Jabulani Jonny

Arrived…3:15pm…tired…8+ hours on the road each of the past two days…got up at 4:15am this morning…a frickin’ huge stack of mail…a clean house, mmmmmmm…tired…need a shower…and a haircut…follow up on hospital bills tomorrow…tired…

Well we had our follow up visit this morning with the cardiologist at CHOP to check Elliot out after his surgery and give us clearance to head home. She was pleased with how well he’s doing and how good he looks and gave us our walking papers. We skidaddled back to the Ronnie McDonnie and decided to hit the road back to Georgia. Approximately 8.376 hours later we pulled into the Holiday Inn Express in Durham, NC. Google Maps had the drive clocked at 6 hours and 40 minutes. Yeah, that mighta been right, but apparently it’s not smart to drive anywhere on the entire eastern seaboard between the hours of 4pm and 7pm. I updated Google maps with the following info that I thought might be helpful for anyone trying to drive south from Baltimore to Richmond.

EDIT: I realize that I could’ve come up with 100 more entertaining quips than “Stupid Traffic”, but “Stupid Traffic” it was, so “Stupid Traffic” it is.

For my birthday back in March Sunette gave me a fly-fishing trip with
my buddy Carl.  As some of you know I’m a fly-fishing guide for
Callaway Gardens on the weekends.  Carl is the manager of the fishing
operations for Callaway and he and I are fast friends.  Our trips
together are truly prized memories.  Here’s a video of  trip that we
took up to North Georgia.  The video’s not the greatest quality since
we only had the video feature on our digital cameras and we had to use
the compressed video format.  Next time I’ll get an 8GB SD card and not
worry about it.  So have you been fishing lately?   Oh yeah, music is Saliva’s Ladies and Gentleman and Evanescence’s
Tourniquet.  If you’re interested in replicating our trip you can
contact Unicoi Outfitters and Cannon Falls Lodge

to me.  I know that last post made it sound like I was bummed at my job.  I'm really not, it was just an interesting observation  I thought. 

Anyway, today's my B-day.  My wife has given me a wonderful gift.  Some of my favorite memories are the fly-fishing trips I get to take with my buddy Carl from Callaway Gardens.  If you didn't know, I'm a contract fly-fishing guide for Callaway.  I used to work there full time back in the day and Carl and I became fast friends.  He's an amazing guy and I really treasure the trips we get to take.  It only seems to happen once a year unfortunately.  

Well last year he and I took an amazing trip to Unicoi Outfitters in North Georgia for some trophy trout fishing.  Carl was going to be writing a magazine article specifically on Unicoi Outfitters and the fishing they provide.  I was the lucky guy that got to tag along and be photo fodder for print.  Needless to say, it was one of the best two days I've had in my life.  Amazing locations, amazing fish and amazing people.  

I was going to insert a pic here of a huge brown trout I caught last time, but alas, I'm posting from work and I'm behind a corporate firewall that won't let me upload the pic.  Doh. 

Well this morning I awoke to breakfast in bed and a card.  In the card was one of the best gifts I've ever gotten.  A voucher for 2 days of fishing with Carl on trophy trout waters guided by Unicoi Outfitters.  Holy mama-sita.  That is a phenomenal gift.  I'd take that anyday over some toy or gadget, and that's saying alot if you know me.  

So, thanks hon!  You're a wonderful bride and……..

mother-to-be.  You read that right folks.  We've got #1 on the way.  August is the time when life forever changes.  I hinted at some changes several weeks ago, so now full disclosure.  We're about 18 weeks along.  Your thoughts and prayers are coveted.  

So I guess that's two birthday presents.  I'm a lucky guy.  

Ok, I’m not even sure I mentioned it in the last couple of posts, but I was up in New York from last Saturday to this past Friday.  I was up there with our game company Zelosport for the International Toy Fair.  We went last year and had a great show, and this year was no different.  We have two new games that are being displayed, Finger Soccer and Finger Baseball.  Both of these are going to be a big hit.  They’re both extremely fun to play and basically the only game of its kind.  We made some great contacts and got some great exposure for all of the games we have available now. 

Just like last year, we had a huge snowstorm while we were there.  Maybe you saw it on the news.  Basically every airport shutdown on Wednesday night and experienced mass cancellations and delays all the way through Saturday.  We were supposed to fly out Wednesday night….nope, cancelled.  We all got different flights on Thursday.  My flight and two of our other guys flights were cancelled.  It was turning into a remake of Tom Hanks’ "The Terminal".

