Update on how lame I am.

I guess I'm jumping the gun a bit. I haven't finished my 5th semester just yet. My last final is tomorrow morning. I should be studying trust and estate law right now, but I'm pretty sure I'm as ready for this test tomorrow morning as I'm going to get, so now I'm just screwing around.

But by the time most of you read this, I'll be done with the semester, which puts me 5/6 of the way through, leaving one tiny little semester standing between regular Dallas and Dallas, J.D. That thought makes me feel giggly inside, I'm not going to lie.

In other news, I'm well on my way toward my lame-o goal of breaking the century mark on how many free highlighters I can pilfer. This semester was a good one for me. I had one day where I nabbed 13. I'm going to see if I can get 20 in a day next semester. I think the current count is about 65.



Sadly, that's about all I have to update you on. Oh wait, that's not true. I've decided that next summer I'm going to start training for a triathlon. I probably won't be able to do the actual triathlon until summer '09 b/c summer '08 will be occupied by studying for the bar. But I may be able to do one before that, who knows. If not an official one, then a private triathlon.

I've got the swimming leg down so that I could do that without dying. I have yet to start working on the running or biking part. Partially because I don't have a bike. Or running shoes. And I haven't biked in years. Or run in years. So I guess you could say I have my work cut out for me. But I've decided I won't let such trivial things get in the way.

Anywho, I'll be on a plane to Utah on Saturday. I'll be seeing a lot of you soon.

That is all.

30 seconds of fame

So any of you who went to the BYU v. Hartford basketball game last night were part of one of the most harrowing athletic moments of my life. I got picked to be the guy to go out on the court at half time, drive the length of the court, shoot a lay up, come to the other end, shoot another lay up, then drive to the other side of the court to shoot a 3 pointer. I had 30 seconds to do it in.

Short version: I suck at basketball. I was worried I would dribble the ball off my foot, and spend 30 seconds chasing the ball all over the court, or throw up an airball, and have the crowd boo me, or something. I missed my first lay up (I wasn't joking when I said I suck at basketball), and made the next two. My first 3 point shot hit the side of the rim, but I got the rebound just as the announcer called out 10 seconds left. Knowing that I only had time for one more shot, I took my time, got in position, squared up and took the shot right as time expired. I nailed the shot. 13,000 or so people cheering loud for something I just did. In a word, it was

AWESOME.

I'm working on getting video of the occasion from BYU. I don't know if they'll release it or not, but if I get it, I'll put it up here. I don't have moments like that very often, so I have to maximize my enjoyment of them while I can.

A singular experience.

I just had an unbelievable experience, and I felt compelled to shout it from the rooftops. Unfortunately, the closest thing I have to a rooftop these days is my blog, so this will have to do.

I just got off of a phone call with a customer service agent with a really big company where I ACTUALLY RECEIVED QUALITY CUSTOMER SERVICE. I know, I know. You're probably skeptical, as I would be, but it REALLY happened. Read on, my friend. Read on.

I had to call an airline to get the details of my holiday flight home (because I'm a genius and deleted the confirmation email with these details). Here's how it went down:

My first surprise was that it took about 8 seconds to get through to an operator. I didn't even have to dial 1 for English, and then 3 for customer flight information, and then 5 for departure and arrival information, and then 2 for departure airports on the east side of the Mississippi, and then 5 for departures after 12:00 pm, and then 3 if I am a male passenger, and then 1 if I am not overweight, only to find myself in a 10 minute long queue waiting for an operator to pick up the phone and ask me how she can help me. Wait, after entering all that information, you still don't know why I'm calling? Gee, it's almost like pushing all those buttons is a colossally assinine waste of time, or something...

-As a side note, anyone who hates this process as much as I do might be interested in this web site. It's a compilation of the magical codes to circumvent these maddening systems and get to a human as quickly as possible. It's a brilliant idea, and I wish I had thought of it. But I digress...

