[/ 2004]

If this web log were a television show, I'd air the most powerful moments of the past year and bloopers. Unfortunately this is not a television digest show. I hope your 2004 was pretty good. I predict a better 2005?

Five Simple Resolutions
1. Get off my ass
2. Take some initiative
3. Budget
4. Meditate
5. Open doors and windows when necessary

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Five Nice Events

Seeing More of The Country - The city can lull people into thinking that they don't need to be at or even visit other cities. Getting to set foot in other states is a good thing. It gives you a better perspective on how this country works.

NetFlix and Technology - The two come together and form what appears to be plenty of entertainment opportunities. That is all.

Finally - Previous two relationships finally closed cases in my mind. College relationship didn't end with any closure therefore became a burden on any further relationship making. Previous medium-distance relationship suffered as a result. Said relationship was also a case of two emotionally insecure people picking each other up out of the gutter until they realized that they were sucking the lives out of each other. What's done is done and it took only 3 years to recover. Game. On.

Moving West - The highrise apartment became very socially isolating. I guess that was the price for living along the lake. Moving closer to the ground and becoming more accessible has meant forming closer bonds with the nice people around me in this city. Good times.

Keeping the Job - I kept the job while still living in a world that got me the question: "why do you work corporate America?" asked by my sister-in-law. The suits apparently like the my work so much that they're genuinely excited for me to work on 'deals'. I built this type of profile on a steady diet of being the last one in, first one out, and the least socially active on the job. I guess the questions to be asked are: "What if I apply myself?" and "Should I completely sell out?"

Five Lessons

Four More Years - Personally, this did not affect my day-to-day life. I'm not saying that outcome didn't change my life...but for now...Status quo?

Landlord vs. Tenant - This relationship has been following me around since I decided to get a college degree in this field. I'm driven to ponder a career in law.

Steer Wide Turns when You Drive Big Automobiles - This is a very handy fact to remember when you make turns in big cars. Steering wide can get you in and out of many a tight spot.

Brevity is Key - It is very key in communication.

Blog Therapy Consumes Too much Time - It didn't take long to type posts when I started this blog. Now, I'm lucky if I can spend anything less than 10 minutes to make you laugh. Either I'm paranoid at what I type here, or I don't really need to make fun of things that happen every day anymore. Perhaps my world is getting too fun to complain about?

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Five Cities/Weekends

- New Orleans, NO: Alcohol. Humidity. Rain. Garden District. Humidity. Alcohol. Smelly. Southern Hospitality.
- Marshall, MN: Two Main Drags. 1200 Miles Roundtrip. Invasion from the city-folk. Ultra-fun Wedding. Mustang.
- Sleeping Bear Dunes, MI: Trees. Sand. Water. Sand. Sand. Camp. Panic Button at 1am.
- Austin, TX: Music. Heat. Music. Sweat. Music. Heat. Texas.
- Madison, WI: 446. Paris Texas. Holler at P. Nis for More Info. Holler at P. Nis for More Info. Two Night Rager.

Five Months

- June: Relocation decided and executed. New Orleans visit. Promotion achieved. Plenty of Baseball viewed.
- July: Michigan visited twice. Plenty of baseball played. Adapted to new neighborhood.
- May: Not much happened.
- September: Texas Visited. Work very stressful. Diet suffered. Weight lost.
- January: New Year started off with a bang. Started jogging in the cold. Moustache Month extended 2 months past November. Befriended bus crush.

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List Time

Lists? Why the hell not? Everybody is doing it. None of these are in particular order and all deserve equal attention. Am I turning into a communist?

Five Albums
+ Rjd2.Since We Last Spoke - Great beatwork start to finish. As an added bonus you get a Rick Springfield-esque song. I could have done without the Sting sounding song, but overall I liked it.
+ Air.Talkie Walkie - I didn't think I would listen to this album as much as I did...Mornings and afternoons on crowded trains will do that to you.
+ Kanye West.College Dropout - Before all the grammy hype, many of my friends downloaded a different mix of the album. Does anyone still have that version?
+ Cee-Lo Green.Is the Soul Machine - I didn't see this one coming.
+ Secret Machines.Now Here is Nowhere - I'm sick of this album but that doesn't mean I don't like it anymore.

