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Weekend: April 02, 2006 - Winnegan's Fake On Friday jamie and I went out to dinner at TGIF and I noticed two things: lots of people were fat and lots of them were at TGIF. First of all, out of a random sampling of 10 people that did not include us 8/10 were fat. Not just a little overweight but fat. The couple at the booth across from us, an overweight couple next to us ate: a full, heaping order of spaghetti, a big-ass steak meal complete with baked potato and other TGIF'd double fried vegetables (or something) and some other full entree that I'll have to ask Jamie about when she gets back from Orlando because I don't remember. We all could shed a few pounds; fine. But when you need to shed three digits of fat maybe you should rethink going to TGIF (and ordering a couple meals).

After TGIF we met up with chris and michael at Halligan's to shoot pool. They were so crowded that we decided to high-tail it over to Leon Pub. After a brief stop at my house to pick up my license we walked over (hey, gotta work off that TGIF you know) to Leon Pub. It was a bunch of smelly hippies and other malcontents standing shoulder to shoulder. We tried barreling in but the bartender said, "You should have come earlier" so we stood outside while I thought about how I could get in close enough to him to either say something belittling about him or giving him a driving knifehand to the temple. Neither happened so we called pchris and elena and told them that we were changing plans AGAIN and going to Finnegan's Wake.

If you've never been to Finnegan's Wake it's just like my kitchen. Except instead of roaches it's yuppies. They both scare you a little bit, you want to squash them and they swarm en masse. We were able to scare up a corner table for the six of us though and we saw the biggest, nastiest ass crack you've ever seen on this she-normous girl. Some guy also passed and we had to call the paramedics. For you Democratic party members, you'll be pleased to know the Young Democrats of Tallahassee all had their cameraphones out taking pictures of the guy as he was being wheeled away. Classy. No really that's classy, especially the one where you put your thumbs up. "Hey, we're the Young Democrats of Tallahassee, we're trying really hard to be Republican." You dicks.

Anyway, P-Chris came up with the best idea ever. Lease the other side of the building across from Finnegan's Wake and call it Winnegan's Fake. FW is so full people would come in just to sit down. And it could be the total opposite of FW: all the waitresses would be butt-ass ugly but would always get your order right and they'd come promptly to serve you...none of the TVs would have soccer on them. PLUS the gimmicks to attract people write themselves! Thursday Night Only! Spritney Beers! Zed Lepplin! Chixie Dicks! Meatwood Flac! Come on! You know you'd go there. I think P-Chris is starting to scrounge up the venture capital required for this deal right now. Buy your share now for only $100!

I know it's April Fool's Weekend but those whole entry is true. So...kapow. Good luck with your Dissertation Defense marty. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: April 03, 2006 - Dr. Blessinger I got a call from my mom around midnight last night that my uncle died. He was diagnosed with brain cancer around the same time jamie's dad was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. I think it's for the best as he deteriorated relatively quickly and there's something to be said for the family being able to let go and return to their lives.

Congratulations to Dr. marty Blessinger who passed his dissertation defense last night. chris and I met up with him and the Theory Gang along with michael at Andrew's and had some beers. It was decided we would play an impromptu game of poker at 9pm. tchris, Chris and Michael showed up promptly but where were Marty and kathy? Allegedly they just forgot and came an hour late. I don't have a picture to put up but T-Chris was our big winner. Yeah that was a long winded Congratulations.

Since I was tagged by brian to write Six Unusual or Weird Habits I figure I'll give it a shot.

• I love flossing; way more than brushing.
• I'm not sure this is a habit but if I have to put a picture of myself online I always Photoshop myself a little bit.
• I'm really good about taking my contacts out; I've only missed about ten times in the nearly ten years I've had them.
• I clean out my ears at least twice a day with Q-Tips. One day in high school a chunk of earwax half the size of a nickel fell out when I was driving. Thank God I was alone in the car.
• I try to only shave once a week and am more than willing to risk looking shaggy Thursday-Sunday.
• I think I should have been born a German since I love to combine words. Let's see here...I have some fungus growing on the plan on my desk. Rather than referring to it as the Plant With Fungus I'd rather refer to it as the Plungus. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Tuesday: April 04, 2006 - Show Me The Orange I've got to be honest. I've already started thinking ahead to my orange belt. Last night, since there were only four people in the class, I got to work one on one with one of the black belt instructors. I never really liked him since he was always criticizing my death moves and moving me literally by centimeters when there were people in the class practically punching themselves in the face with their incompetence. Not that I'm All That but I'm Almost All That.
  