So not only did I get to talk to an actual human being in a few short seconds, she spoke ENGLISH. I'm not one of those speak-English-or-go-home-type bigots. I can't stand it when people get like that. I want to make that clear. That said, it's frequently very frustrating talking to customer service operators b/c it does me little good to try to explain my customer service needs to an outsourced phone operator with a limited grasp on the English language, particularly since I don't speak Hindi.

Not only did she speak English, she was actually PLEASANT to talk to. No condescension from a pompous jerk on the other side of the line that can't believe how stupid I am to have the customer services needs I have (never mind the fact that it's my stupidity that gives her a job in the first place). She was genuinely nice.

Not content to stop there, she asked me what I needed, and my name, departure date and approximate departure time, and about 10 seconds later, SHE TOLD ME WHAT I NEEDED TO KNOW, and no superfluous junk info, and re-sent the confirmation email to me just for good measure. She didn't even try to up-sell me on something, or hit me with a stupid pitch for some service designed for the same tools that order crap from The Sharper Image, or Skymall. I had to pinch myself to see if I was really awake.

I hung up the phone, still a little in shock over what had just happened. I looked at the timer on my phone and noticed that the total time elapsed for the phone call was 3:21. 3 minutes and 21 seconds? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I dialed the number, got my call answered by an actual person, and got my question answered by a pleasant human being that spoke cognizable English in 3 minutes and 21 seconds? That's unbelievable! You grow to expect a half an hour or more for this type of thing these days. I think speaker phone was designed for exactly this reason, come to think of it. Seriously, I probably wouldn't have believed it if it didn't happen to me.

So what company is this you might ask? What company is it that hasn't gotten the memo that customer service is something that big companies just don't bother with any more? Normally I wouldn't give out the free advertising to all 4 or 5 people who read my blog, particularly not to a big company, but this experience definitely warrants the big ups. Southwest Airlines, you just earned my return business. Impressive. Very impressive.

Salmon River: Take 3!

So I just got back from the Salmon River. I've been worked up their once, went back a few months later and did OK. Today was Round 3.

Steelhead are a cool fish. But they're really really hard to catch. I fished hard for about 5 hours, which is tough enough to do b/c it's hard to pay attention when the fishing is tough, and if you're not paying attention at the exact right moment, game over. You lose. Anyway, I finally stuck one, and I got a decent look at it. If it wasn't over 10 pounds, then I've never caught a fish before. It was a super bright chrome steelhead. Generally, the brighter chrome they are, the harder they fight, so this guy had plenty of steam. I only had him on the line for about 10 seconds b/c he ran downstream about 40 yards, and broke me off. It sucks that I didn't land it, and that I didn't get a picture to prove how big it was. But suffice it to say that I don't remember the last time a fish left me weak in the knees. I had to sit down for a minute to collect myself b/c wading with jelly legs is a bad idea.

So then I fished the rest of the day and didn't catch crap.

But, I did manage to land something earlier in the day, so I wasn't totally blanked.


I go fishing for steelhead, and I catch a little smallmouth. Don't ask me how that makes sense.

Anyway, here's a couple of other shots that turned out OK.

We spotted this guy from the bank, and fished to him for about 10 minutes with no response. Then my buddy walked up to him, which was weird b/c they usually don't let you get that close. Before the fish swam away, my buddy got got close enough to see that the fish was missing its right eye. Every cast he put past the fish went on its right side. I was having a hard time figuring out how the fish didn't even respond a bit to his fly. It was like the fish couldn't see it or something...

Anyway, it was a fun day, but the steelhead game is a little different than western trout fishing, where you can have 20+ fish days. That ain't going to happen with steelies. At least not for me.

Gallery o' Terror

So I was looking at my brother-in-law's blog, and I realized that Halloween is a pretty cool time of year. I'm not anything close to as creative as Guy is, so this picture is the best I could come up with to participate in the Gallery o' Terror. The sad part is that Guy is the one that did this picture. So my best shot at getting in on the Gallery o' Terror is by posting something that Guy did. That's lame, I know.

