My Arms Hurt

I got up at 5:00 a.m. this morning to go to a gym with some guys from church. It was a $10 ticket for the day, but if I go with this I can get 13 months for $200 (not bad, huh?). The real test wasn’t the bench press or other activities (including a wonderfully Halo-ish game of raquetball), but it will be how the day goes having gotten up so early. The rest and relaxation will be nice tonight.

The other good news. Today is pay day. And, my federal tax return was also deposited in my accounts this morning. So I saw a double increase that was immediately depeted with some overdue bill paying (namely, the credit card I used in Britain that doesn’t gain interest until March and now has a zero balance, or will on March 3). I still have a good chunk left over and my state return has yet to arrive, so I’m feeling okay about the money thing now. It’s nice to be out of debt besides my student loan.

To return to raquetball, it really is like Halo, but in real life and without the death. Though, the way one guy plays, it may only be a matter of time before that happens. But the zone you enter where everything is the ball and who hit it last, where your teammate is, where will it bounce next, and so on is very akin to a team game in Halo (as well as other things, I’m certain). The amount of focus I automatically tuned into was rather shocking once I pulled back out of it.

The last thing, I can’t lift my arms.

New Blog

I’ve set up a new blog to chronicle my planning and the actual trip I’m taking to London.

You can find it at www.lifeofrobert.com/london.

Vacation Time

Well, I just hit my first 40 hours of vacation time at work today. And I’ve promptly spent it on the two Fridays I’m going to be gone all day in August. Doing the math forward, after London in October, I’ll have exactly .76 hours of vacation time in my bank.

Talk about cutting it close! But, it’s more than worth it.

Point of No Return

My tickets were purchased today for my trip in October.

Why is this significant? It’s the Point of No Return for me. I’m going and I’m going alone. For one week, I’ll be leaving most of my friends behind to visit a place where I will quite literally be alone in the crowd (except for a day or two of visiting friends who live in Cambridge now). My only contact with them will be via email and possibly this web site (if any of them read it, which if they do, it’s a smaller number of them).

One week vacationing and letting go at the same time. I’m glad there’s no turning back now. This could be a very difficult thing for me to do, but I need to do it. And I want to do it. The time has long since past for me to do something like this.

London

Woo-hoo! I’m going to London in October! =)

My first vacation ever and my first time out of the country. I am so very excited for this trip.

More to come!