going in circles: July 2006

Monday, July 31, 2006

pause

I'm putting this blog on hold for awhile, I've been too busy and not around a computer long enough (outside of work) to be able to update it. I'll resume it at the end of august.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

blah blah blah...the weekend blah blah blah...

Im a little late to post about the past weekend but it took longer than expected to load all these pictures on to my photobucket account and things are busy like always. It seems like all I do these days is post about the weekend.

On Saturday Jill and I went to the Ionia Free Fair. Some of the highlights included seeing the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile and Planters Peanut vehicles driving around, co-mingling amongst the white trash of mid michigan and eating deep fried oreos which until then, I never knew exsisted. I passed up the deep friend twinkie for these. They were actually not that bad but I dont think I needed 5 of them, 2 would've sufficed just fine. Anyway here is a couple pictures I took with my phone.

I really had a blast going back to this fair for the first time in many many years. I remember being a kid and waiting for this to come around. My mother would take my cousins and I here and I would lose them and ride the rides all day long. Speaking of which, coincidentally the same day that Jill and I were there, some 8 year old kid actually died on one of the rides at the fairground. He had a heart condition which his father knew about but thought it was "safe" for him to ride. What a dumbass! It was the first death in the 91 year history of the fair.

After we left the fairground around 3 (the crowds were getting bigger and the sun had really worn me out). We drove back to lansing to catch an afternoon showing of Clerks II. I was a bit worried what the crowd was going to be like, especially when the trailer for Snakes on a Plane came on and every sweaty overweight dude started high-fiving every other sweaty overweight guy next to them and were like "hell yeah man!! that better be a midnight showing!!". I've been guilty of this myself minus the high fiving a sweaty guy..ha! As for Clerks II, it was actually really good. It started off kind of slow and there were a few scenes that didn't make any sense in relation to the story. As it went on, the story got better, the characters were funnier and it ended on a very relateable message to stop doing what is expected and do what makes you happy. Theres a couple people in my life that I wish I could get that kind of message to. I dont want to spoil the movie for everyone so that's all I'll say about that.

The rest of the weekend isn't that interesting so I'll end it now. Time to go back to work.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

am I too late?

I promised myself that I would make a post before the day was over, and I made it with 14 minutes to spare!

To say that a lot has happened since last week would be quite an understandment and simply put, I'm too exhausted to try and remember everything so heres a condensed version of what I remember.

Our hot water heater has been broken now for offically 6 days now. Not only that but we need to have it replaced! So our landlord has already purchased a new one for the house, and we are left now having to wait to get a building permit (for what I'm not quite sure) and a licensed plumber to come out to install the thing. I dont know how much more I can take, its annoying enough having to drive over to my parents house at 7:30am to have to take a shower, but to have it go out around the hottest time of the year was the perfect irony. It smells pretty bad here.

Work is going good (see, Im saying something positive about work!), I'm finally caught up with everything for the first time in 2 months, and it only took 3 other people working 3 hours with me on my work just to get everything done. I'd like to think now I would be able to keep on top of things but that just isn't going to happen anytime soon. We're almost at the one month mark until State Convention :(

Speaking of jobs, I've recently applied for a Clinical Records Clerk position at CEI Community Mental Health. I had to rush around today to turn in my paperwork, application and resume as today was the last day. Hopefully I turned it in to the correct place, the rent-a-cop errr..."security guard" wasn't really much help. I should know within 6 weeks if I'll have a new job or not, I'll be crossing my fingers but not getting my hopes up. If I do land it however I fully intend to move out of my current living situation by the spring. I keep looking at listings on craigslist and get caught up in daydreaming while at work.

Ive also submitted paperwork to try and secure a private loan so I can start getting back to school for the first time since May 2004. Prior to this I was just paying out of pocket and thus could only take 1-2 classes at a time, which just isn't cutting it. I have a better understanding and all the motivation in the world to go back now and finally make something out of the time I've already invested. I was however kind of sad when I remembered that I had stopped going to class in my last semester giving me a 0 for one class and dropping my overall GPA from a 3.1 to a 2.8. Ah well, its just one class, I think I'll just retake it and it shouldn't really affect me anyway.

thats it, time for bed and onward to the weekend!

A real post later today I swear!

but until then...

I can't wait for this game to come out for the DS!

Friday, July 14, 2006

"nih gunna gat yo azz!"

I'll keep this short and to the point.

This is by far my favorite picture so far from this Israeli/Hezbollah conflict

AWWW SHOO MAH BOO GURL IS STRAIGT GANGSTA TRIPPIN!

More to come later.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

uggghhhh....

