I got to work the Winter Classic today. It was cold, but no worse than opening day, or a night game in April. It was exciting, the game could have gone better, but I had a lot of fun for most of the day.

The facilities are not made for a sport where 90% of the fan base tries to go to the bathroom at the same time though, so that got frustrating and I spent way more time than I wanted too trying to instruct people on the difference between the door labled in and exit at the bathroom.

All in all fun, worth the lack of sleep and laying off of any major partying on NYE.

I got a few pictures with my phone before people filed in and I had to actually pretend like i was doing stuff. It takes pretty good pictures I think.
( Pics )

Merry Christmas.

Still here, doin alright for the most part. Not much new going on really. New place is fine, family is fine. Still no car. Few things coming up for working for the Cubs, so that'll be nice. Convention in a few weeks and Winter Classic in a few days. Was supposed to work tomorrow morning watching the door while the crew worked, but they finished early so I don't need to go in.

Christmas was good. Time with family is always nice. My cousin and her husband who are about 5 years older than me or so just had their first kid a few days before my birthday, so he's 3+ weeks old. Got to meet him at Christmas. Pretty light Christmas.. Gifts I gave went over well, stuff I got was all nice and wanted and not much to say other than that.

I got the new G1 google phone. It's awesome. I got it for work we're developing some software for it in between other projects. Fun stuff. Also been setting up a web server deal. Some new territory, not as familiar with all the stuff it makes it tough. Anyway, back to figuring that out.

Busy weekend this week. Had to go back to LaCross Wisconsin and drag my car back with one of those Uhaul car dollies. Dad and I drove up to the Dells Friday night, spent some time at the casino there, got a room and drove the rest of the way Saturday morning. Long day lots of driving. Sunday moved to my new apartment. All that after a full week of going to the gym. I hadn't been to a full week of Jujitsu classes since I started there. At first I didn't feel going to the Intermediate classes and then baseball season took up a lot of my time. Now, less excuses. Plus the big regional tournament NAGA is coming up in a few weeks. I haven't signed up yet but most likely I'll be going, so not only do I need the practice/conditioning, but it'd be nice to be able to enter the lighter weight class which means I need to drop a little weight. Not all that hard, the only real difficulty is weekends. Still if I can lose five or six I can drift the rest in water weight no problem. (theoretically I could drop it all in water weight but that's no fun and I'm not all that serious about it).

Halloween this weekend. Fun stuff. May have people over to go out Friday night, and I think someone is having a party Saturday. Still no costume yet, but I'll be able to throw something together easy enough I imagine.

Not much else going on. Work is slow. Went to a concert with Shane last night. Some band called Of Montreal. That's basically how it works Shane wants to see random Indy band in the city. I live in the city so I go too. They were good and the crowd wasn't too annoying. Security had to push past a few time to take out people smoking up, made me sympathize with the security guys. Some of them actually work at the ball park too, I usually see a few of them going to local shows. If I wanted to put in the time I could do that too but meh, I'd have to see more shows that I don't really care about than shows I wanted to see, it probably wouldn't be worth it.

Random poetry guy was there, he seems to be at all the shows we go too causing much speculation (well, a little speculation anyway) between Shane and I what he really does, and why other people cheer for him. They ended the show covering Smells like Teen Spirit. It was fun and a good cover. (not that Nirvana is all that particularly hard to cover or anything but still). So... apparently today is side comment in parentheses day.

Oh well back to work. Fun night of unpacking later.. woo hoo.

Last weekend I was in Minnesota visiting the peoples up that way. Good times as always. Sunday comes and I have to work Monday so after the epic fail that was the Bears game I get in the car and head home. It's not that bad, about 400 miles or so I usually do it in about six hours. 34+ hours later I got home... well to my parents house anyway. Sans car.

Just after crossing into Wisconsin motor got loud, then very quiet as I coasted to a stop. Cop came, tow truck came. It was about 7 ish by then. Yeah not much open in semi-rural Wisconsin at 7 on a Sunday. Too far/late to get a ride from anyone at home as I was still about four hours away so I stayed at the local AmericInn. Next morning the garage still couldn't get to my car, so after a nice hour and a half walk over to the garage, I had it towed to the Toyota dealership in LaCross (ten miles further from home). I remembered the car was certified pre-owned when I bought it and I had paid for platinum coverage or some such, that had to help me out right? Not so much. I need a new engine for my car. Apparently that's not part of my 6 year 100000 mile warranty. My dad spent his evening driving out to get me after he got off work Monday evening. I spent the day watching sports center and playing pool at a hooters.

