Fact:

About 5% of my blog posts are written, in their entirety, while pooping.

This post is one of those 5%

Damn it's nice to finally have a laptop again

So much for that 365 posts thing...

Sorry about the uber-delay. Possibly the longest ever. Things have been fairly hectic (especially over the weekends when I usually mine the interwebz and Earth-in-general for exciting blog posts) what with work, and three trips out of town. Grandma is doing fine by the way...

In my delay I have decided a few things:

1.) Entourage is good. Really really good. I have been catching up on them from the library and Netflix (for the later seasons) and should be well into Season four by this weekend or so. Absolutely stellar script writing to keep what is essentially a repeated macro-storyline (guy gets movie, movie sells mass, guy celebrates with friends). Definitely recommend this one.

2.) This guy is hilarious. Basically, Chi City Mane is the realest dude from Chi town now livin' in the burbs. He chronicles his adventures with his personal Handycam (meaning you never really see his face). Yet another recommendation. As a matter of fact, I'll save you the trip:





And finally, if you don't watch any of the other one's cause they look stupid and you don't need any more ghetto slang in your life, please at least just watch this one. It'll warm your heart. A little Christmas love for the less fortunate:


3.) I'm out of shape. Trying to start working out is probably four times harder than trying to continue working out. I'm realizing this the hard way. Oh well.... onward.

4.) One of my cats now does not eat unless other people are in the room with her. I swear, this cat is quickly getting the nickname "Kevin McAlister" because I think she is afraid of the furnace, near which her main food bowl currently rests. Now we have another secondary food bowl in the living room, but that is just darn inconvenient when the Iams is down in the basement by said Main Food Bowl. The things we do for our pets...

5.) Speaking of pets, I'll be making friends (hopefully....) with three more this weekend. I'll be sure to take massive embarrassing and revealing photos chronic-(WHAT!?)-cling their living arrangements (jk doe....)

I gotta get my weight up...

Literally and figureatively.


Figuratively

As I anticipated, with the end of the school year came a sharp decline in the will to do anything involving, well, anything. That has basically included this sweet ass blog. Lo siento.

Literally

With that incredible (and admittedly, somewhat annoying) influx of having no current direction in life (the pool opens memorial day... until then, I'm basically like a big rotting stump..), I have tried to seriously focus on working out. I'm talking, NFL combine preparation working out.

It actually feels pretty good. So far this week has been more of a restore status quo kinda thing since I haven't done much since before finals week, but I have already done more cardio than I have in all of 2008 combined. With the latest 40 cent increase in Texas tea, I have seriously honest-to-god considered taking my insurance money from my car (it got totaled last summer, long story, mildly interesting, maybe for another blog post) and plunking it down for a road bike. I feel like it would kill two problems at once.

What does this entail, you ask? Well, there is the focus on both lifting and cardio as I already mentioned. Also, in an effort to keep oh I dunno, improving?, on my mind, I got a nifty little piece of freeware called Even Fit that can track all the stuff I do, from strength training, to running and biking, as well as my calorie count and resting heart rate, if need be. Being that I'm somewhat of a science nerd, and a lot of a numbers freak, "quantitative data on my own body really revs my engine" (put that on t-shirt).

I have consciously drank more water this week than I did all school year. Right now I'm chalking that one up to not having a coffee pot sitting next to me 6 hours out of the day, but the benefits are still there. I've also gone out and bought steak and tuna and stuff to grill because a.) Grilling is my only hobby in life other than video games, two) I love steak and III.) Protein is good or something, I dunno.

I figure I have until about June 6th-ish until I have a full time job, and with how long I have been at the same level (See: all school year) a lot of ground can be made if I just seriously focus on it. I'm somewhat stoked.

//And yes, that picture has nothing to do with anything. I'm more just asking if I look most like a chinese communist ruler? Stewie Griffin would be so proud...

90s Eric Clapton > 70s Clapton

The end of the school year sucks

What I havent been able to do

* Read my book
* Take it to the streetz.
* Keep up with my bracket (just checked: currently #1, but the projected score puts me in 3rd, which is usually pretty accurate this late in the game).
* play Minesweeper (sad times)

What I have been doing:

* Picking up and fixing bikes. Lots of bikes.
* In doing so, driving around this bad boy (no, sadly this is not mine):

Awwww yeaaaa

* Vector integrals, jacobians, shearing and moments along a beam, conservation of pretty much everything, and comparing a Hitchcock movie with one by Tim Burton! (find the one that doesn't fit..)
* Too tired to go out on Saturday night, so I watched The Usual Suspects. Definitely a good movie with a great "ohhhh fuuuuuck" moment at the end, as I like to call them. Kevin Spacey outdoes himself here. Oh, and sorry about the kinda random tense change for this asterisk....
* Keepin it gangsta'


PS3 fund: $118.75 - a solid start, but this is all of my paycheck. I'm sure this number will fluctuate as need to buy stuff arises, like, I dunno, pizza. Or ....Mountain Dew...


