I had to run outside at about 5:30 this morning to chase my dog around the house. He was barking his head off, and I didn't want him to disturb the neighbors. What he was barking at, I don't know. We did a couple of laps around the house before I managed to catch him, and he barked every where he went. I guess he was just telling the neighborhood to get up. It was also damn chilly outside this morning. Didn't help that I was chasing after the dog in just a t-shirt and light cotton shorts. Fall is definitely here.

My old roommate, Mike, called last night. It was great to hear from him. Being outside in the cold this morning reminded me of when we roomed together in his house back in Flagstaff. The house was pretty nice; 3 bedrooms, a huge deck, and right on the dog-leg of the 6th hole on the Country Club golf course. And the price was right (though I was always behind on giving him money for bills and such). The house was originally built as a summer cabin, and as such, wasn't insulated against the cold weather we got in Flagstaff.

One year ago, I was sitting in my manager's office watching the news unfold on the TV. The astonishment that someone could actually run into one of the tallest buildings in the world. Then the chilling horror as the second plane hit the other building. By this time, a crowd was in my managers office watching. I will never forget the collective gasp that went up when the second plane hit, and everyone realized that this was no accident.

My brother lives in New York city. He had a job interview scheduled for 9am at the World Trade Center complex. Thankfully, my brother has never been able to get up early to save his life (and I guess, it might have), and had rescheduled it for 2pm that afternoon. He actually slept through the crashes until a friend of his called to check on him. He got online and IM'd me to let me know he was ok.

Wow...can you believe there is only 125 days left until Christmas? Ack! Quick!! Start shopping!

Heh. I know the 2 of you that are reading this are probably sittin' there in shorts (unless you're my mom) and thinking "OK, he's off his rocker". Well, OK, yeah, so I probably am. I just happened to be looking ahead in my calendar, figuring out when my classes were in such, when I decided to count the days.

One of things that bothers me about the holiday season (OK, one of many, but I'll wait until it gets closer to talk about them all) is when people ask me what I want. I have a pretty standard answer: Gift Certificates. I love getting gift certificates, because then I get to choose exactly what I want, the person shopping for me doesn't have shop for hours, and everyone is happy. Who wouldn't love getting gift certificates? I love getting gift certificates from Best Buy, Barnes & Nobel and Borders. Those are probably my favorites of the "Brick and Mortar" crew. I love Amazon gift certificates as well.

While waiting for my pathetically slow Windows machine to build, I decided to write this entry. I did a quick bit of upkeep on the front page, namely taking off the hoopty cool fade on the buttons. As I've been using Mozilla more often, and it doesn't support that sort of thing, I found it more annoying than cool, so I did away with it.

I've also been using my Powerbook G3 a lot more. I could really get to like OS X. And at work, I burned out the video card on my older Mac desktop, so they gave me a new "Quicksilver" model. Woo...damn sexy beast of a machine. I love it! I might seriously consider getting a Mac for my next home computer. Who knows, maybe you'll see me on a "Switch" commercial.

My thoughts have been on home more than usual lately. Home being Arizona of course. I may have lived out here in Virginia for almost 4 years now, but AZ will always be my home. After this summer, I would gladly go back to 110 degree heat, as long as it meant not having to deal with 80% humidity on top of it. It's one thing to be 100 degrees. It's another to be 100 degrees with 95% humidity. I don't know how people stand it. Aside from a few short days last week, it's been like that all summer. Ugh. So yeah, give me the dry heat of the desert, or better yet, the cool air of the mountains. Man, I miss home.

Yes, it's true. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel called Spring Semester. One more class (English) to go, and I can call it quits for the summer.

After spending about 2 weeks on my presentation for my business class, it turned out that we simply didn't have the time. Half the class didn't get to give their presentations. Personally, I was kind of put out. I would have liked to present my nifty-keen Power Point presentation on Harley-Davidson. As it is, I made the teacher watch my intro anyways. Ah well, she seemed to like it. After that, we graded our finals. She had us trade with one another and then we grade that paper. Right off the bat, everyone got 5 points because this was an older quiz she hadn't had time to update, so some of the questions weren't in the chapters covered. Then after the grading, we discussed some of the questions. In all, she gave everyone an extra 8 points. So my grade on the final? Out of a possible 100, I got 106.

Go figure.

I'm 99.99% certain that I have an A in my Business class. My English class, which I have my final in this Monday, I'm not so certain. I'm thinking I'll have a B...which, in reality, isn't a big deal, and might even be better if I DID get a B. I think it's cool having a 4.0 and all, but I don't want to kill myself just trying to get a 4.0. I just want that piece of paper that says "I'm Smart! S-M-R-T that spells Smart!" As long as I earn my degree, I'm not going to worry if I have a 4.0 or not.