Sorry I haven't been around much. I've recently went from a 50 hour work week to a 56 hour work week. It's likely to be that kind of pace through the end of August. But I'm really enjoying my job after my promotion, and the pay is very nice. Plus, there are incentives to be had. At the pace that I go through applications, I could earn in the neighborhood of 500 to 700 dollars in gift certificates. (Mind you, this is after taxes, not before.) So I may not have much of a summer, but by winter I could be watching ER on HDTV.

Given the hours I'm working, it's just been too hard to keep up on the boards and on blogs. But this is only temporary as we get caught up on a backlog of applications for a new and popular product. It is not anticipated that they'll need me to work overtime in September or thereafter. But that's why it's so important to work as much OT as I can now. Come September, it may not even be an option. I should play Green Day's Wake Me Up When September Ends during this paragraph.

Speaking of September, I have a pretty big month in store. I've been saving my vacation days and I'll need them. My best friend is getting married, and yours truly will be serving as best man. That will be 9-22. I'll be taking the week off before that in case he'll need help. I'm taking 9-10 and 9-11 off. (I vowed I would never work on 9-11 again unless I had to.) On 9-10 I'll be going to San Francisco for a 49ers/Cardinals game to kick off the football season. On 9-7, I'm kidnapping the married-man-to-be and we're doing a 24-hour trip to Las Vegas for his bachelor party. I'm very excited about that, as I've never been to Vegas. I've been to Reno, as it's a two-hour trip from where I'm at.

Enough about me, onto the other half of my blog title. July 16 marked an anniversary of two events that I found highly ironic. On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 left earth's orbit and started its journey towards the moon. In four days, Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Alrin would become the first two men to set foot on the moon. On July 16, 1999, a plane crashed near Martha's Vineyard killing three people. John F Kennedy Jr, his wife Carolyn Bessette and her sister Lauren Bessette were the three people killed. The irony was that on July 16, President John Kennedy's legacy of promising to land on the moon was about to be realized. And on July 16, the other Kennedy legacy was being relived, being killed young. Thirty years to the day.