The story behind the picture is actually kind of funny. A few years ago my mom paid for family pictures. The package my mom bought included pics of the whole famn damily, and pictures of all the couples in the family. Being that I am not a couple, but am actually a single, I got single pictures taken. The photographer was a total dork, and I'm pretty sure he always saw himself photographing in Hollywood, or some stage much more grand than Orem. Worse, I'm pretty sure he thought of me as his best shot to break into the big time by nailing a killer head shot for me. You'd have thought that to listen to the guy work his magic, anyway. I've never felt like a bigger tool in my life, and I've probably never looked like a bigger tool in my life (at least I hope I've never looked like a bigger tool in my life). The whole thing was pretty laughable.

Anyway, there's one particular photo where I somehow held a conflicted/pensive/sophisticated look long enough for him to take the picture. Most of the time I was laughing too hard b/c I kept on thinking of rude names to describe the photographer, and because Willus snuck into the room and was dancing around behind the guy and making faces. A bit juvenile, that one. So most of the shots are of me with a big, stupid turd-eating grin on my face. However, he did manage to get one shot of me being lame and trying to look cool. My mom loves it. I hate it. Guy got ahold of it, and with a little Photoshop magic, this picture is the result.

If I can ever get Willus to email the real version to me, maybe I'll toss it up here. It's pretty bad though, so I might not.

Better than my best day of school work

So I went fishing on the Ausable River again yesterday. I fished there last year and pretty much got worked. Unfortunately, yesterday wasn't much better. Fortunately it was beautiful up there, and, despite the fact that it rained like an S.O.B. for a while in the morning, the weather felt great. Maybe that's because I got out of the 85 degree weather we've been having lately in Albany, I'm not sure. And finally, it was a day spend doing something other than school work, which makes it a good thing, ipso facto.

Anyway, you'll notice that there is one thing conspicuously missing from my fishing pictures: any actual fish. While I did catch 2, combining for a collective 17 inches of trout, I didn't feel much like taking a picture of them. Just not that impressive. It was a frustrating day of fishing, to say the least. I would love to say that it was tough fishing yesterday, and that nobody was catching fish, but my buddy Carter did pretty well, catching something like 8 or 9 fish, many of which were caught on bugs I tied. There's no justice in this world. And on top of all that, the Ausable is the trickiest river to wade that I've ever been in. I came very, very close to taking a swim on a couple of occasions.. I'm actually a little sore today from the wade, that's how much of a workout it is just picking your way through those slippery boulders.

Anyway, here are a couple of shots from the day:







Like I said, it was really, really pretty, and it was also not studying, which makes it worth every penny.

The Dally Roger

So I wehrre listnin' to th'radio thusmornin', and it came to my attenshin that today be National Talk like a Pirate Day.

If thar be a cooler observed day in the calendar year, I must confess to ye that I haven't an idear what it be.

Now fetch me some rum, ye filthy curr!

Other summer shots

So far, school is really lame, which is why I haven't blogged recently. Unless you want to hear about the law of wills, or 4th amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, I don't have much worth blogging about.

But I do have a couple of pictures left over from the summer that are worth posting. These are from a night when we decided we wanted to go dirtbiking through the foothills of Mt. Timpanogos, and have dutch oven peach cobbler somewhere.

This presented a couple of problems. Not only do I not have a dirtbike, I've never ridden one. Ever the problem solvers, my buddy Eric, and his now-fiance Nakita took care of all that. They rounded up a few dirtbikes, so everyone was able to hit the trails.

I think that there's little question that I wound up with the coolest bike on the mountain.


-Notice that the bike had no headlight, and it was dark. That meant that I had to wear a headlamp to see anything.



Keep in mind that this shot uses no trick photography. We were not on a hill; we were on flat ground, and only a foot or two apart. Yes, that bike really is that small. But it's not the size of the dog in the fight that matters, but the size of the fight in the dog. -That's what I always say, anyway.




