Quick and dirty. I tell you, you were *this* close to getting another quote post, like Monday's cheat. I do those when I have barely any time to blog. Which has been pretty much all the time, lately.

Deal is, Toys R Us still hasn't given us an answer on the pitch we made to them a week ago. So I'm still doing a bunch of work that may be completely pointless if they come back with a "no." So you can imagine its less than inspiring. But its still a lot of work - thankfully I've been able to work from home all week but its been more work than it has been home. If that makes any sense...

I'm not getting my runs in until late at night - 9 or 10pm starts, which kind of stinks, but I have the roads to myself for the most part, which is nice. I'm doing 6-8 miles a day, depending on how much time I have for it, and hope to get it up to 8-10 in the next month or two. After that I want to add the swimming during the winter months.

The goal is Ironman before I'm 30. You heard it here first.

Youth group started again for the school year this past weekend. We're still doing the 7 Checkpoints material I blogged about last year, but I'm going to try to do another recap of this year's material should I get an opportunity any time soon. I think I did a pretty good job of drilling at least some of the checkpoints and related scripture / ideas into the kids heads last year as they seem to remember some of it...this year I want to move briskly through the earlier points and hit the later points a little earlier in the spring, when we can focus intently on them, before the big fade-to-summer starts to slag everyone down.

Home fellowship group started again last week over at Cregan and Mindi's (who, I might add, are preggers with #2, Naomi - at least that's what she's called right now, save any late ultrasound discoveries). She's due around Christmas time so they'll be in town for the holidays - first holidays it looks like I'll be plenty free to travel home for, ironically.

I'm not digging this not-knowing-what-life-will-look-like-next-week deal that I've been stuck in thanks to work pretty much since the spring. I'm not complaining, summer was the best one I've had since college, its just that after a while, and especially now that I'm working sporadically (but in huge bursts), I'd like to have some regularity - be able to plan stuff like going out of town, be able to get a gym membership going, normal stuff that I can't do right now. Even the weekends are difficult as I sometimes find work thrown my way on Friday night. I really don't like how it forces me to be non-committal with friends and such.

At the same time, I've really gained new appreciation as of late for how good my life is, especially now that I have a job that I don't hate. I'm not in a profession that I know I love, but I've taken a huge step away from one that I do know I hate.

So there's your personal blather update from me, probably won't see that again for a while. Pizza is still cooking, which is why its actually run longer than I first thought.

Things to come, soon, Lord willing:

- more articles submitted to RelevantMag, and other online rags.

- Dave finds himself back on the market again after 5 years off, is not pleased with his initial findings (read: this is not Dave saying he is dating. Dave hates dating)

- favorite places in NYC (just in time for autumn explorations)

- on Instant Messaging and the totally non-committal youth culture (although I think I wrote on this before, somewhere...)

- a techy piece on how I have my computers set up and what I want to do next, by the nerd in me

- lots more comment posts (perhaps a return to regular weekend posts, with these), as I'll be updating my "Reflections in a Diamond Eye" file - more on that later