Friday, December 30, 2005
My life has become a boring pop song and everyone is singing along
Finished the brutal week after Christmas at work. It was pretty rough mainly because nobody else was around. I guess that's my own fault, I didn't have any vacation left. Ah well, it wasn't too bad, I just wish I would've gotten more stuff done. It snowed all last night and most of today and there's a pretty good amount on the ground. Heavy and wet snow.
New Year's Eve is tomorrow and it should be an okay time. Isabel's friend is having a party over in St. Paul and I guess we'll probably head over there. It'd be nice to hang out with everyone, but that just won't happen this year. Everyone's kind of got their own plans this year. Ah well, NYE is kind of overrated anyway. Although, I think I might actually get into the New Year's resolution thing this year. Right now all I've got is one, first month of January is detoxification, meaning no alcohol, no pop, the only things I'm going to drink are milk, water, and/or juice. Hopefully I can hold to that for one month. If I can do it for longer that's even better.
A lot of people around here have been putting out lists of the best local music to come out this year. There were more than a couple mentions of The Ashtray Hearts - Perfect Halves so I'm recommending that anyone reading this check them out. I'll probably post more in a couple days about what some of my favorite stuff was to listen to this year.
Got a couple books for Christmas:
Next Man Up - John Feinstein
The Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene
Both of them seem very interesting. I started on Next Man Up, and it's pretty good so far.
New Year's Eve is tomorrow and it should be an okay time. Isabel's friend is having a party over in St. Paul and I guess we'll probably head over there. It'd be nice to hang out with everyone, but that just won't happen this year. Everyone's kind of got their own plans this year. Ah well, NYE is kind of overrated anyway. Although, I think I might actually get into the New Year's resolution thing this year. Right now all I've got is one, first month of January is detoxification, meaning no alcohol, no pop, the only things I'm going to drink are milk, water, and/or juice. Hopefully I can hold to that for one month. If I can do it for longer that's even better.
A lot of people around here have been putting out lists of the best local music to come out this year. There were more than a couple mentions of The Ashtray Hearts - Perfect Halves so I'm recommending that anyone reading this check them out. I'll probably post more in a couple days about what some of my favorite stuff was to listen to this year.
Got a couple books for Christmas:
Next Man Up - John Feinstein
The Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene
Both of them seem very interesting. I started on Next Man Up, and it's pretty good so far.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Wild Weekend...
Well obviously I haven't posted anything in about a week and a half. It's kind of weird how you realize how little spare time you have. Or maybe it's that I don't use the spare time I have very wisely. Not too much has happened, just going through the motions lately. Christmas shopping is still on the horizon. I've only bought a couple gifts, one for my brother and one for my sister. I've got a ways to go and about 6 days to complete it.
This was quite the weekend. Thursday night was Nick's bachelor party. Girtz, Berndt, and I carpooled it up there. It was a really great time. We didn't really know what to expect, but you can't go wrong with boot hockey and beer on the streets of Shoreview. All of Nick's other friends that I hadn't met before were really good guys, so we all got along great. We also ended up teaching the dads how to play presidents and assholes. Comment of the night candidate, from a 40/50 something man: "man, this game could really mess you up!" We also gave Nick his "gag" gift that Girtz and I had purchased the night before: The Accomodator! Very unique. We ended up going out to the bar at about 12:30, which was just ridiculous since we were up in Shoreview and it would take us about 20 minutes to get there. Since we had a pretty big group of guys we went to Brother's. Right away, shots were had. I bought a round of about 15 shots of Jagermeister. And then about 10 minutes later, another guy bought another round of shots of something else. Nick was absolutely hilarious, he had the Accomodator on the whole night. We were only there for about 45 minutes before they turned on the lights and closed the place down. We ended up at Pizza Luce and Girtz and I finally got home around 3 in the morning. Needless to say Friday morning was pretty brutal, I was exhausted. Got my haircut Friday night and then sat around and played College Hoops 2K6 on PS2. Valley came over and drank a couple beers and we ended up meeting up with Dave, Matt, Matt's wife, and a couple of their friends at Drink in uptown. Turned out to be a pretty fun night, we ended it with having an early morning meal at the Uptown Diner. It was delicious. Saturday was the day of Nick and Lindsey's wedding. The ceremony was pretty cool, it was great to see Nick and Lindsey so happy. Their reception was at the James J. Hill library in downtown St. Paul, it was a really cool place for a reception. The table Isabel and I were at ended up being pretty wild: Me, Isabel, Dave, Girtz, Berndt, Karl, Valley, Kerin. It was good to talk also with Saloni and Jill; find out what they've been up to etcetera. It's been quite a long time since I've seen/talked to either of them. Girtz and I talked to the Medeks for a while too, which was really great, I can't even remember the last time I saw them, probably well over a year ago. Jim's sister Kim is now a sophomore in high school. I remember going over to Jim's place in elementary school to play games on his commodore 64 and Kim was about 3 feet tall; now she's almost as tall as I am. The whole wedding was kind of surreal, seeing all these people that I haven't seen in about 5 years. It was a great time. I'd also like to give a shout out to Rich, the amicable bartender. As the night wore on, the crowd dispersed, and then the DJ played "Red Letter Day" and "I'm a Loner Dottie, a Rebel" and about 7 or 8 of us that were left went completely apeshit. Finally, when we got kicked out of the reception, a bunch of us headed to the Wild Onion on Grand in St. Paul. That bar really kind of sucks. Maybe it's the fact that in backasswards Ramsey County you can still smoke in bars. I'm still waiting for the day when the entire Twin Cities area catches up to the rest of the big cities in the country and bans smoking in bars and restaurants outright. Then we rode in a cab home with some crazy cab driver. I really don't even remember what he was talking about, but at the time I remember just hoping that we would get home in one piece. Plus it was uncomfortable, it was me, Dave, Karl, and Girtz all in the back seat. Not a lot of extra room. So it was a great time, Nick and Lindsey's wedding and reception were phenomenal.
