Happy Birthday to Steve

Dadadad

gagagaa

heyababab

madadgabaya

(sorry...have to translate..Kaleb insisted on singing happy birthday to you on line, Steve, but doesn't quite know the words yet! So...

Happy Birthday to you...

Happy Birthday to you...

Happy Birthday to Uncle Steve

Happy Birthday to you!!

And he's off

Well, thought you all might like to know that Kaleb took his first official "crawls" this weekend! Sure, he's been doing the army man crawl for a while and can get places amazingly quickly that way, but we were excited to see the effort made towards switching to the real thing:-)!
In other news, we went down to the river last night as it was a balmy 70 degrees around 7pm, and John caught 2 good sized catfish...let the fishing season begin!

Checking off the sights

Well, this past week or so, John and I have made an effort to get out into Downtown D.C. We have a checklist of things we want to get to while we are in the area. Our first stop on Thursday was to watch the National Symphony orchestra play in the Kennedy Center. AMAZING. Both John and I had never heard an orchestra play so well (even the ones I have been in I am sad to admit!). We were especially impressed with how quiet an entire string section could get and also how many instruments the percussionists could play at one time. On Saturday, we ventured downtown (along with everyone else it seemed as parking was hard to find) to go to the National Geographic museum. I had heard it was like the natural history museum, only smaller. Wrong. If you have elementary age kids it's fun, otherwise, skip this one. We went to the National Cathedral after this and definitely recomend this one. It is beautiful and reminds of us the European cathedrals. The coolest parts I think are the windows...one which is dedicated to space exploration and actually has a moon rock in it. On Sunday, John was in the D.C. St. Patty's day parade. His captain complimented him on how well he did. On Monday, he took half a day off because he had to work on Sunday, and we went to the Eastern wing of the National Art gallery. This is the modern section. One of the main collections was by Jasper Johns. I can enjoy this section, but John prefers the Western gallery which holds much older pieces. Definitely worth the time to see as well. That's it from this edition of the Shirley guide to D.C.!

Eastern Europe 2007

Hello Everyone--I just wanted to let you know that our trip was a blast. We went all over the place. I sent some pictures to Steve, so we should have a little filmstrip of pictures to go with this post. The places that we traveled include: Venice, Italy; Lubijana & Bled, Slovenia; Budapest, Hungary; Bratslavia, Slovakia; and Vienna, Austria. I enjoyed most of the places, but I definately liked the horseback ride through the mountains in Bled. I also enjoyed the Balet in Bratslavia. I have now made it to 32 countries. When I returned, Mom and I went to North and South Carolina for Presidents Day Weekend. We went to a couple of movies and played two minature golf courses. Then, we spent some time a place called South of the Border in South Carolina. We went up into a 200 ft tall Sombrero. That trips makes 47 states that I've explored. I hope you like the pics. Talk to you all later. Love, John

Engaged!

Well as all of you know, I proposed to Delia on Saturday and she accepted. We are officially engaged to be married. Not sure when or how, etc yet. We will let you know. Here we are kissing in the new year of 2007 on a patio of a San Francisco apartment while the fireworks were going off. It was a great gathering of friends. Delia will be here in Newport until Thursday which is nice. Ole' Steve is finally gettin' married. We are very excited!

GNC...GN-who?

For all you GNC lovers out there, I've got a newsflash for you: Yesterday's news. GNC is the supplement and vitamins store you see at malls. John has one at the base store in DC. I used to go there in college, etc., to get some supplements, whey protein and other. However, it MUST be yesterday's news for me and all of you too. You can get the same stuff for literally half the price at Bodybuilding.com. I recently bought about 70$ worth of stuff that normally would have cost about 150$ if I would have went to GNC. Plus, when you order from this sight, it also arrives at your house in about two days. Pretty cool if you ask me. Enjoy!

I'm back!

So Kaleb broke the silence. Great job Kaleb. I am really not sure if anyone wants to check this out from time to time or not. But if you do...I will be here.

I have been pretty busy lately. I found some space today to finally clean up my office and get it set up the way I want. Basically, my roommate Sean was always unplugging the internet connection from my computer to his and it took a long time for me to either switch back or just use his (which probably took even longer to get going!). Time is money.

I have basically been studying and lifting weights and that is it for the past month. "Work hard..uh...I forget the rest." I have been to busy to worry about the rest of that statement. I have been making good grades and getting ripped. I have only been lifting for about a month and I can already see the difference.

