.

It wasn’t horrible, but I really didn’t like it all that much. I don’t think I want to join the team. I pretty much have about 0 interest in playing soccer. No offense to all that play it. It clearly takes a lot of skill. I found my love and I think I will stick to that. Sorry guys…

This weekend was really nice. One of the nicest weekends that I have recently had. Steph and I went to Galveston, TX to celebrate our 1 year anniversary. We were really lucky and had really good weather while we were there. The drive home, however, we were not so lucky. No, nothing bad happened, just a lot of rain. In fact, I heard on the radio this morning that Houstin got 10″ of rain this weekend… and it didn’t start raining until Sunday!!

Anyway, I know I have been slacking on the “everyday” picture, so here is today’s….

Check out the pics from Galveston. There should be a link over on the right under the pictures section. Come on… you know you want to.

Alright if you are too lazy to look, here is a link…

Galveston, TX

… of a magical pill that I can take that will allow me to carry out my functions yet be oblivious from the hours of 8am-5pm for the next 6 months? If so, please let me know. I am willing to go to any black market to get this…

Someone out there HAS to know…