  Tonight I finally learned the Death Move for the single wrist grab and the best part about it is that I no longer have to specify a wrist so friends and family can grab my by either one and still get the same devastating blow to the face. Working with the black belt meant the practice half of the class was all about me and Combination 3, while tough, came much more quickly than it would have had I been working with McOgre or Death Breath. Man, I can't wait to beat someone up. Too bad all the poor have fled New Orleans because that's only like a seven hour drive. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Wednesday: April 05, 2006 - Google Dance Google danced tonight and we all have new page ranks. Well, everyone except me. Still a 2. 55 backlinks, steady updates and that's the thanks I get. My blog at work went from a 0 to a 6 (so far) so that's pretty cool. Unfortunately it looks like all our work sites dropped at least one point. Good thing I'm not going to be there for the semi-annual Freak Out. I'll be in Chicago at my uncle's funeral. See everyone on Monday.
  
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  Weekend: April 09, 2006 - Trip To Chicago My trip back to Chicago for my uncle's funeral was mostly uneventful; which is good for a somber event like this. No drama is always good. The only down part was the driver bringing me to the wake from my flight got HORRIBLY lost and he made a 75 minutes trip into a three hour one. It didn't help that he didn't speak English and I was a little rusty in my Hindi so it was rough. It's weird to think all my baby cousins are now grown up but not as weird to think my next major birthday will be 30. Weirded out.
  
  While I was away I got an email from this woman who crazy Jack wanted to work with but nothing ever developed. She wants to sell her website and she let both Jack and I know it was for sale. I'd really like to buy it but I don't think I can afford it. The problem is that it's a hotbed of cash just waiting to flow. It's got great PR (6), the site was registered in (get this) 1996 and it's got about 800 pages of unique content that could easily be broken into 2400 since right now every page has about 3mb worth of text. I try to look at it as though every page is worth about $50 in advertising so it would be pretty easy to rebuild parts of it and then start cashing it in. I just wonder how much up front cash it'll take. We'll see. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Monday: April 10, 2006 - Before and After My body temporarily taken over by chris, I purged three large office-cluttering items yesterday by pawning them off on christine. She inherited my two inbred convict cichlids along with their filthy tank as well as Abner (The Turtle)'s old tank and a CRT monitor. I had been trying to kill those damn cichlids off for about eight months and thought I had been doing a good job since their numbers had dwindled from about 200 to 2 but those last two just wouldn't die. I didn't feed them. I didn't have a light for them and their filter didn't work. And this was the case since about November of last year. Somehow, through cannibalization (I would imagine) the two of them stayed alive and are now being rewarded by living in a nice clean tank in Christine's house. In return I'm getting a big new pleco for the downstairs tank to hopefully control the massive amounts of algae. Ah, twas a good day for the ole office. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Tuesday: April 11, 2006 - But I've Got The Biggest... In case you're not sure what exactly we do at work all day I can tell you this right now: we put giant metal balls onto cars. My official title is Ball Hanger, Picture Taker and I like it because it rhymes. Well, I think that's about it and I need to be hitting the ol' dusty trail. So, uh, have a great day and I'll see you for poker! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Wednesday: April 12, 2006 - Mike the Minotaur I am so tired. With the president of our largest client in town for the week I feel as though the amount of work I have is piling up beyond even my wildest dreams. I truly believe that this week three people working full time could not cover the amount of the things I have on my plate. Remember the good ole days when I was just a spammer? Yeah, I do too. After work jamie and I went to The American Cafe in the Governor's Square Mall. Instead of mashed potato sides they had bouslin mashed potato sides. Gross. I don't want anything that sound like boozin'. Not in my taters. Matt Flynn stopped by unannounced around 10pm or so. It was good to see him and as we talked I realized I hadn't seen him in ages. He's shaved his head and I don't think you'd recognize him on the street. I'd be willing to bet on it. Speaking of betting, I can't wait for poker tonight. I need a relaxing night. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Thursday: April 13, 2006 - Suuuck It First off, I have to congratulate kathy for her first win in the weekly poker tournament. Now, onto the sucking.
  
