The 4th and Beyond

Hope everyone had a good 4th weekend.

Friday I actually didn't do anything (well, I was lucky enough to work all day!). But my allergies were bothering me and I'm not so excited about fireworks, so I just spent some quality time on the couch and watched the Mets blow a 2-0 9th inning lead and lost to the Philthies.

Saturday I finished up Season 2 of Weeds. Holy crap what an AWESOME season finale!!! Then headed over to Courtney & Mike's place for a BBQ and festivities. It was fun. They're big into the game cornhole. Which, I thought they made up, but apparently its popular enough to have its own wikipedia page! They make their own boards and equipment, involving the college team colors of choice. For Mike and his friend Adam, they've got Auburn colors, Courtney gets one LSU board. I may need to get me an FSU set...I think my patio is big enough to handle it! So anyways, we setup a Cornhole tournament (complete with dry-eraser-board brackets!). I teamed up with Will, but we lost in round two to Mike and Adam. We definitely got a raw deal in that setup! Courtney and Mike are also the proud new owners of a Wii. And more importantly, the game Rock Band. Which, I'd never experienced before. I've played Guitar Hero before, but Rock Band includes a drum set and a microphone! If I was ever gonna play any instrument, I'd always wanted to be a drummer. Back to the days when I was a kid, going into a music store and grabbing some drum sticks in a side room only to have some a-hole working there yell at me that I was holding the sticks wrong. I ran off crying and it crushed my hopes and dreams forever. I'm pretty sure my parents told him to do that so that they wouldn't have to deal with me playing the drums in their house :) Anyways, we went through a couple of songs, turns out I'm a good singer???? well, it helps when the "singing" is actually a Beastie Boys song! I spent most of the night trying out the drums. And it was A LOT tougher that you'd think. Especially because they incorporate a foot pedal. That makes it tough, and eventually by about 2:30am, after Courtney was long asleep and Mike was passed out on the couch, it was just me and Nooga, we decided we were ready to call it a night.

On Sunday, without really anything to do, I talked Lauren into a double-feature, which we'd been talking about doing for a while now. We both wanted to see The Love Guru, but we couldn't fit it in. We wound up seeing Get Smart (with Steve Carell) first. It was pretty good...but you've really gotta appreciate Steve Carell to really like it. I think he'd be perfect to play a real life Inspector Gadget movie. Next up was Hancock (with Will Smith). I hadn't really heard a whole lot about it, but I definitely wanted to give it a shot. We originally got seats pretty close to the screen, but after staring at the Rock Band screen all night the night before and with it being the 2nd half of a double feature, I asked Lauren if she would be cool with moving towards the back of the theatre. WORST. DECISION. EVER. Turns out we sat right in front of a family with a 2yr old wondering and chatting with himself throughout the aisle behind us. It's bad enough that I already generally don't have a lot of patience for annoying kids, but this was a movie theatre. You just don't let that happen. It's not like this was a kids movie. Without giving much away, Will Smith plays the role of a guy with super powers, but, well, he's kind of an asshole. There's a lot of cursing and drinking in the movie. Not that I claim to know anything about parenting, but this is not something I'd think a 2yr old should be subject to. This kid was sooooooooooooooo annoying, eventually, about halfway through the movie, we moved back down to the bottom closer to the screen again. I was sure to make sure they heard me use the word "obnoxious" as we left our seats, I also made sure to say "fucking" first but not TOO loud. Once we got to our new seats they did take the kid outside, so I feel like I made a positive difference in the lives of everyone in that theatre :) Unfortunately, it was temporary, the kid was back, and even way down at the bottom of the theatre, everyone can still hear this kid. With all that said, Hancock was an AWESOME movie. I absolutely loved it, and whenever it comes on DVD, Mitsa will be providing a movie night viewing party.

