I’ve had a lot in my head lately, so I’m just pushing it all out here. I’ve been really lax in proper blog posting. Maybe if I stop talking about being a slacker, I’ll stop being a slacker. So, every paragraph or so that I write below could have been its own post at one point, or is just randomly pulled from the recesses of gray matter at the moment.

I haven’t logged into Warcraft in a week or more. I think that’s a new record. I get to talk about it with people, like James and Nasser and Anthony and such, and since I’m higher level than them all, I’ve been where they’re going usually, so it’s like playing vicariously. I’m actually surprised at how little James and I talked about it on the way out to California.

That reminds me, I didn’t really mention it here, but James and I went out to the Real Life Forums meet in California last weekend. It was about eleven hours each way, give or take half an hour. Using his amazing MacGyver-style ninja skills, he was able to repair the lighter socket splitter he had, and we were able to use a power inverter and his laptop and cell phone while on the road to connect and post a few pictures. He posted a number of them in a thread over there. Here’s the end picture, and if you click, it’ll show you a sequence of photos showing us posting from the car. James is on the left, sporting his I Roll Twenties shirt, while I’m sporting my Gravatar shirt with the special red logo, since I host a wide gravatar cache.

Lisa got home Sunday, while James and I were driving back. It’s really awesome to have her home. I got home at about 8:45pm or so on Sunday. It was good to come home to someone again.

This week has been utter terror at work in some ways. I’ve had a huge deadline looming overhead, but this morning, it suddenly got whisked until at least next week, if not further. Yay for the corporate world.

For those students of you out there (and I’m going to lump myself back into that as of this fall) who’ve been looking to pick up an Apple computer, here’s your chance. Apple is offering a Back to School program where you can either get a free iPod mini ($179 value, on student discount) with any qualifying Mac purchase, or you can have the $179 value applied as an additional discount. Between Lisa and me, we have two iPod shuffles and a pink iPod mini (which I’m stealingborrowing), so when I go to buy my PowerBook this fall, I’ll get an extra $179 off, which has me giddy.

I traded in Polarium for Meteos yesterday. A better video game swap has never been made. Not that I didn’t like Polarium, but it wasn’t that great, and a bit slow as games go. I mean, Mario’s Picross was faster, which is saying something if you’re familiar with Mario’s Picross (an old Game Boy game with Super Game Boy support, one of like five games with that). Meteos is extremely high speed and super fun. It’s got a bit of a learning curve, but man, it gets amazing.

This post has used more HTML markup than any post I’ve made in a good few months, if not a year or more.

Bloglines is quite possibly one of my favorite new tools. It saves me so much time in keeping up with my favorite parts of the blogosphere.

Stopping now as not to be so rambly.

I’m very amused, because I sat and started to compose this entry, and then I went and I dug up the entry I wrote last year for our fourth annivesary, and I was almost writing it out again word for word, at least in regards to the first few sentences.

Today marks five years that Lisa and I have been married. Five whole years. Part of me wants to crack a joke that I’m surprised she hasn’t gotten rid of me yet, but then part of me says that such a comment shows that I’d be doubting her love, which I most certainly don’t. We may have only been married five years, but this isn’t the first time we’ve been apart for our anniversary, as for our first anniversary, she was here in New Mexico while I was out in Virginia, as she was tending to family issues.

I really wish I could put into words how much I love her. Lisa completes me more than I could have ever imagined. Five years ago today, I put on this ring here on my left hand, and dedicated my life to her. Each day, I take time to touch it, turn it, fiddle with it, and to think about my lovely Lisa and how much I love her, and all of the things that this ring represents. I recall the gentleman who married us, how he told us that this ring is an outward symbol of our love, and how it represents that I belong to someone special, and that someone special belongs to me, and I never, ever forget that.

My friend Jeremiah just recently got married. My friends Anthony and Audra just got engaged. It’s awesome to see people I know taking these sorts of steps. I feel lucky, because I got an early jump on things.