Since the car isn't even paid off yet, I can't just get a new one so next weekend we get to drive up there and drag the car back. It's not the best time to be borrowing money and all and I don't have several thousand dollars cash to have the engine bought and put in. So no car for me for the next few months anyway. For my normal everyday life I don't really need it, I take public transportation everywhere anyway but yeah still kinda sucks. It's a good time not to drive I suppose, parking in the winter is less fun than normal. meh

Part of the reason it's hard to come up with the cash is I'm moving at the end of the month. A new place, with a bedroom and all. So I have the whole rent/security deposit all tied up as well. Hopefully after the holidays/tax return I can get my car back, until not it'll sit in the driveway at Mom and Dad's.

After the crash and burn of the Chicago National League team that I work for, we had our end of season party last night. Open bar from four till seven. That group can do a lot of damage to any bar in that time frame much less where the company is picking up the check. I'm not a big fan of drinking on work nights, but that was a much needed break after the last week. I get to take the train home to see mom and dad for the weekend, and go play cards with the guys. Yay.

Bears preseason football starts today. How is that possible? There is no way it should be time for football to start already. It comes on a good day, as there is no Cubs game tonight so I don't have anything to watch this evening but still regular season one month off. Olympics started too. Not super excited or really even interested in them, but I'll probably check out the Judo and Wrestling coverage, as it looks like you can see some of that online which is cool.

This week has been pretty rough sleep wise. I started coming in an hour earlier to make up for Joe not being here any more. I've been going to bed earlier, or so I thought but apparently not enough, because I've been dead all week. So much so that I've not worked out, which is bad but still. So sleepy. Tornado weather at the ball park delaying the game 3 hours or so Monday night didn't help any I'm sure, since it was pushing 1am by the time I did go to sleep. It does give some bright side to the otherwise terrible game Saturday that starts at 2:55, meaning I can sleep in. Otherwise really fox afternoon games are brutal and shouldn't happen any more, and then a 7:00 game for Sunday night baseball. Which is nice because I can go out Saturday night and come home Sunday with enough time to park and do stuff before work.

Horseshoe has done renovations or something and is reopening it's casino in Hammond. It's supposed to have a fairly nice poker room. It's a little closer than the one I occasionally go to in East Chicago or Gary so I may have to check that out one of these days. Like next week when I finally get a weekend off, and also get paid by both jobs. How's that for timing. In fact, that's the third Friday of the month I'll have to move my car for parking that week too. Yeah I'll be there. Playing live is way different than playing online. Live players are just So bad. Sounds like a good plan.

Busy week or so. Cubs are playing great ball all of a sudden, right in time. It's exciting. They're coming home for a big 9 game home stand, of which I work 5 games. With last weekends games that makes 3 weekends in a row of working, but oh well. Tuesday there was a minor league game at the ball park, which was pretty cool. It did show me that if I didn't like the team so much I wouldn't be working there though. It's a lot more of a job when you don't care what's going on on the field heh.

Some changes at the real job as well. Joe the other guy I work with was let go, so I'm back to answering phones as well as programing. For the time being anyway till they replace him. It isn't a huge deal, I was doing most of the actual work to fix problems anyway but yeah not optimal. I did get a fairly respectable raise as well though. I probably Could get more by going elsewhere, but not enough to give up the intangibles of working here (such as generally flexible schedule, lax dress code stuff like that), and put up with the hassle of looking for and changing jobs for the time being. It also means I'll definitely be moving when my lease is up to a place with a bedroom.. and probably parking. So that's a bonus. I've also been working on some pretty cool things, and fixing some problems we've had in the past so definitely is good in that respect.

( Jitz stuff )

SO, I've had enough driving for a while. Not so much the act of driving, but putting up with everyone else who is also driving. Two weeks ago we drove to the family reunion in Montana. Rented a big ol minivan. Dad and I did all the driving, well he did a large chunk of it and I took over while he napped. Still 20ish hours each way.

