Today is the 27th, and Christmas is officially over in my house. We took down all the decorations, threw out the tree and cleaned the house. You might say ‘wow that was fast’, but in my house, we like to keep things organized and clean and that means throwing out a dead Christmas Tree.

I know I haven’t blogged in like a week. It’s been a nice vacation away from the harsh demands of blogging. While I am still on vacation from my real job (our offices are closed until January 2…. nice huh?), I am trying to get back into the swing of things with my websites. I haven’t done any work online in quite a few days. I sorta feel bad or guilty for not working.

If any of you were wondering how my Christmas went, it was very good! One of the best ever. I got a lot of awesome gifts including a new iPhone. I can’t believe I’ve been living the past few months without one. I literally haven’t put this thing down. I almost wrote this blog post from my iPhone. It’s the best device I’ve ever had. The Wifi connection it gets is about as fast as my computer. It makes browsing the web very convient. Even the EDGE network is pretty fast. Just the other night I was at dinner and we decided to go to a movie, so I pulled up some movie times on my phone in about a minute. It’s great.

I also got a lot of clothes, and a couple of Xbox 360 video games…including Guitar Hero 3 and Assassin’s Creed. I haven’t opened Assassin’s Creed yet, but will probably jump into that game tonight.

Like I said, it was a great Christmas. I pretty much got everything I could have asked for. But now it’s over. The big family feasts and fun days are over. It’s back to work for me.

Months ago, back in June, I posted that I had been looking for a new car. I just wanted to fill everyone in on an update.

I have really narrowed my search down to a 2005 Infiniti G35 Coupe. I originally posted that I was interested in the Sedan, but that quickly changed. The more I looked at the G35 Coupe, the more I fell in love with it.

Why the 2005 model? Well, one… I’m not rich enough to buy a brand new car. And two, I don’t really believe in buynig new cars. After reading The Millionaire Next Door, I realized how much money is instantly lost when you buy a brand new car. Nothing depreciates faster then a new car the minute you drive it off the lot. Buying a brand new car is really only for people that have a lot of disposable income. There is just no need for someone in my position to buy a new car, when a used one will work just fine.

The reason why I haven’t purchased a car yet is mostly because of the wedding I’m planning and paying for. Katie and I have to pay for a lot of the wedding ourselves so money is tight, and will be tight until after the honeymoon. Another reason why I’ve been putting it off, is that my current Acura TL is still running fine. I don’t have a car payment right now, so it will be very tough to trade in a perfectly fine car for a new one that comes with a $300-400/mo payment.

Things always change though. Maybe I’ll hit it big on the internet next week and be able to buy the car sooner. If any of these plans change, I’ll be sure to keep you posted!

I’m venturing into unchartered waters! I’m actually working and posting on a Saturday, something very, very rare for me. Now before you go and say I’m lazy and blah blah because you work on Saturdays all the time, please remember that I hold a 40 hr/wk corporate job AND work on my website network during the week. So really, when the weekends come I’m spent and ready to just chill out.

Usually I’ll spend a Saturday with my fiance Katie or hanging out with my friends watching football. However, today Katie is at a wedding shower with her friends and there is no football on! The Heisman Award ceremony is on tonight and I will be at a party cheering on my favorite gator Tim Tebow. But for now, I’m just listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers and chilling at home waiting.

It is a very nice day out today and an unusually warm like 80 degrees. I could go play golf or something, but I really wanted to sit down and get some uninterupted work done…something I haven’t done in a long time.

I’ve already posted once on Forum Business Blog, and I plan to tmestamp about 3 more posts. I’ll probably post 1-2 more times on this blog as well with timestamps for Monday and Tuesday. I have about 3 or 4 other sites/blogs that need posting on too. And depending on how my time goes, I might start up a new blog that I’ve been wanting to for a week or so. We’ll see though.

So all to my friends out there who are also on the net, I hope you have a great weekend. Don’t work too hard! Weekends are supposed to be fun!

 

I’m sure some of you outside of America, or those of you who don’t care about sports, may not know what fantasy football is. You basically draft a team of real NFL players and you get points based on their performance every week. We have 12 teams in my fantasy football league, and we’re all ‘real life’ friends, so it makes it very fun and ultra competitive. I’m a huge fantasy football nerd and spend way too much time on it.

This week marks the first week of the Fantasy Football playoffs in our league. Since I won my division with an 8-5 record, I will be playing this week against the worst Wild Card winner. I’ve beat this guy already twice this year, and shouldn’t have a problem beating him a third time so I advance to the next week. If you lose in the playoffs, you’re out.

