My Body is Pissed

I spent the last 3 days moving heavy furniture.

On Sunday we moved a couch, dresser, rocking chair, and desk to our house from Lova’s house. Where we swapped out our old couch, chair, and desk. Then we had to go to my dad’s house and swap out our old couch with his junk couch. That wasn’t easy either because we had to go through the window. Luckilty Dad’s apartment in Semi-underground. Then we had to try and break up the chair that we took from our house so that we could put it in the truck with my dad’s junk couch. That was an act in and of it self, our old furniture was solid I’ll tell you what.

That was the easy moving.

On monday I met Lou at the Ryder truck rental facility on the south side of Rockford. From there we left and went to Schaumburg to get some office furniture. It wasn’t easy. Cubicle partitions are pretty heavy, especially when they have power strips in the bottom of the partitions. The ones without power are pretty easy, but they all have steel frame construction and the powered ones had steel wall panels covered in insulation and fabric. We filled 12′ of truck with those. The rest of the truck was filled with steel office furniture, such as filiing cabinets. Actually that was all we were able to load up. Other than a 8′x3′ white board. Those things are heavy. We figured that we only had about 1/2 a truck to go and get the next day. I got home at 2 am on Monday night after all was said and done after starting the day at 2 p.m.

Then yesterday I got to Conover Square around 9:15 or so yesterday morning, so that we could unload the truck. It took us until 2 p.m. to get the truck unloaded. Then it was back to Schaumburg for what we thought would be another half of a truck. Boy were we wrong. We packed the truck AGAIN to full capacity! Turns out that there were more little things that we had thought between lights and shelves and bins, and more filing cabinets. All made out of steel. We worked at loading the truck until midnight again. We were supposed to have the truck back to Ryder by midnight. That obviously didn’t happen. We got back to Oregon, I was dropped at my car and I had to go and buy a cappuccino just to make sure that I would stay awake for the 45 minute ride home. I was falling asleep in the truck between Byron and Oregon.

Today, thankfully I didn’t have to go and help unload the truck. Lou was able to enlist the help of someone else for the day. But, if he hadn’t been able to find someone, I would have gone and helped unload the truck without question. Lou is fun to help out, plus it got me out of the house for the last 2 days. I would have gladly gone and done it today too, even as sore and tired as I am. I would have helped Lou out because I know he appreciates the help that I give him with moving those heavy objects.

I’m going to go and crash on the couch now, probably not nap, but put my feet and chillax all day long.

It’s Been A While

It’s been sometime since I last posted here.  The last time I posted here was when all the Korea stuff was going on.  I was also still employed at the time, well, now I am no longer employed and the Korea situation died fast.

Being unemployed kind of sucks in this economy, because there are quite literally no jobs available.  It doesn’t help that I am looking for a specific type of job.  I have an associate’s degree in construction technology.  I work on CAD, it’s what I’m good at.  Unfortunately though, nobody is looking for a CAD technician.  Unemployment isn’t all bad though.  I get to sleep a  little later and spend more time at home just relaxing.

Eventually there will come a point though when I won’t be able to do that any longer.  I will eventually have to venture out a find a real job, because somewhere down the line I will no longer qualify for unemployment.  But, what happens if when my unemployment runs out I still can’t find an engineering technician job anywhere?  Do I go get a job at a nearby big box store?  Do I get a fast food job?  Or do I start a business?

If I were to start a buisness, what should I do? My wife and I make chainmail jewelry, but it’s nothing that we feel we can really make a living off of.  It’s very hard to make a living off of chainmail jewelry, there are very few that ever have.  Opening a record would be kind of cool I think, I mean, I would get to hang out all day and listen to music and whatnot.  But we don’t have near the capital required to be able to open a record store, or any kind of store for that matter.

Since I’ve been off work, I’ve had the opportunity to be able to get out of town for awhile.  Me and my dad went up to Brainerd, MN for the NHRA drag races a few weeks ago.  It was a blast, even if you’re not into racing, I’m not, you can still have a great time.  2 weeks before I went to the races, me and my wife were in Minneapolis for our anniversary.  We had a good time there as well.  We saw a movie, hung out downtown, went to the Mall of America.  It was great, it was somewhere we had never been before.