  I'm totally beaten down at work. I'm hesitant to write all this since I know everyone there reads my damn blog but no sense in keeping secrets. I'm totally beaten down; the week has totally sucked. I have three jobs right now, all of which could be full time and two of the three are extremely stressful. When I started I figured that although I wouldn't really be able to buy a gold car at least I'd have a very stress-free set of daily tasks. Oh but that was then. And this is now. And now I'm this Project-Managing, Programming, Business-Developing, Affiliate Managing robot who, after estimating his taxes for last year, formally realizes the pay is laughable despite a great environment. Point is, I'm overworked and underpaid like everyone else in America. And I'm so stressed out it's starting to affect my personal life much like it did when I worked with Jack. And that really fucking sucks. At least with Jack I was putting money into the bank every month instead of taking it out.
  
  I fucked up yesterday. I figured with the combined wisdom of myself, liz and christine I'd be able to redo a bunch of Overture's adwords. And I was wrong. I said I was sorry and that I'd fix it, which (with Christine's help) I did in a half hour. No big deal right?
  
  In karate we had a pop quiz which entailed going through moves and doing pushups when the instructors find your hand in the wrong position or some other inane "problem". By the end I had lost track of my how many pushups I had done but my shoulders are still really sore. Adding insult to injury I had to work with the 14 year old kid I yelled at on Tuesday after telling him one of my personal karate goals was to never speak to him again. Naturally, we had to work together on the day we learned how to break a person's elbow. And now my elbow really fucking hurts.
  
  We had a good crowd for poker last night including Tim who battled Kathy in a clash of Winning Poker Virgins. Kathy was deflowered and took home $40. I, fittingly, finished 7/8 after going all in on an open-ended straight draw bluff. It was dumb and I normally wouldn't play like that but hey, it was a lousy fucking day. It was good seeing everyone though and even though I took a total ass-whomping I was in a better mood when everyone left. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Friday: April 14, 2006 - Much Better First things first, remember that on Saturday Night, at the Legion Hall on Lake Ella is a benefit concert for Habitat For Humanity, specifically jamie's Dad's house. It's only $5 to go hear her ex-boyfriend's dad's band (follow that?) play so you should go if just to give them $5. I'll be there so what more could you ask for?
  
  Work was better and the week ended on a much more positive note than I was anticipating. I'm pretty sure the President of our big client doesn't want to eat my soul so I'll write the week off as a victory. I left work about ten minutes early so I could take a quick shower before Jamie went to Cyprus to meet up with Jerry. We were there for a couple of hours and, get this, I tried something new. White truffle potatoes. I gotta say--they were pretty darn good. Afterwards we went back to Jerry's now-finished house and waxed philosophical until about 12:30. Then, friends, it was bedtime. Go to that benefit concert Saturday Night! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Weekend: April 16, 2006 - Happy Easter! For Easter I went with Jamie's family to this Presbyterian church for services. It was weird and I'm pretty sure just by going I've renounced Catholicism and ensured a humid place in hell. The service was nice--they had a big choir. The only problem was that the sermon was horrible. Horrible in every way: long, without point, slow. I found myself figeting a lot but I had no choice. After the service we went to Chez Pierre and met up with Chip's family. We also saw Kurt and Chrissy there and I'm sad to report I was unable to perform my back-two-hand-grab from a seated position. The service was extremely slow and the food was fair at best. They could have at least told us they were out of potatoes instead of brining us steaks with sushi rice. Gross! The desert, which was thrown in for free, was awesome though. Seriously awesome.
  
  Desperate Housewives was pretty good but they tried to swap out Grey's Anatomy with some stupid show that I'm sure no one watched. Jamie and I tried to watch the Family Guy South Park episodes but I fell asleep. Oops. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Tuesday: April 18, 2006 - Kia! Last night I was going to try to eat a family serving of rice and time myself. It was going to be the first of a set of Competitive Eating entries. Fortunately I didn't have my digital camera or else you would have seen that I couldn't even finish the food. It was probably all the left over Olive Garden croutons I'd eaten a few hours earlier. Anyway, I think rice would be a terrible food to try to eat competitively. It sticks to your throat and no amount of milk can really wash it down. I ate probably 90% of the rice in about five minutes. No world record there. I promise, though, in the next week to bust out the digital camera and do some of these entries. It'll be so fun. Like you don't even know. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Wednesday: April 19, 2006 - Armoire I'd be remiss if I didn't hearily thank the following people: Erick, christine, chris, jamie and Barbara. Why would I be remiss? Barbara because she sold me this AWESOME armoire for $100. She's finally getting the hell out of America and this huge thing was the last thing in her apartment. Christine was kind enough to loan Erick's truck to us and they came out to meet Chris and I to haul the thing down the stairs of Barb's second story residence and tow it over to mine. After it was safely in my house I met up with Chris and michael for dinner at Applebee's then waded through Publix to get dog food before going home to throw away the cinderblock entertainment center Kathy and I made my first year in this bug-infested state. Chris, Jamie and I reinstalled all the electronics in the living room and now my whole apartment has an aura of adulthood. How "adulty" is it? Christine and I saw a woman on the street fall today and not only did I not laugh, I felt bad for her. That's adulting right there. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Thursday: April 20, 2006 - Ruture Rapist Today was a pretty good day. christine brought me Monica, her old (my new) pleco and we transitioned him smoothly into my big tank. She's about the size of Chris Rix but hopefully she's a little more hungry for algae than he is. At work Kurt had a successful meeting in Chicago with HFC which means my life will probably get easier as a result; never a bad thing. In karate I got to beat up this 13 year old and, to top it all off, I knocked off tchris to reclaim 2nd place in the PCS.
  