That's me next to the fat cat. I wanted to ride that one, but then my buddy Derek would have had to ride the 80 with his date, and he's too fat to ride the 80 on his own, much less with someone else on the back, and the 80 doesn't have extra pegs for a rider. So with a laugh in the face of danger, I took control of that bike, and rode it like it's never been ridden before. Fortunately, I was concentrating so hard on not wrecking that I couldn't hear everyone else's thunderous laughter at how ridiculous I looked.




So I took my first ever motorcycle ride through the mountains on a bike that was way too small for a big gut sack like me, without a headlight, by light of a headlamp and whatever ambient light from someone else's headlight I could use. Suffice it to say that it wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done, but it may have been the most fun thing I've ever done.

Awesome summer

Well, it's that time of the year again. Summer is over, and school has started again. That means it's time for me to spend large amounts of time trying to find something to do other than homework. The only consolation to starting school again is that I am a mere 9 months away from finishing school

FOREVER!!!

So the summer was pretty much awesome in every sense of the word. I did lots of fun stuff, despite the fact that I didn't post any of it. Unfortunately, I didn't take a whole lot of pictures of the things I did, or someone else took them, and I never got copies. But, I did get some cool photos from my Havasupai trip. Here are a couple of shots from the trip:



That's my porcelain white self in the foreground.




I'm still waiting for a girl to email me what will ultimately prove to be the coolest picture of me taken this summer. The weekend before coming back to NY, we decided to go on a night time dirt bike ride into the mountains. This was a great idea, but there was the problem that I have never ridden a motorbike, much less taken a dirt bike off road. So a friend of mine rounded up an 80 cc Yamaha that was probably intended for someone 20 years my junior. Just watching the suspension sag was all you would need to know that it wasn't designed for hauling a gut sack like this guy. Anyway, I went tooling around on a motorcycle that was barely taller than my knees. Mind you, this was in the middle of the night, and the bike didn't have a head light. So I wore a head lamp. Awesome really doesn't do the experience justice.

The very next day, we went to a place where you can jump a bike into a pond. I originally decided I wasn't going to do it. I had to be on a plane the next morning, and didn't want to risk breaking something. Then a couple of girls took the jump. I knew I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if a couple of girls did something and I was too chicken to do it, so I went. This is what it looked like:


So thanks to everyone that made this summer such a blast. It sucks that it's over, but it was all kinds of fun.

-And the greatest time of the sports year is only a week and a half away...

Stung

So we just got back from an Alaskan cruise. It was pretty much awesome. I didn't take a lot of pictures on this trip, for some stupid reason, but this picture might just be my favorite.

For those of you unfamiliar with sting pong, here are the rules. Play a game to 3. Loser lifts up his shirt, and winner gets a free shot. Repeat until one player's desire for vengeance is outweighed by searing pain and the fear of getting nailed yet again, so he quits. It's a fun game.

I'll let you go ahead and guess who was on his A game on the day this picture was taken. PWN3D.

There was a lot more going on on the cruise, and when I get a second, maybe I'll post a more informative post.

Memorial Day in the Uintas with B Money

So a few friends (including B Money) and I went into the Uintas for Memorial Day. Our trip to the lake was made a little longer than it normally would have been thanks to my extraordinary ability to get lost and forget where I am, even in places I'm familiar with. Anyway, we originally planned on going to Mirror Lake, but once we finally got to Mirror Lake, it was still frozen over. This doesn't make for the best fishing conditions, so we had to drive to another lake.

By this time, we had driven over 100 miles, and were getting frustrated with the fact that all the camp grounds were still closed. This gave rise to the second best B Money quote of the trip. After finding another camp ground closed, B piped up, "Hey, everything's closed. Why don't we just head back to Provo, and do this some other time, k?" You gotta love B Money.

His best quote of the night came around the camp fire as I was telling a story about a girl I knew named Mica to my buddy named Micah (not a girl). Somehow, I wound up looking at B Money and telling him that he would make an ugly girl. He got offended, and looked back at me and said, "whatever!" in a voice of indignation that only B Money can produce. Then Micah asked him if he thought he would be a pretty girl, to which he replied, "fetch yes!," and gave him a glare as if to say that he was an idiot for even asking. Suffice it to say, it loses something in the re-telling. -Seriously, for all three of my blog readers, if you don't know B Money, do what you need to do to get to know the kid. You won't regret it.