Last night was the return of Sports Trivia to a new bar since Frankies is no more. It was at a little hole in the wall kind of place called Charlie Mopps. It's hard to find, I will admit to one U-Turn. I met up with a coworker, Cintron and he needed at least 3 U-Turns I believe. The place was pretty cool, it had tons of beers to choose from. Anyways, for trivia, where half the fun is coming up with funny team names, we went with the recently demoted Braves outfielder, Jeff Francoeur as our target. "Jeff Francoeur, AA [minor league] All Star Game MVP". At first when I got there, our waitress, who was wearing a Sweetwater T-Shirt (a good sign, I was actually wearing mine too) took my order and I ordered a sweetwater and asked if they could turn the Mets game on one of the TV's. Well, they turned it on about 6 TV's! wow!!!! what service :) and the Mets were winning 5-0 before they even got it on! For my 2nd beer I asked the waitress to recommend something to me. She did one better. Actually three better. She brought me 3 samples of beers to try. Hell, after the samples I was kind of thinking I didn't need anymore beer, but since she went through all that I wasn't about to say no thanks, I'm good! So I got a 2nd beer and that was gonna be it. Well, as luck would have it, throughout trivia, they randomly pick team names and award a free pitcher of beer to two teams. Yep, we "won". Cintron isn't really a big drinker and I had to drive, so as sad and tragic as it was, the pitcher pretty much went to waste. I was tempted to offer it to the table next to us, but I'm not so sure they were even 21. There were too many straws in their drinks anyways. Well, me and Cintron wound up finishing in 2nd place and went off with $30 of gift certificates to spend there next time we go back. Which we most definitely will. Hopefully we get the same waitress too!

And in typical Mets fashion, after being ahead 8-0 and 10-1...they had to make things interesting, and wound up winning 10-9. Ughhhhh.

Am I Cursed? Brrrrrrrrrrrr

So last week it was (insert Dr. Evil accent) FRIGGIN freezing (end accent) here in the ATL. It was 17 one morning that I remember. Which seems like the perfect time for my heater to stop working. Yep, I got home from work and it was about 50 degrees INSIDE my place. Poor Mitsa, I could almost hear her shivering! I'm not a Pierson, so I was not about to brave the cold, I slept at a friends' house (Thanks Jason & Tara!) that night. Wanna take a wild guess as to what happened that night? Yep, my presence broke their heater.

We each managed to get our respective heaters fixed within 24 hours, so I guess there was a happy ending. If anyone needs their heater broken for any reason...give me a call, I'll be happy to see what I can do.

Vickie's Milestone!!!

As everyone knows, I have two special ladies in my life (please note - this means you mom - I only count ones that don't breathe), and they are my beautiful TV - Mitsa - and my car - Vickie. They are by far the most costly and best investments of my life to date (I guess some day my condo might overtake one, but my condo is a boy anyways).

This morning - November 21, 2007, at 9:11am ET - Vickie cruised (literally) to her 100,000th mile.

Ironically enough, to me anyways, on the J-Pod was Weezer's song "Slave".

*-Professional cameraman, do not attempt

I Bought a CONDO!!!!

Well, I'm ABOUT to buy a condo (those 2 upstairs windows are gonna be mine!). I did all the hard work already, the search, the offers and counteroffers, an inspection, finding a mortgage. None of that was a whole lot of fun, but its done! Now I gotta fill out a tree's worth of paperwork and I'm all set to close on July 20th! Just over 2 weeks from now!

I'm sure you local ATL people are dying to know when you get to help me move...July 28th is the target date, don't go anywhere!!!!!!!!! (Of course, there is a small possibility that I'm gonna hire movers...you know, for Mitsa's well being)

Another trip to Jacksonville

Lots of interesting stuff to report from this weekend. I'll try my best to make it brief. (HA!)

(Nurse) Kim met up with me in Atlanta and rode with me to Jacksonville Friday. Got into town and met up with Tracy & Stacey and others at the local Mellow Mushroom. Some people know of Mellow Mushroom as a pizza place (some may not know it at all) but the version in Jacksonville is more like a bar it seemed. Still pretty cool. Tracy was being a party pooper and wanted to go home, but me and Kim stayed and hung out at "The Shroom" (I just came up with that! I'm sure i'm the first too). Right about at last call time, I went back to the bar to get a last beer ( a Newcastle - draught, of course) and was rejected. The taps were cleaned and closed out. I went back to Kim to give her the bad news, she went up there and next thing I know, here comes Kim with 2 very very dark glasses of beers? What the???? Well, apparently the bartender liked her boobs better than mine, so she got us beer. Oh well, whatever. After the bar we went back to Tracy's place and popped in Talladega Nights. Kim was asleep within 10 minutes. Funny movie!!!!

