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Adam K. invited me to come to a White Sox game with him, Sarah (Adam’s girlfriend), and Raff. Since he wasn’t able to make it to the Quad Cities for the JD Classic, and baseball is always a good time, I eagerly accepted.

I decided to take the Amtrak train into the city. I haven’t used the train in the midwest since I was a boy, so I was interested to see how it worked. (Travi, Collin, and I took the Acela from NYC to Boston about a year ago.) Overall, it was a very pleasant experience, and I anticipate doing it again next time I visit people in the city.

The weekend after the Fourth of July is always one of my favorites of the summer, because that’s the weekend of the John Deere Classic. I’ve been inviting some of my friends and family into town for the past few years and we always have a good time. Despite a rainy Friday, this year was no different.

Though I was quite concerned at the time, collecting Nathan from the internet cafe Friday turned out to be straightforward, and we ended up enjoying a lovely weekend in Pune. He left this morning for Mumbai, which he'll explore for the next few days, before returning to Pune Thursday evening.

What a day. I moved into my flat, met my driver, and then immediately went gallivanting about the city of Pune as if I have any idea what I’m doing.

Let me back up. A few months ago, when we still thought I was traveling in December, my friend Nathan made plans to visit me during his school holiday. You remember Nathan; he’s the one who is studying International Relations in first Syria and now Cairo, Egypt, this year.

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had as wonderful of a time as I did celebrating the new year with fraternity brothers in the great city of Chicago. Tom, Nathan, and I drove up from Woodhull during the afternoon of December 31, checked into our hotel, and prepared ourselves for a night (not) to remember.

The Iowa Hawkeyes travelled to Champaign Saturday to challenge the Fighting Illini of Illinois. After building up a lead over the first three quarters, the Illini held off a late Iowa comeback to win 27-24. Most of the McDonald clan were in town for the game. I had some Quad Cities friends in town as well, and Nathan organized a surprise when he showed up with Raff, Adam K., Adam's girlfriend Sara, and Pritch.

See the gallery for more pictures from the day.

Matt Travi, Collin Looby, and I have been in Boston since September 24 for some vacation, the 2008 jQuery Camp, and The Ajax Experience 2008. (I'll be posting about the jQuery Camp and Ajax Experience later.) We traveled to Boston via New York on September 23, where we took in a Cubs / Mets game.

Check out this great video, which features Mr. Meixner around 0:42, 1:18, 2:01, 2:13, 3:00, and 3:16.

My good friend “Opie” sent this email to me, and with his permission I'm reproducing it here because I found it to be very interesting. I've not made any changes except to add HTML formatting and to redact his email address. I hope to post the pictures later tonight. — bholt

Thanks to everyone who came into town for the John Deere Classic last weekend. I had a great time hanging out with everyone, and really enjoyed introducing some of my Quad Cities friends to my fraternity brothers.