I can’t wait to see where life takes Lisa and me. We’ve already been through so much in just five years, and as we progress and mature, I see so many wonderful things in our future.

Lisa, I love you so very much. I can’t wait to see you Sunday.

So, if you read this with any regularity, you know that my wife, Lisa, has been out of town for several weeks, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her original date of return was to be July 11th (well, at least that was when she would leave, and land the next day here in the states).

Well, that’s been bumped up rather considerably. She’s now heading out on June 27th!

This is a very exciting prospect. It means I get to have my wife back with me, which brings me more joy than I can describe. I’ve missed having her around so much. I feel so much better when she’s around. I don’t know what I’d do without her in my life.

It also makes me a bit nervous. My time to clean up the bedroom has just dropped from a few weeks to a few days! I’d better get crackin’ when I get home tonight.

I can’t wait to have my Lisa back with me!

Okay, initially for some reason I have yet to figure out, I was rather against the idea of Audioscrobbler, but having played just a wee bit with it, I’m enjoying it. I’ve even altered the blog to show recent songs over there on the side. Here’s some useful links.

Audioscrobbler.com
My profile on Audioscrobbler.com

It’s really quite a fun little non-intrusive program. I’m glad I’ve got it going now, especially because at one point, I liked the thought of a “Recent Music” list on the side of the blog there. I mean, it’s one thing to have it as post metadata, but to have it right there on the side, that’s pretty neat.

Aside: I feel some guilt that I’ve been so slack with this thing lately. Let’s hope I can turn that around.

I may have been in Argentina for a few days, but after the fact, it feels like fleeting hours. It was too short no matter how I look at it, but I had such an awesome time. I’ve got a ton of great memories now that’ll never leave me, and a couple of stamps in my passport, and lots of love in my heart for Lisa. So, let’s do some day by day summaries.

Thursday: Not much else past what I posted. Lisa got back to the hotel, and we went walking up to the Florida street mall. We walked all over and it was a blast. There was an arcade with this neat percussion game called Percussion Freaks (and I think it was the 4th edition, which is why that’s the one I linked), and Lisa and I both played with that and it was greatly amusing. We passed a number of theaters as well as the place where Lisa works, so I’d be able to walk back the next day.

Friday: Lisa went to work, I slept in. I got up and met her for a long lunch. We walked to a food court in this one mall and had a mediocre lunch from this teppan yaki type place there, and then an awesomely wonderful bit of chocolate ice cream with Dulce de Leche in it, which is apparently the national treat – the Dulce de Leche part. That night, we went and saw “Sr. y Sra. Smith”, which was in English with Spanish subtitles, except for the short scene where Spanish was spoken, and then there were no subtitles. It was funny because I’m used to having those scenes subtitled, and didn’t realize that they wouldn’t here – it makes sense, it was just amusing. Afterwards, we went to this place where I got an 18oz or so steak for like $7 US. It was a great steak, if a little undercooked for my taste. Well-done doesn’t exist in Argentina.

I should note, I think I’m remembering everything right, but I’ve already had to correct myself once. I haven’t really slept in roughly 38 hours or so, aside from short naps on the plane, which was a pretty rough ride back – more later on that.

Saturday: We had a blast today. We went and visited the LDS temple in the area, which was like a twenty minute drive from the hotel. We had a driver from the hotel as opposed to a taxi, since it was notably cheaper to have a driver hang around than it would have been for a taxi. It was very pretty, and I have a number of pictures that I’ll be trying to get up soon – probably tomorrow. We were there for about 45 minutes, then we had our driver take us to the zoo. We were at the zoo for easily three or four hours. It was much more open than the zoo here, with some animals just wandering about. We also saw a hippo for the first time. There’s this one camel that tried to eat Lisa’s hair, or at least that’s what she’d have you believe. It’s an awesome picture, and I’ll be providing a link for it soon. After the zoo, we went back to the hotel and rested a bit.

