Birds and Stones, Hair and Puppies

I got a haircut! Brendan also took new pictures of his and Maria's puppy, Brenna! Pictures abound!









One Locks-of-Love donation later...









You can enjoy more photos of the puppy here, more pictures of my new hair here. Granted, I am not one to blow dry my hair, and I take showers at nights, so my hair is now much more wavy and crazy-like than in these nice pictures. These enjoyable photos have been brought to you by Brendan Adkins, the official photographer of the Tuesday Night Ballers.

Lent and such

This Lent I have a few smaller goals vs. one big one. No soft drinks, which isn't so much a drastic change as a clamp down on an already dwindling habit. I really only ever have soft drinks on Tuesdays, and occasionally if I go out to eat for lunch or on the weekend. This is a closing of the gap, so to speak.

Also, I am reducing my WoW time to 7 hours a week to be condensed or spread out to my liking. I've been making a to-do list a mile long of tiny tasks and odd jobs to be done this Lent, and I can also devote the extra time to applying for scholarships. I've sent in applications for three so far, which I feel is a pretty good pace, but there are quite a few in March and April that I'll have to be more diligent on. So it isn't so much a "less WoW" as a "replace one unit of WoW with one of these other tasks to do." The distinction is important, otherwise I'd just go back to napping all the time.

Other news:
- on Friday I'm getting my hair chopped off to donate to hopefully end up on some alopecia areata-stricken child's head.
- Brendan took pictures of the puppy last night, and I'm saying this so he'll post them on Flickr or some such so I can share them with the world
- My great-grandmother of 104 years old finally passed away this week. More on this later.

California

So my boss and I are in Folsom, CA, for the aforementioned training. I have a feeling this week will be exhausting, but we did get a chance to see the sights yesterday a bit.

We went into Sacramento to the zoo. They have a hyena there! I love hyenas! They also have a giant anteater. Those things are awesome!

Later we wandered around historic Sacramento, which seemed to have been founded on candy shops. We then returned and poked around Folsom, which has some pretty bike paths and such.

The rest of the week will be training and eating, I think. Anyone near Folsom want to visit?

Updates and such

Why do the funniest damned things always happen to Stephen?

Thanks everyone for birthday wishes! It was a brilliant birthday full of fun.

I got to puppy-sit for Brendan and Maria for the beginning of the week. Brenna and I had tons of fun, and Brendan needs to take and post more pictures of her! She is the cutest, and we only have pictures of her up from when she was a little puppy, and also that time we threw her in the pool a lot.

In other news, I get to go to Folsom, California next week, but it is for training for work. I will likely only see the hotel room and the training classroom the whole week, bleeeh. My boss, however, did let me install WoW on a work laptop such that I may preserve my sanity during a week of learning huge, complicated pieces of new software.

Birthday Times!

Today is my birthday, and for some reason I am super excited about it! Or it might be that I am just super excited about life in general, and the fact that it's my birthday is incidental.

Woo 25!! This year is the big move out of the 18-24 age demographic, so farewell college kiddery, hello twenty-somethings!

Tonight I am having dinner with my family at my brothers' and tomorrow is the Celebratory Early February Birthday Chili Party.

So, if you are in Louisville and free tomorrow, please stop by my place for chili! Food around 3, but accepting callers as early as noon. Yay!

Yaay!

Yaaaay!