The other night after a summer rain shower this is what the sky looked like.  Eerie, eh?

Brandon was recently written up in the Auburn Plainsman (Auburn's school paper) for his adventure on the Appalachian Trail.  You can read the article here.

I consider myself pretty much an open book.  I put lots of stuff up here on my blog that I'm not sure most people would share with the world.  (My mom reminds me of this from time to time) I just love to share stories and discus even the most trivial of daily events.  Recently however I have found myself thinking and pondering some bigger "life questions" that I'm just not sure are appropriate to post here. 

While I've never been much of a journal-er of theses life issues and rather talk about them with my friends.  And while I also have the best friends in the world and feel like I could, and do, share some of my most intimate thoughts and feelings with them. I've found recently a few times where I need to get something out of my brain that either, I wanted to formulate my thoughts a bit more or where it's simply just not soon enough til I talk to my friends to share with them (like now, 1AM).  So I've started to keep a journal. 

It's really simple and just somewhere to jot down ideas that I can come back to later and see what I was questioning or pondering.  I've found it quite helpful so far.

This is most likely a boring post already and I'm not sure why I'm posting this.  I just felt like I was cheating on my blog, by writing these other thoughts and feelings and not posting them here.  So to make up for it, I'm posting about posting to my secret blog/journal, that you'll never get to see. 

It's time again for more pictures! I don't know about you all but I enjoy pictures more than words, so let me just give some brief descriptions of my latest Flickr sets.

First are the lake pictures.  I posted the videos a few days ago and have finally gotten around to posting the pictures.  You can view them here.

Second, This weekend was my first bridal shower.  I think most of you know I am going to be a brides-man in my friends Allison and Joe's wedding.  This weekend was the first bridal shower and we had a blast.  It was weird being the only male there, but the ladies were all very nice and made me feel right at home.  I'm really excited about the upcoming wedding.

Finally, this past weekend was also father's day.  We celebrated with my dad by going out bowling and putt-putting.  Guess who was the grand champion?  Yeah, me.  I probably should have let dad win on dad's day, but our family is a bit competitive and I couldn't risk Bradley not playing along.  Our cousin, Rachel joined us for the day.  She played all nonchalant about not being competitive but I could see she really wanted to win.

I guess that's about it.  A friend recently turned me on to the power of adjusting my color levels in Photoshop and I have a feeling I'm going to have to repost some of my better photographs once I've finished adjusting the levels.

This past weekend some friends and I headed down to our lake house to live the good life.  We had a blast!  I'm still working on collecting all the pictures from everyone, but I was able to get some quick videos of two events during the night.

This first one is of Allison's Birthday song.  Allison recently had a birthday but we were unable to celebrate with her in Atlanta so we just did it at the lake.

This second video is of Adam.  He got water in his ears after getting thrown off "the tube" and Jeremy suggested that jumping up and down on one foot would get it out.  Big surprise, it didn't work.  It was pretty funny nonetheless.  I guess that's what you get when you suggest that I can't throw you off the tube.  Maybe Adam won't be so quick to challenge me next time!

Well today is the 29th of the month, and that means it's unofficially "Smoltz Day"!  I am copying the idea from one of my mom's coworker's children.  The little guy celebrates it every month and was especially excited about 2008 as February had 29 days and therefore he got 12 Smoltz Days this year!

(thanks to Maria for going on the mini photoshoot with me today!)

My cube is no longer a depressing grey box that I have to sit in all day everyday.  With a little help from snapfish.com I was able to decorate a large portion of my cube with 138 pictures I've taken over the years.

This weekend was Memorial Day weekend here in the states, and as always was a great weekend to relax with family and unplug for awhile.

The weekend started out with my cousin, Kayla's, graduation.  Kayla goes to a small private school in Alabama and it was really fun to see such a small graduation.  She had a class of six people and it was the first graduation where the whole school had a reception, and everyone in the class got to participate in the ceremony.  My dad brought up an interesting point, it is the first graduation we've been to that they could hold a reunion inside a car!

After the graduation we headed down to our lake house for a few days of fun in the sun.  The lake house is a great place for our family to meet and just spend some days with no real plans and no technology to keep us distracted.  We read, ate, talked, played cards, and even went out on the lake some!  The highlight had to be seeing my 76 year old grandmother beg to be pulled behind the boat on "the tube!"  She did it and had a wild time.

It was so nice to unplug for a few days, but as you can see I'm back online with a vengeance! 

I have a full set of lake pictures over on Flickr. 

I've posted some new pictures on my flickr page, including M'day pics and Stone Mountain Lasershow!