I’m actually wanting to get back to Chicago by myself sometime soon before snow starts falling and/or it gets really cold outside.  It would be great to just go and snap pictures all day long and hang out by myself in the parks, and by the lake.  I love Chicago.  I wish I could travel to other major cities and do the same thing, but there is a money issue with that.

I think the only way to solve our money problems is to win the Powerball Lottery.  Me and my dad have some plans for when we win the big jackpot.  My dad is wanting to build a drag car, we are gonna have a gigantic warehouse out in the country with a 600 ft test strip for my dad to test his car out on.  I am going to have an extension off of the warehouse that will house what I have always wanted, a wrestling ring.  I’m a huge fan of wrestling and have wanted to be one for quite sometime now.

Also within this warehouse, we are not only going to be building a drag car.  We are also gonna build a trophy truck, and any other extreme vehicle that we feel would be fun to mess around on.  We have some great plans for it.

My Nuclear Apocalypse Survival Plan

I have been thinking about this as of late, mainly because of the threat of war coming our of North Korea as of late.  So I thought that I would begin to throw together a Nuclear Apocalypse Survival Plan.   I guess it’s similar to a Zombie Apocalyspse Survival Plan, but without the zombies. 

First and foremost when it comes to surviving a Nuclear Apocalypse is finding shelter and food.  This may not be easy to find.  Assuming that I had some time, I would head to the mountains and seek shelter in a cave that runs deep enough to be shielded from nuclear fallout.  Upon arrival at the cave the entrance would need to braced and sealed or a second entrance has to be accessible for when it safe to return to civilization, at least what’s left of civilization. 

The next problem is food.  Who do you grow food in a cave? You surely can’t live off of cave moss for several years.  Some sort of garden is necessary to be able to get the proper nutrition to continue survival, and it must be a self sustaining garden.  This would mean that some sort of system has to be in place prior to arrival.  Some sort of hydroponic system or greenhouse.  The most difficult would getting the power to generate the lights.  If you are luckey enough you will have found a cave with an underground stream running that perhaps you can power the lighting and everything off of for the garden.

Once the fallout is done with, which is typically 3-5 years I believe, it should be safe to leave your cave.  Remember though, you won’t be used to sunlight at all, so eye protection will be necessary so that you don’t burn out your eyes after having been in the dark for the last half a decade.  Once you get out into the open world though it’s a whole new ball game and you will have to redevelop your survival skills.  Food may not be edible, and there may not be any good place to for shelter anymore.

You will encounter people who were within the blast radius and narrowly survived with their life.  They will more than likely remain close to home.  Ideally though the military will have set up refuge camps for survivors.  You will have to very wary of where you are because of the massive amounts of radiation.  Most major urban areas will not habitable anymore, your best bet is to find a military refuge center as stated earlier.  Otherwise, find a community of people who were able to flee the urban areas and have set up out in the wilderness.

Food will still be a factor though, as will clean water.  Likely situation is going to be that no matter what you eat or drink you will be ingesting radiation.  In the end from not having much choice but to eat contaminated food and water, you will die from radiation poisoning.  This may be a painful death, but it shouldn’t hit for sometime if what you are eating was far enough out of the blast radius, or if your lucky and your community has clean food and water.

Basically it all comes down to basic survival techniques and common sense.  Try not to travel alone either, you don’t know what’s out there at this point.  Preapre a shelter and have a plan in place for clean food and water.

The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brian

Tonight Show with Conan O'Brian

Tonight was the premiere of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brian.

It was great.

Show show opened with a video montage of Conan running from New York to L.A. with Cheap Trick‘s song “Surrender” playing over the videos.  This has started off with Conan’s signature humor which is great.  He said that he wasn’t going to change and he has delivered so far.

There were some more video montages to as the show went on.  Such as the one with him driving his 1992 Ford Taurus around L.A. and various things happening to him.  It ended with it overheating and being pulled away on a flat bed towtruck and some woman hanging all over him in the passenger seat.

I almost forgot to mention.  Andy Richter is the announcer of the program, assuming the role that John Melendez had on Jay Leno.  I must say that I am not a very big Andy Richter fan.  He does bring a certain uniqeness to the show though.

