Category: Life

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It’s been crazy

I haven’t written in awhile. You may have noticed this.

It’s not that I haven’t had anything to write about. Quite the contrary. My head is busting with ideas and topics. The real enemy here is time. It is simply that time of year when events get ramping up and there just isn’t anything I can do about it. For example, here is my schedule since the day before I left for Vegas with Jess on the 28th of October.

  • Saturday – Party at Friends
  • Sunday – Vegas
  • Monday – Vegas
  • Tuesday – Vegas
  • Wednesday – Return from Vegas (Halloween)
  • Thursday – blessed rest
  • Friday – BSU Basketball
  • Saturday – BSU Football
  • Sun – Leave again for Vegas
  • Mon – Vegas
  • Tue – Return from Vegas, exhausted
  • Wed – Steelheads Hockey
  • Thurs – a little more rest
  • Fri – BSU Basketball
  • Sat – Drive to Logan, UT (and back) for BSU Football Game
  • Sun – Dinner at Jess’ folks
  • Mon – Finally, nothing
  • Tue – BSU Basketball
  • Wed (yesterday) – Friend’s B-Day dinner and Steelheads Hockey.

For those of you scoring at home, that would be 3 separate trips, 7 sporting events (3 basketball, 2 football, 2 hockey), 3 dinners out (not counting travel days) and a grand total of 3 evenings of rest where I had nothing going on.

Of course, those ‘rest’ days weren’t even all that restful since they landed on weekdays and because in the midst of all this, work has been absolutely crazy. Not bad-crazy by any stretch, just super busy. Everyone is trying to get sites I’m working on done before the Thanksgiving holiday, and its putting a pretty good crunch on me.

To be perfectly honest, I’m kinda surprised I’m still fully functional. This does sort of resemble my previous life except for a few crucial differences. a.) Before, this sort of schedule would go on for weeks or months at a time. b.) Also, back then, most of the events we’re not ‘my’ things… All of this stuff I’ve been doing has been stuff I wanted to do. Not events to which I was committed and had no say at all, but was still expected to attend and have my game face on. That makes a big difference. c.) Top that all off with the fact that I really like my job now, and the whole world has changed.

So, yes, some things have suffered. The blog for one. Dad, your website for two. I ain’t seen Georgie or Hillman in weeks. There’s been a bunch of movies I’ve wanted to see, and my TV sports watching has fallen off dramatically.

At least, with ye olde birthday coming up, I should be able to catch up with just about everyone then. For anyone that hasn’t heard, I’m heading to Busters on Broadway on my birthday (6:30pm, Saturday the 24th) for finger steaks and beers. Anyone and everyone are welcome to stop by, even if only to have a drink and laugh at me for getting old.

And if you think I’m not looking forward to a most relaxing Thanksgiving, hanging out at the parents, watching football, drink in hand, before gorging myself on mom’s excellent dinner, you’re crazy.

Stay tuned.  Maybe I’ll get a few spare seconds to write some more. No guarantees.

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Pai Gow Adventure

Greetings from beautiful Las Vegas!

Yesterday, when Jess was in meetings I decided to go play some pai gow. For those that don’t know, pai gow is a pretty simple and very fun game. The basic premise is each player and the dealer is dealt 7 cards, and your job is to make the best 2 poker hands you can, a 5 card hand and a 2 card hand. The only rule is that your 5 card hand must beat your 2 card hand. (full wiki here). To win, both of your hands must beat the dealers 2 hands. To lose, both must be lower than the dealers. If you split, you push and get your money back. Very simple.

Anyway, yesterday I played for about 2 hours and did pretty well. I ended up about 40 bucks and got a couple of beers out of the deal. I was up almost $100 at one point, but hit a cold streak before I picked up.

Continue reading “Pai Gow Adventure”

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Happy Halloween

I’m spending today watching football and packing for Vegas, so I don’t have a chance to properly recognize Halloween. We won’t be back in town until Halloween afternoon, but I wanted to say a little something about the season…

Jess refers to Halloween as the start of the “Eating Season” which lasts from now until Valentines Day. I hadn’t thought of it, but she’s right. Halloween candy, thanksgiving dinner and pumpkin pie, Christmas gorging, super bowl parties, and Valentines candy. By the looks of it, we’re looking at a couple of hundred thousand extra calories. God, isn’t it glorious?

