Memorial Day

Glenn and I both had today off, Monday is one of my days off right now but Glenn usually has to work. Anyway, we decided to take it easy. We only went out long enough to do a little shopping, then back home again. It is already way too hot to be outside for very long,besides the parks would have been to crowded to go to. We watched some "Bobby Flay"...He was grilling all day. Then we decided to play another round of Monopoly, it did not go as well as yesterday because I was winning. In the end we started watching "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" on DVD, gearing up of the new movie coming out on Friday. Well, I'll be signing off for now. Can't wait for the movie!

1,100 miles of racing

Or so I thought. Ever since I became a fan of auto racing a few years ago (October 1998 to be exact), I look forward to the day before Memorial Day. This is the day that the Indy 500 is run early in the day (noonish) and the Coca-Cola 600, NASCAR's longest race, starts around 5 p.m. It's a day of nothing but racing. And as a bonus, there is usually a Formula One race in the early morning, so you can overdose on racing. I love it.

But today's races sucked. I woke up too late to catch the F1 race in Germany (it started at 7:30 a.m. EST), but that was OK because the Indy 500 was coming on at 11 a.m. Well, it came on and it was in a rain delay. The green flag was supposed to wave around noon, but it ended up starting around 2 p.m. I did get to see Jessica Simpson sing the national anthem :-) So, the race started and it was going well, but it started to rain around 2:45 p.m. (only 28 laps were run) and they didn't get back to racing until around 4:30. At 5 p.m., I switched it over to Fox to watch the NASCAR coverage, so I missed the end of the Indy 500.

After watching ABC's coverage of the Indy 500, I have a new respect for Fox.

Anyway, the Coke 600 started on time and got off to a good start. But then Jeff Gordon (really the only reason I watch the races) started having problems with his car being "loose" and he dropped off the pace. He was 5 laps down only a quarter through the race. Really not a good day for racing. But at least Jimmy Johnson won the race. He did dominate and at one point, he had lapped the entire field. That's a pretty amazing fact. And he's now only 5 points behind Dale Jr. in the standings. Gordon dropped to 4th in the standings (from 3rd).

To add insult to injury, I just looked at my points in our fantasy racing game on Yahoo! (Crawfish Cup Series), and I've dropped from 1st to 3rd. But at least I'm only 8 points out of first. Boy, this is a tight race. And we still have a long way to go...

Once Gordon was out of contention for the win, Tammy and I decided to pull out a board game to play while we watched the race. Tammy chose Walt Disney Theme Park Monopoly. We hadn't played it in a long time; probably because every time we play, we have a fight. We vowed not to fight tonight. We did have a good time. I can't say we didn't have any fights, but we made up quickly.

Finally, I set up Tammy to be able to post to our blog. So keep checking back for her posts!

Tammy's First Post

Hi! I'm just writing a short note to make sure my account is working...

Blog notes

By the way--if you have an RSS newsreader (I'm using RssReader) you can add this blog to your news feeds to get the latest updates. Here is the site to add: http://www.welchhome.com/blog/atom.xml

Also, my friend Chris has a blog too (he's the one who pushed me over the edge to start this blog, just like he pushed me over the edge to get an iPod :-)). His blog can be found at: http://www.sinknet.net/blog/

Busy day

Yesterday was a pretty busy day for yours truly...

The day started as normal--by checking e-mail in the morning. Then I heard some popping/clicking noises coming from the computer. These noises have been coming from the computer for the past couple months, but not to this extent. I checked Windows Explorer and I couldn't see my second hard drive. So, I decided to reboot the computer. When I tried to reboot, neither drive was showing up. Uh-oh...

Since I thought my hard drive was a goner, I ran to Best Buy at lunch and bought a new 120 GB drive (I also picked up "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" for my sweetie). Well, when I got home and booted the computer, it worked and I could access both drives. So I immediately backed up all my data to my external hard drive (I use Handy Backup and I'm pretty pleased with it). It took forever! But it's all backed up, and I'll figure out what the problem is over the next few days. Hey--if I don't need the new hard drive in the computer, it'll have a home in my TiVo :-)

Since I couldn't do too much on the computer last night (including write this blog) because it was backing up the whole night, Tammy and I watched TV. We still had a few shows TiVo'd from our vacation last week, so we watched "Las Vegas." Once the show was over, we popped in the "Tomorrowland" DVD from the latest batch of Walt Disney Treasures series.

Since I'm a fan of all things Disney, but specifically the Theme Parks, I was VERY excited about this DVD because it had the "EPCOT" presentation that Walt gave to describe what the Disney World project was going to be. This turned out to be the last time Walt was ever filmed, as he passed away two months after taping. This has never been shown in its entirety since 1967. After seeing it, I was in awe. I've read a ton about how Walt dreamed what he wanted EPCOT to be, but seeing the presentation and having the visuals to go with it was incredible. He truly was an amazing man with lofty goals.

There was also an interview with Marty Sklar (Disney Vice Chairman and head of Imagineering) and we watched that. Short story about Marty: Tammy and I were at Innoventions in EPCOT Center a few years ago, and all of a sudden I turned around and Marty and his wife were standing right there. Nobody else knew who he was and he was just walking around looking at the exhibits. I had my camera, but I was too much of a wimp to go up to him and ask him to take a picture with me. I kick myself all the time for not doing this. Oh, well...

First Photo Post

This is Glenn's family in the backyard at home in New Orleans on 5/16/04. I really just wanted to see if I could publish a photo on here. Apparently, I can! 

First Post

Well, I've finally given in and started my own blog. Peer pressure is a horrible thing... :-)