Conan’s first guest of the night was Will Ferrell, who was also his last guest on Late Night.  I’m not much of a Will Ferrell fan either, but it was a decent interview with some good comedy thrown in there.  It ended with Will singing a farewell song to Conan just in case this thing doesnt work out.

Pearl Jam was the musical guest tonight.  Long story short, they are looking old, you can’t understand much of what was being sung but, you must remember what era of music they came out of, grunge.  It was a decent performance though.

In closing, I think that Conan is going have a great run as the Tonight Show host.  He has the charisma and the comedy to pull it off for years to come.  I’m sure that he will be able to either last as long, or longer than Jay Leno.

Medival Events and Awards

So this past weekend, we attended an SCA event with our group (The Barony of Carraig Ban) in Lake Villa, IL at the Rose Tourney.  We were there to sell with my father-in-law and mother-in-law, who are also Baron and Baroness.  My father in law tried very hard to have a strong presence from our group at the event.

Unfortunatley, not many showed up except for one other couple.  Both me and my wife were given the honor of “Award of Arms”.  Basically all that does is allows us to bear the title of Lord/Lady.  I must say that it was very nerve racking to be up on front of that amount people.  Even though my back was too them I was still nervous.

The King and Queen have to give out the awards, which is kind of a big deal when you get one because they are only out in our area of the kingdom approximatley once during their reign, which is 6 months.  We got to meet the king previously in the day while he was at our booth discussing the court arrangements with my father in law for who was there and not there.

Actually all of the awards that were put in for were given except for one that he put in for.  Which is unfortunate, but those things happen.  After court was held, my father-in-law had to go have a silent court with the royalty.  Which basically they just recieved the awards for the people that were not present.  Those will be given out at our event on June 6th in Big Rock, IL.

We made some decent sales as well.  And to have the King stop and admire our work was amazing.

Wipeout!

Last night made for a long night, and it was a long day in general. I spent all day at work and then came home, ate a quick dinner and then we were off to my brother-in-law’s 8th grade graduation party. I can’t believe that he is going to be in high school already. It seems just like yesterday that he was in first grade, his little brother is 11 now, I met him when he was 3. I cannot believe how fast time flies. Actually September 22nd, 2009 will mark 8 years together, with July 29th marking out 3 year wedding anniversary.

Last night though while we were at the party. We missed the 2nd season premiere of ABC’s best game show, Wipeout. We fell in love with this last year. We don’t even know how we found out about it because we don’t watch anything on ABC at all. It was a one our pain filled bonanza. This is starting off good so far. Along with new, tougher obstacles on The Qualifier they have also something new right before the big balls, The Motivator, where as if you don’t get your but in gear, The Motivator will push off and force you to take on the big balls, so you’re better off just going for it.

Along with The Motivator being added, they also added a new, what they were calling, mechanical challenge. Think of it as The Qualifier Jr. It’s shorter and has 2 different paths. Much like last season where after they got off the Dizzy Dummy, they had to go down one path, but in the next round they had to go the next path. The hardest obstacle featured in this one was by far the slippery wall, it was covered in a KY type lubricant it seemed and was near impossible to cross. Luckily they gave them a rope attached to a line to try and cross it with, it didn’t work though because everyone was doing it wrong.

The Wipeout Zone was far better than last season. While I enjoyed the massive water slide they went down last season. This season they got catapulted off the starting line. The obstacles were harder as well, one of them deemed so tough called the Gears of Doom, that if they fell off it then they had the opportunity to take a time penalty and move onto the next obstacle. It was definitely a larger challenge than last season to get it finished, it was far more entertaining as well. This season of Wipeout is shaping to be as great as last season. The hosts are just as funny, and the action is just as great. I am looking forward to an awesome season of Wipeout this year.

Goodbye and Big Balls!

Rainy Work Days

So today was one of those days where I didn’t want to get out of bed.  It was raining outside and I woke up with a pounding headache.  I still have the headache actually, hopefully throughout the course of the day at work it doesn’t worsen.