Eating is the biggest challenge of bodybuilding. I didn't expect to have to eat so much. Chicken breasts, brown rice, tuna, salmon, steak, potatoes, spaghetti...rotate...Oh and 5-8 eggs in the morning. Oatmeal, wheat bread, tons of fruit, veggies, sandwiches with as much meat as you can pile on. I bring a backpack of food to school so I can eat all day. Sundays involve about 3hrs of cooking and 1hr to shop. Part of it.

I am 203 lbs and 22% body fat. I was about 192 lbs and 25% body fat when I started. I literally am about one month into it though. I think this months goal is to be 208 lbs and around 19% body fat. That will only be about two months though. This is a 6 month long program! That is the fun part! Baby steps. My six month goal is to be just over 210lbs with around 10-13% body fat. We will see.

I better get back to my Sunday chores. I will be re-arranging the blog again. Maybe get my ugly marathon mug off there. I am going to try to get some more recent photos on there. Don't forget to check out the new voting poll. It's coming ya'll...really... it's already happening.

In the great words of lil' bro: "peace out!"

Kaleb

Hello:

I am 8 months old (well, really only 7 months, but my 8 mo. birthday is coming up soon). I like to chew on anything I can grab. I am especially good at taking off my own sock and eating it. I can sit up on my own (well, until I fall down or mom and dad catch me). I have recently started eating rice cereal and just learned how to hold my hold bottle. Am interested in happy, fun, girls who would like to roll around on the floor and won't take my pacifier.

Hey there Mr. Jobs

Dear Mr. Jobs:

I was driving the other day listening to my Ipod Nano in my truck. Cruisin' to the sweet tunes of the new John Mayor CD Continuum (A must have if you like JM). I love my Ipod. I guess it was inevitable that I would get one since I love music so much. I have tons of CDs of all genre of music. I have been a downloading fool by getting all my favorates to my Ipod.

So I was driving and decided to listen to the radio instead. A great song came on the radio (I think it was Maria Maria by Santanna). I cranked it up and thought that I should get that song on my Ipod (so I bought that song for $0.99). It is now alphabatized right along with the great ----ing band ever--Metallica. Fade to Black. Ride that lighting. Damn right...

Sorry, I always go on a tangent when Metallica is blaring. Anyway, I thought of another instant gratification that could be added to this now-now world. Here is my idea:

How about setting up the Ipod to connect to your car/truck so that anytime you heard a song on the radio, you could push a button on your Ipod that would either 1) download that song somehow or 2) make a running list (like Netflix does) in your Ipod so that next time you connected your Ipod to your computer when you got back home, it would automatically update your Ipod with the new songs you want to purchase and add to your Ipod library.

The reason I say this is that a lot of people just don't have a lot of time to keep up with the music they like. They are busy. This way, you could listen to the radio everynow and then and when you heard a new song (or old one) that you liked, you could just press a button and it would be added to your Ipod with next to no thought.

I am not sure about the technical aspects of this, but who cares. I just have the idea. It's up to the nerds with calculators to figure out how to make it happen. Anyway, it would be pretty cool concept that would bring even more $0.99 song buyers to the Ipod superstore of songs. Just a thought Mr. Jobs.

PS. Can I have a cut on the profits? Also, AAPL stock is going to soar over the next few months. $100.00 is right around the corner.

Best catfishin' ever!

Washington DC -- aka-John's back yard -- Delia and I sure had a good time at DC. John, Katrina and little Caleb were great! I got to run a marathon, play with Caleb, visit Keri, Collin and Abe, and best of all...I got to go on the best catfishin' trip ever with John!

We traveled so far (2 blocks I think) to get there. I must say (Dad), that I have officially validated that little smokies do work with catfish!

We caught a total of 8 fish and three of them were over 9 lbs! John led the way with a 12 lb beast (pictured here). Then he caught a 10 lb catfish. I caught one (thankfully!) that was 9 lbs. All in all they were the biggest catfish that John or I had ever caught or seen pulled in the water.

My marathon legs were sore (this was Monday night), but when John hooked that 12 lb beast, I was running around that dock reeling in poles and grabbing the net and climbing down rocks to get it. I even went ankle deep in the water to make sure I got it. You can take me away from the country, but you cannot take the country out of me! Needless to say, John returned the favor when he went ankle deep to net my 9 pounder (pictured here).

We have had some great fishing trips this year. I cannot wait until perhaps next spring when we can all get together and fish. What a great catfishin' night this was! John's back yard...are you kidding me!!! He can get off work and be fishing in 12 minutes he told me! Little smokies are validated!