Friday Five

The excuse:

This was an amazingly busy week. I was working on Thursday until 11:30 and Friday until 9:30. Today was the best I could do.

The week:

In a word - busy. I was out in Tampa this week, and due to a confluence of reasons I really didn't get to see the people I had hoped to see when I was out here. C'est la guerre. This also turned out to be yet another week where I had hoped to actually check an area out and wasn't able to. Such is life. It was simply work/hotel.

(Boy that above paragraph sounds rather depressing. I'm really cheerier than the above reads. Really. Or at least I think I am.)

I have to take back one of my items from last week's five. I am really digging the Olympics. I didn't think I would - I wasn't at all excited. Come the first Saturday and I'm sitting in my chair watching the Games basically all day. I'm still not exactly sure how some of the sports (badminton, synchronized diving??) became sports, but what do I know. And I'm very much looking to watching the Phelps race tonight - if for no other reason than as Rick Reilly says to see if he grows gills.

This weekend will also be a very sad/proud one for me. Every family has The Smart One. In ours it's my baby brother. We have a very tight bond, and I've been very blessed to have him living next door to me for the last 2+ years. This upcoming Friday he will be moving to DC to attend law school at American. He's going to be amazingly successful, and I'm very proud of everything he's accomplished and will achieve. But I'm going to miss him to death.

The exercise:

Long week this past week. Very long week. As a result, I was only able to get in two workouts. I will get back on track this week.

The travel note:

I use my iPhone as my alarm clock. (I even joined the Facebook group.) What's nice is I set it just the one time and it's good, which means I don't have to worry about alarm clocks in hotels. (And as a side note - I don't know what my mental block is but the simpler the electronic device it seems to me the harder it is to use.) In any event, I had a Saturday flight, which I'm not used to. I set my alarm thinking I was good. Well - I've configured my alarm to only go off on weekdays. So fast forward to this morning and I wake up at 7:30 for my 8:15 flight because my alarm didn't go off. As a result, I'm now sitting in the Tampa airport waiting for the next flight. (Continuation note - it's storming in Houston, so now I'm delayed here.)

The five:

For the five this week, I'm going with 5 misc thoughts on technology.

1. How did we know anything before Wikipedia? And with the existence of Wikipedia, do we know anything?
2. I can honestly say I don't know how we survived before cell phones. Having to find a pay phone, having to remember phone numbers. At this point I remember 3 phone numbers - mine, Karin's, and one I had when I was a kid in New Jersey. (I don't know why I still remember it either.)
3. I don't understand how people survive without Internet access on their phone. What do you do when you're standing in line? Or sitting on the can?
4. By far my favorite thing about the Internet is how it allows for people to stay in touch. While it's certainly not the same as actually seeing someone, it does allow for a bond to still be maintained when direct contact isn't possible.
5. Text messaging is so much easier than phone calls. I can do it in situations where making a phone call isn't appropriate. I can send a quick message without having to go through the whole thing of actually making a call. I can have 3 conversations like I am right now.