Five Wastes of Money
+ Security Deposit - I moved out of the highrise only to find out that the corporation who foreclosed on the building didn't get the security deposits. I'm still not sure if it's worth the time to get a lawyer to get this deposit back.
+ Alesis Drum Machine - Grand designs of creating a solo album earlier in the year yielded to laziness and time commitments.
+ Alexander - My dad was curious. It was one of the worst films I've seen recently.
+ The 'Check-engine' Light - I dropped $265 bucks to have a repair done that didn't have an effect on the driveability of my car. For all purposes, I paid to have a yellow light turned off on my dashboard.
+ Rent - It's near time to take one step closer to full-out yuppieism by shopping for a condo. Instead of paying some guy for use of his space, I'll pay myself money towards a permanent real estate fund. In four short years, I've gone from wondering if $450 is too much to pay for rent to deciding that a 2 bedroom, 1.5 bathroom condo is the best investment choice.

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Christ Mass Break 2004

- New diversion:


The next week will feature plenty of piano action. The idea is to sound better than a good 7th grader by the end of the week. I think I can accomplish that along with a bunch of other things.

Stuff:

- With the holiday falling on a weekend, most of us are cheated in terms of true 'days off'. Time was in short supply this weekend but all of it was quality family time. The folks sounded and looked sad to see me head back to town. That's the way it is these days.

- Upon seeing this camera in a vending machine, a woman got excited and was heard to exclaim. "Back in college, those were the 'Camera Du Jour.'" I requested that she explain what she meant by "Camera of the Day." I stopped paying attention at 'sorror-.' Just kidding. I did some research and these $5 items available in vending machines are merely Kodak disposable retreads. A company collects emptied Kodak disposable cameras, reloads them with film and puts them back on the market. I removed the cardboard wrapping to find a torn Kodak label and an electric tape job. America. Fuck Yeah!

- Secret Santa system was in play this year. I bought a gift and made CD compilations for the rest. While I was explaining why I made these CD's, I absent-mindedly opened my gift to my brother. After a good laugh, I handed him the present. Oops. I feel like an ass for that one.

- The folks house smelled like babies by the end of the holiday celebration and the sound of crying turned into white noise by dinnertime on Saturday. As you can tell, the Christmas atmosphere was very responsible. The annual photo session didn't take too long, either. Efficient.

- This is quite a bit of fun.

Let the next six Saturdays begin. Time some time to step back, reflect, and recharge. Everybody needs a break from lifestyle at least once a year.

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In case you missed it

It's about ten degrees outside. As much as I like being outside, every step into a stiff wind is misery.

The jingle of keys wasn't enough to prevent me from breaking out into a cold sweat this morning. At about 1:30 this morning, somebody entered the building and made a lot of noise in the basement. I heard doors closing, things being moved around, and yet nothing that sounded typical of a neighbor. The person eventually left and I concluded that it was probably my landlord (jingle of keys), but hearing unfamiliar noises at 2am freaked me out. It took the normal sounds of the night to get me to fall back asleep. Sleepless nights have been going on all week long...

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Wake-up Call

Ten minutes to eight and less than seven hours after falling asleep, I found myself half-asleep on a quiet train. Enter the crazy guy with a loud voice two stops from my destination. Behind me, I heard him yell at some guy. The thin man with thick rimmed glasses walked across the train car. He stopped, whirled around and criticized the guy's gloves, jacket, shoes and pants. He then advised the gentleman to go back to his own country and that he declared a mission to clean up America starting today. Everybody in the train did their best to ignore him. I didn't turn around to see who the victim was, but I couldn't do anything about the situation. One stop later, most of the car cleared out.

