Well as I mentioned, I played in a volleyball tournament in Flagstaff today. Here is how the day went down...

I wake up in the morning and feel refreshed. That's odd, I think, as I should have been dead tired. I turn over and look at the clock. Ah, 7:30 AM... WHAT!!! It was one of those moments where time stops, your brain explodes, and you have no clue what to do. I was supposed to wake up at like 5:45 AM. I had a 2+ hour drive, the tournament started at 9 AM, and I hadn't gotten everything ready to go. Needless to say, panic ensued. I managed to leave in about 20 minutes and thought I did a pretty decent job of not forgetting anything. Only later did I realize I forgot one, SLIGHTLY important thing - glasses. My eyes hated me for that...

Anyways, I drove up as fast as I could, and listened to the Dark Tower Book 7, and had a blast hearing about Roland and the ka-tet nearing the end of their journey. I managed to get to the tournament by 9:45AM, and jumped in during the 2nd game. I had high hopes for the day, until I jacked up my ankle like a moron that is. I ran down a hill for a ball and hit a hidden rock and twisted my ankle. It didn't stop me from playing, but I sure couldn't jump at first. I taped it later, but it bothered me all day. Right after that game, thinking about my ankle, I walk back, and my good friend Julia had twisted her ankle badly. She was not only unable to play anymore, but in a great deal of pain all day. I felt horrible for her. In the end, we got 2nd place in the lower division after a long battle - we had to defeat the winning team twice in a row in the tournament as they were undefeated( double elimination ), but was only able to beat them once. After the volleyball ended, there was a barbecue, but I felt tired, disgusting from the sunscreen/sweating, and I wanted to head home before it got dark, so I just left.

So you are probably wondering, where was the irony in all that? Well the prizes we got for getting 2nd, were...drum roll...travel alarm clocks! Perfect for the guy who oversleeps and shows up late

Time for some movies/anime/games/writing music. Gotta enjoy the weekend while it lasts. If you want to see pictures of where I played volleyball in Flagstaff, click the link below.

Volleyball pics

Well the pictures of the house are up as promised. Most of the wiring pictures are pretty boring. The structured wiring is pretty cool though( look for the picture with all the wires going into this panel near the garage door ). I also stopped by the house today, and got pictures of the insulation. I had expected them to do more, but I guess I've gotten kind of used to them working at an insane pace. I also got a couple of pictures of John's house, because his is really moving along. I can't until I have walls inside too

In other news, I'm going to play in a reverse coed tournament in Flagstaff tomorrow. The weather should be a relief, as its been like insanely hot here( highs around 110-115 ). The only sucky part is the driving - it will cost like 40 bucks to drive there and back, and I get around 30 mpg. I wanted to carpool, but I'm not sure I really want to camp overnight. I guess we will see... Stay tuned for tournament results and pictures...

Oh, and on a side note, Lars and the Real Girl is an interesting movie... My family said it was funny, but I found it hard to watch. It just seemed really awkward and embarrassing, even though it truly was sad at its core. I definitely wouldn't call it a comedy...

Well it was another three day weekend( I get every other Friday off ), and I had a great time. On Friday, I got some normal mundane stuff accomplished, and then began working on both my movie database and the song I'm going to release next called Maybe. I'm hoping to get Todd Jeffreys to do the drums for the song once I get a little further in( I only have vocals and acoustic guitar at the moment - need electric, perhaps bass as well, and backup vocals ). He is very good, and I know getting him to do the drumming would sound way better than something I could cook up. Hopefully the song will agree with him. Anyways, the track is sounding pretty good so far, and I really like what I did with the modified melody/lyrics( I originally wrote it a year and a half ago ).

After the relaxing day on Friday, I had a lot to do on Saturday. I first took my car in early to get serviced at the Avondale Toyota Dealership, which I've never been to before. The Camelback dealership screwed me over, so I'm never going there again( and I advise other people not to as well ). The Avondale dealership was a breath of fresh air - they have excellent service, they are really friendly, and the waiting lounge is really awesome. They will continue to get my business as long as they stay like that. Next, I prepared to go down to Tucson. On the way, I needed to pick up my volleyball, which a fellow player was nice enough to grab for me when I left it behind at the Gold Medal Squared grass tournament at ASU. Well I had to go out to Scottsdale, and get it, which was a little out of the way, but not horrible. However, getting back to the I-10 was a NIGHTMARE. Every exit I tried was closed off, and I was doing circles for 20 minutes. I was ready to kill someone when I finally found my way. I continued listening to book 6 of the Dark Tower series( which rocks and I will post on the forum about that series sometime ), and made my way down to get a haircut. While getting my haircut, I saw the news about Cedar Falls, the flooding, and the 350 million dollars of damage. I also heard about the horrible earthquake in Japan. All of these horrible things happening back to back... It really sucks.

After the haircut, I prepared for the evening benefit volleyball tournament. We managed to get 5 teams together, and there was a lot of great talent out there. It started out windy, which really made it challenging, but the day ended with some great weather. My sister Jody worked really hard to put it together, and did an awesome job. Please check out the pictures at the link below, as well as some random videos if you are interested in downloading them( I didn't compress them, so they are somewhat large ).

Volleyball Pictures
Volleyball Clip #1
Volleyball Clip #2

On Sunday, I managed to work on the Movie Database some more, watched Ninja Warrior #20( so awesome, I LOVE this show ), played with my nephew Tyler, worked out, celebrated Father's Day with my dad before he left for a flight for work( so messed up to have to leave like that on a Sunday ), saw my beautiful new niece some more, and then watched Jumper with everyone. I then headed back up to Phoenix, having to double back once for my cell phone, which had fallen out in my parent's car when we carpooled to the volleyball tournament. Fun times...

Movie of Kiara Yawning

So Julie had a fun time in the hospital. After being denied a bed day after day, she actually went into labor early Saturday morning. Unfortunately for her, she was only 3 cm dilated, so the hospital sent her home until she was further along. She was not happy at all to hear this

After awhile, she was ready to be brought back, and had to fight for a long time with painful contractions. After the epidural( which they had to give her twice as it wasn't effective enough ), she was flying, so it went pretty easy from there. She was pushing hard without any discomfort, but believe me, the next day, she was hurting. Even with percocet to dull the pain, it wasn't a picnic. She gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Kiara though, and there are tons of pictures you can see in the gallery. I will post one here for the sake of brevity, as well as a small movie clip that I took of Kiara yawning( so cute ). Although I loved seeing everyone, and getting a chance to meet my new niece, it is definitely difficult to sacrifice 4 hours driving alone, not to mention the cost of gas( at $4 a gallon, not fun ). The time went by quickly though while listening to book 6 of the Dark Tower Series( cool series ).

Other than the excitement of the baby, I played volleyball at Scottsdale Ranch Park on Saturday, and had an amazing time. I was hitting really well, and I think people will remember me You can't have a great day without a sucky one to follow though, and on Monday, I drove all the way back out to SRP again( 45 minute drive ) for 2 horrible games( 1 hour of volleyball ). Definitely a frustrating night. I played volleyball again tonight and had a fun time. We won 2/3 games, and other than feeling sick from too much rice, I think I played pretty well.

If you check the movies page, you will see my new RSS reader. I'm proud of it, and I'm sure I'll find things to improve on here and there, but it definitely works just like I imagined. I will change the layout of the page though, so that the rss reader takes up more space( hence making it easier to read more ). I also uploaded a bunch of random pics to the gallery, so have at them.

Boy, some interesting things have been going on. First off, the weekend was great. I've been working on hard on trying to finish up development on my mp3 player so that I can stream my music, as well as trying to get more time in recording my songs. It took a lot of work and refinement, but I think I finally have a version of Unbinded that I like. It probably won't be my favorite song on my cd, but it's definitely a fun, upbeat song. I also had a great time at the volleyball tournament on Saturday. I wound up staying up until 4:30 am the night before( stupid me ), but I got the team arrangements done, and I think most everyone was satisfied. John, my mom and I wound up winning, but there were prizes for the first 3 teams with some leftovers for others. Here is a picture of me doing some hitting. Who says white men can't jump?

There are some more pictures in the gallery, so be sure to check them out.

Right after the tournament, my mom, dad, and I went to Best Buy, and got two Canon SD1100 cameras( one for me and my mom ) and a laptop for my mom( Yay! she is finally entering the technical age! ). She got a killer deal on the laptop - 1200 dollar Dell XPS for 600 bucks. I was jealous, but happy for her. I freaking LOVE the camera, and all of the pictures I upload from now on will be from that camera, and the resolution is sooooo much better. The camera looks like this:

In other news, I subbed out at Scottsdale Ranch Park( boy what a drive ) and really enjoyed playing out there, and seeing a lot of people that I haven't seen in a long time. We only won 1/3 games, but hopefully I can sub again next week and get a better record. On a non-volleyball related topic, my sister is having her baby girl Kiara next Wednesday, so I am really excited for her. Despite the cost of gas, I'm gonna drive out to support her. Honestly though, 50 bucks to fill up one tank is ridiculous...

I've also been watching movies here and there. Some of this will be covered on the movie page when it comes up, but the Golden Compass was a pretty good movie on blu-ray( incredible visuals ). I'm actually interested enough to read the books, as the movie is watered down. I also rented( it was free ) the worst movie I have ever seen. I had a free non-new rental, and I've seen most of the good older movies, so I picked out a random martial arts type movie, and my god, it looked like a 3rd grader put the movie together and added the lamest effects EVER!! Needless to say, I turned it off after about 1 minute. If you are in the mood for a romance type movie, 27 dresses and PS I love you were decent.

There will be some new additions to the site very soon. I have some ideas for the movies page( you can see some of the stuff I'm compiling already ), and I'm actually going to try redoing the layout a little bit. I tried out some Yoga stuff recently, so I might even compile some stuff for that so I have an easy to find guide to some of the moves.

Now back to watching War with Jet Li...

* UPDATE *

One thing I forgot to mention is that I went to see Cats on Sunday, and it ROCKED! There will be a couple pics of the stage in the gallery, but I must say, it was an excellent cast. I still think the dvd cast was slightly better, but it was a very good show.