Let me recap this week for you:

Sunday - get up around 6 AM to leave Gulf Shores, where I was on vacation with Lori, her sister, and her sister's boyfriend. Mix in an hour of eating lunch with my parents in Birmingham, and we get back into Nashville at around 4 PM.

I had a flight to TX to catch at 6:45, so I had to hustle to get packed (again) and to the airport in time. Flight was delayed, and the subsequent connection flight was also delayed, and I get into my hotel room in Killeen, Texas, at 3:15 AM in the morning. Bad planning on my part turned into a disaster that didn't start the week off right at all.

Great week of training down here at Fort Hood, though. Got to co-teach a course to the fine folks running the military housing there, and it was both fun and rewarding. Maintenance guys, construction guys, and property managers all discussing and learning about how to be even better leaders, utilize various problem-solving tools to correct issues that arise, and in the end, achieve stronger results. Upon completion of the course, got certified as a teacher of the course as well. But the most enjoyable part was seeing a quality team of people function to such an extent that they become almost like their own family. Very strong culture there, similar to Beaufort.

I made the decision when I initially booked the trip to not rush to fly back on Friday, instead delaying flying back until Saturday. This was a great decision because as much as I am looking forward to getting back to Nashville, I came back to my hotel room on Friday completely exhausted.

The final bit of the course concluded around 2:30 on Friday, and I got back into the hotel room around 3. Sent a few emails, relaxed a little bit, and suddenly woke up at 1:30 in the morning! Went back to sleep and ended up getting 12 hours of sleep when it was all over. THAT'S what I'm talking about!

As is posted over on the iTest Blog, a lot is going on right now in preparation for the 2007 iTest in September. It's time to, once again, make that big summer push that's required to have a successful event in September. And this year, we may find ourselves stretched by both the 2007 iTest, the next iTest Tournament of Champions, the launch of the iTest CS, the iTest National Rankings (national high school individual math rankings we maintain from September to April), as well as running the website and handling our Problems of the Month.

We're about to realize the first step of the iTest's vision, which is to assemble a portfolio of academic experiences that we offer to high school students around the country. It might be small, but it's our starting point. I'm ready to dive back into it all, once again...

I posted a month or two ago about the opportunity to meet Jeff Fisher through an eBay auction. Well, as some of you know, I stayed up until 2 AM on the night that auction ended, and narrowly edged one other person up at that hour with me to win that auction. The event was extremely undervalued (in my opinion!) so I was happy to sneak away with the 4 passes to eat dinner with the man himself. He is one of my favorite people in the National Football League and a man that I respect both for his very apparent football genius as well as his high degree of skill as a motivator of people. I am very much looking forward to meeting him, and will, I'm sure, have something to say about the experience in this space after it happens later this month. I also have re-listed on eBay two of those spaces at the dinner, so hopefully some other big Titans fan will help me recoup the investment!

Also, the same week, the Simpsons movie lands in a movie that might significantly surpass whatever the highest grossing summer 2007 movie to-date is. The movie looks hilarious - Hetesh may come up that Thursday to see the opening night premiere with me, and anyone else getting in on that is welcome to...just drop me a line...

Finally, I'll conclude with mentioning that Lori and I are rapidly moving toward closing on a house on July 31, pending no major disasters until then. We'll be very close to Cool Springs (south of downtown Nashville) and in a house that should fit our needs over the next 10 years. I'll post more once it's all wrapped up, signed, sealed, and delivered...don't want to jinx it!