Friday was a bit of a relaxing night. We rented a couple movies from blockbuster and cooked a pre-made pizza. The movies were alright overall. The first, A Lot Like Love, is a romantic comedy that was actually fairly entertaining but very forgettable. I struggled to come up with the title of the movie just now until Kim reminded me that Ashton Kutcher was in it and then I used the IMDb to come up with the title. It’s not a bad movie but not really good either. The second movie was Friday Night Lights, a movie that I’ve wanted to see for awhile. I’ve heard comments about it being the best sports movie of all time, which I now feel is not quite correct. It was a good movie and definitely more entertaining than the first movie, but I’m still not sure why a movie (and previously a book) was made about this team. They lose to state championship in the end! I really like how the movie displayed the towns addiction to their high school football team. The team that wins the state championship game in the end is Tyler Lee High School from Texas, the same team that Colerain (Cincinnati school) will be playing this coming weekend. This game features last year’s Ohio state champ versus last year’s Texas state champ, I’m curious to see what happens…

Saturday we woke up early to participate in a tennis clinic of sorts at the gym. It actually went much better than I was expecting and our team even won the competition, despite having both Kim and I as part of the team. Afterward we were treated to a free brunch which included your choice of bloody marys or mimosas. From there we hit up the pool for an hour or two and then headed back home to unwind for a bit. We had plans to go to the Irish Fest, but we never quite made it out the door again. Instead we watched a few college football games and then called it a night.

Sunday I almost died. We ran over six miles in the middle of the afternoon. If it’s up to me, I will never run that far after noon again. It felt pretty good to actually make it that far, that is after I finally caught my breath, 30 minutes after the run was over. I only have to run this far one more time for the actual race. From there we watched The 40 Year Old Virgin with Ashley. This was actually a really funny movie. I almost hit the floor laughing on numerous occasions. I don’t know if it is as good as Wedding Crashers, but it’s definitely a close race. Afterward we went to O’Dowd’s and met up with Todd for a few rounds. It was nice to sit on the deck and as an added bonus, it wasn’t packed! From there we finished the night off at Tomfooleries with Mike.

Monday we had breakfast at the Corner Restaurant in Westport. It was really good, I highly recommend this place! After that we went out and played nine holes of golf with Mike. I think we all played really well actually. Much better than any other time we’ve played that course. From there we picked up Dominique and Bianca and took them around to do some errands with us. Once we got back to our apartment we cooked chicken kabobs on the grill and made brownies for desert. The food was great and I think everyone stuffed themselves. After dropping them back off at home, we went over to Mike’s place to watch part of a football game and to play a game of Euchre with Christie. It’s was a busy day as you can tell.

I got home last night around 5:30 and with Kim’s help had everything laid out to be packed by 7:00. At first I put both canopies, 2 chairs and tent in my hockey bag and it weighed like 53 pounds or something. So I took one of the chairs out, now it weights 46 or 47 pounds. This is what I’m going with, so hopefully they don’t try to charge me $50 later today. I’ve also got a large roller bag filled with all my sleeping supplies and then my backpack with all my clothes in it. I had to put this all together fairly quickly because we had plans to watch Wedding Crashers with a rather large crowd.

The movie was great, I can see why my brother has already begun to quote some of the lines. I haven’t laughed that hard at the theatre in a long time. After the movie we went down to our favorite plaza watering hole, Tomfooleries, for a couple of drinks and then returned home to finish packing.

I’ve got all of my bags in the car right now. After work I’m going to pick up Kim from work and then we are off to the airport. I’ll fly to Chicago tonight, meet up with my buddy Weeba at the airport, go out with everyone for a little bit, and then stay at my friend Tracey’s place. From there we are heading to Wisconsin on Saturday morning to camp out and watch DMB and OAR blow the roof off of Alpine Valley two nights in a row!

Something caught my eye while skimming through FHM this morning. I guess this happens more than I think, but this time I actually remembered the site address when I got to work and then remembered to check it out:

Two guys quit steady corporate jobs, scrounged up all the savings they could, collected credit cards, and stepped – or better yet – scooted forward to follow their biggest dream: to become filmmakers. Josh Caldwell rode a Segway from Seattle to Boston, while his buddy Hunter Weeks directed a film they both shot about the experience and about the moments leading up to this crazy twist on the American road trip.

