Just another day in the life...

Wednesday.  Hump Day.  Halfway through the week.  Dunno...sometimes it doesn't feel like it, but whatever, I suppose.

Pretty standard day.  Really beautiful outside, right around 47 degrees or so.  That called for a run this afternoon; part of my new policy of running outside every time it gets above freezing.  Turned in a nice solid 2 miler in around 17 minutes.  Not too shabby.  Additionally, I got the resistance bands that I ordered online, so after decompressing from the run a bit, I got in a solid band workout.  Definitely different; felt very easy starting out with the various lunges, squats and curls, but by the end of the sets I was totally feeling it.  Which, I suppose, is what you're looking for to happen.  Good deal.  We'll see how these workouts turn out, results wise, in a few weeks.  Expect updates.

Boomer and I were going to go with Doug to the gym that he teaches at and learn to do some stunting, flipping, etc.  Unfortunately, Boomer hurt his ass snowboarding today while trying to show off for a girl.  Understandable intent, but it put a damper on our plans to do such things.  Oh well...I fully believe we'll head out there eventually, but it's just an easy thing to put off right now.

Regardless, apparently Amy was desirous of us repeating our excellent Wednesday from last week, so the plan was to head out to Brothers around 11ish for some 10 cent wings and (not 10 cent) beers.  To kill some time, I watched 'Charlie Wilson's War', a flick which I thoroughly enjoyed.  Though I didn't know a great deal about the particulars of the situation going in, I did have a basic understanding of how that period of history played out.  That being said, it was interesting to learn some of the details, even through the likely distorted lens of artistic license.  Tom Hanks was his normal, likable self, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman was excellent, well deserving of the Best Supporting Actor nod, in my humble opinion.  Admittedly, as a big history buff, I've found I'm prone to liking a movie infinitely more if it deals with a true historical story (see Kingdom of Heaven).  That being said, I would recommend it.

After the movie and a bowl of chili, I trekked out to Brothers to meet up with the crew.  Hung out in line with Doug, Megan, Amy and Taylor while they got their wings, and then headed upstairs to meet up with the rest of the group.  Eventually found enough unbroken dart tips to play a game, where Megan and I played competitively before eventually taking third place out of four teams.  Such is life.  Hung out for a little while more there before deciding to adjourn to Johnny O's, a move Doug and I were totally behind, as it was Service Industry Night there.

Nothing quite like drinking for half price, unless it's drinking for no price.  Got myself a Jack and Coke and joined the group in checking out the new basketball hoop that O's has apparently added.  Not unlike a basketball game at a fair or a carnival; about a 13 foot-ish hoop surrounded by netting to control where the ball goes.  And it's free...frickin sweet.  Shot around a bit with the guys, with moderate success, which is all I can usually hope for.  Eventually headed over to play some more darts, where Megan and I were trading the lead back and forth with another team before finally losing by not hitting a bullseye before they could.  All in all, however, an excellent game.  Boomer even found his way out to meet us, broken ass and all, after finding out that I was out with Megan and Amy.  Go figure ;)  In any event, hung out there till bar time, at which point we went our seperate ways.  Doug was kind enough to give me a ride most of the way home, so all in all a great evening.  Hopefully tomorrow is even more excellent, with some hot-tubbing with attractive girls, Danno coming down for the weekend, and most importantly not working all in the mix.  Good stuff.  Catch you on the flipside, dudemeisters....LATE

Mardi Gras!

Didn't write anything the other day mostly because nothing of note happened.  Pretty standard day, with two points of info from it; the newest John Legend album is solid, and Call of Duty: World at War is a pretty sweet game.  The CoD game corrects almost all of the small complaints I had with CoD:Modern Warfare, as well as being set in a historical period that I find infinitely more interesting.  The John Legend album has more than a handful of songs that speak to different periods of my life where I've felt a certain way, and also a handful of songs that make me wish I had a girl to bring home and just get down with all night, if you catch my drift ;)  But I digress..

Today was Mardi Gras, and I had to work tonite.  Now the boss loves to do lots of creative specials for holidays and the like, and as a result we had no less than 8 specials on the board today: a seafood gumbo with rice; red beans and rice; andoullie, chicken and shrimp jambalaya; andouille and chicken cajun pasta; deep fried okra and catfish fingers; an andouille, peppers and onion panini sandwich; a 'Bayou' burger with cajun mayo, fried and french fried onions; and Bananas Foster.  Woof.  All really good, and I ended up making at least one of all of them, which was fun, but a lot of work to clean up.  Still, I did pretty alright and was able to jet out of there by around 12:20 or so.

Left the 10 and headed out to meet Boomer at the Library, as he had texted me earlier in the evening telling me to head over there.  Got there and met up with him, Alexis, and Ross and discussed the upcoming Spring Break trip.  The plan is to head out to Jackson Hole, WY, in conjunction with Hoofers, the UW outdoor activities group and do some skiing/hanging out/drinking/whatever from March 13th to the 22nd.  Now, I don't really ski or board, though I've been once, so I was initially worried that I'd not have anything to do.  Boomer kept assuring me that it was much more important that I enjoy drinking PBR.  As the trip date approached and I became more convinced about my ability to find things to do, I became more and more excited.