I'm thinking about trying to organize a weekend up in Lutsen for a bunch of people to go skiing and hang out. Like Valley was saying, you really have to schedule little vacations and trips to have something to look forward to keep your sanity. I agree. I'd kind of like to go someplace warm too for maybe a week or something.
Now for the quick hits:
-It's a 4 day week at work. Amazing.
-Two Gophers men's basketball games this week. North Dakota State and Grambling. It kind of makes a person mad that he paid for games against no name opponents. Oh well, it'll get better once the conference schedule starts.
-I'm going to need an insane performance from Ryan Longwell this week to pull out a win. Chances are that I will be playing for third place against Dave next weekend in PFL fantasy football. It'll be a real grudge match, our first meeting of the season.
-I need to hang out with Cerqua and Kangas again. It's been almost a month. Kind of inexcusable when we live no more than 20 or 30 minutes apart.
-Going to the grocery store is one of my least favorite things to do. But I do like actually having food around.
-The Get Up Kids were a great band. I associate so many memories with different songs of theirs.
-There is no way that Microsoft Office 2003 is actually worth 500 bones.
-I wish I would've seen Texas Is the Reason live.
-Watching somebody make the wrong decisions repeatedly is really, really hard.
-I need to invent something that I can parlay into a business. I've had ideas for different stuff, but nothing is substantial enough to be the next Google. Actually I don't really need to invent the next Google; I'd be happy with inventing a new kind of sandwich or something.
-This blog is not very funny so far. I will work on this.
-Tiki Barber scored about half of my points in fantasy football this week. If I win the championship I'll send him 1o percent of the winnings.
Do listen to:
-Sigur Ros - Takk
-Modern Life is War - Witness
-Jimmy Eat World - Clarity
-The Get Up Kids - Red Letter Day EP and Something to Write Home About
Don't listen to:
-My teeth grating as Black Eyed Peas "My Humps" plays on the radio.
Goodnight and good luck.
This was quite the weekend. Thursday night was Nick's bachelor party. Girtz, Berndt, and I carpooled it up there. It was a really great time. We didn't really know what to expect, but you can't go wrong with boot hockey and beer on the streets of Shoreview. All of Nick's other friends that I hadn't met before were really good guys, so we all got along great. We also ended up teaching the dads how to play presidents and assholes. Comment of the night candidate, from a 40/50 something man: "man, this game could really mess you up!" We also gave Nick his "gag" gift that Girtz and I had purchased the night before: The Accomodator! Very unique. We ended up going out to the bar at about 12:30, which was just ridiculous since we were up in Shoreview and it would take us about 20 minutes to get there. Since we had a pretty big group of guys we went to Brother's. Right away, shots were had. I bought a round of about 15 shots of Jagermeister. And then about 10 minutes later, another guy bought another round of shots of something else. Nick was absolutely hilarious, he had the Accomodator on the whole night. We were only there for about 45 minutes before they turned on the lights and closed the place down. We ended up at Pizza Luce and Girtz and I finally got home around 3 in the morning. Needless to say Friday morning was pretty brutal, I was exhausted. Got my haircut Friday night and then sat around and played College Hoops 2K6 on PS2. Valley came over and drank a couple beers and we ended up meeting up with Dave, Matt, Matt's wife, and a couple of their friends at Drink in uptown. Turned out to be a pretty fun night, we ended it with having an early morning meal at the Uptown Diner. It was delicious. Saturday was the day of Nick and Lindsey's wedding. The ceremony was pretty cool, it was great to see Nick and Lindsey so happy. Their reception was at the James J. Hill library in downtown St. Paul, it was a really cool place for a reception. The table Isabel and I were at ended up being pretty wild: Me, Isabel, Dave, Girtz, Berndt, Karl, Valley, Kerin. It was good to talk also with Saloni and Jill; find out what they've been up to etcetera. It's been quite a long time since I've seen/talked to either of them. Girtz and I talked to the Medeks for a while too, which was really great, I can't even remember the last time I saw them, probably well over a year ago. Jim's sister Kim is now a sophomore in high school. I remember going over to Jim's place in elementary school to play games on his commodore 64 and Kim was about 3 feet tall; now she's almost as tall as I