Friday night started out with a high school football game. I’ve wanted to catch one since I’ve been out here, but I guess we usually have plans on Friday nights. Anyway, a group of us went out to see Rockhurst beat up on Todd’s Alma Mater Liberty. Rockhurst is an all male catholic high school, just like my high school. Todd added that Rockhurst is probably the best team in the city. Good to see the catholic schools ruling another city. :)

From there most of us headed back to our place, where our visitors from Cincinnati were finally arriving. For the rest of the night we sat around our place and caught up on everything.

Saturday we started off the day pretty early, walked around both the Plaza and
Westport. Between shops we caught the end of the Buckeyes game, good to see them pull out the victory. For lunch we headed to Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ. I’ve heard about this place many times before, but this was my first time there. It will definitely not be the last, great stuff. The atmosphere is great, you eat your food right in the middle of a gas station. Their sauce is delicious!

Later in the night we all headed to Amanda’s moving out party. None of us had ever been inside of her place before, and when we finally did it will likely be the last time. She is moving way out to the suburbs sometime next month. The party was a good one though. To end the night we headed to George Brett’s since all the other bars were packed.

Bobbi and Eric left our place after we had some breakfast. From there Kim and I picked up the littles and headed out to Faulkner’s Pumpkin Farm. It was a bunch of fun, the only down side was that you didn’t actually go to the pumpkin patch. I wish I would have taken the camera, there were lots of photo opportunities.

That pretty much sums it all up. I played a hockey game later on Sunday night, but we lost and only had seven guys playing. We are now 1-1, with two games next week.

This morning Kim got promoted to Senior Underwriter, so congratulations to her!

We had dance class again last night, yipeee! We not only mastered the blue rose, which can be a couple’s dance, but also learned the cowboy stomp. Kim and I did pretty well with the blue rose, while Christie and Maria spent most of the time deciding who would do the guy parts. Todd skipped out on lessons this week to play tennis, weak!

From there we all just hung out at our apartment for awhile. Nothing terribly exciting to report about that. Hopefully I’ll have some better stories after the weekend. We do have visitors coming! Kim’s sister Bobbi and their cousin Eric are driving to KC as I’m writing this. They have both visited at least once before, so we’ll have to find some other things to do this time around.

Last night we, along with Christie, met up with some people from my office at Charlie Hoopers in Brookside. The occasion was import night, which features lots of good beers for $2 a bottle. More expensive beers are still given a significant discount, so overall the price is definitely right.

I did my own little tour of England. I started out with Young’s Double Chocolate Stout, a beer I had drank before but Shawn, one of the guys I work with, was already drinking one and it looked good. From there I moved on to Old Peculier, which was a very nice surprise, probably my favorite of the night. I then had a Boddingtons, which I thought I had before, but overall I wasn’t that impressed. Finally I topped the night off with a Newcastle, one of my favorite beers of all time.

It was a great night out, and hopefully we are going to do this again in a couple of weeks.

A couple of days ago we opened up the iPod mini that I mentioned winning earlier. Kim was going to start using it while running, since she lost her little radio on a business trip. I spent a little time the past couple days looking for cases that would protect it during runs. Through my research I realized that using the mini for running might not be the best idea.

Like the full size iPod, the mini actually has a hard drive inside of it. Although you aren’t likely to notice problems right away, continuous running actually could damage the moving parts of the hard drive. The hard drives are what allowed manufacturers to get large amounts of storage space in a small package.

Now they are capable of the large storage space using flash memory, which has no moving parts. Therefore, running should not have any affect on the device. The new iPod nano is one example of large flash memory storage.

I am now thinking that a flash based player would be best for us and am seriously considering selling the mini on eBay. I should have followed your advice before Andy! I hope the fact that it isn’t in a sealed box doesn’t hurt it, but I should be able to get over $175 for it. I’m still considering the nano as a replacement, but I’d love to hear any other suggestions that you might have.

I am so much better at fantasy football than most of you probably ever would have thought. I just had another 3-0 weekend, bringing my grand total up to 12-3. That means I am now winning 80% of the games played. I need to make a few roster changes this week, hopefully those don’t end up hurting my teams.