Also, be sure to check out Eric’s blog for a short video of our booth at the Toy Fair.

Here’s a short video.  Yeah I picked the wrong dimensions.  I’m learning to use Kdenlive in Linux for the video editing.  Pretty good program, but i’m still learning.

Well on Sunday my buddy Josh and I piled in the car and headed off for a business trip to St. Simons Island and Savannah.  Work stuff, but this trip wasn’t too bad.  What made it not so bad was that we stayed at The Cloister on Sea Island on Sunday night and The Mansion on Forsyth Park on Monday night.  The Cloister is one of the highest rated resorts in the nation, if not the world.  Oh, and if anyone from work is reading this entry, no the bank didn’t pay for it.  One of our business partners picked up the tab, ain’t that sweet seeing as how our room was probably $800 for Sunday night alone.  The Mansion was a pretty sweet, artsy, eclectic hotel in downtown Savannah.  All in all, two great places to stay, with fantastic food to boot.  I’d put some pics, but I’m sure they’re protected.  Go check out the sites. 

Okay all here is the slideshow I put together of our Arizona Trip.  It has pics video and music so have your volume turned down or earphones in when you start.  I have to warn you, it’s 15 minutes long, but it’s worth it I think.  There are some great shots and some funny video in my opinion. 

Disclaimer:  The music in this video is not mine.  This video contains clips of songs by Elvis Presley, Jack Johnson, James Taylor and Rusted Root.  I did not write the songs, I do not have the rights to the songs, but I’m not claiming that I do.  They’re just part of the video.  Don’t sue me, I’m poor.  Nuff said.

This video was not made on a Mac.  I can’t afford one yet, hopefully soon.  This was made with a program called ProShow Gold.  Pretty intuitive program and doesn’t crash like Windows Movie Maker…aaarrrggh.

Have you been to any of these places? 

Here’s a short video of something cool we saw on Sunday.  We were visiting the Wupatki ruins just north of Flagstaff where we’re staying.  The pueblo ruins were pretty cool, but the Blowhole was definitely worth the price of admission.  I mean, air just coming out of the ground, like an air conditioning vent.  That was just cool.  So I took a short video with my trusty Canon Powershot 700.  Great camera by the way.  Here’s Sunette demonstrating the powerful effects of…The Blowhole.

We spent all day yesterday at the Grand Canyon and saw an amazing sunset.  I was a little bummed that there were some clouds hanging around all day, which kind of washed out some of my "middle-o’-the day" pics.  However, when the sun was setting those clouds made for a few gorgeous pics.  If you haven’t been to the Grand Canyon, or if it’s been a while, hopefully these pics will inspire you a bit.  So who’s been to the Canyon and what did you think? 

Well, I’ve been out of touch.  Sorry ’bout that.  I’m on vacation right now in Arizona.  Sunette’s parents are here from South Africa and we’ve had a wonderful visit so far.  I’ve really been needing a vacation.  I didn’t take much of one at all last year, and haven’t had anything more than an extended weekend this year.  Needless to say, I was due.

Sunette’s been planning for us to visit the Grand Canyon while her parents are here and that’s where we are now.  We arrived on Thursday in Las Vegas and stayed the night on the strip.  Here are a couple Vegas pics and a pic at the Hoover Dam as well.  I’ll post a short video of the fountain at the Bellagio.  Very cool if you haven’t seen it. 

I’ll try to keep the posts rolling while we’re on the road.  You can see how dedicated I’ve been.  It’s been hard to find the motivation.  See here are my thoughts recently on blogging:

If I was like Los, where I spent a good portion of my day in front of the computer doing neat artsy things for my church, and blogging was kind of an outreach, then I would be waaaaaay into it.  Like he is.  However, I spend my entire day crunching numbers and chewing threw Excel and Word docs.  Fun I know.  When I get home, I do not want to sit down and write anymore.  Sorry.  Weekends can be crazy busy, so sometime’s it’s just difficult to find the motivation and the time.  That sounds like an excuse, but hey, that’s where I am.  I will continue to try and keep it updated though. 

So here are a couple pics from Vegas and Arizona.