vacation

Alright. I gotta make this quick. I only have 24 hours (down to 14 hrs) left now in Michigan.

This past week I was with the fam in Ocean City, NJ. Almost every summer for the past 50+ years my dad and my aunt have gone there for vacation. My grandpa would taken them to visit their aunt & uncle who owned a house across the street from the beach and boardwalk.

So to keep family tradition alive the two families would meet up year...




after year...



after year...




To be honest I'd prefer a little warmer weather (and warmer ocean water, for that matter) but there's something to be said about tradition. When I was a freshman, maybe a sophomore in High School, I don't think I realized what tradition meant. I mean I knew the word and its definition, but to me it all felt like we just did the same thing over and over again. And although I'd welcome some new traditions, there are some that will just always be and for good reason.

Tomorrow (Saturday) I'll be headed out to Binghamton, NY with the Youth Group for Worktrip. So I'm taking today (Friday) to pack up, throw up a new blog post and celebrate the 4th as it was intended - "Pops Go the 4th" on PBS HD with a cheese burger.

So what are you up to this summer? Any plans? Well, whatever ya got planned I hope it's relaxing (to some degree). I hope to post again in a week or so with a (hopefully positive) Worktrip update.

Have a Great 4th!

Pics

So by popular demand ... OK, maybe just by demand ... I wanted to post some pics from the rafting trip. I was holding out cause I was hoping that I'd get a couple more pics of, you know, rafting 'n stuff. But just in case I need to prove to you all that I do get off my xbox, get outside raft and climb stuff, here's some pics.

This is me trying to look cool wearing a gigantic lifejacket, a crevice-invading wetsuit and a plastic hat:



And by the 2nd rapid we were pretty comfortable.



OK, so maybe I lied a little bit on that last picture.

So the next morning go up and walked for about a mile and a half through some wooded area not knowing where we were really going or what we were expecting to see, then suddenly the trees opened up and we found ourselves here:








So I'm not really the most photogenic person after rafting 13 miles, then hiking for 2 miles. But this is the best I could do. Oh, and in the background is the Lower New River where we rafted.

Excellent trip.

So I just finished helping someone out here at work. His response?
"You're smart. You surprised me."

I'll put that in the Compliment section ... I think.

update

May 20th? Seriously? I haven't updated this since then? Wow. My apologies "Buffers". The rafting trip went well. As many of you all know I'm not exactly a thrill seeker but it was definitely one of those things that I wanted to try just to see what my "level" was. Could I do it? The answer: kinda. We went through several Level 4 rapids but when we got to a Level 5 we got a little too close to one of the rocks and our raft went up on edge spilling out the side of the raft that I was on. As a side note: You body seems to not care how cold water is when your own concern is not getting your legs crushed. But all in all it was a great trip! I was a little upset that I only got one quarter-sized bruise. I wanted something bigger to show off that I flirted with deathly sharp rocks.

After rafting 13 miles on the Lower New River, we got up the next morning and decided to go on a 3 mile hike up one of the West Virgina hills (yay exercise!). That excursion was a little more than I was ready for at 9AM, but the view from the top was amazing. It's been awhile since I'd done something like that. I'll post some pics once I get back to the condo.

And life is getting better. Work is still a little rough, but everyone here is in the same boat or at least they understand the craziness the rest of us are going though. According to my co-workers the project that I did for Lockheed Martin was well accepted (score points for JB). So things are getting better.

stock

I wish I had the option to by stock in days from my life. You know, if you get a sense like tomorrow is gonna head in one direction or another, you might buy or sell a few shares.

I would have sold most of my shares last night. I had a good feeling at that point that today would be rough. But little things added up and made bigger things. Works has been rough the past two weeks. This coming after I told my manager that I wanted to take on more responsibility, so I'll take some blame for being given extra workload. The only problem is now I'm re-correcting other people's mistakes before they become my problem (I'm just trying to make a long story short, and not bore you all) but this is not what I signed up to do.

But it's been the little things today. From finding out that the yogurt I was ready to eat this morning for breakfast is a month is past its expiration date (what does yogurt turn into after it expires anyway?) to not being able to leave work until 8:30 tonight (again, making up for other people's mistakes). It's more than work related stuff too. Lately I've just been evaluating my direction in relationships: both with God and with other people, and also where to go next in my career. I guess I'm just not used to such a concentrated amount of issues. I'm absolutely sure my burdens are nothing compared to soooo many other people. But you become used to your own environment and way of living that the slightest news or event throws you off your axis for a moment. It takes a fews days to get back your momentum and begin spinning again.



Sorry to make this post a "downer". I guess I'm just using this as way of dealing with it - write it out. I promise to bring it back up next time.

Relatively things are ok. I'm heading down to West Virgina with some friends this weekend to go camping and white water rafting.

Maybe I'll purchase some shares on Friday night and come out on top.

Progression

So why is it that in 2008, whenever we see people on TV playing video games, it still sounds like they're playing E.T. on an Atari 2600?



Is this how the general viewing public still perceives video games? Nothing like that awesome new Xbox 360 game on an HDTV represented by blips and boops...but it's got sweeeet graphics!

Network TV show producers, I think we're all smart enough to know that if two kids are holding Playstation controllers, it's because they're playing video games. You don't need to make it sounds like they're programming a microwave.

Respect

Wow. So delinquency has definitely set in here on "the Buffness". I'd love to chalk it up to the awesome weather but that's not the case (although I have noticed that other bloggers have fewer posts than usual).

Anyway, I had a great time this past weekend in Ohio. Over the weekend I got to see a lot of family that I typically only see about twice a year. Here's just a dew of us at our place (Blogger really messes with pics - click on it for a better image).



I've always been close to my family and this past weekend helped me to remember why. My family has a tradition of going to my Aunt's on the 4th Sunday of the month. On a typical Sunday there would be about 10 to 15 of us there and my Mom, Dad and I would be the three youngest ones. Although throughout Elementary and Middle School I would complain about it ad nauseam that there wasn't anyone there that was my age, I would still get into some good conversations with my Great Aunts & Uncles at least once a month with discussions varying from "How tall are you now?" to "I don't understand this new music in church. Why do we have to sing the same words over and over?". I don't know why it took me so long to realize it, but this weekend I realized that the time I spend with the older generation of my family teaches me respect. It teaches me that no matter how much I've experienced life, no matter how much I think that I know everything, there's someone who has already gone through that phase and has learned from it. I think there's also a lesson on humbleness in there too. Our generation may have the power and the familiarity of technology, but there's something to experience. And you have to respect and honor that.

After reading the words above, I know that I'm hardly doing justice to my family. I can't wrap it up in a single blog entry. It's tough. But it was something that was on my mind while driving back to Michigan last night. Just thought I'd write it out and share.