I know I am a little late in getting these up here, but here are a couple pictures my friend Chris sent from his latest deployment.  I'm hoping he'll send more soon.  (This isn't actually Chris flying since he's the one taking the pictures.  I really hope he gets someone to take a picture of him at some point.)

So we lost our first game :(

It was a very disappointing 0-7.  I'll blame the heat for now.  I need to remember to bring two gallons of Gatorade to the next game.  It should be next Sunday.

Sunday is my first game of the fall season.  Yay.  This is the league I play in.  Hopefully we'll do better than we did the last couple times.

Spunkey - perhaps the only thing in the world fuzzier than Bella:

BTW - he is the neighbor's Pomeranian.

George had a very lazy and warm Labor Day:

We celebrated Caitlin's 15th birthday this weekend.  I took her out driving in a stick-shift car and she did quite well.  Go Caitlin!

What do you do when you're getting Kung-Fu'd by a master?

You wait until he's stuck in his carrier and squish him:

I have decided, in my first experience with Wachovia since the SouthTrust takeover, that Wachovia doesn't spend their money well.  I guess it's actually our money, but either way, they have money and they are wasting it.  For example, I recently received a letter from them saying that they needed to contact me but that none of my phone numbers worked anymore.  Ok, I understand, I opened the account when I still lived in Huntsville and worked in Birmingham.  So my bad on not updating the phone numbers with them when I officially moved.  I corrected this on the phone, but they still needed me to come into one of their offices to sign some stuff. 

A couple weeks after doing that, I received another letter more or less identical to the first - that they could not contact me and needed me to come in.  A very short phone call to a very apologetic Wachovia representative kept me from having to go in to the bank.  They had apparently sent out another batch of these letters by mistake.

So this brings us to the next thing I receive in the mail from them...  it was actually quite a large packet (it was a full-size envelope - the kind you can put a piece of paper in without folding it).  The body of the cover letter stated the following:

I understand you were inconvenienced by a recent notification.

Due to a processing error, a duplicate letter of notification was sent to you via certified mail.  We strive to provide you with unmatched service for all transactions and sincerely apologize for any confusion and inconvenience you may have experienced as a result of this error.  Please accept the enclosed $30 Visa Gift Card as a small token of appreciation for your patience and understanding.

And sure enough, one was in there:

Now I appreciate customer service, but if they are going to make money off of whatever I manage to deposit with them, why do they go and spend $30 of it when all they had to do was say "sorry"?  Do they have to charge me higher rates for things to cover sending who knows how many $30 gift cards?  I'd rather save the money on fees than get rewarded when I call them and they're idiots.  Don't get me wrong, I did appreciate having the $30.  Maybe I need to call up Wachovia and complain more often.

This weekend we headed over to Atlanta to help celebrate Christian's 28th birthday.  As always, it was good to visit all the folks over in Atlanta, and I hope we can do it again soon.

While we were in Atlanta, we went shopping for Georgia Tech shirts, etc, at the new Georgia Tech Bookstore.  I can't believe how nice the new group of buildings is, including a Starbucks and various eating places.  I remember the area as being old run-down, shady night clubs.  Now it's an amazing area I would have frequented when I lived right around the corner.  Oh, well.  Nice to know things are getting better for GT.

We were enjoying ourselves at Christian's place:

and then when we wanted something to munch on, Laura found an unopened bag of pretzels.  Great, right?  Well, it's the end of August in 2005 and this is a picture of the pretzel bag:

Way to go, Christian.  These had a wonderful aftertaste of moldy feet.  Not sure I'll ever get rid of that one.

On a good note, we did have the best beer run adventure ever on Saturday night.  Here is a picture of Jon and myself collecting our "reward" from the ladies:

Happy OLD day, Christian.  Just wait till you see what everyone does when you turn 30.

Laura made a new friend this weekend:

I was cleaning out a computer the other day and realized it was quite possibly the dirtiest computer ever.  Believe it or not, the computer was still functioning 100% which is quite surprising.  It's amazing how much dust can be hiding under the front cover.

This might be a picture from the last time Wilson came to visit, but George will be getting a special visitor for a few days this weekend.  Look out George.

I have been forever teased by my lovely wife Laura that my car smells like crayons.  She enjoys making fun of it and basking in the joy of hearing some other unsuspecting person say "why does your car smell like crayons?" when they get into my car.  It's not funny, but at least I finally found out it's not something I dropped under the seat that's decaying (some of you might remember the opened Pepsi can my friend Lyle left under my seat for 1/2 a year that I only found because one day I saw a trail of ants going toward it).  the important part is that I am not alone:

Article on My VW Lemon.  Or go to their main site to see other complaints about VW Jettas.

Thanks goodness this wasn't our house - but I saw it on the way out of the neighborhood this morning...  can't believe it's the neighbor's tree.  Rumor has it the tree was cut by "professionals".  You can see the straight across cut they made on the trunk of the tree.  Brilliant.

I like this picture...  it's an accident that it looks this way.  The camera on my cell phone is quite bad and blurred the edges (since they were moving the fastest) but it looks like I'm flying down the road.  I really like roads with tree cover like this...

Remember the huge spider from the other day?  In its place (same gas station, same pump) is a praying mantis.  Wonder if it got the spider...

A good time was had by all this weekend as we traveled up to Norfolk, VA to visit our friend Chris.  How incredible is it to have your name on the side of an F-18 Hornet:

It's absolutely amazing to me that he gets to fly this plane:

I'm sure it looks even more menacing when it is fully loaded up with bombs, missiles, etc., but I'm glad they didn't let us near anything live.  Of course, even without weapons, this plane has managed to cause damage (fortunately not while Chris was in it):

Imagine how much crap his friends would give him if he had been the one to kill Bambi on the runway...  Just in case something like this happened again, Laura was prepared by wearing the proper headgear (she knows Chris too well):

We were actually visiting because Chris will be away from home for the next several months on his home away from home:

We enjoyed this weekend, doing some water skiing in the calmer areas of the Chesapeke Bay (Elizabeth River actually, I think).  Chris's parents and brother also visited us and brought the smallest dog on earth with them:

I believe it weighed in at 1 pound, 2 ounces.  I bet at least 1 pound of it was fur.  If it gives you any sort of reference, I believe the tiles are 12 inches across. 

Good food was had by all:

But no matter how much fun we were having, Chris always made sure to talk with his wife when she got a free moment on the computer.  She is on a ship right now and he doesn't get to talk with her very frequently.  Here he is, still typing with only two fingers:

Good luck, Chris.  Stay safe and come back home soon.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this...  it appears as if they have the equipment installed for a traffic light at Morgan Rd and Aviation.  Woo hoo!  This was a terrible intersection.  Once this and the light at I459 get turned on, I will no longer have blind left turns at a stop sign onto major streets.  Yay.