Please read my Halloween thoughts from last year (And the silken sad uncertain rustling…) I talked about childhood, costumes, trick-or-treating and candy. It still stands up. However, the Simpsons clips have been removed from Youtube. Lot can happen in a year…

And just because, here are some huge images of my Boise State pumpkin from 2004. Pic 1, Pic 2.

If you don’t hear from me from Las Vegas, you’ll hear from me after.

Happy Halloween, everybody.

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Vegas Home Vegas

Las VegasNo, “Vegas Home Vegas” is not a totally awesome spin on Home Sweet Home. It is actually my itinerary for next two weeks. Lemme explain.

A few months ago, Jess found out that the national Charles Schwab conference was going to be held in Las Vegas this year. She used to work for Schwab before her little company broke away and went independent. But, she still knows a lot of people over there and still works with them for her clients. Anyway, she also found out that the keynote speaker is none other than Bono of U2. For those that don’t know, Jess is a rather obsessed U2 fan and has seen them something like 9 times in concert. (despite the fact they’ve never been to Boise).

Obviously, she was geeked to go. Plus, since Vegas is one of my favorite places on the planet (I’ve been there like 9 times), it was a perfect match. So, she went to work on her boss to get the company to pay her way down for this conference. Needless to say, she finally wore them down and they agreed. She got her hotel and air paid for, and all I had to come up with to go down with her was my own airfare. No way was I gonna skip this one.

We leave Sunday morning (the 28th) and return Wednesday afternoon on Halloween. 3 days of Mandalay Bay. Of course, she will be in meetings and seminars a good deal of the time… I wonder if there is anything fun for me to do in Las Vegas… Hmmmm… I’ll have to check into that.

As many of you know, I started a new job in August with probably the coolest company on the planet, Wirestone. I had heard rumors, even before I started, that Wirestone has it’s own Las Vegas conference where they send all 200+ employees (from the various offices around the country) to Vegas on the company dime. Supposedly, the first few years they did it, they actually attempted to get work done. Well, recently all pretense of “work” has been thrown out the window and it basically turns in to 2 days of drinking. The words of advice I’ve received from those who have been before, “Bring your stunt liver.” Check and Check.

Not long after we got the go-ahead from Jess’ boss for her conference, I found out when Wirestone was planning their Vegas party at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.
November 4th through the 6th.

Basically, what this boils down to is I am in Vegas Sunday through Wednesday with Jess, am home for Thursday, Friday and Saturday, then head BACK to Vegas on Sunday to return home on Tuesday.

Either, this will be the greatest 10 days in the history of mankind, or I will return a broken empty shell of a man. I guess those aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

Plus, the first Boise State Basketball exhibition game is on Friday, the 2nd, and on Saturday is Boise State Football home vs. San Jose State. So, I guess technically, the title would be more accurate stated as “Vegas, Boise State, Vegas” which might well be the definition of heaven in my book.

You’ll hear from me again, provided I survive.

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My Saturday

I’m fighting a cold this weekend, which sucks. Basically, I’ve spent all day on the couch watching football.

Well, not all day. Jess was running in the Barber to Boise fun run today, so I dragged ass out of bed to take her down there and meet her at the finish line. It was only a 5k, so it didn’t take all that long. I stopped for a Starbucks and took the paper to read while I was waiting.

On the way home, we stopped on Crescent Rim to take a quick couple pictures… the panorama below is the result. This is Ann Morrison Park and downtown Boise, along with the foothills in the background.  Click on the image to get the bigger version.

The Boise State vs La. Tech game was ok. Ian Johnson is out with a bruised kidney, but it all turned out good in the end. I was kinda zoning out while watching. I don’t have much to add.

Plan to spend all day tomorrow relaxing on the couch too, in order to get this cold out as soon as possible. Goin to bed now.

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Man Crushes

There are guys in the world that I am amazed by. I love their work, their personalities, everything. Jess calls them “Man Crushes” (click for Urban Dictionary definitions). Now, before you go getting the wrong ideas, let me make one thing perfectly clear… this does NOT mean I love these men in a unnatural sense. Absolutely not. By definition, “Man Crush” means if you could sit in a bar and have beers with a guy and shoot the shit for 4 hours, that would be a great time. All of these guys have personalties such that if they were normal guys who lived around me, I would think that I would definitely be their friends.

