Rant/Rave/Whatever: I've mentioned on here that my sister is pregnant and a few months ago we found out that my cousin and his girlfriend are also expecting, well yesterday my other cousin told the family that he and his fiance are pregnant with twins. The amount of illegitimate pregnancies in my family is astounding. I find it amusing that on that side of the family I'm the only adult grandchild that is married and also the only one that isn't currently knocked up. (I'm excluding my 18 year old sister here since she doesn't graduate high school until Sunday, she still counts as a kid.) Rant: My sister's pregnancy has been difficult for her the past few weeks. She's been on bed rest for three weeks now and her doctor told her yesterday that they are going to induce her next week. She'll only be at 34 weeks when they do this, which is six weeks early. Obviously this is in the best interest of her and the baby but it's a pretty scary deal for all involved. Selfish rant: As a result of my sister's pregnancy issues, the drama surrounding it, and my other sister's graduation party on Saturday I'm going to try to sell my Rockfest tickets. I really want to go but there's just too much going on at the moment for me to bail on everyone. Damn it. Rave: Had a good week off last week: Pearl Jam was amazing, went fishing with my dad, went to Ernie Biggs with old work friends, just a good time all around.
Rave: Family Reunion 2010 was absolutely, positive, amazingly awesome. Rant: First day back at work = rough.
Rave: Semester is over, two definite As and a highly probable third. Rave 2.0 Rain in the forecast through Sunday. The honey-do list will just have to wait until next week. Rave 3.0 Gumbo for dinner. I'm cooking the roux right now. I love gumbo. Rave 4.0 Leisure-reading and catching up on tivo'd TV for the next 3.5 weeks. Fringe is awesome. Rant: $235 book bill for two summer courses. On Amazon. With free shipping. I gotta write me one of them. What a racket.
Rant Saw a girl for a few weeks and thought it was going well. Then she let the whole thing go on a whim. What else is new.
Rave: While wading through my wholly unpleasant day, I bought a Super Bingo ticket and won $3. Cashed the ticket in to buy another and won what I thought was $5. Turns out that it was actually $10. That's a small victory that I'll gladly take today.
Rave: My business just became a year old this week. It's going to keep me very busy this summer and I couldn't be happier with it's current state and the direction it's going. Rave: Got a big ass (2"x12"x30") slab of very curly hard maple for next to free (I would expect to pay at least $125 for something like it). It's been curing for years and is ready to be worked with... If I do my job right, I could get three stocks out of it. I'm going to split it and laminate it with cherry and carbon fiber to bring the width up to 3" so it's suitable for benchrest stocks. Woohoo! Rave: Hung out with the organ player at the Twins game last night for the first couple of innings! She's a personal friend of the guy I went with. It was very surreal watching her play and the entire crowd respond.
Rave: Got a 91 on an exam where the class average was a 68. Test was worth 60% of my grade. To say it helped my grade is a total understatement.
RANT: I'm so fucking frazeled right now I don't know if I can take this anymore. RAVE: I have had a smoke since yesterday morning! RANT: I feel like just breaking down and sobbing from everything.
RAVE: Muay Thai! Good shit! RANT: Muay Thai. I was collapsing, get-this-man-some-oxygen tired. Couldn't finish all the pushups interspresed with jump squats and rounds of 20 kicks from each leg. Damn, I was tired. And it didn't help that the instructor kept calling me "new guy" and demanding me to push myself. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I fully realize that it's the only way to grow. RAVE: Having a job in this hellish college town job search scene. Not to mention the type of job in which I can write posts all day long. Woohoo!!
RAVE I woke up this morning with $40 to my name. My horoscope for the day reads: "The bank book may be causing distress, but unexpected money is on the way." Un huh. That's nice. Maybe somebody will just come riding up on a unicorn and hand me a bag of gold! Yeeeah, Maybe Jesus Christ himself will descend from the clouds and offer me stacks of crisp $100 bills while he orders angels to give me blo- [3 hours later] OH MY GOD I JUST INHERITED MORE MONEY THAN I MAKE IN A YEAR!!! I knew I was supposed to get something, eventually, but I had no idea when, how much, or if I would actually end up seeing any of it at all (after 5 years of legal battles within the family). The funny part is that since it's such a big check, it's going to take five days to go through. So, I have to live on $40 (well, $30 now after my "celebration lunch" at fucking Subway) for the next week. It's going to be a weird week... Friend: Hey man, wanna go see a movie tonight? Joe: Sorry, can't afford it. Wanna go on a cruise around the world next week?
Rave: It's my birthday. Rant: I'm exhausted....I'm trying to decide between going out tonight, or this weekend. Or both, if I take this 5 hour energy shot.
RAVE: As of very very early Tuesday morning, I am now the proud father of a beautiful baby girl. She was a bit big at just over 9 pounds, but things went very well. My wife and baby are already home and we're freaked out, but we'll figure it out. The baby couldn't possibly be any healthier. I'm biased a bit saying she's a damn good looking baby, but I've seen some really ugly ones. I like to think that I'm capable of saying, "I love my baby, but damn!" My wife and I joked about it quite a bit. Thankfully, her beauty is almost on par with my level of love for that little thing. In all seriousness, she's super healthy and happy, absolutely nothing else really matters. And the Mrs. is doing just as well. She had to get a little snip snip to help the baby at the final push, but nothing some stitches and some good pain pills and time won't fix. My buddy asked me later if I asked the doc if she'd put an extra stitch in for me. I really should have, but wasn't quick enough. Thankfully it was a natural birth and no C-Section. Made us really happy. I am a lucky lucky man and now understand that level of love that people have told me about. I just look at her and it's deep, primal, "I will do everything in my power to make sure you are always safe and loved", type love. Crazy week, I have a heart attack and a week later, a perfect baby. Can't get any lower or higher than that. Life is an amazing thing. To be freakishly close to losing my own and so quickly see one spring to life, I can't help but think that there are bigger things that I don't understand or even really want to. Gotta just roll with all this and enjoy every second of this wild ride. This is some heavy shit.
