At the behest of my sister

Sorry Katie, I've been kind of busy lately. But I have some free time now, so here we go!

This past weekend was busy, long, and quite good. I spent Friday working on some homework and hanging out at the house. Friday night the Harrell's had all of Jess' friends over for an Italian dinner, even though she is in Italy, and it was a ton of fun. The food was great, and we got to just hang out in their backyard on the coolest night of the fall so far.

At some point, I think it might have been Thursday night, I found out there is a hole someplace in my air mattress. Suck. I WILL be buying a bed this week, mark my words.

I spent Saturday morning at Reverb, and the whole time was spent on homework, thus I didn't have time to post on here. After work I went over to the Gazebo and watched a few episodes of "Lost", which ended with one of the most ridiculous events thus far. And then Ben had to go to the Christian Showcase. I won't have time to find out what happens next until at least tomorrow night. It hurts. Pete and I went to the showcase, which was much better than Ben made it sound like it was going to be, and then I went home and went to bed early. Like 10. That was crazy.

I got up on Sunday and went to Rolling Hills, where I hung out with 3 and 4 year olds at the 9 AM service. Those kids are so much fun, it's one of my favorite parts of the week. After church my community group went out to lunch at Otters. I love the chicken strips there, and the Texas toast is great too. So great, in fact, that I bought two extra pieces after I finished my meal, and waited up front a good 15 minutes until I asked them where it was and they brought it to me. So I missed out on most of the social time, and that was unfortunate.

Last night was great! Two words: John Mayer.

Jon got free tickets to see him and Sheryl Crow at Starwood. We were pleasantly surprised, albeit confused, to see John open for Sheryl. This allowed us to get out of there with minimal traffic and at a sensible hour, since none of us really cared to see her perform. Mayer played an amazing set, he is so good on electric guitar. It's scary, really. I was mildly disappointed that he didn't play "Bold As Love", since I figured he would have rocked it so much. Alas, it was still a great show.

Although, we did end up sitting in front of four high school girls. At a John Mayer show. We knew it was a bad sign when they were playing their John Mayer ringtones for each other before the show and talking about cheerleading practice (they seriously did this, no joke). As soon as he started his set, they stood up behind us and started screaming out lyrics as loud as they could and shrieking in ecstasy anytime he dang falsetto. They also made sure to sing out extra loud any time he cursed, which was an added bonus. Needless to say, I spent the first several songs laughing hysterically at their antics. It was like having "Nashville's Best" live in your ear. Splendid indeed.

This morning I wrote a paper for business ethics that turned out much less painful than I imagined. I headed over to Showdown for an hour, which was good, and I was actually productive the entire time.

Dr. Gonas got our investments class involved in this University Stock Challenge at the Loew's Vanderbilt hotel. It was actually pretty fun, since it wasn't worth anything and my team did decently well, considering 2 of the 4 of us didn't show up, so we were at a complete disadvantage and still finished up over 100%.

Now I'm here at Reverb, finishing this up and watching The Office before I head back to the house to finish up prep for my International Business debate tomorrow and maybe even some investments homework. There is far too much happening tomorrow, I won't even get into it. Wednesday brings Showdown during the day and a management mid-term in the evening.

Then, freedom.

My fall break will be spent, most likely, doing a whole lot of nothing. I will buy a bed, and I've almost convinced myself to buy a twin instead of a full, since it's not only cheaper, but I also wouldn't have to pay them to deliver it, it could be transported in a friend's SUV. We'll see how this all shakes down.

And now, I'm out.

All the leaves are brown, and the sky as gray (probably at home anyway)

It's the end of September. Huh.

My stereo installation will finally be complete this afternoon. Yay. I may also buy Fargo this afternoon too.

I get to go to a free show tonight featuring Paramore and Family Force Five because they're both with Showdown. It shoud be extremely entertaining, and I think I'll be able to see some of the people from Gotee there too, since FF5 is on Gotee.

I came as close as ever to buying a bed yesterday. It's gonna happen soon. I can feel it.