Wow, I am impressed. I wish I had the nerve to do something like this and just hope that it would all work out. Everything seems to be working out for these two though. Their film is done and they have already shown it to some small audiences. Now they are hoping to get it played at some of the upcoming film festivals. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to see this sometime soon…

We aren’t heading to Austin City Limits after all. We were close though. What they did was called out a couple of names and then those people picked a key and attempted to open the lock on a piece of luggage. They called one name and then called out Kim’s name. She was second in line and somehow the first person in line won. Everyone thought it was rigged, but even if it was the first person was picked out of a hat and won fair enough. Oh well, we got a couple of really big schooners of beer and half price appetizers out of the deal! From there a group of us all gathered over at Doni & Phil’s for a few rounds of late night cornhole. That’s right, I finally got to play! In fact, playing cornhole was about the only thing we did all weekend.

Saturday we had another gathering of people over at our apartment for some more cornhole. Mike came over first and then Amanda and Joel. We started playing around 4 or 5 and only stopped once for dinner and then played until it was dark out. A few of our friends from our building also joined in on the fun. Our neighbor Nick played a few games, as did Andrea who now lives in our old apartment and her boyfriend Chris. It was a nice day full of fun!

Yesterday we relaxed at the pool for a couple of hours and then later in the night watched Coach Carter and ate some pizza. I thought I was going to play hockey, but the zamboni broke again. I really didn’t feel like playing anyway, so that worked out. Kim and I both thought that the movie was good. We struggled to pick something out at Blockbuster, especially since most movies were completely rented out from the weekend. I was pretty happy with our final choice though.

Oh yeah, our eBay auctions were a big success. They both ended last night while we were watching the movie. Once it was over I checked on both of them and realized that we did in fact just make $500 (well actually only $497 so if you want to PayPal me $3 I would complete my goal). We’ll have to remember this for future southwest reward flights.

It’s so nice to be able to say that today is Tuesday. We are that much closer to another weekend. As for this weekend, here is a recap.

Friday started off well with some drinks at our apartment with Joel and Amanda. Mike decided to skip the show on Friday since it was his buddy’s last couple of days in town. We took a cab over to the Beaumont and attempted to get in to the show. As I mentioned last week, I was taking my gear hoping to tape the show. Beaumont has historically been one of the most difficult places for me to get my gear into, even though I only tape bands that officially allow fan recordings. Anyway, the bouncer immediately tells me no. I ask him to find someone with the band, and a guy from pipeline productions comes over and says no as well. I told them all that according to Better Than Ezra’s website they are completely okay with it and ask to speak with someone from the band. We stand and wait at the entrance for probably 45 minutes. Kim finally asks the first guy if he ever heard anything. The guy turns into an even bigger asshole and starts going on about how he already said no. I calmly exchange a few words with him and decide to give up. Luckily our friend Courtney had her car in Westport, so I stashed my gear in her car and we all headed in to the show. Pomeroy was good as always and they even busted out a few tunes that I had never heard before. You might remember Better Than Ezra from their big hit “Good” back in 95. I believe this was the second song in their set. I recognized a couple of other songs they played within the hour or so of their set I watched. I was not really impressed by them though, maybe it was the struggle I had to get in the venue or maybe it was the suddenly chilly temperature outside. Regardless we all headed inside of the Beaumont for a couple more drinks and then headed home. Despite all the crap that happened I still had a good time and I think everyone else did as well.

Saturday seems like so long ago, I am struggling to remember what exactly we did. I do know that we headed up to the pool at Woodside with Mike. We met up with Doni and Susan and “laid out” for a couple of hours. Mike and I quickly grew tired of that and had to come up with something else to do. After watching him, Kim and Susan take some dives off the diving board we decided to move on from the pool. After quickly cleaning up we decided to head out to the Great American Barbecue. This appeared to be similar to the American Royal but we quickly learned that it was on a much smaller scale. It probably didn’t help that we got there at 5PM on the last night of the competition. One of the reason we decided to go was that Tanner Walle was playing later in the night. We hung around for a few hours until his set and managed to entertain ourselves mostly eating, drinking and watching the mechanical bull. Tanner’s set was short but sweet. We got to hear a few new tunes as well as a great new cover of “Super Bon Bon.” Hopefully we’ll make it to see him this Thursday, which appears to be his last show in the area for quite some time.

Sunday we decided to have a little barbecue of our own with some corn on the cob we had picked up while down at the City Market earlier in the day. Mike came over with some chicken to help out. We also tuned in to the end of the Indy 500, which ended under a unimpressive yellow flag. For the rest of the afternoon we just chilled out until it was dinner time. At that point we headed over to Westport again to Thai Place, one of Kim’s favorite restaurants. I was not all that impressed, but maybe it was just the dish that I ordered. We then picked up a couple of movies and headed home. My choice at the store was Spanglish, which I assumed would be funny since Adam Sandler was in it. We put this on first, and boy was I disappointed. I tried to stay awake but was less than amused by the movie. However Kim seemed to enjoy it and watched the whole thing. Talk about a role reversal!

