Vacation time

We just made our reservations in San Diego for the end of August! We're staying on Miramar - the location of the famous Top Gun pilot school. I intend to make every Tom Cruise and Top Gun reference possible while there. We're planning on going to the beach, Sea World, the beach, the SD Zoo, the beach, and then maybe go to L.A. for a day and then hopefully up to Malibu for a couple of days to stay with a relative (we'll probably take in a little beach while we're there). Should be fun, cooler than here, and relaxing!

I found this page on the SD Zoo website that you can watch live video of either polar bears, apes, elephants, or panda bears at the zoo. As I write this it's too dark to see anything - bad timing, I guess.

I found it interesting that on the Zoo's home page that they have information about Wolong's horrible earthquake in 2008 - 7.9 magnitude. 70,000 people died. Unfortunately, a couple pandas died too. Luckily, if you want to help the pandas you can donate $$ through the Zoo's website! I didn't see anything about helping the people there, though...

Coming soon!

The next installment in the Inheritance cycle comes out in September! We've been waiting a long time. If your looking for a good book to read and fantasy-type stuff is interesting, check it out. He's a very good writer. If you've seen the movie based on the book, ignore it. The books are really good but they were afraid to stay true to the book because the first one resembles The Lord of the Rings series. It, however, is much different, especially in the second book.

How I became a secret agent.

Well, some people have asked why I go by Agent Pipes. In fact, it's kind of weird because my email contains that name and people don't grasp the concept of such a silly name so I end up spelling it. After I do they say "agentpipes?" "Yup!" I say and then... well, that's a tangent I won't take.

Anyhow, I've actually been Agent Pipes (AP) for over ten years now. It started in high school (well, my last high school, anyway. I moved twice my junior year.). I have a friend named Sean who is now a police officer in Brookfield, WI. In high school we were inseparable, but we were a little different than most juniors and seniors. We just had different interests. We were both Christians so we looked for a little different activities on the weekends and during the summers.

One of the things we did was watch Elvis movies. I've seen tons of them. They are actually pretty entertaining if you don't take them seriously. One of my favorite lines is from Jailhouse Rock (guess what song Elvis sang in that movie). Elvis confronts a guy who is pushing around his girlfriend at a bar. The guy says something like "Watch it, bud." And Elvis comes back "Oooh, you scare me. Women beaters always scare me." I can't continue because it will give away the plot, but, anyway, I digress.

We went to fairs and recorded Elvis songs. I have a lot of lyrics stored in my bag of goodies, too. Our favorite was "Don't Be Cruel."

We also recorded home videos. I'm really glad that Sean never figured out how to put those on YouTube - I would never live it down. At first we started out dancing to the good old tunes like "Walk Like an Egyptian" and "I'm Too Sexy" and "Grease Lightning." Soon we graduated from that (because we ran out of moves).

At that same time, Pierce Brosnan was featuring in his first and second Bond movies. That became the inspiration for our new persona. He quickly adopted 00 Hound Dog (it was him that got me into Elvis). I didn't really have anything interesting about me except that I was into power lifting at school; thus, Agent Pipes was born. I'm not going brag about that stuff now - I had my chance to do that at my 10 year reunion and chose to miss it. Sean put together several very funny videos throughout senior year and our first year of college as us living the life of secret agents - but, alas, I'm retired. It does give our families a lot to laugh about when we bust them out to watch.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Dodge ball!

Monday was a nice break from work. The maintenance folks had some sort of training or catch-up to do so there was no flying. As a result, we had no work to do (well, that's sort of true). Anyway, I saw this as an awesome chance to get a sporting event together for the tower. At first we were going to run. Then someone suggested dodgeball (of course I had to include the wikipedia link).

There was really no question about which to do.

We played for two hours. It was intense. The best showdown we had was between the 28+ vs. the under 28s, which ended up being 7 on 12 (the old dudes had 7). We old dudes won 5 out of 6 games. I am sore today in areas I had forgotten I had. My ankles muscles are sore and I don't there is such a thing! I took a few shots right on my pride, but no one got seriously hurt. I'm pumped to do it again.

You can check out the real rules here for setting up your next tournament.

Sweet quote

"Whenever we repent of sin, we must have one eye upon sin and another upon the cross; or, better still, let us have both eyes upon Christ, seeing our sin punished in him, and by no means let us look at sin except as we look at Jesus. A man may hate sin just as a murderer hates the gallows but this does not prove repentance if I hate sin because of the punishment, I have not repented of sin; I merely regret that God is just." - Charles Spurgeon