Day 4

Swoosh! Stretching my leg after getting back from the gym.

Congratulations to the Baltimore Ravens and the Philadelphia Eagles on their playoff wins today. They join the San Diego Chargers and the Arizona Cardinals in advancing to the next round of the NFL Playoffs. I wasn't too happy last night about the Chargers overtime win over the Colts, but I have to hand them kudos for hanging in there to win.

Note to my friends and family Viking fans: the Houston Texans handed you guys that playoff spot... what happened?

Unfortunately my plan to start 2-a-days fell through, mostly through my own laziness. I went to bed really late last night and woke up rather late this morning. I'm not complaining though - the extra sleep felt really really good. I did go to the gym earlier this evening so it's not like I went the whole day without some strenuous exercise. I'm thinking the 2-a-days are going to start soon, but when is still up in the air at this point.

For the most part we spent the day trying to get a passport photo for my wife to renew her Philippine passport. I know you're saying that it can be done anywhere, but Philippine passports are not that easy. The Republic of the Philippines recently changed over to a Machine Readable Passport system which will apparently utilize some sort of facial recognition technology. The new requirements are to have a 3.5cm x 4.5 cm head-on shot on a royal blue background (most nations require a plain white background) with no open-mouth smiling. The royal blue background offers greater contrast so the face can be scanned by the machine. Most other passport photo places weren't aware of this and are not yet set up to take this type of photo. The cool part is the trip to Los Angeles that is coming up in a few days.

Off to bed I go. I have a long day with a lot of errands tomorrow in along with getting my billiing done for the clients. To all of you I bid goodnight.