The Texas State Fair

Last weekend the family (Dad, Mom, me, Amanda, Nick, and Jenn, who served as the photographer for this pic) headed to the land of deep fat fried EVERYTHING... The Texas State Fair. Yes, everything is bigger in Texas, and in this case, everything is fried in Texas. Yes, everything... including fried Coke, fried cookie dough, fried latte, fried peanut butter and jelly (and banana), fried Snickers.... you get the picture.

This was our 'before' picture... after sampling about half of the list above, none of us felt incredibly photo-worthy. :-)

Rams @ Cowboys... Box Seats!

A couple of good friends of ours invited us to go to the Cowboys/Rams game in Dallas last weekend. His family has had box seats for several years and they were nice enough to invite us to enjoy them as well as a breakfast in the stadium club before the game started. It was a truly memorable experience. The slide show is below.

Click on the slide show to see a bigger version.

As Mr Miyagi said... "Paint the Fence"

Last weekend we embarked on what has to be one of the most awful jobs you could plan during the Texas summer heat... restaining the fence around our back yard. As you can see from the pictures, below, however, the fence sorely needed it.




Jenn has been asking me to help her with this job for about three years and now that school is over I was unable to summon up any equally worthwhile excuses... "It's going to be a huge pain in the butt" turned out not to be nearly convincing enough.

Jenn actually did the lion's share of the power washing work during her summer break, and then last weekend we embarked together on a two-day quest to apply the new stain and get the job done.

The next picture below is the final version of the fence shown above. Below that is another set of "before and afters." It was a miserable weekend, but I have to admit, the final product looks pretty good.

I don't know why we didn't do this two years ago... :-)

Glasses, I bid thee adieu!

In an effort to forego staining the fence for as long as possible, two weeks ago, I finally went in for LASIK surgery. I've worn glasses since grade school and have been considering the surgery for years, but couldn't ever bring myself to actually do it. (Those of you who know me well know my relatively low tolerance for pain...)

Despite that, I put the money for the surgery into a flex spending account when I started my new job, and once it is there, it is use it or lose it, so there was no turning back. The results are truly nothing short of totally amazing. The day after surgery, I was seeing 20/15, and a week after, I was actually as good as 20/10 vision. Unfortunately, I regressed back to 20/15 in my appointment last Friday, but considering I was somewhere around 20/1600 (i.e. completely blind without my glasses), 20/15 suits me just fine. If you've been considering LASIK and have questions, let me know. It was an amazingly easy experience with almost no pain and incredible, immediate results.

Lake Tahoe Vacation

We're back from a great trip to Tahoe. Check out the slide show below!
(drag your mouse over the picture and click on the second icon in the lower-left to turn on the captions for each picture, or click on the picture itself to open up a new window for the slide show)

Goodbye Unemployment

An update that is a bit overdue, but good news nonetheless. About three weeks ago, I (finally) landed a new job with a company called OpSource. OpSource is a technology startup out of California and I am working remotely from Austin, which continues my long streak of working from home (and no, not in my underwear as my family likes to joke). :-)

After graduating in December, I had mixed success with UT's placement program. I had countless first interviews, numerous second interviews, a few third interviews, and a handful of offers. Unfortunately, after endless time spent on campus recruiting, the offers I received were very disappointing. Somewhat reluctantly, Jenn & I decided to turn them down and start the process over using non-UT connections.

Although it took awhile, in the end it was worth the wait. I am working with a few people I know from my former job at BearingPoint, and absolutely loving the company. The only problem was that I had to end my four-month stint of unemployment, which, looking back, wasn't all bad. ;-)