The weather seems interesting to me.  Maybe because I encounter it all the time in my line of work, I work in the steel industry.  Of course you are wondering “What does that have to do with the weather?” Well, let me tell you.  In my job I provide steel rebar to various customers so that they install the rebar in concrete foundations and slabs of new construction.  Believe it or not, but it actually gets pretty busy around here sometimes. 

Unfortunately though, the economy has us struggling to get new work.  So any new work that ever does come in is very precious.  We have been told that everybody is matching everybody’s steel prices right now, and customer service is the most important thing right now.

Customer service should always be the most important thing, it shouldn’t take a backseat to anything in the business world.  The best way to maintain customers is to offer quality customer service, kiss their rump a little bit.  I know that I have developed some customer service skills while here over the last couple years.  That doesn’t mean I enjoy working directly with customers though.  I had tons of mistakes and errors throughout the month of April, approximately 50,000 pounds of errors. 

I was pretty sure that I was going to lose my job.  Actually I’m still not sure how much longer I will keep my job.  As far as I know they are planning on me firing this Friday.  Who knows though, maybe I will be safe another week.  Although the time off wouldn’t be bad though, I need to get in touch with myself again and find out who I am inside and bring that person back out.  The last couple of years have been a pretty bumpy ride for me to say the least.  I’m not going to get into it here at all, that is a story for another day I think.

Mental-Episode 1:Pilot

We watched the series premiere of the new Fox television series Mental.

Chris Vance as Dr. Jack Gallagher

Basically the show is very similar to House.  A very unorthodox doctor named Jack Gallagher (played by Chris Vance) treats patients with mental illnesses with non-traditional methods.  Many of the characters even resemble the characters on House.

The hospital is run by a woman with a striking resemblance to Cuddy, there is a woman who greatly cares about the patients, and there is a well dressed very knowledgable black man (no offense, it’s just an observation).

The only thing is though that the actors suck.  The acting really needs to be ramped up for this show to be a summer success.  My guess would be that this is the shows first and final seasons.  But, it was only the pilot, so maybe things will get better as time goes one.

The episode tonight was about a guy that has schizophrenia.  Without spoiling it for everyone, mainly because I kind of half watched it.  Dr. Jack Gallagher uses his unorthodox methods to help his patient get back in touch with his artsy side.  Turns out it cures him and he saves the hospital from a major lawsuit.

I think that this show could be a hit if they play their cards right.  I will withhold further judgement on the series until after the season is over, then I will make my final verdict.  The first episode usually sucks anyways.

I remember watching the Pilot for house and thinking that it was awful.  Then the actual season started up and it’s one of my favorite show on television now.

Summer/Fall Television

I’ve been thinking a lot about the upcoming summer and fall television schedules as of late.

I can’t really think of too many shows that I am really excited about for the upcoming summer months when our favorite shows such as CSI, NCIS, and Law and Order: SVU are off the air for the summer break.

Jeffrey Donovan as Michael Westin

One show that me and my wife are very excited about returning for it’s 3^rd season is the amazing spy comedy/drama called Burn Notice that airs on USA network which comes back on June 4^th at its new time of 8pm CST.  We have watched that show from the beginning and have really fallen in love with the characters.  If Michael, Sam and Fiona weren’t in out lives this summer doing freelance spy work we would be lost.

The show is tons of fun and stars Jeffrey Donovan as a spy who was burned and is trying to piece his life back together and find out who burned him and why.  Well, at the end of last season he finally found out who burned him and why.  Then he summarily told them to leave him alone.  They told him though that now he isn’t going to be protected and all his old enemies that he made while he was a spy are going to be hunting him down.  It should make for an explosive summer of television fun.

We are also kind of excited about the new comedy coming to USA network called “Royal Pains” and stars that one pot smoking genius from Road Trip.  He also played Alexander in Josie and the Pussycats.  From what the previews have told us, it’s about a doctor who doesn’t like to follow the rules and gets fired from his job at the hospital.  He moves out The Hamptons and starts doing freelance medical house calls.  The show is looking good.  Let’s just hope that it delivers.

Also, we are looking forward to Wipeout returning to ABC tomorrow night (5/27/2009).  Not much to say about that show, other than it is an awesome game show with some massive balls.