And go Reds. Even though I'm taking the terrible until proven otherwise approach.

BOOGITY BOOGITY BOOGITY!!! (sp?)

The smell of burning ozone is in the air, its that time of year! Daytona Day! NASCAR has come a long way since the down south bootlegging days; if you ask me, those died on turn three seven years ago.

Just one look at the new "cars of tomorrow" and its obvious that this is a-whole-nother beast.

So sit back, crack open your favorite cheapo white trash beverage, and turn the volume up to full blast for the first couple turns.


This ain't yo daddy's stock car

And if you really care, my fantasy drivers (seriously...) today are as follows:

1. Jeff Gordon - Most love to hate him, I just love him. The first of the "new age" (see: no southern accent) drivers.

2. Jimmie Johnson - don't really like him, but his crew chief is a beast and he always wins so... yea...

3. Dale Jr. - didn't really like the dad, love him

4. Juan Pablo Montoya - the real-life Jean Girard, made his fame in formula UN. second year in NASCAR, I expect big things.

5. Michael Waltrip - this guy has been around since like 1955



And for those of you who watch for the crashes (who doesn't?) Daytona is the best race to watch outside of maybe Talladega:

Summer all year round

I've been told the first step to recovery is to admit that I cannot control my addiction, so here it goes:

Over the course of the semester I've gone through, at the very least, thousands of sunflower seeds. That was my very first cupful of seeds. Not sure why I took the picture at the time, but I'm glad I did because since then I have gone through about one cupful every week. As I type I'm topping off another cup.

I started this one on Sunday.

Heck, as far as addictions gained in the first semester of college go, I'm right on par with being addicted to crayons in 1st grade.

Why seeds rock:

• With the constant packages of sugary goods floating north from the nati (thanks, Mom) a little salty snack always sounds good.
• Raining outside? Cold? Too lazy to get off my butt and make some REAL food? Seeds are always there for me. Kinda like cigs to some people, but like, 5000% cheaper.
• I think its probably in the same catagory as celery in that "you actually lose weight by eating them." Suck it freshman 15.
• It feels like spring training in December.

So, if anyone needs any early Christmas ideas for me, look no further than your local Sam's Club -->>>

Black Light Special

I can say with a great deal of confidence that this past Friday was the first time I have ever woken up before the crack of dawn while on a "vacation" of any sort when fish weren't involved. Ever since I could recognize a good sale in the newspaper (and had the money to actually make a few purchases) I've had a sick desire to experience the "BLACK FRIDAY" (spooky sounding, eh?) rush.


So, this year, Dad and I (yes, I'm pretty sure we were the only two white males together I saw all day) woke up bright and early at 5:00, grabbed a coffee, and headed out to Staples to get in line for those thumb drives and DVDs. A couple observations I made throughout the day...

1.) DVDs are dirt cheap this year. You can get full seasons of anything that didn't air on HBO for $15 bucks or less if you look around (see: Target, Circut City).
2.) America really can be a sick, sick, place if you just stop and look around. I'm not trying to say, "BOO CAPITALISM!!!!!1!1!" or anything, I was there right along with everybody (see: below). Just the pure numbers of people everywhere from Target to friggin' Pep Boys (yes, Pep Boys, they had some great car-GPS prices) had a crowd.
3.) The downfall of the guitar is imminent. And don't think that it will stop there.
4.) Tickle Me Elmo EXTREME! is hilarious on four hours of sleep.

Our prize purchase of the day, you ask? Office Max, of all places, had some crazy deals on monitors of all types, computer, TV, and projections. For the past year or so we have been contemplating converting the basement into our own common-man-home-theatre (if there is such a thing), and when there is an HD projector with a free 80-inch screen included (which costs only a hundred less than the actual projector), we caved.

The conversion should probably have been a weekend project, but I kind of blew my load when I got home, and by 8:00 that night we were watching a life-size Will Ferrell in Elf.


Mom will kill me for showing the interweb the mess, and honestly the picture doesn't quite do it justice, but this is the best photo-evidence I have.

Note to self: 2,000 lumens is really, REALLY freaking bright when directly shined into cornea.