My New Favorite Book

Human beings are remarkable -- at what we can learn to live with. If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we couldn't ever get strong enough, could we? What else makes us strong?

So we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someone's older brother, and someone's older sister -- they become our heroes, too. We invent what we love, and what we fear. There is always a brave, lost brother -- and a little lost sister, too. We dream on and on: the best hotel, the perfect family, the resort life. And our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them.

--The Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving

Cabo Pictures!

July 28-31 I was in the lovely Cabo with Trevor, MJ, Travis, Rico, Roger and Mel for TP BBE 2006, the Cabo San Lucas edition. Pics are here!

Empire Trials Videos!

Not exactly Olympic material, but this was the first time I've seen myself on video, and it's not scary enough to make me quit for good. :)

Uneven Bars:



Watch my beam routine here

Watch my first vault here

Ketchup

Just some points of interest:

1. In the spirit of maintaining my angry rant on NYC area transit, I just want to add that NJ transit is unimaginably worse (and no, not only because it's in Jersey). The light rail only works 30% of the time. When the light rail train is working, the elevator and/or power at my station most likely is not, prompting a shuttle bus or a fun walk down 35 flights of stairs, after the 11 block walk to get there. When it gets too hot out, the cables overheat and the trains don't run. In this case, I can take the Path train to Hoboken and catch a bus, which may or may not have A/C and takes about 40 minutes.

2. No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks... that's right folks, I have officially completed all of my credits towards my Masters degree with a very nerdy 4.0. Only one lousy $2500 prerequisite online course and $300 in graduation fees and a diploma I will have.

3. I just got back from Cabo San Lucas, and it was fabuloso. Pics soon, I swear.

Empire Trials!

Yesterday was the trials for the Empire State Games in gymnastics. I competed in 3 out of 4 events due to knee issues.

Vault: 8.05 (not bad considering a start value of 8.8 and I didn't train!)
Bars: 7.2 (missing difficulty, one break in connection)
Beam: 8.1 (missing flight series, no falls, a couple major bobbles)

These scores would have put me in 2nd place on bars and 3rd place on beam at last year's meet!

The games this year are way out in Rochester at the end of July. Not sure if it's worth the travel just to do a level 6 bar routine, but I had a blast yesterday.

Next stop: the knee doctor.

Weird...

Wow - it's so weird how accurate this is...
Crush Calculator

Louisiana Man Warns: Listening to Your iPod May Cause Hearing Loss!

Lawsuit: iPods may cause ... eh?

I don't know about you, but my favorite game is to see how long I can listen to my iPod at max volume before my eardrums start to bleed. How dumb can the government allow people to get?