Saturday I got tricked into going to a shoe store with Kim & Tracy..THATS not gonna happen again!!!! After that we went to this place called CRAZY Sushi. It didn't seem too crazy, but I'm not a sushi guy. Later that afternoon me and Tracy drove up to Jekyll Island for my friends' Jill & Josh's wedding. Before I left I got the address for the hotel and got directions from google. As we're headed towards the island the directions took us in a different direction than the signs for Jekyll Island. I definitely got suspicious, but stuck with the directions. Shouldn't have! We wound up in Saint Simon's Island. the street name is apparently on both islands, and google maps screwed me over. Finally we got to the hotel and to the wedding. Oh, on our way to the wedding, I found out my friends Mike & Courtney got engaged. So thats pretty cool. No one seems to listen to my "stay single" advice that my Grandpa gave me!!! Anyways, the wedding was pretty cool. I tried to get drunk enough to dance, but it just didn't happen. They actually had a cool idea for the music at the wedding - they emailed a select few of the guests and took song requests. They had a band for the first part of the reception when we were eating, but after that they just setup Josh's ipod. I thought that was a pretty neat idea. Anyways, I, of course, requested "Get Low" (you know, the sweat drop down my balls song). At the wedding Jill kept telling me it was coming up next, but it never came!

Sunday morning just as we were getting back on the interstate, I was passing a truck who decided to shower poor little Vickie with oil. It was ALL over my windshield, my hood, my bumper and just everywhere. A couple exits later I finally decided to stop at a gas station to make sure it wasn't coming from my car, and it wasn't. I really wish I took a picture, but I didn't. It really was everywhere. We grabbed 2 squeegee's at the gas station and just completely wiped my car off. Not fun. But it wouldn't be a road trip with Tracy if bizarre stuff like this didn't happen!

Sunday we drove back to Atlanta. Then this morning after I woke up, my TV in my bedroom (not Mitsa) was on Sportscenter just like its supposed to be. I walked into the living room for a minute and I heard the sound from the TV go off and heard some odd noises. I went into my room and smelled smoke. Something inside my TV blew up!!!! I couldn't do anything with the remote, so I wound up just unplugging it. Looking inside the TV you can see a bright orange glow...not quite a flame, but something was definitely burning in there! So...now I need a new TV. And since Mitsa has spoiled me, I'll probably have to spend a good bit of cash on a new TV now. Nothing huge, but definitely something HD compatible.

Thats a pretty eventful weekend, huh?

Why Lauren is Dumb (Case #293)

For those not in the know, Lauren is my roommate, and is better known as "failure". I've actually gotten away from calling her that, but I think its gotta make a comeback. Both of us have been struggling with allergies the last couple of weeks. It seemed like - for me anyway - that it was worse when I was on the couch. This is crucial, because the couch is the prime Mitsa viewing area (Mitsa is my 57" TV, not some girl I look at from across the street through binoculars, I don't know HER name). Now that "Failure" is car-less for a bit, she's been working from home. Something gave her the idea to work at the table in our living room. On this table was a vase with some flowers. Flowers that had been there a while. A long while. A very long while. Turns out several months worth of mold formed all up in there!!! Who knew?

The flowers are gone, and so are both of our allergy problems. Note to self, don't ever buy girls flowers...they die, grow mold and attack my nose. Not worth it!

My Reward for Kicking Cancer's ASS!!!

I guess I should start by telling everyone I'm doing great. But, for those of you who don't know, here's the story...

Like anyone else, I got pretty drunk on my 30th birthday. I lost my glasses. A couple weeks later I gave up on finding them so I went to the eye doc to get new ones. During my eye exam, he found a tiny spot in my iris that he was concerned about, so he referred me to another doctor, who then referred me to another doctor at Emory. Well, Dec. 5, 2006 is a day I'll never forget. I was told I had a tumor in my eye. I decided the best way to handle this was to keep it pretty quiet. I didn't want to think about it, didn't want to worry about it. Which I was pretty impressed with myself and my ignoring abilities. I only had trouble sleeping the day I found out and the day before I started radiation.

So, Jan 11, 2007 I began my week of radiation. Which was pretty awful, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone!!!

Jan 18, 2007 I had the radiation (we'll call it "device") removed. And I've been slowly but surely regaining my vision. It's still a little blurry, but I'm doing good - all things considered.

Anyways, the point of this blog is to talk about my reward, which I'm VERY excited about!!!! It put a little bit of a dent in my tiny little savings account, but I'm pretty sure I earned it!

http://www.mitsubishi-tv.com/j/i/18326/TelevisionDetails/WD57732.html?cid=382

4-6 weeks to ship this bad boy (well, girl, named Mitsa by the way) I don't know how I'm gonna manage to get through that waiting period! But when everything's setup, we'll definitely be having some kind of viewing party at my place!!!!