Anyway, the next day at the lake, B's mood followed a pretty funny course through the day. I think it's pretty discernible from the pictures below.

Remember: these pictures appear in chronological order.

This is the first fish of the day (and the smallest). I caught it after fishing for a while. It was slow at first, to say the least.


This is B protesting after fishing for about 20 minutes. On his third cast, he broke the only bobber he had on an errant cast that went straight into the rocks at his feet instead of the water, so his mood soured for a while, especially after I caught my first fish.



A few hours later, B got his second wind, fashioned a bobber out of a piece of drift wood, and started fishing again. All of a sudden, we heard the loudest yell that has probably ever left B's body telling us he had caught a fish.


The fishing was picking up by this point, and B was starting to get cocky. He'd talk trash when he'd catch something, and say that he wasn't fishing competitively when someone else would catch a fish.


He was really feeling it by this point.


We were pretty much dealing with the world's best fisherman by the end of the day.


So that was Memorial Day. Lots more fun than any library ever dreamed of being, and lots prettier than any part of the country east of the Rockies ever dreamed of being.

66.6%

Just finished my last final of 2L! Feels good, to say the least.

The down side to finishing is that you get so used to always needing to do something that when you suddenly have nothing to do, you have no idea what to do with yourself. It's kind of like the first time you're in an airport and realize how fun it is to run on a people mover, so you start running on the thing, feeling like an olympic sprinter, but don't hear the nice voice near the end of the track telling you it's going to end soon, so you keep on running, and fall on your face when the track runs out. Yeah, something like that. Just the same, falling on my face never felt so good...

So for now, I'm enjoying the moment b/c when I see my grades from this one, I'm not convinced it's going to be pretty.

I'll be seeing some of yous' before too long.

Sitting, waiting, wishing. -But mostly sitting.

It's that time of year. I just finished with classes yesterday, so nothing left between the 2/3 mark and me other than two weeks, and 4 nasty, nasty finals. My computer chair and I have spent some serious quality time together lately. I think I might be getting bed sores.

What I like about Sundays.

This, combined with no homework for a day = my favorite day of the week.



The only bad thing is that it only lasts for a day, and then I'm back in it for another 6 days.

The gift that keeps on giving

Recall this post.

With that in mind, here is the email I got from Lo this morning:

38 bouncy balls in my sheets tonight--courtesy of one 9-year-old and her uncle.

When I went to go return the prank and put them under her bedding (while she was "asleep") she growled, "get away!"

Happy Fools Day!

-L

How awesome is that?

Embarassing admission

So you know how some of life's greatest joys can be found in re-discovering something you've known about all along, but for one reason or another have horribly under-appreciated? Well, I've recently re-discovered the unspeakable joy of something I've known about for 20+ years now:

Butt Rock & Power Ballads.

Seriously, how terrible is the idea of scrawny guys with bad perms, bangs, leather, tattoos of snakes, and other tough guy things, make up, chest hair, and head bands trying to look all bad-a, but singing sensitive rock songs? Terribly great, I say.


Honestly, how is that anything but the coolest thing you've ever seen?

Here are a few of the songs I've been re-discovering recently:

White Lion: Little Fighter
White Lion: Wait
White Lion: When the Children Cry
Night Ranger: Sister Christian
Faster Pussycat: House of Pain
Cinderella: Don't Know What You Got 'Till It's Gone
Cinderella: Gypsy Road
Cinderella: Coming Home

Those are just a few of the biggest winners that came up on my ipod's butt rock playlist. Rest assured that there are plenty more where those came from.

Look some of it up some time. You won't be disappointed.

P.S. There is an honorary spot in The Dally News Hall of Shame for anyone who can name the band pictured above.

P.S.S. The band is not in my list of songs, although that band has probably the best song on my Butt Rock playlist. Not that that helps you at all; I just thought you should know.