We originally thought that we were gonna have another homework night with Dominique and Bianca last night, but we never heard back from them. Instead we made a big Italian dinner and watched TV. Oh yeah, we also secured 25 tickets to the Bengals/Chiefs game, and helped some of the visitors with hotels on priceline. They ended up getting the Sheraton for $85 a night, which is a phenomenal deal. Typically the rooms go for $150 a night and every room is a suite! Let me know if you are reading this and need help securing a room, although I think everyone who wants a hotel has been taken care of.

With the lack of much else going on, I’ve added a new song of the moment from none other than O.A.R. Just in case you were a little iffy about buying the CD, “Wonderful Day” is one reason to do so.

Friday I felt worse and worse as the day went on. I think I had my first cold of the upcoming winter season. Because of this, we didn’t do much on Friday night. Just sat on the couch and watched some TV. I felt much better on Saturday morning.

Saturday we took care of some things around the apartment and then headed down to the Falloon to watch the Ohio State – Penn State game. We had the usual crew with us, most of us being Ohio State fans, but of course Amanda was rooting for Penn State. The end result, Amanda was happy and the rest of us were taking shots in an attempt to forget about the game. From there we had most of the group over our apartment for a little bit and then off to bed.

We had lunch down on Southwest Boulevard on Sunday afternoon at Taqueria Mexico. Maria’s family is from Mexico but she had never been down on the Boulevard before, so we decided it was time. The food did not disappoint. From there we checked out these condos that caught my eye earlier in the week. Now I just need some more money. :) Then we bought a new hockey stick for my game later in the night. It was nice to be back on the ice, after taking a month off. It was also nice to come away with a win! Our team is looking pretty good.

Somehow I was convinced to take a country line dancing class with a few of our friends. I don’t like country music and I really hate line dancing, so go figure. Our first class of four was last night. Basically for an hour we learned how to do the electric slide, the reggae cowboy, and the blue rose (well partly). I’m not sure that I remember how to do any of them right now, but it actually wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I did make the instructor mess up when I busted into a river dance after doing one of the steps wrong. :)

From there we hit up Tomfooleries for a few drinks and some music. This definitely made up for the punishment earlier in the night. I figure that if we go out after each class I’ll likely complain a lot less.

Overall I don’t hate line dancing as much as I used to, but I still don’t think you are gonna see me out there at the next wedding I attend.

We hung out with the kids again last night. They didn’t have much homework, so we had them read for a little bit while we finished making some pizza. We had dinner and then played a few rounds of spoons, while listening to O.A.R. I’m not sure if they actually enjoyed the band or were just impressed by my love for the band, but they took home a ton of my promotional postcards and a couple of posters. I told them to pass out the cards at school to all their friends. Maybe I can even turn this into an outing with them, we could hang up posters all around town for the upcoming concert. It would be much more entertaining that way and I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.

I put up a couple of pictures from the weekend. I meant to include one of my new framed poster collection, but I forgot this morning. Gallery, the photo manager I use, was giving me all sorts of problems on the new webserver. I think I’ve worked all the issues out, so hopefully I won’t have any more problems. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

I may have mentioned this somewhere before, but serious plans are in the works for the Bengals vs. Chiefs game out her in KC on New Years Day. My parents have already confirmed that they are coming, along with their good friends the Hemmelgarns. My Aunt Chris and Uncle Steve are also confirmed. Kim’s parents and potentially other family are seriously considering it. My buddy Fighty mentioned it before. This is shaping up to a huge party!

I looked on ticketmaster and we can still get tickets up in the rafters for $59 a person before fees. The nice thing is that we can get a whole bunch of them together, probably close to 20, and maybe even more if we called in and ordered them. We just need to get a final list ASAP so we can buy these hopefully this week.

If you want to make the trip or are already in KC and want to go, let me know and I’ll pencil you in. This is surely going to be a weekend not to miss!

This week my fantasy teams went 2-1. I beat my brother in a blowout match 133-81, eat that Tim! :) I also won in another league 109-70 and lost my final in a heartbreaker 73-87. My overall record is now 9-3, so I am winning 75% of my games, not too bad at all.

Not much exciting to report today. I spent last night at my boss’ house once again. That should be the last time I have to do an update with him. The next time I will be on my own from my own home. Sounds like fun huh?

O.A.R.’s new CD, Stories Of A Stranger, is in stores today. Let me know what you think of it, I think it is their best CD yet and I cannot wait to see it take off! If you actually do pick up a copy of the CD (and don’t just download it) check out my name in the liner notes. :)