well, it is one of those mid-week holiday fridays - always an odd creation in our traditionally created weekly routines.

this evening i will learn to make pizza dough and cook pizzas; also a friend's 30th birthday. perhaps the weather will cooperate and i'll be able to play futbol tomorrow? one can only hope.

other than that - i'm progressing with mid to end of summer vacation plans. hopefully i'll have completed my career transition by then and can use the energy usually absorbed from such vacationing to a useful goal.

freitag cheers!

American Birthday

so happy birthday America! another 4th come and gone; with the now traditional rain and overcastness. this new tradition i like not at all; but i have figured that it does have its advantages: all-day fireworks. therefore i will be ready next year: in case of rain - fireworks starting at noon (no chance of wildfire); if no rain - then the traditional hot outside 4th of grilling and pools.

now a mini-week of work with no interruptions as half of my group is out for some sort of holiday. considering there's an 80 percent chance of rain today; i see no reason to skip out on work.

a gray lady

or just a gray day as it were. it is truesday mixed with friday - a holiday tomorrow; so who knows what comes.

of what i do know:

• being paid for one's opinion (focus group) is very nice; $100's worth of nice for 90 minutes of rambling to be exact.
  
• watching a 90-foot metal dinosaur eat cars is the perfect monday evening activity (see my flickr account for more info).

holiday week!

so a new week begins.

summer has finally showed itself and i was able to commiserate with it in true lounging fashion these past several days; poolside of course.

i still need to go hiking along the greenbelt to fully appreciate the amount of rain we've been getting these past several days - hopefully this week sometime. for a good idea of what the area is like, take a look at my flickr site (sidebar right) and the most recently posted pictures of the town lake trail. i've seen flooding before during rainfall events, but not often do all the lakes fill up and then necessitate continuous floodgate openings and the mass movement of water throughout the system.

items of note: i was able to grill various fishes for the wine tasting on saturday and introduced the tastiness of wood plank grilling to friends. i'm going to take up rock climbing soon enough as i actually have a group of friends that go regularly. i was able to see ratatouille yesterday - an excellent pixar movie about cooking.

and as a new week begins things move along as always: my job search / career change leads to new contacts and opportunities (of which one will hopefully pan out). I will get paid to offer my opinion later tonight for a marketing research company (always a fun thing to do); and following that i'm going to bike over to the alamo drafthouse in my neighborhood and see a 60-foot fire breathing metal robot eat cars (a transformers the movie tie-in). it'll probably be good times.

pictures to follow for sure.