Scrabble Games I've made the effort for several years now to take a picture after each game of scrabble that I play. I'm sure that there are still several missing from the gallery, but hopefully in time I'll find the remaining ones and get them in here. I don't know why I find it interesting to keep up with them, but it's just one more thing worth collecting.

Graham Garage Sale A friendly little garage sale that the Grahams organized. Tracy also had a bunch of stuff to sell and I had a few items that I contributed to the pot. All in all the garage sale was a huge success. I made about $70, Tracy probably made around $180, and I think Sunni and Preston managed to walk away with over $800. So all in all, we collectively made over $1000, which I think is pretty good for any garage sale. Everything that was left over at the end of the day went to good will.

March 4th, 2008 Texas Primary As involved as I have been in our presidential race over the past year now, March 4th (the Texas primary) was finally my day to vote. Although I believe that Texas is significantly better than a lot of other states since we have an open primary system here, I believe that our system is just terrible. Absolutely and positively terrible. The reality is that I wanted to cast a vote for Ron Paul, but none of the other Republicans on the sheet. However, since I wanted to Vote for Ron Paul, I was only allowed to choose from the other Republican candidates as well. Consequently, and with exception of Don Zimmerman (who organized the bulk of Ron Paul support in Austin), I abstained from casting a vote in any other positions.

My Tama Drum Kit for Sale The one and only real instrument that I have ever parted with... Although I was inevitibly going to have to sell my drum kit when Tisa and I took off to New Zealand anyways (or put it in storage at least), I really sold this so that I had the money to afford her a nice Christmas present in 2002. It's a long story how I ultimately went about getting the thing packaged up and shipped across the country, but it landed me a few hundred dollars, just what I needed to buy Tisa a very simple little emerald ring. The ring was unfortunately lost about three weeks later, never to be seen again.

Some Early E-Bay Sales Just a bunch of junk that I either listed or helped other people to list on E-Bay over a few month period. My favorite items on here are the Girls Gone Wild DVDs. I can't remember exactly how much money we made off of them, but it turned out to be quite a bit. Basically what happened (and no surprise here) is that the company would NOT stop sending them to our house. We tried over and over again to contact them (one time I even left the phone at work on auto-redial for the entire working day) to no avail. I eventually just had to suck it up and explain to the bank what happened. To my surprise, they were very quick to help me with the situation, refunded the money I had been swindled out of, and put a stop payment on any future sales from them.

Barhopping with Teachers Tracy and I met a bunch of her friends downtown for some good old fashioned bar hopping. I was unfortunately still a bit sick and didn't really get to party it up as I might normally do, but still had a fun time. It turned out that the Texas Relays were going on and to say the very least, all of downtown Austin was a zoo. We spent a short while at Red Fez smoking the hookah, then over to the Beauty Bar (a long walk through huge crowds), and then finished the night off at the Apple Bar.

Tracy Getting her Tattoo Tracy has had her eye on a little wrist tattoo for a number of months now and after Louie (her brother in law) finally set up the appointment with 'his guy', off we went. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but the tattoo only took about 15 to 20 minutes to finish.

Flying the DA40-180 Dustin and I took a little break from our flight training to take a fun flight from Austin to Brenham (R11) in a Diamond Star DA40-180. The flight was uneventful but flying the DA40-180 was very enjoyable. This was the first time that I had ever flown a Diamond, or a stick, or a low-wing plane. I came to find that once you know how to fly, you know how to fly. Another interesting feature of the plane is the Garmin g1000 dual display glass cockpit. Navigating with it was a breeze.

Nice Thunderstorm There was a thunderstorm outside of my house and so I did the best I could to capture some bolts of lightning with my regular Canon Powershot. I found that if I set the camera for a slightly longer exposure, and then took random shots at the sky, I was periodically able to get a bit of the flash. One in particular captured the bolt of lightning perfectly.

Michael's EBay Sales A bunch of stuff that my brother was selling on eBay and Craigslist. He shot it all with my camera and so it ended up in my collection.