Fall Colors

*Hiking in Shenandoah National Park on Saturday with Adam. We got to go about 5 miles and got a really really nice view at our main stop along the route. In the first picture, our parking lot is somewhere way down in the valley. The pictures are showing the orange colored leaves as more yellow, in fact they looked quite Hokie colored (burnt orange and chicago maroon) in real life, proving that God is a Hokie :-P


*Staying at Adam's house overnight to keep out of the rain

*Perfect weather for the hike: partly cloudy and 65 deg for a high!

Weather and iPod!!!

*Beautiful Days.  There have been a few days in a row recently that have been absolutely perfect.  Some complete with a little rain and all.  The temperature and breezes have been great.

 

*Unexpected Coupon.  While looking at a new cereal in the grocery store, I noticed someone had left a coupon right in front of them.  The coupon was for that cereal and expired the day I was shopping.  Someone had been nice enough to leave the coupon for someone else (me!) who they didn't even know because they knew that they wouldn't use it before it expired.  It wasn't a big coupon but it was nice to see that people do things like that for people they will never meet.

 

*iPod!  I got my iPod!!!! It is amazing and holds a ton of stuff.  I've got all my non-techno songs as well as all my photos on it now and about 100 of my techno songs.  Its pretty cool and I love having it at work to pass the time.  I even installed (part way) the device that hooks it up to my car so that I can listen to it on trips.  The device doesn't work properly with my iPod but works well enough that I am proud of myself for self-installing and will hold onto it until after my camping trip and then return it and wait for a new version to be released.

 

Just as a note, I cannot change any blogs for the time being, just email in updates because Google updated their IP forwarding and decided that I live in Japan so Google.com and blogger.com show up in all "?"'s since my computer doesn't show Japanese.  They assure me they have now correct it for my IP and it should take effect in "about a month".

Music and Friends

*Ordering an Ipod!!!  I finally got to order my ipod and it comes with free laser engraving so I could get my name on it too.  80GB of space :)  I can't wait til it gets here and will probably be tracking it a few times a day

 

*Ordering a device to hook my ipod to my car stereo.  This way it will charge the ipod and use my steering wheel controls to switch between songs or 5 preselected playlists or everything on the ipod.  Its going to be pretty awesome.

 

*Finishing off a half gallon of milk before it goes bad...I realize this doesn't go with the previous 2 but its still cool

 

*Planning a camping trip with Adam!!  We are going to go backpacking and camp one night next weekend in Shenandoah National Park in the mountains.  We'll probably only have time to hike in 2 miles or so and set up camp before dark but it will be fun.  Then Saturday we can do a long day hike.  This trip coincides with peak fall foliage days for the region so I should get quite a few nice pictures.

 

*More frisbee.  I got to play frisbee again with a total of 4 people this time with 2 discs so it was a lot more exercise.  We eventually had to quit because it was just too dark.  I hope daylight savings time stays here.

Back to VA

*Seeing Katherine!  Since Salisbury is right on the interstate I arranged to meet Katherine at Starbucks for about 40 minutes for a stop on my way.  It was good to see her again and catch up on life’s happenings.  I’ve seen her once before since graduation and that was in May and she’s looking even better!  If she ever reads this I’m sure she’ll comment on how hot she is now ;-P

 

*Smooth, Safe drive back to VA.  The trip back took a total of 8 hours due to the previously mentioned stop and dinner and went quite smoothly with only one slowdown for a couple miles at the very end of the interstate driving for the trip.

 

*Getting enough done before a meeting I had this morning.  I managed to get myself into work early enough to cram in what I needed to get done.  Turns out we didn’t even talk about it, but I’m still glad I have it completed.  Now I have new assignments…

Columbus Day

*Columbus day. Being a federal holiday I am now on a 3 day weekend.

*Going to my parents' house. I took the time to drive ~7hrs on Friday and will travel back again tomorrow. I got to pick up a ton of stuff here to take back with me, though I will still be leaving behind quite a few loads of stuff like Legos, etc. I will now have my TV, bike, tent, camping gear, and much much much more.

*Having a car that I didn't have to worry about breaking down during the trip down to SC.

*Making it to SC on one tank of gas. I got better gas mileage than they had listed and could have made it all the way home without stopping, but I stopped at the last minute so I won't have to necessarily stop for gas on the way back to VA.