This last weekend I went out to Minnesota. It's about 400 miles or so. It took 7 hours there and 8+ home. It usually doesn't take that long. I don't know what it is but Wisconsin, I'm sure it happens other places too, but I almost always run into it on WI, has points in the interstate where everyone stops. There isn't an accident, or construction, or a lane reduction or even vehicle broken down or pulled over ... just people stopped. Seriously.. if there is no outside reason for there to be a parking lot in a 65mph speed limit then everyone should be able to go in the forward direction.

The weekend was fun though. Celebrating the Fourth of July in a state that it's legal to buy and blow things up with fireworks is a pretty good thing. Apparently MN has some rules that are a little stricter than Wisconsin but yeah, still some good stuff.

Ugh anyway.. home, back to work.. yay work....... right.

I got a call from Dad while I was driving home and he was asking if I was going to stop by the house to meet the new dog. This was news to me as no one said they were getting another dog, but apparently they did. His co worker had to get rid of their pug due to changing living situations so yeah. I'll have to stop by next weekend. luckily Saturday's game is an early one so that works out. Should be a good time. Always enjoy animals. Animals and little kids love me after all.

Almost time to go get killed at Jitz. I'd actually been doing well the last few weeks, but two weeks off by it self is going to pretty much kick my ass, not to mention you know, the guys attempting to choke me or bend limbs in sub optimal directions. Good times.

Yesterday we all got up early and took Dad fishing. Pretty much every vacation my family ever took was a camping trip. We didn't get to do much fishing before typhoon style storms hit. We literally went from the sun starting to peek through the clouds, to lightning, thunder and rain coming in sideways in the span of twenty five minutes. We'll get some time to fish when we go to Montana at the end of the month for the family reunion though, so it'll work out. Half the fun for him is getting the gear out and playing with it anyway. We went home, got Mom outta bed and got breakfast.

TJ came back to the states last week too so we got to hang out and play cards for the first time this year pretty much on Friday. He was in Thailand for the last six months or so for his job. We stayed up pretty much all night playing cards. Good times.

Over all good weekend, but not much sleep. Add to that having to come in early this morning and I'm flagging some. Plus the Cubs and the Sox play next weekend, so I'm working all next weekend so not much catchup there. Cubs Sox is always a very busy weekend. Sunday is a night game though, so I can sleep in. Night games during the weekend can get ugly.

Weekend after that family reunion.

It's world series of poker time again. Another year I won't be going. Not that big a deal, it's not like I made an effort to qualify but one year I'd really like to go though. What is pretty cool though is that ESPN has been broadcasting some of the final tables live. Daniel Negreanu, one of my favorite players and the owner of the poker website I spend time on won a bracelet last week and getting to watch that was pretty cool. Unlike watching poker on tv they obviously don't show the cards, because it's live and could still effect things some how. It gives a different look for studying things. He's in another tonight if I get back from Jitz in time I'm probably going to check it out some.

For the first time in a while I have a weekend off. Well the weekend of the wedding I was technically off, but this weekend I don't have Anything to do. I'll get to sleep in and such. Next weekend as well, as the Cubs have a weird 3 game mid week homestand and then go back out of town. It's rare to have back to back weekends off where the team is out of town. I've had to get up early to work a few days this week, so it's definitely a welcome break.

I'll go home and see mom and dad tomorrow. I need an oil change, and we'll probably go to the bar, or Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the UFC pay per view in the evening but no plans tonight. Was considering driving out to the boat to play some cards, but that's usually a late night and yeah between early days at work this week and west coast baseball games that's probably not going to happen.

I've been reading the Vampire Earth series by EE Knight lately. I'm about 100 pages into the third book. They're pretty good. It's a dystopia/fantasy type story, I like it.

There is a Whole Foods near my apartment. I recently went in there because it's on the way home from the ball park, as opposed to the Jewel, which isn't far either, but isn't on the direct route, and while I don't mind walking a few blocks, doing it with multiple bags of groceries gets old. Anyway I don't eat all that much stuff these days. My dinners basically consist of sandwiches almost exclusively. It works for me. Every time I go into Whole foods though I just feel outta place. I keep waiting for an employee to come up and act like I'm lost or that I walked in to the wrong store. I donno, I guess it's kinda trendy and organic and healthy and what not and I really don't care about any of that I just need some lunch meat and I like the mac and cheese at the hot bar.

Anyway, finally done with reports and such. It's been a long day time to go home.