Welcome to the week.

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Twas the Weekend before X-Mas

We saw snow, we saw wind, we felt cold, and I saw a bunch of banged-up automobiles on my street this morning. As a result, the weekend was rather entertaining.

- Steve and Kara hosted a party this weekend. It was nice to attend a party at their place without paying seven bucks each way on a cab. Folks came by and brought a compact disc compilation to pass. Over 20 compilations where passed around. I thought I could throw a curveball by populating my CD exclusively with 1970's funk & jazz. We'll see about that one.

- Friday morning whiskey hangover + Saturday morning everything hangover = Soda Saturday Night. It's getting difficult to fire the jets for three consecutive nights.

- Gifts for the nieces were shopped for today. The zoo that was Toys R Us today was...a zoo. The congestion got to me and for a few flustered moments, I thought about punishing one of my brothers with a talking/dancing Elmo doll. Instead, I gave up the search for an Elmo doll that does nothing. During my search for things I know nothing about, I traded a mutual smile with a similar-aged, attractive woman who appeared to be on the same mission of buying toys for infant relatives. As expected, I didn't take the opportunity to at least say something. Confidence...yeah...I'm going to have to work on this.

- While in line, I noticed a dad buying this Item. It looks exactly like this. Kids today are getting cheated.

- I met two foreigners last night who they both left technology careers for the real estate game. The seemed to be doing alright living the American dream. The house game might not be a bad permanent fall-back plan.

- If it's going to be cold, it may as well snow. I'll take this January weather in December. December weather doesn't seem to exist anymore...

...and now we begin the week of tying loose ends. This month has cruised by.

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I try to not talk about my occupation, but today I feel the need to share a few lessons:

1) small dinner + whiskey = nausea
2) standing with a plate of asian food while eating with chopsticks: that guy.
3) those 'below' you seek your help if they respect you.
4) Said holiday event was at the Museum for Contemporary Art. Out of 150 people, I estimate about 20 actually walked around the museum and looked at the art...sad.
5) those who think you're worth more than you're paid will tell you so when they're wasted.
6) I still hate work functions.

With my new phone, I present to you : photoblog.

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"Sometimes I feel so nice, I wanna try myself with you..."



Six extremely shallow reasons I shouldn't be so single and dateless these days:

1. I clean up well (see figure).
2. I weigh less than 190 pounds and can bench-press more than my weight.
3. I have a lot of stuff.
4. This past year's salary bonus was equivalent to the per capita GNP of many countries in the world.
5. I palm basketballs, my shoe size is 11.5-EEE and I can run a 7:15 mile (sports).

Sorry, I had to get that out my system...tune in tomorrow for more cynical comments about why the world sucks.

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Apartment

I wouldn't say I shut myself in this weekend, but the majority of the last 55 hours were spent within the walls of this apartment. I think I needed to get a weekend like that out of the system. Guests were entertained, laughs were had, I sat here and listened to a lot of music, and I made bad dietary choices. The hectic days of the season begin this week. Hilarity to ensue.


As previously mentioned, my folks gave me a few pizza pies courtesy of their fine friends from Glaxo Smith Kline's sales department. Yes...the pizza was indeed good. Ask me more.

In searching for a song, I stumbled upon Lalo Schifrin. The guy scored 'Dirty Harry' and a bunch of other films including 'Enter the Dragon' and the theme from 'Mission Impossible.' In finding the popular works, I found that work he did for the 'Verve' label is pretty addicting. I must explore this a bit more...there's some crazy, funky shit going on.

Bad dietary choice: Sushi sold at Jewel. Disregard the 'sell-by' date.

I left the house at 1:45am to go out two nights ago. I needed to get some fresh air after playing video games all night with dudes. Instead of fresh air, I got to breathe inside two cabs and two houseparties (one crowded). It was still worth it.