Saturday night: We had tickets for a tango show! Well, rather, reservations. At around 8 or so, a van showed up and picked us up, as well as some others, to take us to the show. It was a dinner first, then the show, and while the food options were limited, there was some pretty good and unique food. I still don’t know what was stuffed into my chicken, but it was pretty tasty. Lisa had a steak that had some sort of grape sauce on it, although the grape wasn’t really that strong. At 10:15 or so, the show started, and ran for like 90 minutes. It wasn’t quite what we expected, but it was great. There’d be some dancing, then some singing, then some dancing, then some just instrumental music for a few minutes, then dancing, then singing… you see the pattern here. The end culminated with singing and dancing combined in this really neat setup, and overall it was just awesome. We got back around midnight-ish, I think.

Sunday: Well, Sunday was the official opening of the call center, so we had to be there at 8am or so. We went and stayed as short as we could, then came back to the hotel and took a nap. I think we got moving again at around 1pm or so. We took a taxi down to the Hard Rock Cafe, where we had lunch, then walked around an area that I know only as “the fair”. It consists of a TON of people selling various home-made items. It’s very touristy and full of souvenirs and tons of live music and such, and it was a blast. After walking through a lot of that, we walked over to the cemetary and wandered about the mausoleums. We walked up to Evita’s tomb and looked at it for a minute or two. It was covered in flowers and other such tributes. It was a very different experience, and I know I saw a number of coffins that were occupied, which was a bit weird. It was very unique, to say the least. Afterwards, we walked over to the national fine arts museum and walked around that for a bit, then we walked over to the theater and decided there was nothing else we wanted to see, so we caught a taxi back to the hotel. That night, we went to dinner at Bice, and that was quite possibly the best meal I have ever had at a restaurant, ever. It was great. Such an awesome lasagna. Yum. Great dessert too, great everything. So good.

Monday: Lisa went to work, I slept in a bit, and got moving at about 9am or so (6am in my home time zone). I packed up a bit, then walked and met Lisa again for lunch. I had this thing called a milanesa, which was somewhat like a really big chicken fried steak. I had the extra version, which also had some ham on it. After that, we went and got a small treat at a corner store, then she went back to work and I went back to the hotel. She got off work, we had té, and just hung out together in the room until I had to leave. The car picked me up for the airport at 6:50pm local time there, and it was a very hard goodbye. The drive to the airport took forever too.

Monday night: Checking in at the airport in Argentina was very different. I went through at least two different metal detectors and wand checks and had to show my boarding pass and passport to what seemed like a ton of people until I finally got to my gate. The plane back was a 767, but it didn’t have any of those nice little air vents for personal AC, so I felt like I was roasting on the plane. I also didn’t have a personal screen, so I was subject to whatever they were showing, which in this case was some highlight reel from CBS content, then “Because of Winn-Dixie”, which I didn’t even bother listening to. I just switched to music and tried to sleep. I couldn’t really sleep well.

Tuesday morning: I got into Dallas at around 6:45 Dallas time, which was 5:45 for my home time zone. I’d been going for about 24 hours now, with only some mild plane napping, which is almost worse than no sleep at all in a way. I got off the plane, and had to pick up my bags and go through all the customs stuff, and it took about an hour to get through it all. It didn’t help that in my groggy state, I kept forgetting to take metal off of myself as I passed through detectors, meaning I got a much more detailed security check upon arrival. After re-checking my bags, I talked to Lisa and my mom on the phone for about a minute or two each, then sat down in the Chili’s Too at the airport and had some breakfast while I waited on my flight. It wasn’t to leave until 9:42 Dallas time, so I had a couple of hours to sit there. My flight back to Albuquerque was decently nice – it was all on time with no issues, and it was probably the smoothest landing I’ve ever had in Albuquerque. My mom picked me up, and we came back to my house where we dropped off my bags, and did a quick flip through of the pictures of the trip, then we went and got a chicken bowl. I then came back and took a nap for a couple of hours, then I got up and I’ve been slogging around the net for a couple of hours, catching up.

