Nothin' but Net.
December 20, 2006 @ 07:45 AM
So as of last Tuesday (12/12), I have Internet access at home. As you can see, it hasn't really improved my posting frequency that much. And by "that much," I mean "whatsoever". I'm still hung up on that one fundamental problem: when I get home after 8-9 hours at work, I'm really in no mood to sit back down in front of a computer. And besides, I'm rarely at home anyways.
I think last Tuesday best exemplifies these points. I got a call at work in the afternoon to let me know that my DSL had been turned on (in the middle of a meeting, and I'd forgotten to turn off my ringer, go me). Instead of rushing home to install my modem and whatnot, I spent the evening at my first-ever hockey game (Iowa Stars… we lost mightily). I had a really good time, enough so that I fully intend to do it again in January sometime. I bet it was even more fun than sitting alone in front of YouTube all night would've been.
All of this sorta begs the question as to why I bothered to get Internet access at home in the first place. Well, I'll admit that it did come in handy a bit this week. See, I decided to be all domestic and send out a few Christmas cards this year. I think I prepared 13 in total — not nearly all of my friends/family, but enough that I felt like I'd accomplished something. Only problem was, I didn't really have very many addresses. I had two addresses from cards that had been mailed to me, but after that, I was sorta at a loss. Enter the Internet. I found two more addresses scouring my email archives from 2003 to present. Then I turned to Google and was able to track down four more. After that, I logged into Facebook and got ahold of two that I had expected to find in my email but had proved elusive. And for the grand finale, for those who were proving particularly difficult to track down online, I turned to the government: property tax records. I found three addresses — in three counties and two states — by searching through property tax assessment records. :)
Man, I'm beginning to think I'm in the wrong line of work.
Anyway, life continues to go well. Work is ~extremely~ busy this week (I had to schedule all of my tasks for this week several days in advance to ensure they'd get done), but I think I'll get enough done that I can take off a couple of days next week. Tonight, I'm heading out to Felix & Oscars with some coworkers for some Chicago-style pizza and beer. Tomorrow, I'll be enjoying a lovely dinner of steamed salmon, some olive-feta salad thing, white wine, Grey's Anatomy, and Firefly for dessert (I'm on disc 4/4 though… very sad). Oh, and also some of Anne's chocolate mousse, which I hear is pretty darn good.
I was seeing red. And giant bunnies.
December 04, 2006 @ 04:42 PM
So the Santa Pub Crawl was pretty darn awesome. According to Juice, there were something like 600 people in attendance, which seems pretty plausible. At the first bar, at any rate. We left people behind at every bar we visited. :)
Amanda and I first got our drink on at Sara and Anne's apartment while they finished getting ready (mmm... Screwdriver goodness). Then we, along with Julie and Chuck, headed to Drink to do so (cheap domestics and vodka tonics ensued). We were there an hour or so before we headed via bus to Paddy's, which I don't remember much of. I think they had cheap Long Islands, and I think I had more than one, along with beer from Chuck's pitcher. Then we headed to 3-Bag, which is pretty much the worst name for a bar ever. Actually, I think it's called 3rd Base, but nobody ever seems to call it that. They had free Home Team pizza (and more cheep beer, of course). zOMG it'd been a long time since I'd had Home Team. Last but not least, we headed to Wellman's for more drinky goodness. We ran into Megan and Scotty there, and hung out for a while, since it was the first bar we'd been fortunate enough to get a table at. Eventually, we tired of wearing red and smelling like smoke, so we called a cab and headed out a bit before the bar closed.
Sunday was far more tame by comparison. I spent the afternoon hanging out at Stomping Grounds in Ames, but didn't get a chance to see any of my favorite Amesians. I had a meeting with a guy about a potential freelance project, and I was hoping to stick around for a while afterwards, but my laptop battery died and I got bored and wandered home. I was also hoping to sneak in a game of racquetball, but Dwight was being unresponsive. Some people's kids, I tell ya.
So yeah. Weekend = good. I have pictures up here, if you'd like to take a gander. Sadly, now I don't have anything (that I know of) to look forward to until Wednesday, which has been declared a night out at Taki for sushi and martinis.