Last night, the neighbors joined me for a viewing of this made-for-TV movie. In honor of the subject of the movie, we picked up a case of Busch. The highlights were seeing the lines used for the commercials in context...and that was about it.

Windy days like today tend have a relaxing effect on me. Why is that?

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blah blah blah blah blah

The Postal Service cover of Phil Collins' 'Take a Look at Me Now' (Against all Odds) still makes the song as annoying and almost as disturbing as 'That's All.'

The lady sitting behind me on the train this morning spoke very loudly and clearly into her mobile telephone that she "will be there in ten minutes." I'm glad I learned that about her life.

During dinner last night, I overheard the following exchange:
"Have you considered Russian Mail-order brides?"
"No, I'm not there yet."
I always thought that was an urban myth...

I've had a 773-area code cellphone number for exactly two years today.

Regarding the murder of Dimebag Darrell, Brian, the singer of Hanalei remarked that the murder was the "White Trash 9/11." I laughed.

Friday afternoons at the office are agonizing. Bring on the dateless weekend.

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Shuffle. Random.

Like many of those who spend their time in public shutting out the outside world via the portable mp3 player, I listen in shuffle mode more often than not. Today, the shuffle, or random, mode gave me Daft Punk while the gym was blaring a Daft Punk workout song. A few minutes later, I was watching that scene of a Simpsons episode where Lisa winds up at Springfield's other elementary school. She meets a nerd named Thelonious and they dance. Shuffle mode gave me New Found Glory's "Happy Together." The episode plays the original song during that scene...

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Introduction to the Mystery

In case you have ever wondered why Fidel Castro has remained in power for over forty years, you need only watch this documentary. The ninety minute film glazes over most of the story, but it's a good peek into the revolution. According to this documentary, history will judge him as one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century. From what I gather, I agree but will have to read a few books on this matter. The international community hails this man as a friend. The united states government should consider doing the same before Castro passes away. Towards the end of the film, there's a scene where he hands little Elian Gonzalez a book and a box of chocolates and advises him not to read the chocolates and eat the book. I recommend this documentary if you're curious.

Now, allow me to take some pre-emtive action to getting a CIA file started: America good. America good. America good. America good. America good. America good. America. Good.

In other news, I made the suggestion that we watch BET during lunch today. That response was as if I made a joke. I wasn't kidding. "Hits from the Street" (cancelled) and Rap City re-runs made for many an entertaining lunch hour back in college. A few hours later, I entered the same cafeteria to see that somebody was watching BET. I'm glad I'm not the only one. America. Still good.

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Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Rinse. Lather. Listen. Repeat.

It's been the same old weekday routine. Things feel dull again, but it could be the weather. If it's going to be cold, raingy and gloomy all day, I'd rather see some snow.

I did eat an apple on the train after work, but that is not much different from the norm. I was thinking about doing some work from home, but I've wasted the last hour listening to my recent samplings. So many horns:

Man Child - I have this on vinyl, but I needed something I can turn into compact disc...Especially the first track.

Secrets - I have yet to listen to this. There's no such thing as funk overload.

Future Shock - I don't like how a lot of the big jazz artists from the 60's and 70's tried to evolve into the cheezy 1980's synth sounds (opinions are all relative to time, mind you). The big hit on this album is great, but the rest meekly attempts to mix classic sounds with technology. It's a hard listen.

Maiden Voyage - See a pattern here? I don't. Piano. Enough said.

The Great Summit: The Master Takes - Just like a 1970's supergroup except it was recorded in 1961...and instead of creating lame new material, they went back and busted through Duke Ellington's hits. It's essential to own if you ask me.

Dance of the Drunken Master - Pretty good funk if you ignore the songs that make you feel like you're watching the Weather Channel.

Interstellar Space - One of these days, I'm going to sit down and listen to an entire 'jazz work.' I don't think I get it yet.

Djangology - At this point, I'm overloading. I'll catch this one in the future.

I also sampled an MF Doom/Madlib album that I can't find listed for sale anywhere and and few other things on the way. I'll sort this all out in the next few days. End Post.

