When we roll out old pictures of Jeff and wish him a happy birthday.

P.S. Jeff, buy your plane ticket!!!

As of today, I am not eating out anywhere until I go to Minnesota for the 3MH weekend (hello Chino Latino!). No fast-food, no sit-down restaurants, not even my highly subsidized company cafeteria until June 8th. Though I did decide I would allow myself the occasional cookie or pudding cup at lunch, so long as I spend less than $1 per occasion. But I’m going to to my best to avoid spending any money other than at a grocery store for the next forty nine days.

Looking at the receipts piling up around my desk, I realize just how much I have been eating out lately. Going out of town for many, many concerts didn’t help, and those meals were kind of necessary. However, my co-workers have been wanting to go out to eat for lunch lately, something we’ve never done in the past, and I am weak when someone wants to go to Atlas. Also, in between weeks of traveling, I’ve gotten lazy and being single, sometimes its just easier to grab something on the way home rather than go to the grocery store and then cooking just for me. I feel I’ve spent way too much money on food (I hate spending money on food) and I’ve not been eating very well.

So if you ask me to meet you for dinner and I say no, don’t be offended, its nothing personal.

But if you want me to come over and eat your food, I fully embrace that.

As many people have been doing, I’ve been following the news of the unbelievable tragedy at Virginia Tech. What can one say about it? What has hit home most for me was something I saw just today. One of the victims, Ryan Clark, was a senior member of the Virginia Tech marching band, the Marching Virginians. I can’t imagine losing someone from the HMB while I was a member.

I watched some of the convocation ceremony that was just held at VT and the one image that stood out for me was just a short shot of some students in the large audience. In the middle of other students in their VT sweatshirts and t-shirts sat a guy with his head bowed, dressed in his VT marching band uniform. What a beautiful tribute to a friend.