I fly out in two days ... needless to say, that feeling in the pit of my stomach is still there and it's not really going away. I'll be taking my Nintendo DS along with me as well as the laptop so I can keep myself occupied on the plane when I'm not busy flipping out.

Daisy is in the Intermediate class now. Her classes are Wednesday evenings, which means I'm taking her to one tonight. They're a bit more intense than the puppy/beginner classes and require a larger amount of additional work. This is a little tougher than those classes as well because shibas, by their nature, are a bit more independent than a lot of other breeds ... meaning they'd much rather do whatever they want than what you tell them.

I hear it's easier to adjust to the time difference on the way there than on the way back. Based on the trip to Hawaii a few years back I'd agree with that, even though it still took a couple days. What I'll end up doing is forcing myself into the routine. That's probably the best approach in this case. I'd like to see if it works on the way back too, but I'll need to wait until October 3rd to test that.

It's great that we have air travel and all, but it makes me friggin' nervous. I'm heading to Sydney next week, and have been flipping out about it for the past two weeks. People are telling me to drink a lot, take some drugs, etc. as if I hadn't tried that yet ... nothing works. I'll just be nervous.

I'll be taking lots of pictures, of course. Two weeks' worth ... because that's how long I'll be there.

Good times.

Julie and I got married two years ago today. Yeah, two years may not sound like a lot, especially when you consider how long we dated. We'll be celebrating more anniversaries, though ... interestingly enough things went well everywhere for me today. The servers arrived, I was able to load Windows Server 2008 R2 without any trouble (even though it's not officially supported yet), dinner was delicious. Good stuff.

We've got a vacation coming. I'm off from August 31st to September 8th ... Julie goes back to work on the 7th, though. Not sure what we're doing, though; we were thinking of going to Door County but are looking at other options now. We just want to relax for a week, but we don't want to leave Daisy at home.

Soon after that I'm heading to the other side of the planet to the head office in Sydney. I've never been on a flight that long before and, based on how I reacted to the flight back from St. Lucia, I'm going to be a wreck. Never been to Australia, but I hear it's pretty cool. And no, I'm not going to skydive.

Let's see how Richard reacts when I walk into the office carrying a MacBook Pro

Discovery Channel is hosting Shark Week this week. That means that, apart from a few breaks for Cash Cab and infomercials, it's a solid block of sharks until 2:00AM Sunday.

It's a good thing sharks are awesome. Combine that with HDTV, and the awesome increases. I'm somewhat biased so I'm not the best-qualified to research this, but I'm pretty sure the awesome increases at an exponential rate.

Daisy does not understand this, but she is actually watching her ancestors on TV. Yes, Daisy is a dog ... but only to the untrained eye. Under that soft puppy exterior lies a for of teeth capable of rending flesh and splintering bone. When fully-grown, Daisy will be able to bite through a late-model Toyota Sequoia with the greatest of ease. At this age I have to keep her away from Smart cars and Mini Coopers, but she's a growing girl.

Okay, so that's not going to happen ... shes actually starting to lose her teeth now. Yes, this is normal, as even dogs have baby teeth. The freaky thing is that, even though she's only lost one so far, they're supposed to come out in groups of two or three at a time. Apparently this isn't really known to people who don't own dogs, so first-time puppy owners get quite alarmed when their puppy's toys have blood on them.