Without further ado, here are my man crushes.

Continue reading “Man Crushes”

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Slacking…

South Park MeI know, I’ve been slacking here. Well, I suppose technically I’ve not been slacking. That would connote me, parked on a couch somewhere eating Cheetos and watching old Three’s Company reruns.

No. That’s not me. I’ve been busy. So terribly busy. Work went from zero to 100 in about a minute. Add to that the fact that I’ve been moving for what feels like forever. (Don’t get me wrong, its going great! But half of my crap is still in boxes, and we just got the last crap from the apartment last night, which is finally all empty, clean and ready to go).

It’s just the blog that has suffered. When I get a bit of down time lately, I tend to zone out and can’t summon the creative juices as easily as I could when I was wasting time at HP.

Of course, that is not to say that I haven’t had stuff to blog about either. I’ve had about a dozen different ideas for posts. Some of them are great too. Who knows if I’ll ever get to them. I’ll sure try, but since many of those ideas were topical in nature, me, blogging about the Boise State game 3 or 4 games ago, really isn’t doing anyone any good (if I could remember what I wanted to say in the first place).

So, as an amends to my loyal readers, all 7 of you, I have this image… my South Park “me”. I’ve had this image for a long time and totally forgot about it. But now seems like the time to bust it out. Enjoy.

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Happy Retirement, Mom

Mom, I just wanted to take a second to wish you a happy retirement day. It is currently 6:37pm, so I’m sure you’re probably still in the office. If you see this, wrap it up! Go home. Relax a bit. Sheesh.

I’ve told you this for years, but you have given that place MORE than enough. You have been so grossly overworked and underpaid… and I mean damn near criminally underpaid, it is long overdue for you to leave.

Your boss… er… EX boss is in for a rude awakening when come Monday and you’re not there. She will try to fill your position for what she paid you, and maybe then she will realize how good she had it with you around. She won’t be able to find 3 people who earned what you did to split the work you covered.

Now, you can relax. Check that… you should relax, but you probably won’t. At least you won’t have to dread the end of the month any more. Plus, you can travel whenever you damn well feel like it. How great will that be?

Even better, you can now jump into the junk biz full time with dad! How exciting will that be!?

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Moving Sucks (and my new address)

I’m sure most of you know already, but let me just reiterate once again. Moving totally sucks. I hate moving. I hate boxing up my shit. I hate lugging my shit around. I hate living in and out of boxes. I hate dust. I hate updating addresses with every single person, place or thing who sends me shit. I hate everything about moving. *whew*

Luckily, this time Jess is there to help, and she has been invaluable. She keeps me on task long past the time I would have crapped out.

We are now in the “little random crap” stage of packing which makes me insane. Boxing up the kitchen is easy. It’s big, defined, and can all go in the same box. It’s when you get down to all of those odds and ends you have floating around your house that have no real category yet still have to go in some box in order to be moved. Just beyond aggravating.

My new address is as follows:
1005 N Harding
Boise, ID 83706

(the nice thing is the sheer number of characters I’m saving when I have to write my address! The old one was: “6294 N Park Meadow Way apt. 303” )

The funny thing is, as much as I hate moving this will be my 9th move since I left mom and dad’s. You would think that I would have it down at this point… but I don’t. My progression is as follows. (map)

  1. Stone Ridge Apts.
  2. Eastover Terrace
  3. Stephen Ave Apt.
  4. Falcon Valley Townhomes
  5. Clocktower Apts
  6. Charlotte Ave (my house)
  7. 21st st. (G’s house)
  8. Renaissance Apts
  9. Harding (Jess’ house)

Ugh… I get tired even thinking about it.

I’ll have a new home phone number as well, but since nobody actually ever calls me at home, I won’t post it here. If you want it, drop me an email.

So, the movers are scheduled first thing Saturday morning. Not sure how long it will take, but just about everything is boxed and ready to go. There are a few stragglers, but that’s it. I still don’t have any concrete leads on selling the TV, but I keep hoping something comes through in the 11th hour.

All we’ll have left at that point is once it’s all moved is to find places for all my crap in the new place, which is only marginally better than boxing it up in the first place.

No, I haven’t had a chance to blog about the Boise State game last weekend, but hopefully I will. This week is not good. Next week might not be much better. But, I may find some time in there somewhere.