Teetering on death

With my increased (almost obsessive) usage of facebook, I find that I'm far less likely to update this blog, more than ever. Hardly anyone even knows this thing exists. And anyone that I want to keep in touch with or update my life to is already on facebook.

I probably won't delete this blog, and I'll keep the domain name (until the day that hole.com becomes available again). But for the few of you who will see this post, look me up on facebook.

The holiday season is upon us

I really been bad about updating this blog over the last...well...forever, actually. But lately, I've had some other stuff really take up my time, so blogging has taken a back seat. That, and I don't know if anyone even reads this thing. I think there might be two or three people.

Anywho, Christmas is finally here. I'm getting ready to head to my Mom and sister's house for the next couple of days. I'm excited about the Honey Baked Ham my sister is getting. And I'll probably brave good ol' Coral Square Mall for shopping the day after Christmas, because I'm a masochist.

Let's see...what else is new...

I've really gotten into Facebook. I'm on that thing all the time, just to see what my friends are up to. Facebook is definitely far more interesting than MySpace, and less of an eyesore. And for some reason, I'm addicted to Mob Wars...

Well, that's pretty much it for now. The Christmas break may be just what I needed...or I will end up going insane. Either way works for me.

I am the Godfather

This past Saturday, Kiet and Anny had their son Connor baptized. It was a very big day, as I was chosen as the Godfather. I have to pick a Saint name for the child. After a long and arduous process, which involved scouring the interwebs for Catholic saints, I ended up choosing:

Magnus

Why? Well, why not? I wanted to pick something unique and interesting. I think this fits the bill, don't you?

Went off-road biking today

It's been quite a few months since I got my new mountain bike, and I have yet to take it off road. I've been sticking mostly to the paved trails. I even swapped out my off-road tires for slicker road tires.

Sure enough, a few days after I swap the tires, I decide to go off-roading. Carey and I head out to Snowhill Trail, which is just off Chuluota Rd. We join about 15 other people from the meetup.com group. It was a beginner's ride, and was pretty fun. After the first couple planned miles, some of the group split off to go home. We stayed with everyone else, and tried out some of the other paths.

If I wasn't with some of the regulars, I can easily see myself getting very lost. The trails are very winding, and I have no idea which direction to take at the intersections. After about three total hours, we were done. It was a pretty grueling day for me, but definitely fun.

Now I get to go home and swap out my off-road tires for road tires. Again.

Connor Van has arrived!

Last night, Anny gave birth to Connor. He's a healthy 6lb 9oz baby.

The experience was something. Anny arrived at the hospital for a routine checkup. She wanted to know if they could get this thing going, and the hospital had an opening. It was on.

I got the call around 5pm, and they broke the water around 6pm. A short 6 hours later, she was fully dilated, and the real action began. Kiet and Anny's mom were in the room, as was I. I had to be backup in case Kiet passed out from the sight of blood.

Luckily, Kiet managed to keep his balls in check, and hung in there for the serious pushing. After only 30 minutes, Connor was here. Kiet even managed to cut the cord.

Now the easy part is done. The next 18 years is the hard part.

Got new road tires

Not much going on lately.

I've been riding the bike regularly for the last couple of months: at least once a week, if not more. But the knobby mountain tires are a real pain when riding on paved trails. And since I ride pretty much exclusively on paved trails, it pretty much sucks.

So I finally went out and bought two road tires, and swapped them out. The difference is amazing. Hopefully now I can go further without getting as tired so quickly.

In retrospect, buying a road bike probably would have been just as good as a mountain bike. I wanted the flexibility to switch, since I think off road trails look like fun. But there aren't too many around Orlando, so I haven't exactly needed the mountain bike capabilities.

Linguine with Clams

Since cooking is allegedly one of my hobbies, I figure I might as well start posting pictures of some of my delicious creations. I've actually made quite a few good dishes over the last few months, but I never think to take pictures, or even post them.

This particular meal was spinach and wheat linguine, with whole clams in a tomato basil sauce with mushrooms. I didn't follow any recipe for this one. I just kinda threw some ingredients together that I thought would taste good.

Although I did cheat a little. The clams weren't fresh, they were frozen, and were on sale at Publix, so I bought them.

I want to kill you with my toe

If you haven't noticed, finding new hobbies is apparently a hobby of mine. So far, I've kept up with all my new hobbies relatively well: shooting, cycling, reading comics, cooking.

One hobby that I've been wanting to pick up for years is martial arts. I used to take Tae Kwon Do when I was a kid, but that was 15 years ago. I actually tried picking up TKD again a couple years back, but that was a lame experience. Mostly because I was too cheap to pay for a real school, and ended up with the UCF TKD club. Good people, just not serious enough for me.

In any case, I stumbled upon Krav Maga a year or two ago, and decided that was a pretty badass skill to have. It's a hand-to-hand combat system developed in Israel, and used by various Israeli Security Forces. But I never pursued it.

Then Human Weapon profiled Krav Maga on the History Channel, and I got all stoked about it again. But that didn't get too far either.

Part of the problem is that no one teaches it in Orlando. Not a single person. So I couldn't even go watch a session in person. But recently, I heard that a licensed trainer was teaching classes here in Orlando. So myself, Kiet, and a couple other people went to go check it out. When we got there, we were told that the instructor moved out of state, and no one would be teaching Krav Maga. WTF?

So, back to square one...

Maybe I should just take Self Defense for Women.

Bought some ammo...

Since I'm going to the gun range about once a month, I figured it was wise to find some cheap ammo somewhere. I ended buying 1,000 rounds of .38 special ammo from www.ammoman.com for only $239. At $24/100 rounds, it's a good price. The standard price is usually $30/100 rounds.

Shipping was free, which is good, because the box weighed a lot...probably 30-35 pounds. I've shot about 200 rounds of it so far. It's pretty dirty ammo, with a lot of smoke and residue left on the gun. The price is right, but I probably won't get ammo that cheap again. I'll just run through the rest of what I have, then look for some higher quality ammo.

Getting my ride on

Now that I've got a nice bike, I've taken it out twice on two group rides. I found these groups through a neat website called MeetUp. It's a great way to meet new people and basically get out of the house. They have all sorts of things you can do.

Anyway, I did the first ride with Chris and Carey: the Winter Park Urban Assualt. It was a 20 mile ride going through the city. Damn, it kicked our asses. It was a high intensity ride, going through minor obstacles like curbs, stairs, rocks, and dirt, as well as plenty of evening traffic. Perhaps not the best choice for a first ride, but oh well. Luckily, it was a "no-drop" ride, so the advanced riders would wait for us to catch up when we fell behind. Towards the end, we were so tired, that we had to split off from the group and head back on our own.

The next ride was the Cady Way Trail social ride. It was a 18 mile trek on a bike path, at a much more leisurely pace. Chris and I did this, and it was definitely more our pace. We were tired at the end, but not completely destroyed like the previous ride. That, and the people on this ride were far more sociable than the Urban Assualt.

We'll probably do another Urban Assault again, although we'll just call it quits sooner this time around.