Garrett M. Vonk

Here are a few things I’m excited about this fall…

• Halo 3 - Duh. After playing the multiplayer beta and following every tiny tidbit of Halo news I could find on X3F, the most anticipated video game of all time is pretty high on my list. I even violated two of my self-imposed rules by A) pre-ordering the game at B) EB Games, but I don’t care. Come September 25th, I’ll be right there in line with the teenagers waiting to unwrap my cat helmet and play all night. Also–I have a Halo 3 party planned with several friends that night. I’m obsessed.
• Trip to Reno/California - Heather and I are heading to Northern California in October to visit my grandparents out there and do a little sightseeing. We happened to find a great price on a flight through Reno, so we’ll probably spend a day in Lake Tahoe, as well.
• Futurama - As far as I can tell, Futurama will be back on TV toward the end of this year or early 2008. It can’t come quickly enough for me. Yes, I saw the Simpsons movie, and it was great, but I’m at least equally excited for new Futurama after all of these years of repeats on Adult Swim.

We’re heading out tomorrow to the British Virgin Islands for a trip that we’ve been planning with Heather’s family since last July. We fly through Puerto Rico on Friday and stay the night in Tortola, and we’ll be on the boat Saturday through Thursday.

I guess there’s not much else to say except that we’re excited and trying to get packed and finish up everything at work before the trip. I always make a concerted attempt at not over-packing, but sometimes I fail. I have a feeling this may be one of those times. I mean, how many pairs of socks and gadgets could I possibly need on a 55′ boat?

Yes, we’ll take lots of photos and no, I won’t have access to email or phone for the whole week. It’ll be very nice.

August was a horribly neglectful month for the blog. I haven’t had much to say, and for that I apologize. A quick rundown of what’s been going on with me:

Early August: In Destin for a long weekend earlier this month, to sit on the beach and do nothing for 48 hours. Saw Jurassic 5 in concert. (Highly recommended.)

Mid-August: Work outing at the lake. Think I want a boat someday. Another work outing at Dave and Buster’s a week later.

Late August: My buddy Josh got married. This was a great time.

Throughout the last month or so, as you may have noticed, I’ve been playing a lot of NCAA Football 2007 for the Xbox 360. I highly recommend it, even with EA’s innovation-stifling monopolies and ridiculous pricing.

It was a very good weekend. Friday was a big work event up at Château Élan. I found, as usual, that no matter how nice the course is, I’m still pretty bad at golf. Saturday, we got some of the gang together and went out to celebrate my birthday at The Vortex and go have some drinks. Our fun was interrupted by the rain, however, and we had to hole up at Skippy’s place shooting pool and playing foosball. Not a bad way to celebrate one’s birthday.

Yesterday, we stayed inside (more rain) and I opened presents. The highlights were a DVD burner (yes, I’ve now entered the 21st century) and some very snazzy work clothes. Oh, and if you see me on MARTA reading any of the books in the Halo series, please try not to make fun of me. They’re interesting books.

The DVD burner makes my life much better, computer-wise. While I do have 440GB of space on my local hard disks (excluding iPods and other various external storage), I still seem to have a surfeit of large files that I don’t need daily access to, but can’t bring myself to delete. Now, I can burn them off 4.7GB at a time and make room for more important things, like archived shows from the Tivo and my 40GB of uncompressed video from our wedding that I’ve got sitting on there.

Saturday
We had a good group of people over to watch the UGA/Tenn. game, and we all know how that went. The new TV was in full effect, and everyone had a good time. It was definitely an experiment in cramming people into a small space, and we’ve quickly learned that our little condo was not designed for entertaining groups of people. Still, we managed to gather around the big screen and enjoy the thrilling contest.

We bought chicken for everyone from Roasters, and it was fantastic. I recommend their “Instant Party” for a quick and easy way to entertain a group of people. (If those people like buffalo wings, chicken fingers, and spicy spinach dip!)

After several rounds of beer and margaritas, and a sweet victory over the Vols, we walked over to IKEA across the street. The place was packed as usual, and it seems like we’ve (thankfully) gotten over our urge to spend hundreds of dollars every time we visit.

Sunday
Some of Heather’s family came over for lunch. We made tacos. Surprisingly, the simple meal was a hit. I think slicing fresh tomatoes and onions goes a long way toward making a simple meal seem more… thought out. I mean, all we really did was buy a few pounds of beef and some sour cream. Come to think of it, how, then, did we spend $100+ at Kroger?

Of course, I had to come in to the office both Saturday and Sunday for a big deadline Monday morning. This also forced me to miss kickball for the second time on Sunday evening. I’m glad to finally be working a less hectic schedule this week. Those 50-60 hour weeks take a toll on your system.

Ah, yes, the livejournal. I’ve been a little absent from the livejournal for a little bit, but a lot was going on…
My 21st birthday was Tuesday, went out with Matt, legally drank (woohoo) and had a great time. Heather was unfortunately sick and could not make it though she wanted to.
But we were still good.
I think.
Yeah, we definitely were.

Anyway, now it’s on to finishing that pesky degree with an assortment of electives! Fun!

Dancing is very very very fun. We danced at Half Moon, Firehouse, Wild Wing, and at my apartment. I think it’s some primal instinct, but I don’t do it very often. I think that’s because I am usually very self-conscious. Not tonight. I guess it’s just…
Whatever.

Last night was the sorority formal. I will add pictures once I get off my butt and have them developed. The event was fun. I honestly had a great time. The venue was a forgettable little “house with columns and a big front yard/walkway and a nice room in the back with a cover band.” So, really, we could have just stayed in Athens.

Anyway, we ended up dancing one time I think. The cover band was pretty good, possessing quite the gamut of musical talent in multiple genres.
So, since we took a (two hour) bus ride to get there, we were going to have to go home via the buses (four motorcoach-type things).

However, luckily I might add, Heather’s roommate had driven her and her boyfriend there and could give us a ride back.
We ended up going downtown since we weren’t exactly tired, just tired of being at the formal I think. So, decked out in our quite beautiful attire at about 11:30pm, we headed into Atlanta. After not too much scouring, we found the Westin Peachtree, the cool 70-odd story circular hotel that used to be the tallest building in the city. There is a restaurant at the top, for the uninitiated, that rotates so that the patrons can enjoy a 360 degree view of Atlanta. There is a lounge/bar above and inside this circle that rotates as well. The restaurant rotates at a healthy 1 revolution per hour, and the bar goes around twice as fast, 2rph.

We went around exactly one time and spent exactly $50. All we got for that was drinks for those of age and not driving, cheesecake, and some pretzels. I suppose going to one of the nicer joints in the city brings this kind of cost, but it is near-prohibitive for me!

In all, it was a fun night and I can’t wait for the pictures to come back.

Oh, I have to take them to be processed before they come back? You don’t say?