The week has so far turned just as busy as my weekend was. To follow up on my phone issue I went back out to Best Buy and was able to FINALLY purchase my phone and renew my contract, having a couple more problems along the way of course. At least I scammed them out of a free bluetooth headset which was included on a sales sign that ended on the 8th but was honored since it was still on the shelf. I love consumer protection. That thing is going on eBay since I absolutely REFUSE to be "that guy". You know what Im talking about, wears the headset to look important when all he is doing is talking to his controlling wife on the phone about what kind of laundry detergent she wants at the grocery stores. These are the same assholes who drive expensive SUV's to either feel important or compensation. Your life is not that busy that you can't use one free hand to hold a phone to your head, unless your occupation requires it otherwise.

By the way, this is the phone that I purchased.

and the specs if anyone cares

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A900

It's sprint's attempt at the razr, nicknamed the "blade". I feel kind of like a tool for buying a trendy phone but at the same time, again I must stress, Im not wearing the bluetooth that goes with it. No way am I going to walk around looking like a cast extra from an episode of Star Trek.

Im pretty happy with it so far, navigating the menus is still kind of confusing since I've been using my other phone for so long but the features included make up for the learning curve.

Thats it for now.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

"shut up shitbag!"

*This post took me 3 days to write, I hate how busy my life can be*

Another busy weekend.

This time Jill and I went back to the O.C. for a bachelor/bachelorette pub crawl across 23 bars in Oceana County on Thursday night. We arrived for the with the group around 6pm at which time about 7 or 8 bars had been visited. The crowd started out with 9 but by the end had grown double in size. By 1am we had visited every redneck establishment with the exception of 3 or 4 that were either not open or not worth it. I've included a couple of pictures of the night in the order that I can best remember things happening. It was fun to say the least. No descriptions this time, Im too tired.

Friday we went out and spent the day in muskegon doing a little shopping. While at Best Buy we had spotted a black and white kitten running across the empty parking lot into a group of bushes. I had attempted to try and rescue the cat but once I had cornered it and Jill tried to grab it, the cat hissed at us and ended up running away again. We gave up shortly after that. Poor stupid kitten.

Later in the day we also visited this light house on Lake Michigan. The view from the top was gorgeous and I had only wished I had a real camera to take a decent picture from the top. The water on the other hand was still fucking cold which for early July was really disappointing.

Towards the end of the night a group of us decided to go to a drive-in to catch a movie. I had never been to a drive in before and lets just say the experience is vastly overrated I think. I dont know how a double feature to sit on the group and listen to a crappy speaker box is worth $8 but whatever. At least I can say I've actually been to a drive in I suppose. The real highlight came when Jill and I were sitting on the ground watching the movie and these two giant dobermans break free from whatever automobile they were in and start rushing right at us. Comeon now! who the fuck brings DOGS, much less DOBERMANS to a drive-in?! were they thinking someone was going to attack them or something? jesus! The owner of the dogs was able to call them away from us though just in time. We ended up watching Click (which Ive seen before and suprisingly liked from an Adam Sandler movie) and the second movie was Nacho Libre so we ended up sleeping in the car for the rest of the night. The second movie didn't end until 2am.

Saturday was the day of the wedding who's party we had attended on thursday night. The wedding was held on Jill's parents property since they have this picturesque yard with a small creek and covered bridge...etc...etc.. The whole ceremony lasted 10 minutes and then shortly after was the reception. Needless to say I got hammered and at one point was dancing my ass off without a care. Yep, this lame ass white guy was dancing like I'd never done before. Im sure theres photographs of this out there but you'll never see it. haha suckers!

Sunday was recoup and recover day. Jill had woken up sick and I didnt feel too good either, not from the alcohol but from something I ate I think. I started to feel better after the 2 1/2 hour car drive back home.

After I had gotten home though I decided that I wanted to get my phone plan upgraded since I qualified for a $150 discount for being a 2 year subscriber. So I went with my roommate to best buy, picked out the phone that I wanted and was ready to renew my contract. The only problem was that I had a past due balance and I couldn't get my phone until it was paid, so I called Sprint, spoke with a representative and found out my past due. Since I didn't have enough to cover I had to deposit a check into my bank account and call Sprint again. This time the second representative didn't even ask for a payment and was pushing me to sign a 2 year agreement with her to which she was going to include a $50 rebate which I never really even agreed to do but apparently was done anyway. This rebate was to cover the past due balance and clear up any problems getting the phone. So I drove back to Best Buy and tried again and the same problem came up! So I called them one more time and the last service rep. told me the credit takes 4 hours to be processed, uh HELLO! did you not hear me the first two times when I said I was at the store trying to purchase a phone! I didn't have 4 hours to kill as it was already 6:15 and the store closed at 7 plus if its a credit, shouldn't it go through automatically since its all on their end? I went home after that for the night.