Back in NY *Updated*

So I had an awesome spring break, and today was my first day back in school. Here's why spring break was awesome:

I surprised the ever-loving crap out of my mom, who didn't know I was coming into town. Seriously, one of the funniest pranks we've ever pulled on her.

I scared my nephew and niece, who also didn't know I was in town by jumping out of the back of the Suburban after Lo picked them up from school.

I went to Las Vegas to watch the MWC basketball tourney

It was in the mid-70's in Vegas the whole time.

It was in the high 60's to mid-70's in Provo the whole time.

I got to go fishing on my favorite river with my future boss.

I missed the huge snow storm that put another foot of snow on this city that STILL does not know how to handle snow.

I got to hang out with friends.

A CANCER FREE Derek Swanson moved back to Utah, and hung around with us for the weekend.

National Corndog Day!!

OK, National Corndog Day needs explanation.

Last year my buddy found out about it and told me. This year, when I realized I was going to be home for National Corndog Day, I thought I'd get ahold of my friends, who not only have all the cool gear to throw a wicked party, but love doing it, particularly since we can't hold the annual Tree Burn any more. Long story short, I registered as a party host, and the next thing we knew, Foster Farms sent us 336 corn dogs. Here's a picture of the party hosts with our corn-clad, stick impaled bounty:


Note: each white box is a case with 3 cases of 28 dogs each.

Before the night was over, we had consumed somewhere around 150 corndogs (leaving a ridiculous surplus), about 12 pounds of tots, and who knows what else. We also wound up with an astro bounce (you know, the cool inflatable self-contained rooms that little kids go crazy in at the county fair), dance music, and a green egg toss (in honor of St. Patrick's Day). Here are A few more photos:

When you see these flowers blooming, you know that spring is officially here.




B Money throwing down some rhymes before going to his debut show later on that night. Word on the street is that he brought the house down.


Green Egg toss in observation of St. Patrick's Day.


I don't know who this guy is, but I think it's safe to conclude that he was an egg toss loser.


This was our bounty. We had so many dogs, it was ridiculous. By the end of the night we had a few sitting around, and a potato gun on hand. Put them both together, and you've got corndog aviation magic.


Seriously, it was an awesome party. Big thanks to our sponsors at Foster Farms. I'll send you the bill from my cardiologist.

Anyway, the down side to being back from spring break are:

It reminded me how much fun the world outside of law school can be.

I have a ridiculous amount of work to be done in the next few weeks.

It snowed a foot the other day, and the city is still struggling to deal with it.

It's freaking cold out here.

It's snowing as I write this.

School.

*Sigh.*

Right. Anyway, spring break was incredible, and I'm glad I had more fun than I had last year, when I spent basically all of it in the library. Loads of fun. Thanks a lot Brent D., and Janet R., if you ever read this, that is.

Are you serious?

30.

A quick list of the consoling(?) things I've heard from friends during the last few days:

-It's like, the new 20.
-Just think of yourself as being 20-10 years old.
-You don't look a day over 25.
-At least you're not still in school, right? Oh, wait...
-My parents were that age a while ago, and they totally said it's not that bad.
-You're only as old as you think you are.
-Buy you some Geritol?
-I think Guy was 30 for about 4 years, so it's really not that bad.
-Dude, it's really not that old. <--Except the guy who said that is 36.

Yeah, those are pretty much all things that old people tell themselves to convince themselves that they're still younger than they really are. You're old. Face it.

So in case you were wondering what I did for my birthday, and I'm sure you were just dying to know, I'll tell you.

I always felt cheated as a kid when my birthday was on a Sunday, so I took the liberty of observing my birthday yesterday. I started the day by going to the gym, which I have to do in order to maintain my uber-masculine physique. Then, I had to do laundry. Not my idea of fun, especially since it was crowded in the laundromat, and I had to wait for some guy to finish with the dryer to dry my clothes. Seriously, do you really need to throw 5 T shirts in the dryer for 32 minutes when there are tons of people waiting? Jerk. Not to mention the people who leave their stuff in the dryer, and show up a half hour after it's done drying. They say to just pull it out and put it in a basket, but I'm not cool with grabbing someone else's underoos and throwing them around, even if they did just get washed. That's creepy. I hate laundromats.