Last night I went to "Jet Li's Fearless" with a bunch of the guys. It was rather entertaining, but it mostly made me want to see his far superior movie, "Hero", again. That is on the buy list now too, which currently looks like this:

1. Good Burger - It's available on DVD, and it's only 6.99 on bestbuy.com, but it's not one of those movies you send away for. I need to find it in a store.
2. Babe - Now that I've resigned myself to buying it in pre-packaged with Babe 2, I can't find it anywhere.
3. Fargo - Just because.
4. Hero - Amazing.

Additionally, here's a list of upcoming releases that I'm looking forward to:

Oct 3 - X-Men: The Last Stand - probably won't buy this until it's significantly cheaper, but I'll complete the trilogy eventually.
Oct 10 - Prarie Home Companion - A great movie with lots of commentary on Minnesota life.
Oct 31 - MI3 - So much better than MI2, almost on par with the first.
Nov 7 - Cars - Another classic from Pixar.
Nov 14 - Family Guy Vol 4 - Still not sure if I want this yet. Loved the first three season, first half of season 4 was a bit weak. And they better not be skimping on episodes and over-pricing them again.
Nov 21 - Seinfeld season 7 - I love this show.
Dec 8 - PotC2: Dead Man's Chest - Kind of the same category as X3.
Dec 8 - Mission Impossible Season 1 - This was such a great show, I might just do it.

I took the previous post off so it doesn't mess up the margins anymore, but if you want to see pictures of the house, click on the flickr badge.

Mario Bros meets Prehistoric Man

Guess what Ryan and I made yesterday?

If you guessed homemade cheese, you're wrong. We made a Nintendo fort!

The process began by going to the Goodwill Superstore down the street and buying an assortment of blankets. We then returned home and made suspension ropes out of packing tape and draped the blankets across them. A rather simple set-up, but it turned out fantastically! I'm going to try and remember to buy a cord to attach my camera to my computer and then I'll get some pictures up here of the whole house, not just the Nintendo fort.

I'll have the opportunity to buy said cord when I'm down at the Cool Springs Best Buy getting my stereo installed this afternoon. I've got another 2 hours at Reverb, and my appointment with them is at 4, so I'll have plenty of time.

Tonight is also the Pop/Rock Showcase here at Belmont, which is always interesting and almost always entertaining. Benji Stein will be rockin' the bass for Brett McLaughlin, so if you're in town you should go and cheer him on (Ben, not Brett). The other acts are Sarah Silva, who I hear is real good, Lorien, who I also hear is pretty good, and Sophia, who I hear are weird and screamo. Gotta love it.

If you're on Facebook and haven't checked out the Friend Game under "My Friends", you should. It's rather addicting, and an easy way to pass the time.

My first tests of the year took place this week. Management Comm was easy, 54/50. My Business Ethics and Int'l Business tests aren't graded yet, but I think they went OK. I don't have the books for either of the latter classes, so this is the litmus test to see if I need to buy them or not. I'm leaning towards no.

Finally, the new season of The Office premiered on Thursday! I won't give anything away for those who have it TiVo'd, but I will say that I enjoyed it quite a bit and it contained one of the most gauche kisses ever (In an effort to keep from using awkward as much, I'm going to try and apply multiple synonyms in its stead). Definitely worth seeing, and opens up a whole new world of story lines for new installments.

Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti

Again, I'm at Reverb. Shocking, I know.

I'm listening to the new John Mayer right now, and I have to say it is quite good. There are some songs on here that I might even call fantastic. So far, favorites are The Heart of Life, Stop this Train (even though Ben says they shouldn't both be on the same album, I appreciate the fact they are), and the Bold as Love cover. The new Jars of Clay is quite good too, although it's taking a while to get used to the second half of the disc, it's quite different from the first.

I might be in a music video this weekend... Kurt and Tyler are shooting one for a new country artist and they want me to be a businessman. I would say completely for sure yes if I didn't have community group that day already, but I think I'm gonna do it anyway.

All of my homework is done as far as I can remember. At least the stuff that's due tomorrow. That never happens with me.

I decided to try a little experiment today: I was walking through the grocery store and saw that Hot Pockets and Lean Pockets were on sale. I couldn't decide which to buy, so I bought one box of each, both Pepperoni subs, and made one of each tonight, with Tim knowing which one was which so I was unbiased. First, I could definitely taste a difference between the two. And second, the Hot Pocket was much better. The cheese in the lean pocket is a bit too... something. Blobby? I think that might be the best way to put it. Anyway, the result of this is that I will not be buying either Hot Pockets or Lean Pockets again, since Hot Pockets are terrible for you and Lean Pockets don't taste good.

