Activesteve.com is Born…

Well, another weekend has gone by, and what a busy one it was. Love of my life Jody has finally caught up to me as far as decades go. Yup, Jody has joined the masters club by turning 30 last week. The celebrating started on Thursday, and didn’t stop until Sunday night. What a lucky lady! As a result of my second job, I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to spend Thursday evening with Jody, so she made her own plans. She chose to take the bus to the cosmopolitan city of Montreal for the day. Personally, I don’t see how the shopping is any better in Montreal, but apparently the ladies see it another way. She had a full day there, and even made it back in time for us to watch Survivor. Then it was off to bed early to get ready for a fun weekend. Jody actually opted to take both Thursday and Friday off, to properly give herself time to get used to the idea of being 30. Sadly, I had to toil away in the salt mines at work, then go home and put in extra time on the laptop, even on Friday. Such is life though.

Hooray! The bar is seriously starting to shape up into the beautiful oak masterpiece that I envisioned it will be! On the right you can see a shot of the current bar progress. All the main cabinetry work is done, and the lower bar counter-top has been installed. The sink was fitted in for the picture, but not yet fastened down, to make sure I don’t mark it up before finishing the other pieces. The counter came out really nice, and I think this will definitely be a bar worthy of pouring some high-quality spirits on. To those ends, Jody even gave me an early Easter gift, a bottle of Tanqueray No. TEN, a top-shelf gin, since she knows me affinity towards gin. I now have nice top shelf Rum (various aged rums), Vodka (Grey Goose of course), Gin (Tanq. No. TEN) and Tequila (Cuervo Gold), not to mention a nice Single Malt. All these bottles, along with countless others, will no doubt grace the liquor shelf soon once the bar is completed.

Since I’ve got your attention on these matters, I think I’ll also share another source of inspiration that I’ve unearthed. I was going to tack this onto the end of my last post, but decided that it was important enough to get it’s very own post. This inspiration comes from an unlikely source. Well, maybe not unlikely, but undiscovered by me until just today. It came in the form of a news article shared to me today by Larry, an old co-worker of Jody’s from her CREA days. This article was about a fellow by the name of Randy Pausch, who just died today from pancreatic cancer. He was a university prof with a very distinguished pedigree in the world of virtual reality. So just what is the source of inspiration from him? Well that would be his 1hr and 16min lecture that he delivered in September 2007, which was his ‘Last Lecture’. Basically, profs at Carnegie Mellon are given the chance to reflect on their lives and give a lecture based on what they would say if it would be the last lecture they would ever be giving before dying. Well, in an odd twist, Randy was actually doing just that. He had already been handed his death sentence resulting from the cancer diagnosis, and had to come to grips with it.