  This 13 year old kid is going to be a rapist or a serial killer. I'm not sure which yet. First of all, he's a fat dork. Skinny dorks become cool musician hipsters and fat dorks turn into serial rapists. It's basic knowledge. Once that moustache fills in...yikes. Anyway. He was my partner AGAIN tonight even though two weeks ago I had told him my personal goal in karate was to never speak to him again. We spend the half hour doing knife defenses and take downs. While stabbing me with the fake knife, he would NOT SHUT UP about how to goes to flea markets to buy things he can sharpen into weapons to take into the forest. Or how he has special throwing knives and one stuck in his foot but it didn't hurt. Or how the guts spill out of things when they're sliced open. Healthy. This in addition to the constant complaining about how my knife counterstrikes wouldn't hurt him enough. SHUT UP KID! He always puts on a show when the instructors walk around--both by making you look bad by not doing what he's supposed to do or really hammering you when it's his turn. Last night I had enough and fucking took his ass down. Once our main instructor walked over I knew he was going to try to do something to make me look like a fool so when it came time for the drop I caught him right below the neck (we're supposed to hit the chest) and swept the hell out of his leg. He went down hard. I was laughing so hard at this point I couldn't bring myself to finish him with the face punch. Because I didn't finish it our instructor asked me to do it again so I did it the exact same way again and dropped him again to the point where the slapping-out did him no good. Take that 13 year old. You're MY bitch now! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Friday: April 21, 2006 - Impending Last night it really hit home that within the next year things are going to be changing rapidly for just about everyone I know. Within the next four months about half of my core group of friends are going to be permanently leaving. chris and michael are of course leaving for grad school at Indiana. kathy is going...somewhere to start married/teaching life. elena and pchris are possibly picking up and moving away. nbrian has already moved to the Big Sleazy. It's easy to be picky about your friends when you're in school. You have almost a limitless pool of people to choose from. As you get older, though, you have interaction with less people so you become severly limited in your choosiness. Thank God jamie, tchris and marty will potentially be here for the next year or so with me. And thank God Chompy is a dog without means of escape. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Saturday: April 22, 2006 - Human Trafficking jamie made me watch a movie yesterday. A four hour movie. About human trafficking. On Lifetime. So before you complain about your day, just shut it. Mira Sorvino was an extremely convincing cop, especially the part where she walked into the Department of Homeland Security, asked some guy (the professor on Animal House who bangs the guy's girlfriend at the end) for a job and a few weeks later was giving the information so the President could be briefed. I can tell you this much, I thought for sure I'd get to see some action but no. A couple of side-boobs here and there but not enough to compensate for the four hour commitment. In all honesty though, I did learn a lot from the movie: Russia is still our enemy despite being filled with hot girls. If you're ever in the Philippines and you're white don't ever, EVER, talk to any native Filipino under the age of 40 or else secret anti-trafficking women will run up to you with cameras and accuse of you being a pedophile. If you're a woman, don't ever, EVER, go on a date with an attractive man anywhere in the world. He's just going to sell you. Ugly men are ok (unless you're a little boy). If your child is kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery it is only the wife's responsibility to worry about it--the husband must return to America and work to pay for you to stay abroad and complain about how you're only working and not helping her look. Everyone in the world speaks English except words that you already know in a foreign language. A good example of this, "Perdon Senior, I was mildly curious to know why you insist on exacerbating this horrific situation. Perhaps we could settle this over a glass of agua." Seriously, though, (according to Lifetime) 800,000 people are trafficked worldwide each year (they don't mention that 780,000 are trafficked into America to maintain the lawns of Lifetime executives) and it's the third most profitable illegal activity after drugs and weapons smuggling.
  
