Here’s a couple of delicious Firehouse subs that I had while down in Florida. My usual is the Hook & Ladder, but an awesome manager gave us a Smokehouse Beef & Cheddar Brisket Sub to split and try. So now I’m torn between the two for my favorite.
First is the Hook & Ladder, with the tomato, lettuce, and onions left off, and next is the Smokehouse Beef & Cheddar Brisket.
Starting today, I’m taking 5 days of personal leave at work to give my brother a hand on a few jobs. Originally we were going to be working up in Knoxville, Tennessee, but things didn’t work out as planned. So we headed down to Vero Beach, Florida today so that we could get an early start on this job in the morning. The trip took about 10 hours, so it wasn’t too bad. If things go smooth, we should be headed back home late tomorrow sometime.
Hopefully we’ll get some free time tomorrow as well to run by the beach and check it out while we are down here.
The route that we took looked like this:
I know you aren’t really supposed to check on your long term investments, especially when you know the stock market has been doing nothing good lately, but today I checked on my Vanguard account to see where it stands. This month, coincidentally, is 2 years from when I first started my mutual fund that invests in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund. Over the 1st year I made a few contributions, and then went cold turkey at the end of 2007. This of course could be looked at as either a nice move, or a mistake, because even while it was dropping I should have been dollar-cost averaging. I’m sitting at -38.8% currently on my funds that are in the 500 Index Fund, ouch!
Not that I have much right to complain since I never did pay for a subscription, but I’m finally dropping Yahoo! Music here at work for the popular music site of Last.fm. It’s been around for a few years now, but I never have really checked it out too much until the other day. I really like it so far because it creates a record of what all you’ve listened to, so if you ever wanted to look up a song you heard earlier, it’s there. Whereas on Yahoo! Music, at least to my knowledge, you just have to wait for the song to come around again. It has a few other neat things like recommendations, where it’ll recommend groups that are similar to those that you’ve added into your media library, and a social network setup.
There must have been no disagreements in with the way I rated myself previously. I checked my paycheck this morning and saw that I now receive 36¢/hour more, which I suspect is the amount of increase for being in my department another year. While it doesn’t put me where I’d love to be, it does get me closer, and I’m happy for and appreciate any little increase I can get.
I have a phone book in my office that sits on my desk underneath my phone, and with the exception of today, is extremely rarely used. When I need a number, I look it up online. When I need a business name, I look it up online. It’s not just a matter of convenience, but I find it so much faster to find what I’m actually looking for online. So while flipping through the newspaper-like pages that turn your fingers colors today, I had a thought – are phone books completely obsolete and no longer needed nowadays?
My family dropped our house phone number a year or so ago, and I imagine that many households have done the same since they are really unneeded with nearly everyone having their own cell phone. Our local phone book actually looks thinner than I remember it being, which could be an indication that I’m right.
Today I turned 24 years old. 24 isn’t really one of those milestone numbers – no big discounts on insurance or anything, but it is something different to get used to saying. I’m really surprised at how fast this past year of being 23 has seemed to have gone by, but looking back on it, it was a great year.
The day started off with my mom making me and Chase a delicious homemade red velvet cake for our birthdays. It was 71° outside today, so I took about an hour ride with my dad and brother on our bikes to enjoy the warmth. And then this afternoon, Billy and Alicia (my oldest brother and sister-in-law) took me and Chase out to eat at Sticky Fingers for some ribs and to spend some time together. So with all that, I had a great birthday! 
Today we went down to Highland Park Resort in Cedartown to do some riding. We had 3 motocross bikes, and two quads between the 4 of us (my brothers, Billy & Chase, one of Billy’s friends Chris, and myself). We arrived down there at about 12:00PM and rode pretty much solid until 5:00. They have about 65 miles worth of trails winding throughout 27 different one-way trails with difficulty ranging between 1 and 5 diamonds. The onsite KTM dealership there even offered hamburgers and hotdogs for lunch. They were the most expensive place we’ve been so far, at $25/person to ride, but well worth it. After 5 hours of riding we were all spent out and ready to head home.
The video below explains the graph in more detail. This is why I personally just can’t come to support any stimulus bills, stimulus checks, or any bailouts. Even though they may seem like they’re needed and can help, it looks to me like it just pushes off one problem and makes it become another a little later on.
Interesting times ahead, especially with the news from California today.
Wii Fit has been out for a while now, but over the weekend I had my first chance to play it. From what I had seen of it before, it’s like they took Wii Sports and stepped it up. You start off by taking your Mii, which by the way now has arms attaching the hands to the body, and do some tests that calculate your balance, BMI, and weight. The whole game is based off of balance, posture, and goals centered around your BMI and improving all of those.
You never really realize how off your balance may be until you are standing on a platform and can see your center of balance move constantly.
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
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© Copyright 2007-2012 Shane Holden
All Rights Reserved.