am. The whole wedding was kind of surreal, seeing all these people that I haven't seen in about 5 years. It was a great time. I'd also like to give a shout out to Rich, the amicable bartender. As the night wore on, the crowd dispersed, and then the DJ played "Red Letter Day" and "I'm a Loner Dottie, a Rebel" and about 7 or 8 of us that were left went completely apeshit. Finally, when we got kicked out of the reception, a bunch of us headed to the Wild Onion on Grand in St. Paul. That bar really kind of sucks. Maybe it's the fact that in backasswards Ramsey County you can still smoke in bars. I'm still waiting for the day when the entire Twin Cities area catches up to the rest of the big cities in the country and bans smoking in bars and restaurants outright. Then we rode in a cab home with some crazy cab driver. I really don't even remember what he was talking about, but at the time I remember just hoping that we would get home in one piece. Plus it was uncomfortable, it was me, Dave, Karl, and Girtz all in the back seat. Not a lot of extra room. So it was a great time, Nick and Lindsey's wedding and reception were phenomenal.
I'm thinking about trying to organize a weekend up in Lutsen for a bunch of people to go skiing and hang out. Like Valley was saying, you really have to schedule little vacations and trips to have something to look forward to keep your sanity. I agree. I'd kind of like to go someplace warm too for maybe a week or something.
Now for the quick hits:
-It's a 4 day week at work. Amazing.
-Two Gophers men's basketball games this week. North Dakota State and Grambling. It kind of makes a person mad that he paid for games against no name opponents. Oh well, it'll get better once the conference schedule starts.
-I'm going to need an insane performance from Ryan Longwell this week to pull out a win. Chances are that I will be playing for third place against Dave next weekend in PFL fantasy football. It'll be a real grudge match, our first meeting of the season.
-I need to hang out with Cerqua and Kangas again. It's been almost a month. Kind of inexcusable when we live no more than 20 or 30 minutes apart.
-Going to the grocery store is one of my least favorite things to do. But I do like actually having food around.
-The Get Up Kids were a great band. I associate so many memories with different songs of theirs.
-There is no way that Microsoft Office 2003 is actually worth 500 bones.
-I wish I would've seen Texas Is the Reason live.
-Watching somebody make the wrong decisions repeatedly is really, really hard.
-I need to invent something that I can parlay into a business. I've had ideas for different stuff, but nothing is substantial enough to be the next Google. Actually I don't really need to invent the next Google; I'd be happy with inventing a new kind of sandwich or something.
-This blog is not very funny so far. I will work on this.
-Tiki Barber scored about half of my points in fantasy football this week. If I win the championship I'll send him 1o percent of the winnings.
Do listen to:
-Sigur Ros - Takk
-Modern Life is War - Witness
-Jimmy Eat World - Clarity
-The Get Up Kids - Red Letter Day EP and Something to Write Home About
Don't listen to:
-My teeth grating as Black Eyed Peas "My Humps" plays on the radio.
Goodnight and good luck.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
First post
Alright, so this is my first post, perhaps of many to come? Who knows. Let's see, lately: Christmas shopping, obscenely cold weather, boring work. I just want the chance to contribute more, maybe that's my fault, maybe it's not, I'm not sure. I definitely miss school, the constant learning, the constant challenge. I just don't feel like I have that anymore. Ideally, I'd like to work in a place where I'm consistently challenged. Maybe that's unrealistic. Anyway, I'd like to start reading again soon. Our Band Could Be Your Life is one book that I wanted to pick up. It's a chronicle of a lot of different underground groups from the 80s and 90s, like The Replacements, Husker Du, Fugazi, Dinosaur Jr, etcetera. So there's a pretty good Minnesota representation also. I've been listening to a lot of downtempo stuff lately, that probably doesn't help my state of mind: The Ashtray Hearts - Perfect Halves (if you like mellow alt-country type stuf), Low - Things We Lost in the Fire (most people have heard of Low, this is my first foray into their catalog, I like it). I also picked up the Blackout Pact disc, they're playing at the Triple Rock tomorrow, I might go. I got a new cell phone yesterday. Same model as my old one, but at least this one hopefully won't have the microphone difficulties that the other one did. Anyway, hopefully this won't be my last post for like 3 weeks.
