Well the holiday season is officially arrived as it is now Halloween. I must admit this is one of my favorite times of the year with the Fall season, football on TV, grown women wearing sexy schoolgirl outfits...what can be better for a 30 something male? Janelle and I carved some sweet pumpkins on the weekend with a cat from Janelle and a glasses-wearing dude from me. Not sure how the lit-picture will come across but I thought we did a good job nonetheless. I played in a reverse coed 4's volleyball event as well this last weekend and had a blast with Stacey Terry, Christina Hengtgen, and my baby bro. We placed 4th and played tough to the very end. We were dressed as the "Service Industry" with the TGI Friday's waitress (Christina), the Pizza Delivery Guy (Myself), the Starbucks Barista (Stacey) and the all-important Hooter's Girl (John). Great time was had by all. Perhaps the best moment was realizing that one of the teams was dressed up as myself!! That is right, they were the official "Matt Weaver Tribute Team". Great shirts, shorts, socks, sweatbands, headbands, and tattoos adorned them all. Great laughs for all and I felt really honored to have made such a mark on the Northwest Volleyball Community with my goofiness and antics on and off the court. Who knows what really the future might bring but I do know that we will be having good times with those we love and care about with planned trips to Seattle, Denver, and beyond. Hope you and yours enjoy a great holiday season!!

Has it really been over a month since my last post?!? Man I am bad at this message thing. Oh well. Life has been the usual hectic fun here in the lovely Northwest. Volleyball continues to be the usual big part of my life. Currently between my 4's league (2nd place at 14-4), Coed 6's league (1st place at 18-3), and 6's men's league (1st place at 21-3) and 6 reverse 4's tournaments in the last 8 weeks or so (2nd, 3rdx2, 5thx3). I have pictured here one of the fun tournaments I played in, I am the goofy one with all of the temporary tattoos, wristbands, and the team all got funky socks from me as a little present for the event, they were all well received. I have been on the court a lot as you can tell and with pretty good success I would say all things considered. Janelle has had some good news as well as she is moving to a new job that is closer, pays more, and has better benefits. She gets a nice week break before the start of the new event in her life. We are busy getting ready to attend some sort of Halloween party and coming up with some fun costume ideas. I have a costume tournament scheduled for the 28th with my brother that should also be a a fun one. I plan to do pumpkins and fun as usual, pics to come of all the costumes and fun!! I am also in the process of planning a "turkey-tournament" for the holiday season and currently have 7 slots filled of the 12 we were hoping for with almost a month left to plan....that is a huge success so far based on the northwest scene and how late teams seem to like to sign up, should be a fun one and we plan to raise some money for a local highschool program and food for a local foodbank. Work has been hectic as I aim to finish up the loose ends here at the lab before my next career move, your guess is as good as mine!! ;-) In the meantime I am working on no less then 3 separate manuscripts as we speak to round out my time as a postdoc at BRI. I have had what I felt was a great run here and look forward to some new challenges. Hope all is well with you out there.