Digital Digits

To answer your first question: yes, this is the first anniversary of Life As I Know It! This blog has been with you for an entire year now, simultaneously tugging at your heart strings and making you want to claw out your eyes. Happy Birthday, Blog!

To answer your second question: yes, I'm still alive! The last two months have been an amazing adventure. I've played for a championship softball team, got hungover in Mexico, dove down a Slip-n-Slide made of marshmallows, dunked four times in a basketball game, learned everything there is to know about my new job, showed Kelly that I'm always right (with proof), got up every morning at 7:00 a.m., voted four times for President Bush, ate all-vegetarian meals for two weeks, and watched my beloved University of Georgia soundly thrash Florida on national TV.

Okay...none of those things happened. Not even close. But even in the world of reality (which I occasionally visit sometimes), there has been a lot going on. Thus I apologize once again for the blog hitting a virtual pothole. But I still love you! Never think otherwise.

I have a couple of updates I'd share with you! One would be my new digits. Anyone that knows me knows that I've become a champion of moving. County to county, apartment to apartment, non-wife to wife companions. In all this, I've had a lot of phone number changes...but I'm attempting now to make that disappear forever. When I started my new job at the beginning of September, I received a Blackberry phone to carry around with me everywhere (that's a link, FYI). I'd already gone from ditching the house phone to just a personal cell phone, and now I received a work phone to go along with it.

Uh-oh.

That means I now have two cell phones to carry everywhere with me. And trust me, there is nothing as geeky as carrying two cell phones. Just picture it in your head for a moment...oh, wait...yes, there it is. A horrible image. So what to do? Well, there is a brilliant internet innovation called Skype that allows any two people to talk over the internet for free. Cliff (one of my charismatic groomsmen, if you remember) recommended it to me and I've been sold ever since. But this just allowed people with the software to talk...until a month or so ago. Now they offer an actual phone number setup, so that for a small monthly fee you can receive normal phone calls on the computer! I jumped at the chance to try it out, and thus far it works great. So what does that mean? Well, it means I'm going to give it a shot. :) If all works well, I'm going to ditch the personal cell phone and just use the Blackberry and Skype for all of my calling needs (you can call out on Skype for a low 2.3 cents/minute to anywhere in the world).

So from this day forward, please use the following to call me:

Home - (336) 283-0572
Cell - (336) 549-5424
Work - (336) 412-0859 [Daytime]

Please use these numbers just as you normally would! In fact, I'd love to get more calls from some of you outside of town...I miss talking to many of you. Drop me a line anytime, and I'll try to do the same! I'll be happy to tell you about any or all of my grand accomplishments above. The marshmallow Slip-n-Slide was especially exciting.

Aside from all of that, things are going pretty well! Work is going well (I really am trying to keep my head above water, but so far have been able to do it), and of course I'm married to the most wonderful person on Earth. Those two things, combined with an iMac, make life pretty enjoyable. :) It's obvious that I've been extremely busy, but I'm still looking for ways to improve that a little bit. We shall see! Although this month I've factored actual honest-to-God exercise into the equation, which no one saw coming.

At any rate, let this serve as a friendly hello to all of you! Take care of yourselves, have a terrific week, and make sure to buckle your seatbelts out there. Life is a roller coaster.