In any event, tonite was kind of a low key planning session with Boomer and Alexis, the two drivers for the trip.  A lot of logistics were discussed, the major point of which was how to transport the nine people and their assorted stuff out to JH and back.  Once we get out there, things are shaping up to be awesome, with a lot of skiing, drinking, a day on some snowmobiles, X Country skiing, a night in a teepee, St. Patty's Day, etc.  The trick is to get everyone and their stuff out there without making anyone to uncomfortable/mad, apparently.  It's times like this that I'm not only glad that I'm not in a planning/organizing position, but also that people generally get along with me and I'm not involved in any sort of "Drama" (quotes and capitalization for High School type emphasis).  In any event, the basic consensus of tonite was that we needed to meet as a larger sort of group so that we can make concrete decisions without hurting anybody's feelings too badly.

Round bar time-ish, we broke up the convo and decided to head our own seperate ways.  Alexis gave me a ride home, which saved me the trouble of firing up the ol' Chevro-legs, which is always welcome.  Don't get me wrong, walking both ways to campus once or twice a day is doing wonders for my legs, but it can get pretty old after a while, especially in this cold.  So that brings us to this place, where I sit listening to John Legend and writing a blog.  Which = bed time.  That's the kind of math I can both understand and get behind.  LATE.

Andy Samberg ain't got shit on me...

That title right there is some straight meta-humor for my day.  Very much a laid back end to the weekend.  Woke up, puttered around the apartment and accomplished a handful of the random tasks that seem to pop up over the course of a weekend and demand your attention.  Luckily, (or unluckily in retrospect), I was able to finish everything up prior to the Badger game at 2 in the afternoon.  A big match-up against the conference leader MSU, a team who we just seem to be able to get in the head of whenever we play was far too important for me to miss.  Knowing that we were the underdog in this particular game, I tried to convince myself that I wouldn't be bent out of shape if we lost, but the truth is all I wanted was to see Tom Izzo blowing a gasket and making incredulous faces and gestures to help himself deal with another loss.  As my roommate, Smith, so kindly pointed out, Izzo over the course of a game often imitates the face of Bilbo Baggins in the LOTR movies when he lunges at Frodo to grab the One Ring; pure and unadulerated rage in its most visceral and expressive form.  Yikes.  Unfortunately, despite the solid lead that the Badgers built up midway through the second half, they proceeded to go absolutely frigid from the field and managed to choke away the lead and the game.  Ah well, just adding some more fuel to my desire to punch Moran Goran Suton in the blank, confused space directly between his eyes if I ever happen to meet him in real life.  Such is life.

After watching the game, it was time to head in to work for the evening.  Sunday nights are by and large completely dead, providing ample time to prepare for the week ahead.  Today was no exception.  I managed to complete 3 projects for the upcoming week about an hour and a half after I started my shift.  After that point, it was a long, slow slide into cleaning and trying to find ways to flesh out the end of my shift.  In the end, everything worked out great; I got shit squared away as quick as I could, and Jenna and I were out of the bar and on our way to the Vintage by 11ish or quarter thereafter.

Apparently the last Sunday of every month is Hospitality Night at the Vintage, so we enjoyed dollar taps and 2 dollar top shelf mixers for the majority of our night out.  Not too shabby.  I seem to keep running into more and more situations where I'm glad that I work in a service industry, particularly for the one I do work for.  In any event, this basically meant that Jenna went to town on Skyy Razz and Sprite, while I fell back on the old standard Jack and Coke.  Eventually Timmy made his way down and joined us, and much glorious conversation did ensue.  I am firmly of the belief that when you get a good handful of the Big 10 crew together that the conversations borne out of that meeting are absolutely solid gold.  Just hilarity of the highest order. 

In any event, we sat at the Vintage for some time doing shots and having some casual drinks while discussing all manner of topics.  Eventually, however, Timmy felt that he had to leave, so Jenna and I ended up heading down to the Lava Lounge.  I, myself, am a big fan of the ambiance of the Lava; kind of a cool, tiki/surfer style to it.  Good stuff.  Hung out down there for a while with some people Jenna knew and that was that.  Had a couple more good chats about a handful of things that I don't feel comfortable relating here, cause they're really Jenna's business in the end.  I'm just there to provide a sympathetic ear and a new insight into whatever problems she may be having.  All told, it was another fantastic night of good friends and good conversation, even if it was largely unplanned.  Oh well, no arguments here.  Time for the beds.  Rock over London, rock on Chicago.  OUT.

How do we always find ourselves doing the same things?

Another day in the life, but there's certainly nothing wrong with that.  The weekend tends to lend itself to a lot less structure, but this also can be a good thing.  Woke up, puttered around for a while and then got around to doing the dishes.  Smith had previously promised to make some chili if I cleaned up the dishes that needed to be done; a proposition that I was totally behind.  As such, at this time in the morning, we have almost no dishes to clean and an entire pot of chili in the fridge.  Good fucking job, life!  I heartily anticipate eating chili for a few days before I get around to making my lasagna.  We've got a good system.