Once the laundry was out of the way, I cut to the real fun, and started up with my second annual birthday migraine. Complete with flashing lights, diminished peripheral vision, huge blind spot in the right side of my visual field, and inability to read due to flashing lights messing up my ability to focus on letters, and all. It's a choice experience, really. I don't know how one guy gets that lucky.

Having experienced the whole flashing lights thing three different times now, I know that even though my head doesn't hurt when the lights start, an absolutely unholy head splitter isn't far behind, so I threw about 1000 mg of ibuprofen at it, along with a few other drugs, and started eating. I actually got on it quickly enough that it never became a factor, and the whole screwed up vision thing only lasted about 45 minutes before it went back to normal. I was kind of tired and goofy for the rest of the night though.

Then, not to be outdone by my older sister, I ate sushi with a bunch of law school friends. Can I just tell you that I officially renewed my love affair with the Philly roll? Man alive, I've forgotten how incredible that is. Whoever thought to combine salmon, cream cheese and avocado is a genius, I say. Genius!! Anyway, after that, I hung around with some friends for the rest of the night, they got drunk for me, and that was about it.

As for my official birthday, I pretty much sat in meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting.... You get the point. Then I got another headache when I got home, so I took a bunch more drugs, ate a bunch more food, followed it with junk food, and then followed it with some really good cake that my roommate's girlfriend made for me. I'm one fat, disgusting slob right now, and I love it. I even have food stains on my shirt, and couldn't care much less. -Oh, and let's not forget when my sister had my nephews and nieces sing, "Happy Birthday, y'old geezer" to me. Thanks Lo, you're a peach.

Anyway, I think the moral of this story is that next year, around the middle of February, go out and buy stock in Advil. It will be a solid investment.

So that was it. Here's to my next 30 years. -Hey, that's got a good ring to it. Maybe I should write a country song...

Snow. Not just a little, either.

Here are a couple of time lapse sequences from today. School got canceled, so I sat in my apartment and worked on my article all day, and took pictures periodically. Then I went outside and shoveled snow, and did a number on my lower back. Snow out here is a lot heavier than what I'm used to, and when it's 2+ feet deep, snow blowers are the only way to go.







I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure my car is a little depressed that I didn't get to take it out in this slop.

A view from the other side:


This is the car outside my apartment window through the course of the day:













And can I say that this city SUCKS about taking care of snow on roads? All day long, I only saw one city plow truck go by with its plow down. I saw tons of private plow guys, but of course they had their plows in the air. Wouldn't want to do something you're not paid to do, would you? Particularly when you're driving the street that looks like hell anyway, and all you would have to do is pull the handle and drop your plow. Don't you just love those "not my job" types? Seriously, you should see the roads. I just had to help a guy in a big SUV with 4 wheel b/c he got stuck, and it wasn't because he was a crappy driver. Even on the traveled roads, the sloppy snow is 6+ inches deep with plenty of several foot deep banks waiting to suck you in. In fairness, there was a lot of snow today, but there is no excuse for a city that gets snow regularly to do as poor of a job handling it as they did here. If this happened in Atlanta, I could see it. But all the way up here? You're killing me.

Anyway, forgive the rant.

Here's a local jerk making the problems on the roads even worse. I saw at least 5 different cars spun out and stuck at this intersection today:


This dude had the right idea. It was probably a lot faster way to get around town today than any other.


So that was my snow day. I actually got quite a bit done, which is good. Plus, I love how quiet everything is when it snows. Tonight will probably be the first night I've had here when I don't hear big rigs and sirens back and forth on the street outside my window. While I'm looking forward to that, I'm not looking forward to the aftermath of all this snow for the next few weeks. I think it's going to take quite a while for the city to get on top of it.

PHOWNED.

So apparently 40 pound dumbells and cell phones don't mix too well...



That really sucks. I kind of liked that phone.