To end the night, as I was ready to take a bath (since I hadn't taken one since Saturday morning and was feeling pretty gross), I find out that the hot water heater was broken so I gave up and took the coldest bath ever, climbed into bed and called it a night.

God I'm tired of typing this post, time to end this shit.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

picture post

Since I've been far too busy with work (and who wants to hear about that?), I decided instead of another boring post, I would upload all the pictures on my camera phone from the past year or so and talk about those instead. If this turns out well, I may start doing this more often.

All Descriptions are from left to right

First Row

The first 2 pictures were taken at Presque Isle State Park in Marquette looking out over Lake Superior. I went there with Jill to visit her sister at Northen Michigan University in November 2005. I absolutely loved the area but the drive was something else. It took almost 10 hours to get there but was worth it.

Pictures 3 & 4 were on the Shore of Lake Michigan taken in late December 2005. The weather was actually not too bad when we walked out to the beach. I was rather suprised there was no snow present but then again this winter was incredibly mild compared to other years.

The last picture is of the concrete pier in Ludington Jill and I made the mistake of walking on barefoot. First of all the thing was just covered in dry bird shit which is kinda gross to think we walked on it barefoot and second of all it was an incredibly windy day which made the walk even more difficult. By the time we made the 20 minute walk out to the lighthouse at the end it was too cold and unpleasant to enjoy the view and instead we ended up just walking back to the beach.

Second Row

The first picture is of a donkey that Jill and I came across on the 4th of July while driving through the MSU farmlands. It was standing in a pen with a group of sheep so we pulled over to observe them. Once the donkey saw us he immediately came over to the fence to have its head patted. It was amusing. Later on as we got back into the car and drove off, I honked my car horn and the sheep took off to the other side of the pen.

The second and fourth pictures are of my roommates cats, Conker and Samus (he named them after videogame characters, bonus points if you can figure out which games.) In case you were wondering, yes, I can tell them apart even if you cant. Nothing to really discuss here. They only get fatter and lazier by the day and their favorite pastime seems to be trying to sneek into the basement when they're not supposed to. Anyplace they can't go is where they want to go first. Aren't humans like that too?

The middle picture is of my former fish Roy Rogers, whom many of you know I made a post about last year in my livejournal. He died when his tank became too hot from sitting too close to the window last summer. Thats at least the story I'm sticking with anyway.

The last picture is of my roommates uncles dog Scout. In April we were asked to watch his dogs while he went on a vacation. I had pictures of the other dog but honestly I didnt like it very much and deleted the pictures awhile ago. Scout on the other hand was an awesome dog. I kinda miss him.

Third Row

The first 2 pictures here are of former corecomm co-workers. First is Mona who is demonstrating what she did best, sleep through the midnight shifts. Mona and I worked at both CompUSA many years ago and corecomm together and everytime it seemed to be the best of a bad situation. I miss working with towelie (it's a bad rab joke, I made them all the time and she made up whitey cracker jokes. Racism can be funny sometimes). The other picture is of Erik displaying a bad joke I came up with late one late night. I came to enjoy Erik's unorthodox ways of dealing with angry customers. I loved how truthfully honest he was with people and how he just didn't give a shit what the other person was saying to them. Yet another person I miss.

The middle picture is my friend Matt. For this one he was dressed up as Satan for a bad movie he and his friends made for a project they were part of but recently disbanded. If you want to see the video, Do We Have a Deal?. Personally I think this one is funnier Staring Contest.

The next picture was of a gas station marquee Jill and I came across while driving back to her parents house one weekend. The business was having a contest to win a mustang by purchasing raffle tickets. The money was going to some charity to help victims of child abuse. However the sign reads "Stop Child Abuse Win Mustang". I dont know, it was funny at the time. I can't think of why it is now.

Finally the last picture was taken inside the bathroom of a bookstore in the mall. I went back recently to the same bathroom and its since been changed to include a noose around the babies neck and reworded to say "Baby Hanging Station". I use this picture as the photo I.D. when my roommmate calls.

Alright, thats about it. This whole post only took an hour which is amazing considering that I had to set everything up from scratch. Now I'll just be able to copy and paste this when I do it again. I guess a picture really is worth 1000 words. I feel like I've type that much just in this one post.

Time to go to bed, I need to wake up in 4 hours.

Goodnight!

going in circles