This entry is just beastly, so if you didn’t read it all, I can’t blame you. I’ll try to make the next few shorter, I swear. I think my next few entries will probably be observations about Argentina and things that fascinated me or amused me at least. I’m so glad I took tomorrow off, because I need a day to recoup from my trip.

Okay, I’ve been really bad about blogging lately, but I wanted to take the time to do a quick entry, for all who might be curious.

So, Lisa’s been in Argentina for almost a month now. I can’t believe it has gone that fast. In fact, it’s gone so fast that it’s already time for me to be down here. I meant to post before I left, but, well, that didn’t happen.

My flight took off yesterday at 3:30 Mountain Daylight Time, just a few minutes late, and I don’t recall exactly when it landed, six-something local time there. I only had about twenty minutes to wait, maybe, before we started boarding at 6:50 – so I guess we landed at like 6:30 then.

The flight to Buenos Aires took off at 7:35 local time there, and it was great. It was a Boeing 777, for reference, and my seatback had my own personal screen. After we got up and meal service started, there were several channels with movies. I watched Robots. I was mildly disappointed. I believe that on the way back, I’ll be catching Coach Carter, which I have higher hopes for. After Robots, I could have waited for one of the other movies to start, but I decided to try and sleep. So much for that. I think I kind of half slept for about four to five hours. I woke up, listened to music, and ate the “breakfast snack” of a croissant and cantalope that we were served.

The flight landed at about 7:45am or so, local time – but my body was still thinking 4:45, so I felt a little tired. However, the excitement kept me going strong. I breezed through customs, which was nice, and then walked out to a guy holding a sign with my name on it. We walked outside, and about all I caught was “here” and “parking garage” – so I stood still, and he bolted off. He drove up a few minutes later, to take me to the hotel.

I had a better grasp of spanish than he did of english, so I was able to tell him “I’m sorry, normally I like to talk, but my spanish is poor” to which he chuckled and replied that it wasn’t a problem. We somehow established that I was here on vacation, and that my wife was here on business, and that I was visiting her – at least, I think we did.

Apparently, in Argentina (or at least here), lanes on the road are roughly recommendations, ones that are rarely followed. We were also speeding like mad, doing like 120km/h. I have no idea how fast that is in miles per hour, and I’m too tired to bother right now, but the speed limit was like 80.

I got to the hotel, and after a few minutes, found the right place to check in. Apparently I had to go to the nicer Park Tower as opposed to the normal Sheraton place. Lisa’s got a nice setup here, let me tell you. I think she’s got some pictures I’ll have to put up. It’s a four-star hotel, which is quite nice.

After that, well, I came down to the business center, and plopped down here. I’ve been IMing via the web, as well as sending an email or two out, so that friends and family know I’ve made it and that I’m alive and well.

This entry is a lot longer than I anticipated, but it’s just flowed out with no stopping. I’m wrapping up here though, because I just got hit by a strong wave of exhaustion, and I think I’m going to go shower and lay down. Maybe I’ll see if I can get an early lunch first. There’s a restaurant right here next to the business center.

Last thoughts: This keyboard is what I’m used to for the most part, but it has keys like ñ and ¿ and ¡ to make entering such common characters easier, as well as a convenient sort of ´key so that I can enter things like é and á easily. It’s rather amusing, although it took me a minute to find the normal apostrophe, as well as how to enter the @ symbol, as it’s on the Q and I have to use this AltGr key. However, I figured it out quite well. Yay for being computer savvy.

Okay, that’s it – I’m off to eat and/or sleep. Feel free to comment and/or write emails, but know that I may be quite slow until I’m back in town on Tuesday. I’ll probably update this a time or two while I’m here, since Lisa has to work.