Big props to Shan

Believe it or not, but Shanda and I have been married for five years!
(Our anniversary was last Saturday, Aug. 2).
That's like a college player's whole career, including a red-shirt season. Pretty amazing, huh?
I mean, for her. She's accomplished more in just putting up with me than she ever did in her illustrious softball career. I guess you could say she's done more with the diamond on than she ever did on it.
To celebrate, we took a short getaway to the mountains for two days. We had originally planned to go away for longer, but with money being tight right now, we just decided to make it short. It was also the first time Shanda had left Jett at home overnight, had someone else (her mom) put him to bed and wake him up. But Momma Shan did okay with that.
We went to the movies for just the second time since Jett's arrival and saw Dark Knight. It lived up to the hype in our minds. We also went tubing on the New River, which was a lot of fun except for the storm we were caught in briefly and the sunburn I brought home.
The trip was a good capper to eight days off for me. With football getting cranked up now, I took the chance to burn five of my vacation days and built them around some weekend days. From now on, it'll be hard for me to get away for that kind of time.
While off, I had the chance to catch up with a few guys I haven't seen in a while. I ran around with Tyson on Monday, Earl came up Tuesday and I took in a Cubs game with my old WBT bud Dan Scheneman on Thursday (11-4 Cubs win!). I hadn't seen Earl since the Panthers played in the Super Bowl in early '04.
It was great to catch up with those guys. Had a few other people to see that I didn't have the chance to. But mainly, I just wanted to be able to be at home with the wife and kid, have some normal kind of nights. And we did.
Now, it's back to reality.