Rant: Haven't been on in a while. Haven't felt like posting anything. Started typing this out a few days ago but my mind was too boggled to try. My air conditioning died last Monday (the 3rd). Called my home warranty company, which is HMS Home Warranty, and they sent out a tech. The tech found a completely destroyed spring in my unit inside my garage, and a bad leak in the unit that sits against the house in my back yard. He called in the work order, I paid him my $100, and was told I'd have an idea of what would happen within 48 hours. It's now Thursday the 13th. No A/C for ten days. Because of all the rain/storms, it's been not bad in my house this week. Last week, however, was another story. It was routinely 85 degrees in my upstairs bedroom, at night, with windows open and fans on. Because it has taken considerably longer than expected, I've called several times. Each time, I've eventually gotten through to a supervisor who would promise to call me back before the day is over, and then never called. I've spent a grand total of four hours on hold with these morons in the past week. Today I finally got a call from them. Turns out they misplaced the service order and had to call the tech again. The good news is that they finally called. The bad news is that if I use their tech, it will cost me $500 out of pocket to replace. If I don't use their technician, they won't cover a penny. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the point of having a home warranty to cover peoples' houses if something goes wrong? I can understand the $100 deductible, even though each service call is magically $100. I can understand not wanting to buy me two completely new units, even though the existing units are in poor condition because they're 20+ years old. What I can't understand is how a company can have the fucking nerve to want to charge me $500 out of pocket on what, according to the marketing bullshit I fell for (and my contract), should be covered. So far I've filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission. Anybody know what the fuck else I can do?
RANT: Broke up with the girlfriend. I know it's the right thing to do, but fuck me, it doesn't make it any easier. RANT: Already getting angry text messages from her friends. RAVE: One text was actually a mature, even-keeled message of sympathy, and not vitriol and whore-babble like the rest of them. It gives me faith in the fairer sex.
??? - Can anyone tell me how to interact properly with girls that you want to make happy-ness with. I seem to have forgotten through the last two months of necessarily celibate busy-ness. I used to be good with the ladies, now I'm just drunk and mean... Maybe...I... should be....less drunk and mean? Or more? Or one of you lovely ladies can fly out to Hawaii and give me advice with a personal touch. Takers?
Rant: Almost hit a kid with my car this morning. Rave: Almost. The idiot jumped out of a fucking bush right into the road as he was going after a tennis ball. Luckily I was on a back road that has speed bumps every 200 yards or so, so I was only going about 20mph and could stop on a dime. Rant: It was really close. His 9 or 10 year old hands were on my hood and I was too fucking scared to yell at the little shit. I just motioned for him to move out of the way with my hand and slowly drove off. No parents in sight. Took about 5 minutes for my heart to stop racing.
Today is truly a rant/rave type of day. Rant: I tweaked my lower back from running. Rave: I'm running consistently again and the results are starting to show. I'm at the point now where I can run for a half-hour comfortably. Rant: No more Canuck's hockey until September. Rave: An off-season of change awaits. Hopefully we have seen the last of Kevin Bieksa and Pavol Demitra in Canuck's blue. Rant: My Mom started chemo last Friday. Rave: She was accepted into a clinical study, and gets to take a pill rather than a shot. She's happy. ------------------ Huge Rave: Only 22 more days until Las Vegas, and yesterday my girlfriend confidently agreed to go to a Strip-Club with me! She said that she wants to get a lap-dance from a female stripper. My spank-bank will be filled for years if/when this occurs!
Rant: When did Michigan pass this whole smoking ban thing? Can't even enjoy a cigar on a bar patio. Rave: Being forced to drink inside I got a front row seat for a show featuring two of the most fucked up people I've ever seen. The characters: Him: Unemployed for over a year, has a messy house, is working for someone who isn't paying him but will make him a millionaire by August. He drinks 7 days a week. Her: Blockbuster Video assistant manager with some very stupid coworkers (I now know and understand the minutia of working in a video store) has three children from another guy. Only receives $600 a month in support for these kids. Is disappointed in her boyfriend and very nagging. For the first hour I was trying to figure out if they were out having an affair or openly dating. I decided on openly dating. For 70 minutes straight the woman talked about the minutia of putting movies back on shelves and having to train co-workers. 70 minutes of Blockbuster talk. I feel like I know enough to open a store. The second hour and a half consisted of her berating him for not having a job and working for a friend who is very obviously taking advantage of him. Every 15 minutes or so he would get pissed and leave the bar for a few minutes only to return and allow the berating to continue. The final half hour revolved mainly around one of the bartenders and the woman discussing how much money they get for their kids and how the woman should be getting more. I didn't realize that the state issues a debit card? for this child support... apparently so because the bartender mentioned it when the woman used the card to pay her bar tab. I always feel better about myself when I come to MI. Rave!!!: Just found out that since we're a major supplier to a major supplier of Subaru we can get their "partnership" discount on EVERY Subaru model. The discount is a vehicle at factory cost. Oh my. The STi is included on the list. I checked twice.
RANT: Bruins are looking like they're on their way to becoming the third team ever to lose a 3-0 lead. Fuck. Additionally, one of my friends at school is a Flyers fan. If they lose, she will become unbearable. Gonna punt a baby.