Check out my team:

QB: Jon Kitna, Jay Cutler

RB: Larry Johnson, Travis Henry, Chester Taylor, Kolby Smith, Selvin Young, Ron Dayne

WR: Braylon Edwards, Steve Smith, Marques Colston, Chris Chambers, Andrew Walter

TE: Antonio Gates

K: Nick Folk

DEF: Broncos

There are definitely areas I could have improved on, but my team was solid enough to make the playoffs. Losing Larry Johnson for the season really hurt me. But good news came out this week… Travis Henry won’t be suspended, so that helps a lot.

In the fives years my group of friends have been playing fantasy football, I’ve only one the Superbowl once… that was like 2 years ago when I had Larry Johnson, Shaun Alexander, and Tiki Barber (all of them had completely insane years that year).

I’m not the favorite going into the playoffs this year, but I could possibly win it all if my players get hot. I especially need Steve Smith to return to form.

I swear this holiday can’t get here any faster. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Really who doesn’t like it? I feel bad for people outside of America who don’t get to celebrate. Although your country may have a similar holiday on a different day, I don’t really know.

The first Thanksgiving dates back almost 400 year ago when Pilgrim settlers and native Indians got together for a great big feast. They shared their food with one another and gave thanks for their harvest. At least that’s how the story books tell us it happened.

Thanksgiving in my house consists of a ton of eating and football. We have a lot of family coming in to stay at my parent’s house in Jacksonville. We usually have the main feast around 2:00 or 3:00 pm on Thursday afternoon. We have all the good stuff… turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, biscuits, green bean casserole, and a wide variety of yummy desserts. All day we just eat.

Another great thing about Thanksgiving in America is football. This year the NFL has 3 games on Thursday, which means it’s an all day event now. The Jaguars aren’t playing, but all the games are enticing and meaningful, especially when your fantasy football playoff hopes are on the line.

Friday morning all the guys have golf schedule and, if it’s nice out… my entire family will all go out on the boat in the afternoon. I’m not counting on that though because the high could be like 60 degrees.

Saturday is another fun day or just hanging out and eating. The Florida vs. Florida State football game on Saturday late afternoon. I’m not going to the game, but I will be watching it. I have a sister and uncle who are FSU alumni, so it’s a big family rivalry between them and myself (for those of you new to the blog…I am a Florida graduate).

All in all it’s just an amazing few days of fun and being with the family. I’m still at work until Wednesday afternoon, but lucky enough to be able to dip out early. I’m not going to be posting these next few days. I’ve said many times before that I don’t like to work on holidays and that means working on this blog too. I may timestamp something though for tomorrow.

Hope everyone has a great week!

The last major piece to the wedding planning puzzle was completed on Saturday. After months and months of going back and forth, my fiance and I finally decided on a honeymoon destination. We knew that we wanted to go somewhere tropic and wanted to stay at an All Inclusive (all food, drinks and activites are included in your rate) resort so we would have no worries once we got there. We officially decided on and booked a week long stay at the Sandals Grande St. Lucian Spa and Beach Resort.

I’ve heard only good things about Sandals Resorts. Neither of us have stayed at one, but by looking at the pictures and reading the reviews you really can’t go wrong. We decided on St. Lucia because of its pure tropical beauty. Not only do you have perfect beaches right outside the room, but there are mountains and rainforest excursions not far from the resort either. The only thing that could have kept us from picking St. Lucia is that it is about 7 hours away from where we live. It’s almost at the equater. We could have gone somewhere closer like the Bahamas or Jamaica, but we really felt St. Lucia offered us everything we could want in a honeymoon destination. And the rates weren’t too expensive. We were able to book a Honeymoon sweet.

So far we have already booked a half day jeep excursion through the rainforest and we booked a trip to one of those adventures where you go on rope lines overy the canopy. I’ve always seen people doing that on TV and it’s looks like so much fun. We’ll also take boat tours around the island and do a sunset cruise. In addition to hanging out at the beach and pool all day we’ll also make it to the spa and I might play a round of golf.

Our honeymoon will be a short one though…only 6 days. We would have liked to have a 10 day honeymoon, but my fiance is an elementary school teacher and she was only able to get off one week of school because of the lack of substitute teachers. To make up for that, we are planning another vacation for the summer of 2008 to California and/or Las Vegas.
We’re really excited about this trip. We went to the Bahamas about a year and a half ago, but this trip will totally blow that one away. Check out the pictures on the Sandals St. Lucian website if you get a minute. There is a ‘photo’ button on the right side just above the 45% off image. It truly looks like paradise.