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We got back in town on Saturday from our cruise to Alaska. The weather was pretty rainy, but accomodations were made to keep us occupied during the bad storms. I will have to say that the staff on board the Golden Princess were very friendly and accomodating. The land based excursions were the prize attractions.

The Golden Princes in her glory:

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Pam loves dolphins:

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The ZipLine excursion:

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The second night I had troubles with the swaying, so I ended up missing the first formal dinner night. I guess I am not as used to the water as I thought I would be. We were not able to get entry into Victoria Canada because of rough waters which makes me a bit sad because I wanted to see castles. Saftey of the crew and passengers is obviously more important though.

Just check out the rest of the photos in the photo gallery

If anyone was curious on what Gout feels like, this image explains it all.

Picture provided by Wikipedia

I have recently been told that I have what they call border-line high Cholesterol and it made me re-evaluate what foods I choose at the grocery store. Previously I was paying attention to just foods which did not include high fructose corn syrup because of research which shows that man made corn syrup leads to really high upper and low downer feelings in people. You should try this as an exercise sometime in the grocery store, just take the food you normally purchase and see if high fructose corn syrup is one of the top five items on the ingredients list.

The main point of this post is that now not only do I have to pay attention to high fructose corn syrup, but now I get to pay attention to foods with lower Cholesterol. This means goodbye to butter, to string cheese, to whole milk and to nice juicy steaks. So far I have been doing quite well in the past few grocery trips in keeping track of what I eat. The only thing that I really cheat on is the whole milk, I just cannot go without it. So as a compromise, my wife and I agreed to have less than one glass per day.

In the end, we are all in control of how we look, feel and our overall health. I encourage everyone who may read this to read the labels when they go grocery shopping and educate yourself on what each item in the ingredients list means. Look at the nutrition charts and make sure you are not taking in too much trans fat or Cholesterol.

I thought I would give the majority of the online community my summary of the summer of 2007. This summer was supposed to be a nice relaxing moment where I could relax and work part time on getting caught up with school work. Then I got hired by Wells Fargo in an excellent start up (get my foot in the door) position in their Business Payroll business unit. Wells Fargo has been a very interesting experience for me and I am glad to be a part of a very active team.

I went to three different weekend camping trips. The one trip was with my family and was very successful. We went tubing down the Cannon River and had ourselves a very nice time. There was two trips this summer with my friends. The first such trip was out at a state park, we had fun and everything was nice and sunny. This was the first camping trip where I was able to cook very nice steak sirloins and everyone was happy. The last such trip this summer was during the flooding season during this summer. While everyone had fun, we ended up leaving early because of the chance that we wouldn't be able to leave if the rain got worse.

Then there was the State Fair this summer. I ended up going with my Grandfather and several of my siblings. We spent eight hours eating, eating and more eating during the great Minnesota get together. We also had a separate trip this summer with my Grandfather to Grand Casino Millacs where we gambled away. The end result of this gambling yield my wife and I +$40.

As for my project work, this has been lacking a bit. There has been so much family activity going on lately, that I haven't had a moment to sit down and arrange myself in this area. Hopefully this Fall I am able to duck my head down and dig right into the project work I have to fulfill yet.