Speaking of things that aren't good for you: Sara Lee French Silk Pie for $2.50.

Heck yeah.

Oh, and did I mention that I'm recording with a bunch of the guys "Africa" by Toto? Well we are. And it's gonna be hilarious.

Waiting on the World to Change

Times are getting better.

Yesterday I came home from class to find the last of my birthday presents from my parents had arrived. This included the new Jars of Clay, Leigh Nash, and John Mayer CDs, as well as the second season of The Office! Life is always good when you've got the guys from Dunder Mifflin around. Most of the episodes are even better this time around, plus the delted scenes are hilarious.

Today I came one step closer to ending the whole car break-in debacle: I bought a new CD player at Best Buy. This ended up costing a bit more than I expected because they're going to have to do some re-wiring, and the plate that has the air controls on it costs $80 rather than the $30 I thought it did. That's no fun.

I really don't want to work at Reverb tonight. Or tomorrow.

But I am.

I have a driver's side window.

Bitterness abounding

So, hm, this weekend was not the best I've ever had.

After my 5 mindless hours at Reverb on Saturday morning, I hung out at the house for awhile, basically watching college football the whole time. I also made my first batch of corned beef hotdish for the year, which has provided 4 meals so far, and should provide that much more when all is said and done. Jon and I went over to the Gazebo to hang out with the boys and watch "SWAT" (that's right, we watched SWAT).

So we go home, and I wake up in the morning to go to church, get out to my car, and find that some creep had thrown a massive rock through the driver's side window of my car and taken my CD player. Yeah.

Metro came and filed a report, but I don't plan on them ever finding my stereo. And, frankly, it's not the stereo that pisses me off so much as the window. It's currently Saran-wrapped and sitting in my driveway, waiting for me to make an appointment to get it fixed, which I was waiting to do until I found out whether insurance was going to cover any of it. And today word came down that they aren't, which wasn't a total surprise, but still sucks anyway.

That was really the only thing that sucked about this weekend, but it's sizable. Beyond that, we started community groups for church on Sunday night, and mine is about 25 minutes away. It is also with Ryan and Susan, completely by chance on all three of our counts, which saves on gas and is great to have people there I'm already comfortable with.

Yesterday I walked to my internship, which took about 20 minutes. While there I did a lot of randomly connected things that took a bit longer than planned, so I got home at 4:45 and had Jon take me to Reverb for work at 5. While there I learned that they apparently tried to get someone to take the shift that I didn't want, but they thought it was Mondays instead of Tuesdays, so I still work 4-10 on Tuesdays and now share a shift on Mondays from 7-10. This did, however, allow me to leave at 8:30 with Ben to watch the end of the Vikings' opening-game victory. I had originally planned to stay up with Ben and go to Wal-Mart at midnight to buy Lucky Number Sle7in and John Mayer, but I hit a wall around 10:30 and he went by himself, which I hear turned out quite interestingly since Wally World didn't have Continuum.

That all leads to today, where I spent 9:30-3:15 in class, had dinner/lunch at the Curb, and now am at work. I did decide today while in investment portfolio management that I'm leaning towards not adding a finance major. Gonas was up front, talking about all of this stuff in the Wall Street Journal and these futures contracts and such, and I looked around the room and most of the people looked genuinely interested. I, on the other hand, hardly understood a word that came out of his mouth, let alone cared about it. I'm gonna actually try and buckle down in this class for a bit and see if I can force myself to enjoy it, but it's looking less like a possibility by the day. Maybe it's just the stuff we're talking about now, but I am supremely confused by it. I've even (gasp!) tried reading it, and it's not happening.

So, again, I'm hoping the rest of this week is a bit better. Maybe I'll find a good deal on a driver's side window for a '96 Taurus. Maybe I'll find a cheap CD player, or at least a cheap way to control the A/C. Maybe investments will come alive to me. Maybe I'll even bite the bullet and buy a bed, as much as I hate to in light of the car situation.

Or maybe not.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see.