I woke up Friday morning realizing that I had to convince my short little dog that he’d need to walk two miles. It didn’t turn out to be as daunting as I’d thought. I’ve been taking a lean number of items to work the last few days including my phone, my iPod. That’s it. Light, huh? Along with my dog’s 25 foot extension cable (and the dog attached to it), I started heading south on 3rd street at 7:51 AM. By 8:20 AM we’d made it to the Society Hill Vet where he was quickly assessed and checked in. I had to hop into a cab to make the 8:51 AM train. Not a problem. I got into work around 9:30 PM and had the most intense set of interaction possible within a short period of time. I found out that I get to customize Actuate Reporting Server 8. This may sound like a drag, but I’m excited at getting a chance to get familiar with the latest version of something. I asked IT to install a copy on my desktop after I left for the airport. Before I knew it, it was noon and I had to leave for my 12:10 PM departing bus ride back to the train. Once back in Northern Liberties, I went to the Soy Cafe for the Egg White Wrap. Mmmm. It took way too long to prepare, however, so I ended up leaving later than I’d expected. The end result was that Continental had to put me on stand-by for the next flight out. I didn’t realize the R1 train to the airport was going to be so much of The Suck. It took nearly an hour to get there. At one point the train stopped, backed up while switching tracks, then painfully began traversing forward again in the direction of the airport. After getting my flight plan worked out, I sat it out and attempted to finish up reading Coupland’s Microserfs. Oktobernight gave me the book last year for my birthday. Such a sweetheart! I savor the moments of geekdom that I get to spend with the book, so it’s been hard to face the fact that I’m finishing the book. All told, I ended up waiting 20 minutes past when we were supposed to board. I ended up 20 pages away from the end. I’m still that far away, actually. I’m getting ahead of myself, however. I returned to Houston and had dinner with my dad and Fonguro, my coworker / house sitter. We all refrained from imbibing, which was weird, but Fonguro is on a health kick thanks to (hopefully) myself and Shawn’s overbearing influence. Upon our return we called it a night because a big day lay in store for us.


On Saturday I was up at 9 AM and quickly did the shower and protein one-two punch. We piled into Fonguro’s car and headed to this place that makes prepared foods. Fonguro, as I mentioned earlier, is on a diet plan to increase his Burly Man appearance and this cool little place that prepares the food had his weekend meals already prepared and at the ready. We dropped this off at The Office. I miss The Office. It’s so purdy. My car rental last month was a mind-boggling $2000 which made the higher-ups freak out (and a half). Luckily we noticed this was not a good price to be paying which is why I’m currently on the Go Green public transportation kick. Remember when I said I had a sore throat? I think I got that from being amongst The Train People. I still am hacking up a storm here on the plane back to Philly, but yet again, I’m getting ahead of myself. We then headed to Best Buy where we picked up Fonguro’s step bro. From there, we were on to the magical land of Marvel McFay, otherwise known as Astroworld. Or as it’s now called, Six Flags Astroworld. This would be the only time I’d get to go this year, so we made a day of it. Having procured our tickets online earlier that morning, we blew past the first set of booths (after the traditional post 9/11 pat-down) and gave our printouts to the ticket cutting people. Fonguro’s bro got trapped by The Survey People. The guy administering the survey was super-bitchy and didn’t like the attitude we exhibited when we learned that the questions he was asking were completely voluntarily. This guy was cutting into Fun Time. He claimed it would take only 30 seconds. Fonguro and I crossed over into the park, looking back wistfully at his stepbrother who continued to respond to survey guy’s questions. After a minute I yelled,