Worked again tonite at the Big Ten.  Busy prior to the hockey game, but that's really more expected than notable.  Tuttle and I proceeded to bust some ass to get shit cleaned up as fast as possible.  This lead me to be in perfect position to win the coinflip at 11ish.  Normally I'll try my hardest to find something to help the loser out with, but in this case, we were really far ahead workwise, so there truly was nothing to do.

Tonite (the 21st) was Dan's birthday, and as such directly after he finished his shift he started to get good and riled up.  Lacey and Jason had gone out to the hockey game and came back in a similar state.  I mentioned it a handful of times tonite, but I really love hanging out and drinking with people who are wildly more inebriated than I am, just because they give me a baseline from which to operate; the drunker someone is that I'm hanging out with, the drunker I feel the need to get myself.  That being said, I hung out at the 10 for a while, enjoying my drinks and trying to figure out what else was going on in town.  Everyone was in pretty phenomenal shape, and I had a great time talking to the random drunkards who are my coworkers.  Eventually, Boomer showed up from work and borrowed some cash so that he could rip it up tonite.  We rolled down to the Library where we hung out with Tim, Steph, Sam and Doug for a decent amount of time.  There wasn't a ton of people out, so we did the standard hanging and talking bit, where you really get involved in some solid convos.  No complaints on this end.  That all being said, it's once again roughly 4 in the morning, so the time has certainly come to bid you all adieu.  Rock on with your bad selves, and I'll catch you on the flip side.

Here goes something...

Ok...I think I've finally gotten this whole blogging thing set up so that it's almost easier for me to blog than not to, and as such I hope to stick with it longer than my previous attempts. Mostly my plan is to have an online journal with an additional smattering of random postings whenever I should feel the need. Effectively, I'm looking to chronicle my daily goings on, as the passage of time pays no heed to my memories of random fun happenstances and erases them from my mind as it sees fit. With all that being said to set the stage, let's give this a shot.

Today was a Friday, as is obvious from the date, so I had little going on at all. Woke up at the early hour of 10ish and proceeded to putter around the house randomly cleaning and wasting time until Smith and I headed out to do some grocery shopping. I had been planning on doing this for the last couple of days, but when I found that my meaty state tax return had been deposited in my bank, it ratcheted up from a simple trip to an epic grocery haul. Roughly $170 later, I should be well stocked for the next monthish hopefully to eat the fruit of my own labors within the comfort of my own home. Which is fantastic, as though I love to cook, I've done far too little of it at home as of late. It just becomes so easy to go out and grab a quick bite that I find myself doing it all the time. Not so bad when it's at work and I'm eating a free shift meal, less so when I'm just out and about dropping between 8 to 10 dollars on lunch. Plus, with everything I make, I increase my own personal cooking repetoire and skill. (It's often helpful for me to do things that I may not initially want to do, like go to class, work out, etc, if I envision them as sort of an RPG skill building, which in fairness they are). After shopping, we swung by the liquor store to check out the various new fancy beers available and spoke wistfully of wanting nicer weather more conducive to throwing parties, grilling out and drinking on the patio. Curse the Snow Miser and his wintry grip on Wisconsin!

After all this excitement, we returned home where I had a fantastic lunch; a roast beef sandwich with horseradish jack cheese and horseradish mustard on whole grain bread, with a salad from the salad bar at the grocery store. Glorious. Then it was kick it around the apartment time until I had to head into work

I didn't have to work until 7 tonite, which is about 2 hours later than is usual for a Friday night. As a result, I got there right as they were in the midst of a rush. Not only was I feeling out of sorts, because though that was how I was scheduled, I couldn't help but feel 2 hours late, but then to have to try to jump into things and hit the ground running? Uck. We had a good and busy night in which we didn't get all cleaned up and out till 12:30. Such is life, I suppose.

After work, I tried to get a hold of the handful of people who'd tried to reach me while I was at work. Eventually worked my way down to the Library bar where my buddy Faust was in town having a few beer. Sat around and had a few beers with him and some of my other friends who were there, Doug and Busey. Red Seal, by North Coast Brewery, is a phenomenal beer as far as I'm concerned. Nicely hoppy, but with a bit more of an amber body to balance it out. Screw Bud Light, this is 'drinkability' right there. It was kind of nice to stray from my standard PBR for a while too, as it's been a little bit since I've enjoyed some "good" beers. Pair that with the kind of fantastic conversation that tends to occur on a slow, easy-going night out, and I'll be happy every time. As much as I enjoy going out and rolling into a solid shit show (which this blog will hopefully help me to remember the details of), sometimes you just want to take it easy and enjoy the moment. Tonite was one of those nights. Plus as far as drunk food, I don't think I'm gonna do much better for myself than the second half of the salad I had for lunch.

And that brings us to where we are right now; writing a blog entry instead of getting my ass to bed at 4 in the morning. Truly, I am a product of an online age. Still though, now is the time on Sprockets when we sleep, so that's the plan. B, out. Peace and chicken grease.