GYM: Kind-of-Amazing Day.

The title says it all. For work, Toastmasters, volleyball... veryniiice.

Everyone at the office was in a good mood today. Plus I was able to get my one PTR as far as I could then start on the next one. I got help getting NetBeans set-up on my Sun (GUI work!), and I have some Java to look forward to (and I haven't touched that kind of code since 2000!). Then I also have another big PTR on its way -- and it's a mix of C/C++, HTML, and Javascript. Woo!
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Today's Toastmasters meeting was also delightful. The two prepared speeches were very funny entertaining, the table topics were well-prepared, and I felt like I did a good job giving a speech evaluation. All of our members had a role and did great in explaining to our two guests(!!) the purpose of their part in the meeting. And we may have a new member of the club soon. The meeting was very organized and ran smoothly. Great job to all!

I was also able to show off a couple new forms I created for the member folders that I'm putting together as this year's VP of Education. I'm excited about getting them set up and hopefully, it'll be a good way of keeping track of everyone's progress. I'll make these available on our club's website when they're done.

I got to work a little late this morning, and with Toastmasters, I had some extra time to make up. I quickly went out for a late lunch -- a Southwest Salad with grilled chicken at McDonald's -- and managed to stay productive and get my 9 hours in. Then instead of heading straight home, I went downtown to pick up the running club's mail and to check out the library (I caught it on one of the two nights they're open past 5pm, so I was thankful for that).

And then instead of taking US 1 up, I went across 192 to I-95. This was for two reasons: First of all, there was a McDonald's on the right side of the road, and I needed to eat something before volleyball tonight -- plus they are having a Teenie Beenie Baby Happy Meal promotion, and I wanted to check out what was available (and they had the koala!).

Secondly, I wanted to avoid driving by the new Chick-fil-a.

The grand opening of the Viera Chick-fil-a is really tomorrow, but that just meant the line of tents for their First 100 promotion had been on since 6am this morning. I had wanted to participate not only for the year's worth of Chic-fil-a meals but also because it was sure to be an experience. I passed on it because I didn't have the fore-thought to put in vacation for it and because I was totally unprepared for it -- no tent, and busy as is to have given up an entire day-and-a-half.

So I tried to avoid the scene.

Still,... I snapped a pic from the exit ramp.

Tonight, I changed into volley-gear before leaving work, and after running the errands, went directly to the gym. There were 14 of us to begin with -- the game play was very very decent.

By the second hour, we kept steady with a dozen of us, and everyone was still amazing nice to each other -- none of Monday's meh-ness. The free-arms skinny guy actually played with two hands for a while, so there's hope yet. Communication on our side was absolutely fantastic. Our newbies were very good, and not to be under-estimated -- I think one of the guys actually served a perfect game.

As for me, I was fantastic with the calls and the short balls. I may have gotten all but one of my serves in, and overall, I was pretty awesome. I am not shy to say that tonight I was consistently making beautiful sets, and also got in a couple of good spikes. Tonight, there really weren't many spikes -- CBJ wasn't there, but Susan, ViVi, and BearJ were -- and there were a Lot of "amazing" rallies on both sides.

No +R guy either but Sylvia was there (I will learn all of the gym worker's names by the end of the year). The gym is really feeling like a second home now... like Orlando, like Toastmasters, and [dare I say] like the office.

So, it was a good day... a kind-of-amazing one.

Here are a couple more of tonight's sweaty ceddy pics:

Here's my toy (and you can bet that I'm going to get a few more of these)

:)