  We went over to pchris and elena's last night to celebrate Chris officially getting out of the military. We got to put on his clothes and play with guns. And we were drinking. Heavily. The only casualty was Jamie, who I accidentally punched in the face. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Sunday: April 23, 2006 - Tallahassee Nursery We met up with chris and michael for grilling and DH/GA watching. The burgers were good but the recap shows were horrible. ABC needs to realize that they lose more people than they gain each time they show a Catch-Up episode. And since they show a Desperate Housewives Special two out of every three weeks they're losing a lot of people. I need to be in charge of ABC. I'd make it work. [Comments: 2]· permalink · · ·
  
  Monday: April 24, 2006 - Go Cubs Last night I got to watch a Cubs game. Last year, since I was working at home, I got to watch most of them. With Kerry Wood, Mark Prior and now D. Lee hurt it looks like it's going to be another losing season. Shocking. The only bright spots thus far is that Dinosaur Maddux is 4-0 with a 0.99 ERA and Perpetual-Stubble Walker is hitting around .400. Maybe it's best I don't waste my money watching the games this season. Granted it only cost me like $74 last year to get all the mlb.tv package games I'd probably only be able to see a few this year.
  
  Sorry this update sucked--I didn't really do much. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Tuesday: April 25, 2006 - Most Offensive Thing Ever
  
  
  Has there ever, EVER in the world been a more offensive...anything than this???? [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Wednesday: April 26, 2006 - Gill's Tavern Trivia Last night I met up with kathy, jamie and chris at Gill's to play some trivia. Out of 14 teams we finished 5th which, all things being equal, wasn't too bad. What really sucked was they had a category of The Rolling Stones. I figured I'd get at least five of them but no...we got 0. That's pathetic. When is it going to be Led Zeppelin week? We'll get like, a million AND our bar tab. So there bitches. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Thursday: April 27, 2006 - Poker and Dr. Buchler We had a very small turnout for our Weekly Poker Championship. It was only jamie, tchris and kathy. chris, as per usual, watched keenly. I beat Kathy head to head and then she and I headed out to Dr. Buchler's Schenker party. We were tagalongs. Especially me, a tagalong of a tagalong (don't they speak that in the Philippines?). Anyway, I only knew two other people there: Alex and Sarah. Alex and I talked mainly about beating each other up with various types of death blows. It was weird seeing that circle of people again. It made me think that I really, really, really miss teaching but at the same time that I probably will not enjoy getting that last degree. As I said to Kathy last night as we were driving back, I think composers write some things just because they know that's what to write. There's not some organicism bullshit underneath; it's nothing that can be classified that easily. Anything that you write according to some bullshit pattern is going to sound like shit (see 12-tone) yet music nerds will love you because you're writing something they're capable of easily understanding. Anyway, that's a very unflattering picture of Dr. Buchler but it was the only one I can find. I assure you though, he's much better looking in real life. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Friday: April 28, 2006 - The Melting Plot Last night jamie and I went to the Melting Pot. It was ok--the food was pretty good but I don't think paying that much money should require you to make your own food. I would have loved to been in on the business proposal meeting when the company was first getting started. "Now listen Johnson, this is genius. We make them pay $60 per person. THEN we just bring them the food and let them cook it. No need for chefs. Just waiters and kitchen prep folk. Oh, let's make sure they're all real hot too." After dinner we came back here for an evening of Seinfeld episodes and cookie cake. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Saturday: April 29, 2006 - Happy Graduation! Happy Graduation! I bet michael didn't even realize I had secretly snapped this picture on his way out the door this morning. As you can see, they've switched the mortarboards to no longer be perfect squares. And the cords are no longer braided. Anyway. I did nothing all day. chris and I got some coffee and jamie made a scrumptious dinner before we settled into some cookie cake. Mmmm. I tried to clean my house but I didn't get too far (I know you're shocked). That's what Sundays are for anyway. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·
  
  Sunday: April 30, 2006 - Alexadex Season 4 Alexadex Season 4 is over and I finished in pathetic #32 place. It was a fun run and I think I could have really competed had everyone else not had a two month head start on me. Still though, #32 out of like 15,000 isn't too shabby. If only I had cheated with my custom API's or bought a shitload of subdomains I would have gotten a Top Ten T-Shirt. Alas. It's fun though and I really felt sorry for all the people that took it really seriously. As I said from Day 1 it's a good way to spend 10 minutes out of your day. And for the people that broke a billion--good for them. I don't think I'll ever do that although I do expect to perform a little better this time. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·