Back to work today from vacation. It was relaxing. I ate too much though.

A short breakdown of the cruise:

At Sea:

The days at sea were very relaxing, mostly I ate too much, laid around, went to shows, and swam.

Montego Bay, Jamaica:

Jamaica was my least favorite stop on the cruise. Mostly because the people hassled us a lot. It wasn’t the normal hassle where they are trying to sell you something, instead the would grab your hand, pull you into their shop and show you things they were peddling. When I would decline to purchase, they were always upset, I had one guy tell me “I’m sick of this no thank you bullshit!”. We did get to see “Dunn River Falls”, which was pretty but we were rushed through along with a few hundred other people.

Grand Cayman:

Grand Cayman was really cool. The whole island was clean and beautiful. We went snorkeling and got to swim with stingrays. The water was beautiful there. We had huge margaritas and nachos at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville, which were VERY expensive! It was a fun place to eat at though.

Cozumel, Mexico:

Cozumel was fun. I mostly drank cheap beer and walked around most of the day. Got a fake tattoo on my bicep. It’s fading slowly. I picked up some Cuban cigars in Cozumel, however I discovered the Dominican Republic made cigars were less harsh and had a more mellow flavor. Maybe the Cubans I got were old?

Cigars smoked on the trip:

• Montecristo – Cuba
• Cohiba – Cuban
• Romeo Y Julieta – Cuban
• Courvoisier – Dominican (This had a nice sweet flavor)
• Arturo Fuente Don Carlos – Dominican

I went to the Brazos Bend Observatory on Saturday with Derk, Effie, Ryan, Jill and Sammi to see the telescopes and possible meteor shower. We only saw like two meteors, but it was pretty cool still. I took a lot of long exposures with my Canon, a few turned out.

Starting a new diet today. It’s one of those “boost your metabolism” diets.

* Note: these are all very small portions.

Breakfast:
Yogurt with some cereal in it and blueberries

Snack:
One Celery stalk, with 1 tbsp peanut butter.

Lunch:
Tuna salad sandwich on whole grain wheat with a few pretzels on the side

Snack:
I’m eating carrots and cream cheese right now

Dinner:
I think we’re having some kind of fish

We’ll see how it goes, so far, so good. Oh and im only drinking water.

My brother is in Okinawa, Japan. Haven’t heard from him since before Typhoon Man-Yi hit the island Friday morning (their time). I’m sure everything is alright, just thinking about him, thats all.

I’ve lived on the same street since March 2005, so this would be my third July 4th. I’ve never been home on July 4th before, but this year I stayed in. My neighbors do crazy amounts of fireworks!

Next year the party is at my place..

Another great shot of Kylie. Night before easter. Decided to end “bath shots” on a good note, now that shes almost 5 its a good time to stop with the bath pictures. She’s not a baby anymore.

So I’ve been in the courtroom since Monday of this week serving on a Jury. The case is taking its sweet time. It will probably go another 5+ days. What sucks is… my employer will only pay me for three days of the jury duty, after that I’ll need to start taking sick/vacation time in order to keep money coming as usual.

Anyways, got to be at the court by noon today… BLEH.

So, I started using a planner yesterday, yes one of those black leather zipper man-purse things. The past year or so at work I’ve gotten really forgetful and find myself apologizing for not getting things done for people yet. This is mostly due to having 45 things to remember at all times. My monitor was a post-it note dumpster. I had three calendars with notes all over them, and text files all over the place named “todo.txt” “remember.txt”.

In the past I’ve tried several Palm models, but they don’t seem quick enough to jot things down with. So I’m trying my hand at an old school paper based organizer. I’m on day two and am knocking things out like crazy. So far so good. We’ll see how it goes.