Bizarre Foods has returned already this season and is continuing to gross out me and my wife with the crazy stuff that Andrew Zimmern eats on a weekly basis.

The fall television is where we really go crazy, because that is where all of our favorite shows reside.

The standard series are coming back with our favorites, CSI, CSI:NY, NCIS, Law and Order: SVU, Two and a Half Men, Dollhouse, and House.  Chuck is also one of our favorites but that will not be returning until the spring due the time slot being split with Heroes on Monday nights.

There will also be some new shows being added for the fall lineup, the only one that we are really looking forward to is the new NCIS spinoff, NCIS:LA.  We are big fans of NCIS and hope that LL Cool J and Chris O’Donnell can deliver as members of the Naval Criminal Investigative Services.  The spinoff was announced after the 2 part episode which featured them.

Some other shows that we hope make a return this year are “I Survived A Japanese Gameshow” and we are pretty sure that “Hell’s Kitchen” will return next spring.  But hopefully “Kitchen Nightmares” comes back as well.  It’s always fun seeing Chef Gordon Ramsey yelling at people for being idiots.  One show that we are dissapointed about leaving the airwaves is the reincarnation of Knight Rider.  It was a great show, super corny and at time downright outrageous, but we enjoyed it.

I’m pretty sure that I missed some of our favorite shows.  But our DVR is usually pretty packed with new shows come the fall.  Hopefully all of the shows can deliver come the fall and keep things fresh.  Especially the shows that have been around for sometime such as SVU, NCIS, and CSI.

The next season of House is sure to be interesting with House checking into a psychiatric hospital.  That show seems to get better every week. I just wish that they could have written Kutner out of the show a different than so abruptly with his suicide.

A New Musical Adventure

So,

I haven’t logged on here in quite sometime.  Unfortunately it seems to be the way that I operate.  I start something and then I don’t finish it or continue on with it.  That appears to be what has happened here. 

Now to get on topic though:

I have recently decided to start up a new musical venture.  I recently started really getting into playing my acoustic guitar again.  I have since began trying to find some really good chord progressions to use to write some new music.  New lyrics are in the works as well.  Even though I have a bunch written right now, I feel that it is time for a fresh start.  Most of the lyrics I write seem to make no sense at all, but it all appears to flow together nicely.

I have started many musical project in the past with my friends.  I have also ventured into the solo realm a few times only to not have it go anywhere.  My previous solo project (Whatever’s Left) actually did end up on a compilation album that a friend of mine at Cesspool Projects put together.  He actually plans on doing another compilation album here again within the next few months that he has invited me to a part of.

I have also done a couple of grindcore/noisecore bands over the years.  The names of those were A Blood Red December and Grinding the Belle.  I actually made some more material for GTB about 1 year ago.  It may be time make some more and pound out more aggression. 

The only band that I have ever played in though, that actually played a show was with me and my friends, we were in a band called Short 5 Cents.  We were a really terrible band, we actually did the worst cover version of “The Red” by Chevelle that you could ever imagine.  I still have the tape somewhere.  No matter how bad we were though, we had a very good time.  That is why I have decided to venture back into trying to make music again.

That’s not to say that I haven’t been trying to make music.  But I have been on kind of a hiatus since our last band (Thick Bearded Balls) went on hiatus at the beginning of last summer.  I am trying to enlist the help of my good friend Jim again for this venture with me.  I am hoping to begin writing some music with the 2 of us soon and then getting a 3-5 song demo CD made.  In the long run it would be ideal to have a full band.  For the drumming I would probably enlist the help our other former bandmate Tyler for drum duties.

So in the beginning this new venture for me will be acoustic and will eventually move over to a full band hopefully.  Who know where this may lead, I know where I want it to lead but will it actually get that far?  I don’t know, and only time will tell.  I think I may call this new venture of mine “TBA” which is short for To Be Announced.  Not sure why, but I have always thought that it would make a cool band name.  Hopefully by the end of the summer a demo CD can possibly be completed.  No guarantees though.

With all of the traveling that we will be doing trying to sell our jewelry this summer, hopefully I can find sometime to write some good songs for the first time in my life.