October?!?!

Well, for two people as chatty and opionionated as me and my wife, we certainly haven't done our own fair share of blogging recently, have we? Actually, life in September was rather hectic, as you could tell from our occasional updates. Mandy started her new job, we had a bit of drama with Cindy's car accident (the bruises have healed!) and I was back on the road for a good chunk of it. But what road trip wouldn't be the same without some pictures and stories...

For instance, check out my hot rental set of golf clubs here...

That was from my trip to Sacramento to visit our group out there. We played this tiny little course and I didn't want to haul my sticks all the way out there, so I rented. Have you ever hit a stone with a frying pan, attached to a wet noodle? Well, if you have, that's what playing with those bad boys was like. It was a good time though!

After that trip, I had a weekend in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. for some events. The downtown aquarium in Baltimore was really cool. Here was the view from our reception room on the top floor...

Not a bad little view. Having never been there before, I can say that I was pleasantly surprised with the city, for the 3 hours total I spent in it!

And now here we are in October. Thanks to Mandy's new job, she gets to travel a little bit again (not thrilling to her) and I can reinvent the temporary man cave while she's gone. Don't worry, I'm not stupid enough to get the place dirty, but the copious amount of sports viewing would make any woman want to gouge her eyes out.

Speaking of sports viewing, Mandy and I both cringed in agony last night for our two "favorite" sporting events...
1) The Cubs - I think I honestly watched 140 of the 162 regular-season games this year. That is silly, stupid, dedication. And what does it get me? Nothing. The curse lives and it will continue to live.

Side story: Yesterday, I am driving home for lunch listening to the Jim Rome Show (sports talk) and he calls out Cubs fans, saying "I want to hear from you and your Big Ten educated, 3-series driving, golden retriever walking...etc." I almost swerved off the road in my 3-series (on my home to let the golden out) because of the irony that, yes, I am a stereotype.

2) The Presidential race - What, you don't think it's a sport? I do. This campaign has the makings of a marathon race mixed with a little sophisticated football. Let's see which candidate can stand up the longest in the most places while talking mad trash to the other side the entire time. It's become the ultimate reality TV show, and dumb, average Americans eat it up. The VP debate last night proved the point. Biden was ridiculously more knowledgeable and prepared than Palin, but he was too smooth. She threw in common phrases like "doggone it" and "Joe six-pack" to mask her relative ignorance on the issues and endear herself to the millions of people sitting at home who think that personality alone will bring change.

The wild card: One person cried last night during the debate, and it wasn't the mother from Alaska. That was a shock. Mandy and I actually joked that Palin was trying to force a tear during her closing statement, but the emotion might come too late and instead of crying when talking about her kids, she would cry when talking about the deregulation of health care. That would've been funny.

31 days can't pass quickly enough...

And now, as it has become tradition on our blog, a shameless cute picture of our baby, the wannabe lap dog: