Okay, I know I'm running too many photos with me in them, but I figured I needed proof of my recent trip to Bermuda. It was a work trip, so I really didn't have much time to explore despite being there for five days/four nights. But I did get a sense of the island. Bermuda in the Atlantic Ocean (not the Carribean), 600 miles off the coast of North Carolina, and it has that beautiful blue/green water. It's also not a poor country, like most of the Carribean. Riding from the airport, you don't see shacks and run-down areas like you would in, say, the Bahamas. Even the worst part of the city of Hamilton - the "ghetto" as the bus driver described it actually didn't look bad at all. And since it's a British Commonwealth, they drive on the "wrong" side of the road, which takes some getting used to. I had thought about renting a scooter, but I didn't know whether I might zone out and accidently go to the rights side, which would have been disastrous. Actually, after I couple of days it seemed perfectly normal and I'm sure I would have been fine, but I didn't have the time to make it worthwhile anyway.

Meet my new niece, Sara Elizabeth. She was born on Tuesday night at just past nine and weighed a solid 7 pounds, 14 ounces. I may be a bit biased as a proud uncle, but I think she's the most beautiful baby I've ever seen. I expected her to be a bit red and wrinkly when I met her a mere 14 hours after she was born, but she wasn't. She looked perfect - well, except for a bit of the "conehead" effect, which was hidden under her cute little hat. I'm so happy for my little bro Steve and his lovely wife Kelly. I just know they'll be wonderful parents.

A week or so ago I decided to go to the beach, and since I'm only a few miles away I decided to walk. So I packed up my backpack and put one foot in front of the other. Just over an hour later, I arrived. It was a very nice walk, but after spending a couple of hours on the sand and in the heat, I wasn't exciting about making the return trip. Despite stopping for clam cakes and chowder at Seafood Haven to break up the trip, the journey home was an ordeal that seemed to take, well, forever. Being a clever sort (debatable since I didn't figure out that the walk was too far) I came up with a solution - buy a bicycle. After looking around for a week I finally found one that fit the bill at Benny's. It's a one-speed, aluminum frame cruiser style bike, and best of all it was cheap ($99). Today I took it to the beach, and it was perfect. It took long enough to get there to be a light workout, but not so long that it seemed like work.

My mom was recently doing some spring cleaning and found this old toy in the closet to my old room. It's a puzzle or sorts, and I distinctly remember my brother Steve and I each getting one (one red and one blue) while visiting our grandparents in Daytona Beach, Florida. We must have been 10-12 years old at the time, and we bought them at a flea market, where we would search for comic books and dream about buying a real sword (we settled for Japanese throwing stars, which our parents inexplicably allowed us to have). Puzzles were all the rage back then, as the Rubik's Cube craze had swept the nation. Basically, the idea of this puzzle is to transform the straight line into a ball by rotating the joints between the segments. When I first saw it again I couldn't remember how to do it, but when I picked it up again a few days later I tried not to think about it and automatically made the ball in about 10 seconds. The only other semi-interesting thing you can do with it is make the impressive-looking cobra you see in the photo. Scary, eh?