Once again I have convinced myself that I need to build up my PC music library. It is my goal to have every CD I own saved on my PC as mp3 files in addition to any other album or song that I want. With the recent crackdown on peer-to-peer file sharing I have started to decrease my use of these targeted applications (kazaa, morpheus, etc). I never really used them that much before, but now you will rarely find me on any of them. Then how am I getting all of my music? My friends and I have all started sharing our music collections via AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). Using this very popular instant messaging service, you can select a directory on your PC that others are allowed to connect to and then download files in that directory. The great part about this is that you can limit access to your library to only users on your buddy list. This is currently how I have my file sharing setup. If you wish to see all that I have and are not on my buddy list, just send me a message and I will likely add you to my list. While Kim has been busy studying for her insurance exam on Friday, I have been busy downloading music from all of my friends…

Only one thing has been standing in my way. I haven’t found a decent application to rip all of my CD’s to mp3. If you have any suggestions shoot them my way…

The emails keep pouring in today, everyone is taking a sick day. This is crazy. Margaret is out sick again today and according to Steve, “she is on medications now and doctor has told her to stay home.” I guess both Doni and Phil are sick as well. There is something bad going around, I’m just glad the worst of mine only lasted a day. Kim is immune to everything that is out there and I’m extremely jealous…

I was able to play hockey last night, and that about sums up the excitement of our Sunday…

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…

I just got a raise! Had a very short meeting with the owner Ed, he’s happy and now I’m happy too. Off to Brio to celebrate, have a good weekend!!!

Well the Bearcats pulled it off in one of the lowest scoring games I have ever seen. I was very glad to see them actually win for once. We had a slight change in plans since no one was heading to the brooksider. We all decided to stay on the plaza and ended up at George Brett’s. Mike decided to join up with us even though he didn’t know about the rivalry until a couple years ago. Crazy Clevelanders. :)

Tonight we have dinner reservations at Brio. We’ve had a gift certificate since Christmas and we are finally going to use it. It’s an early valentine’s present to ourselves. From there who knows what we’ll do. We have no real plans for the weekend…

The annual game between the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University, called the Crosstown Shootout, is tonight. Kim and I will be heading out to a bar to watch the game, most likely the Brooksider if anyone in KC wants to join in the fun. We are forced to watch the game out because we are no longer getting extra channels of cable like we did before. We pay the $10 monthly fee for the basic service which is supposed to be around 13 channels, but in the last apartment we got something like 70 channels, it was the standard package for the basic fee. Well I guess when we moved the cable guys had to come out and this time they put a filter on our line. Most of what we watch we can get with 13 channels, but I wish ESPN was one of those so that we could watch the occasional sporting event. Oh well, this gives us an excuse to go out!
GO CATS!

Not those two famous MTV newlyweds, this is about a different Cincinnati couple. Two of my friends are now engaged to be married sometime in November. For those of you who don’t know, Nick and I lived together my senior year of college. He and Jessica have been together since the high school days. I should have mentioned this earlier, but the weekend events made me forget until now. Congratulations to them!

Not too much to report about yesterday. We made it to the gym again this morning and ran once again. That’s three straight days of working out!

Starting this morning Kim and I are going to be heading to the gym before work. I’ve thought about trying to do this many times before and the last straw occurred last night. We went to the gym at our normal time (between 5:00 and 5:30) after work, and there were no available treadmills, even the ellipticals were all taken. We eventually got on a couple of the ellipticals, but the treadmills never really opened up. I thought the fad of everyone working out would be ending with their short lived new years resolutions but apparently it’s time for people to do things for Lent. Anyway, it was decided that we would start morning workouts. I think we are going to try to go everyday too. We’ll run 3 days a week and do some lifting the other 2 days. We woke up at 5:30ish this morning and were able to get to work before 8:00 still. Before today, we were getting up at 6:00, so there really isn’t that big of a change except for we will now have extra free time after work. We can go to all the happy hours we want and eat dinner as early as we want. I haven’t found any downsides to this new plan yet, but only time will tell…

I am finally putting a new song of the moment on my site. Sorry for the huge delay, but we’ve been busy. One CD that I haven’t stopped listening too in quite some time is the new Ray LaMontagne disc, Trouble. It is mellow disc, but the amazing part is this guys voice. I highly recommend picking up the CD or at least downloading my new song of the moment. The song is “How Come” from a demo disc, which is slightly different from the version on the CD. Check it out!

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…

Have you ever wanted to speak your mind on edpaffjr.com? You are now free to make comments on any of my posts in fact I encourage you to make comments. Sometimes I wonder who reads this thing, and this would be one way for everyone to find out. If you are going to post comments please sign up for a blogger.com account (the signup page should be there when you go to make your first comment). The process of signing up should be very simple and then you will be able to have your name displayed by your comments instead of Anonymous. Let’s face it, who really wants to be known as Anonymous???