We spent most of yesterday over at Doni & Phil’s. Phil and his buddy Chris Martin were smoking some ribs for the better part of the day. We stopped off at Home Depot and bought all the supplies we needed to make 2 sets of cornhole boards. Mike came over and helped out with the construction. When we left we had the boards completely built and had put on three coats of paint. I would say that they are just about done. Well besides the fact that the first design we came up for the folding legs doesn’t seem to be working so well. The second design is working much better, so we will have to convert the first set into the second set design. The only thing left for me to do is buy some bags online, which I hope to do today. If everything goes as planned next Monday’s blog entry will be all about how much cornhole we played over the weekend!

Sorry about the downtime today, apache crashed for some reason and I had no way to restart it while stuck at work. I’m trying to track down the reason for the error but the apache error logs can be a little over my head at times. All the more reason to get a dedicated server with fewer applications running on it. Perhaps some day…

Last night I went and saw Star Wars with Mike. I didn’t go to one of the opening midnight showings like I had done for at least one if not both of the prequels. I won’t say too much about it here, but if you enjoy the Star Wars movies at all, this is a must see. Mike never saw episodes 1 or 2 and I don’t think he was ever lost in the plot of this one. Go see this one ASAP!

We did go to Mike’s roof on Friday and we did drink some beers. When it got a little cold out, we moved down to his apartment and watched Groundhog Day. Nothing else too exciting for Friday night.

Saturday we cooked up some breakfast and then got to work. Kim had some studying to do while I installed the new wireless router. It was really easy to setup and we can now access the internet from anywhere in our apartment. Also the webserver should be much more stable and the site should have very little downtime if any at all. Later on Kim cleaned out the new tank, and I made some minor repairs to it. It should be ready to go after work today, but I think we’ll wait until next weekend to get a stand and a few other supplies before we make the move. That didn’t stop us from going out and shopping though. I think we are going to try using a Turtle Dock in the new tank. We’ll have to use the large size though since the turtles keep growing. Kim noticed that they are building a Coldstone on the plaza, but since they are not quite open we headed out to Overland Park to visit that location. I think the construction of this is the worst thing to happen to us since they built the Chipotle just a few blocks away. Speaking of which, we did have some Chipotle over the weekend! While we were out shopping we picked up a few DVD’s from Doni. That night we watched War Games and then The Incredibles. Mike came over to watch the movies as well. We watched War Games because Doni and Phil quote it from time to time and we never have any clue what they are talking about. I figured out why though, the movie was released when I was 3 years old. Kim fell asleep during The Incredibles and I think I dozed of a time or two as well, so we’ll have to watch that one again. From what I saw though, it was a good movie. It was the end of this Saturday night however.

Sunday we did some cleaning and stuff around the apartment and then met up with Doni for lunch at Mr. Goodcents. From there we hit up the grocery and then played a few games of darts. Before too long it was dinner time. We grilled out some chicken and made some fresh stir fried green beans and potatoes with a little rice. It was very yummy. Afterward, it was back to the TV to finish out the night.

This morning was pretty warm out, so we got to run outside again. I think this week is supposed to be warmer and warmer each day with the possibility of hitting 90 degrees!

Friday night we met up with Doni and Phil at Jalapenos in Brookside for dinner. Good food as always! From there we went back to their place to play some cards. It started with Euchre which Doni and I won. We then played Pitch which is something Doni and Phil have taught us. The link is to the best site I found describing how they play this game. Again Doni and I were victorious! Eventually Kim and I headed out and stopped over at Mike’s place. After an hour or two they headed out to the bars and we ventured home. Quite a busy night for us…

Saturday we walked over to the new plaza library and discovered that it is not quite done yet. I guess it will be open in the spring. As I mentioned before the Chipotle is right there, but we didn’t stop since we were still full from breakfast. We walked through a few plaza stores and then headed up to Mike’s rooftop. It was a pretty nice day so him and Jeff decided to take some drinks up to the roof deck. We joined them and started another Euchre game. Mike and me versus Kim and Jeff. We won two out of three games, it was a good card weekend for me. We then headed down to Tomfooleries for dinner and drinks. The food was excellent and I had a few of the new Bud Selects, and it was even on tap. So far I am a fan and will have to pick some more up sometime soon. Jeff went home when he got a call from his sick girlfriend, and the rest of us went to our place. Kim went to bed shortly after, while Mike and I watched my all time fav Mallrats. He could quote just as much of the movie as I could, good times…

Sunday we spent the afternoon over at our gym but we weren’t working out. We sat in the hot tub, saunas, etc. I guess it was about time that I used these facilities. Not a bad way to spend the day. We had lunch at Panera, finishing up the last of our xmas gift cards and later in the night went to Susan’s for her Oscar party. I didn’t get to see much of the show because of hockey, but Chris Rock opened it up pretty well. Speaking of hockey, we won! That’s 3 weeks in a row I believe…

