I’m not one to promote finding happiness during the holidays based upon the gifts you receive. I mean, as always, I’d much rather get nothing and have the chance to go home and see my family than anything else. But sometimes you just get something that’s hard to beat and you’ve been wanting to have for years. And this year’s gift is, in fact, something that I have wanted to have for as long as I can remember. I’ll use pictures as a description here, because I think it pretty much says it all.

One of the not so unknown things about me is that I’m obsessed with the Braves and have been since I was a kid. I mean, I helped start and write for BravesBlast.com. Normal people just don’t do that kind of thing.

For the longest time, I was convinced that the Georgia Tech football program was cursed when it came to beating Georgia by my enrollment in the school. The Jackets last won the Georgia game in 2000, which just so happened to be the year before I made my way to Tech. I was enrolled at Tech for 6 years (2001-2006), all of which yielded losses in the season-ender against U(sic)GA. I thought for sure that, with my graduation at the end of 2006, last season would be the time that we beat Georgia since I was finally gone. But that wasn’t to be and we had our 7th consecutive loss.

When it came down to analyzing the situation, I decided to blame ECE3055 for Georgia Tech losing the game against Georgia last season.

If you’re looking for a post about some miracle body makeover I’ve been able to make at the gym, you’re looking in the wrong place. If you’re looking for some magic workout that will allow you to have the perfect body, you’re also in the wrong place. I’m not really the type that likes to stare at myself in the mirror and continually tell myself how perfect I look like half the guys at the gym. Don’t lie….you’re out there….I see you every day.

I go to the gym to try not to die the next time that I go out to run farther than I ever really should. Right now, that day is January 10th, 2009 at the Disney Half Marathon. So I head off that way after work most days to do my thing and try to feel a little less bad about my generally out-of-shape self. I have found however that, instead of large amounts of muscle mass, I have gained a few things….

I learned some interesting things about the Georgia government today and I also learned that being summoned for jury duty and forgetting to take a book makes for one of the most boring days possible. In light of missing work for the day to be a responsible juror candidate, I decided I was going to knock out as many of those civic duties as I possibly could and also took advantage of the Georgia early voting program to cast my ballot for the November 4th election.

My day of jury duty started with me dragging my far-from-awake self out of bed around 6:30. Now to some of you, that’s not a big deal and sounds like a normal day. But for those that know the extent of my days, if the time doesn’t start with a 9 when I roll over and look at the alarm clock, my day is off to a bad start.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been two and a half years since Shirlock passed away. I still find myself off in space fairly often thinking about him and the random things that we got to around the dorm room, around the city, and anywhere else that we managed to wander and find trouble to get into. The general day-to-day of getting through life has gotten easier, but missing him and wishing that he was still physically here hanging out never really goes away. As always though, I make sure to keep plenty of pictures of us around the house.

I don’t really have too much to write about it all tonight, just that I’m taking a low-key night and thinking back to all of the great times that we had through the years.

I guess 2:30 in the morning is as good of a time as any to post an update on the progress on my various projects and such. First of all, and probably most noticably, I’ve been working on completely redesigning my site here as I mentioned I was going to be doing. I’m still playing around with a lot of things and trying to get it operating how I want, but I’ll get through it all. Please bear with me for the time being on things that look a little out of place or a little too plain or empty. I’m working on it and hopefully I’ll get everything I want to coded and styled soon enough. Also, I’m always open to hearing any suggestions or what you think about the new design.

Without fail, it’s Thursday and my hip hurts again. A little background: I hurt my hip during the half marathon in Virginia Beach. Call it what you will; out-of-shapedness, lack of training, being a crappy runner, but I’ll stick with “pushing myself to the limit”. Okay, so that’s a complete load of crap. I just wasn’t ready for it.

So back to the point, I hurt my hip during the race and it’s been bothering me off and on since then. It usually starts feeling better throughout the week and then on Thursday with softball games, starts bothering me again. Lately however, it’s been bothering me even before the game on Thursdays, but this week takes the cake.

It seems like I’ve got too many things going on right now but at least it gives me something to do in the offchance that I ever get some free time to work on them.  Aside from the basement project (which I’ll have updates on and a few photos here shortly), I have a good number of web projects that I’m trying to get figured out and prioritized:

JonathanTorrell.com - I’m ready to do a redesign of my site and get my WP installation up-to-date.  It’s time for a new look …

Apparently my general rule of leaving for the airport two hours before my flight’s supposed to leave does not apply at 4 in the morning. This method that usually gets me to the gate a few minutes before boarding starts has me sitting at my gate an hour and twenty minutes before my 6:50 flight is supposed to leave. So I sit here listening to the recap of the night of a group of people that are trying to get to Vegas, but spent the night in the Atlanta …

Stay and I ran a 5K in Brookhaven this morning.  It’s the first time I’ve really ran since the ING……and it showed, but I was mainly out there to see how my knee felt.  I went to the orthopedist this week to get it checked out since it’s still sore after the ING and he gave me a referral to a physical therapist.  We’ll see how it all goes.  Anyways, we’re sitting down now to eat some chili-cheese dog……at 10 in the morning.  That’s okay, right?
Just wanted to drop in …