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Aren't you ready for no Football?

I'm not a religious watcher of Monday Night Football, but I bet the show could have used the viewership of the third largest media market in the country. I bet those at home who don't really care about the fire and care more about football are angry right now. We get to watch a special report about a rather large high-rise fire located near my place of employment. My sister-in-law works in that building (closer to the ground) and decided that she would go to work early rather than stay late tonight (i.e. safe). It's big news, but this coverage is lasting a few hours too long.

This book will either improve my writing, or do nothing at all. It was a birthday gift from the ex-girl who is encouraging me to write a short story and/or novel. At the same time, she doesn't really like this web log. She enjoyed the person she knew much more than the voice she read. I'm not one to really expose myself here in a semi-anonymous forum so I'm doing something right...right? Write?

Analog versus digital...feel it.

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Same As it Ever Was

The last few days have been pretty social. By social, I mean consumptive. By consumptive, I mean being American.

Two hours left in an otherwise boring Friday afternoon, tallboy cans of Miller Lite were purchased by the bossman and offered to close out the week. It seemed like all of corporate America suffered through a long and drawn-out week and this was needed. Our consumption of libations as I talked Motley Crue and e-bay with the bossmen were met with semi-disapproving looks. Just another day in the office for our renegade group, I guess.

A weekend in the city means I took the chance to decorate my apartment for the holidays. Being a single guy living alone in a apartment seen by few female guests, it probably wasn't entirely necessary. I still went ahead and purchased decorations to go along with my 2ft fake tree. I figure if I do just enough where one wouldn't feel sorry for me, my apartment would look just fine. It looks pretty festive right now. Next up: Figure out a Christmas card.

Minor League hockey was witnessed last night between my hometown squad (whom I barely followed while growing up) and the Chicago squad (whom I know nothing about). It was a good time. Besides the hockey, we were entertained by a drunken fan who had to remind the players on the ice that they need to have testicles to play hockey in the AHL. We were also entertained by a sorority/fraternity group on an outing. Nothing says "family atmosphere" like drunk co-eds stumbling into families and frat guys who pulled their pants down when Chicago scored. This outing was fun enough to become a regular activity.

No man should cry on his 30th birthday no matter how drunk he was. Stone cold women deserve no love if they break a man's heart like that. I'm glad the 20+ friends who attended agreed on that. We got his back.

A Sunday mid-day visit to the gym is one way to fight through a hangover. As I sat at the bench press, I was questioning whether showing up was a good idea. By the end of my visit, I was feeling fine again. It's a tough, but effective way.

I had a fairly long discussion with Natron regarding what life would be like if you were born without arms, but still had hands attached to your upper torso. So many issues regarding daily life came up. I'd be interested to see an artists rendition of that.

I spent $60 last night. 30% of that was devoted to hockey. I'm not sure where the rest of it went.

First meal on Friday 12:00pm: Authentic Mexican meal that tasted amazingly good.
First meal on Saturday 3:30am: "Famous" Taco Burrito King. Tasted like nothing.

Sleep...so necessary.

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Lunchtime Entertainment...or something

One. Getting in line at the lunch place to see a woman with an ass hanging out of her low cut sweater while she sat facing the line. I had no choice but to laugh when every single guy that got in the snaked line fixed his gaze on this woman's cleavage for quite some time. Juvenile but entertaining.

Two. Walking under a construction canopy across from the tallest skyscraper when chunks of ice started raining on to the street. Police lines were up to protect unsuspecting passerby. Actually that wasn't entertaining...that's a potentially lethal situation.

Three. Watching a homeless guy rummage through the trash for discarded Styrofoam containers of discarded foodstuffs. Putting together a meal, getting himself a cup of water, and picking up a newspaper before nonchalantly walking out the door. The staff didn't notice and the customers tried their best to ignore what was going on. That's not exactly entertainment either...that's reality.

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