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This bites…Melany came into town this weekend and we were supposed to do stuff. Instead, on Friday night I woke up feeling VERY sick and proceeded to spend the next 12 hours throwing up every half hour or so. This is on top of a cold I’ve had for a few days already. I’m not sure what caused it—food poisoning, or what, but it sucked because I couldn’t even stand up without having to vomit. Anyway, I’m feeling a little better in that now all my symptoms seem to feel like cold ones—namely coughing and stuffy nose. Some people are trying to encourage me to stay home tomorrow but we’ll see. As it is, I already took Friday off. I guess I’ll have to see how I feel in the morning. On the plus side, I was able to hang with Melany and Kevin a bit today. We played a 3 rounds of pool, then went back to Kev’s place to hang out and BBQ some stuff. Since I wasn’t sure I could stomach that stuff, I bought some chicken noodle soup and ate that. It was nice getting to hang out with them, especially since they will both be 2 1/2 hours away after December—Melany has been back home since August or so, and Kevin is moving back after he graduates this quarter. :(

My good friend Martin started a company a few months ago called Axure Software Solutions. Their mission is “to serve the software development industry by offering technologically and socially innovative tools and middleware designed to help software development companies meet their objectives.” If you, or someone you know, think you can benefit from such services, check out their site. Or, even if you don’t think so, go look anyway. :)

Have you ever been somewhere that just seemed downright “creepy”? I went to such a place on Thursday: The Timbers. This is a restaurant that is hidden near Winchester Canyon in Goleta. Supposedly it is built from wood taken from a pier that was destroyed when the Japanese attacked Santa Barbara in WWII. Anyway, we walk into this place and immediately notice that there are few people eating there, and that we are the only people under 65. What is strange though, is that there are tons of cars out front, so where are the people??

We have a VERY friendly waitress and as we sit there, we notice lots of very old people trickle in. This seems a bit strange, but not as strange as when some old guys in Civil War uniforms show up. I guess you had to be there, but I found this highly amusing. We started speculating that perhaps this place was a vampire joint—run by vampires and frequented by old vampires. Confirming our suspicions was the fact that every time we looked toward the kitchen, someone from the staff would be standing almost at attention, staring straight at us. Kinda creepy! It almost seemed like the waitress didn’t want us to leave—she kept offering us more drinks or coffee or dessert. I expected to hear her say “leaving so soooon??” as we tried to leave, and then block the exit. As it was, it was pouring rain outside, adding to the overall ambiance that I have described for the evening. The place looks neat, but it was just a weird experience. Maybe that was wasn’t the norm, but any of you in the area should go check it out and see if it’s true for you.

This post is restricted. To gain access to view this post, simply click *here* and send me an email (make sure you do NOT change the subject line), and I will give you access ASAP. (Access is usually given within 6 hours, or so (it's done manually)... if after that time you're still not able to see the restricted posts, please email me to let me know and I'll give you password access).

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This post is restricted. To gain access to view this post, simply click *here* and send me an email (make sure you do NOT change the subject line), and I will give you access ASAP. (Access is usually given within 6 hours, or so (it's done manually)... if after that time you're still not able to see the restricted posts, please email me to let me know and I'll give you password access).

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