Kim’s friend Corinne is moving to Denver from Cincy and will be stopping in KC tonight…

I’m doing something I never do, making a post during the weekend. It has been one of those weekends though. Friday was great! We went straight from work to Brio for some dinner and a bottle of wine. Everything was very good and I hope we can go back there sometime soon. We thought about staying out for a movie or something, but instead we opted to watch a movie at home. We still had a ton of movies from Doni and Phil, so we decided on A Mighty Wind. Pretty funny “mockumentary” about folk bands. I think we both fell asleep watching it, but it was decent enough from what I can remember.

Saturday I woke up feeling a little groggy. It got worse as the day went on however, and by the end of the night I was miserable. I blame this completely on work. My boss Steve left at lunch time on Friday, and Margaret (the lady I share an office with) was out sick as well. Something is definitely going around the office, and unfortunately I caught it. We spent most of the day in front of the TV. I believe it started with episodes of Sex And The City followed up by Addicted To Love. Not a bad movie at all. I was thinking it was going to be some sort of chick flick, but it was actually pretty funny and entertaining. We then watched Collateral, yes another Jamie Foxx movie. This was a thriller type movie that kept us both awake, so it must have been pretty good. We then attempted to watch another movie, but the DVD player was getting all messed up, it must have been overheating. So with nothing left to do we watched the end of Animal House on TV and called it a night.

Nothing too exciting yet for today. We have some errands to run in a little bit and I have a hockey game tonight. I hope that I feel good enough to play…

The weekend can be summed up with one word for the most part, movies…
Friday night after work we headed to Doni & Phil’s to pick up a stack of movies that Phil has been burning and then from there we went to Blockbuster to rent a couple others. First up was Napoleon Dynamite. I had heard a bunch about this movie before and how funny it was supposed to be, but perhaps I heard it a few too many times. I wasn’t all that impressed with the movie, but I can see how it could be one of those “cult classic” type movies. Perhaps I will watch it again after Phil burns a copy of it. Next up was Garden State, which Kim really wanted to see. The funny thing is she had already seen it and didn’t like it, she just forgot right up until we started it again. This was another one that was built up to be so good, but I think that did more damage than good. I didn’t particularly care for it, although I think I dozed off at one point. I guess you either love it or hate it. In my case I really just didn’t get it. At this point we probably should have gone to bed, but Kim decided to try one more movie, 13 Going On 30. Is it wrong for me to say that this was the most entertaining of the night? Yeah it?s a modern day version of Big involving the opposite sex, but at least it entertained for a short time…

Saturday I woke up to Kim attempting to file her taxes. The hardest part was trying to work with the “survey” that H&R Block had setup to simplify the process. The problem is that we have so few things to enter I would have actually preferred to use the actual tax form. Either way, we will soon be over $1000 richer, money that I’m sure will be used towards credit cards or some things for the new apartment. From there we got an oil change, ate at Chipotle, and then went to the grocery. Once we got back home it was time for movie night two. We started with Ray which was definitely better than the movies the night before. I actually learned quite a bit about his life from this movie, and found it to be quite entertaining. I felt like it ended strangely, but the two and half hours were enough I guess. From there we attempted to watch Troy. I think we made it through the first hour or so before both falling asleep on the couch. The movie doesn’t seem to be that bad, but it also doesn’t seem to be that good. Winner for the weekend would have to be Ray.

Sunday we took care of some more errands: Petsmart, Target, grocery store. Afterward we cleaned a few things around the apartment and before we knew it the time had come for the Super Bowl. We headed way out to the suburbs to meet up with Joel and Amanda along with some of Joel’s roommates aka Money and Noid. The bar we went to was Zig & Mac’s which looks much better than the website. The place was covered with TV’s and was far from full, the perfect place to watch the game. They also had $10 buckets of Rolling Rock! The commercials were a bit of a letdown this year, however it started strong with the Bud Light skydiving one. There were a couple good ones from Ameriquest, and an honorable mention to careerbuilder for all the monkey commercials. When we entered the bar, we were encouraged to put our names on a couple of squares for the standard Super Bowl Squares game. I ended up with 7-7, 8-4 and 9-5 (I cannot remember the teams for those but it doesn’t really matter). Hopefully you know what game I’m talking about. The coolest part is that I won at halftime, since it was tied 7 to 7! I got a big Ketle One bottle chiller, a Smirnoff martini set, a couple shirts and a hat. You can’t beat free prizes! Overall, the night was very good even though the game was not always as good…