Back to Entertain...Later

Just got back from Philadelphia a short while ago, and I see that mouse was getting antsy for an update while I was away. I am too tired to write much now, so I'll provide this short teaser:

Tomorrow's entry will involve me, Philadelphia, and too much alcohol. Want to know more? You'll just have to wait.

Goodnight! :)

The Curse of Sleeping In

I apologize for the weekend of no posts. I guess I am more creative during the week (or seriously lacking in drunk stories, you decide).

Sunday was a milestone for me. I slept until 10:45AM. 10:45!!! I have not slept passed 9AM on a sober weekend for several months before Sunday. Several years of waking up around 7AM have started to take their toll on me. Sadly, I paid for the excessive sleeping this morning. I couldn't fall asleep before 1AM last night because I was not tired. Now I feel like four days of getting some real sleep became worthless.

Tomorrow won't be any better either. I am travelling to Philadelphia for work the next two days. My flight to Philly leaves at 5:30AM tomorrow. That means I have to wake up shortly before 3:30AM in order to get to the airport on time.

Now that I have made you all feel sorry for me, I'll give mouse a shoutout for a funny drunk dial on Friday. I especially enjoyed having a hard time hearing mo and skitzo when talking to them because all I could hear was mouse screaming in the background. Keep the fun calls coming, as long as you don't wake me up on a work night!

The Lions fired their coach today. I guess I fail to see what this actually accomplishes when the new coach will still have a crappy team thanks to a GM that is as qualified for the job as I am. He may even be less qualified given that he went to Penn State.

WE OWN...

Pay for Performance?

Who am I?

I was named president of my company despite no meaningful experience before getting this job.

I inherited a company that had mixed results with occasional strong periods, but never strong consecutive outings.

After two poor years, I placed all the blame on one of my employees and brought in "my guy" to run the day to day operations.

After four consecutive years that were worse than the previous ten years, my boss gave me a five year extension and even more money.

No person I brought in to improve the company results has had any impact whatsoever. In fact, many of these people have character issues that are causing even worse results.

Answer - Matt Millen.

I wish I could find an employer to pay me millions for a job that I am not qualified and the give me a contract extension after I prove my incompetence for four years.

How long do the Lions have to suck before something is done to improve this joke of a team?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope all my loyal readers have fun plans for the weekend.

My weekend will be kind of quiet here in CT. I was trying to make plans to see my dad, but things didn't work out for me to travel to NC or for my dad to make the trip up here to Hartford.

Usually the people who are not doing the family thing and/or leaving town all get together and have a group Thanksgiving dinner. This year, there are 5 people that I know who plan to be in town. 3 of the 5 might go to NYC tomorrow for the Macy's Parade. I thought about joining, but getting up at the asscrack of dawn (like 5AM or earlier) to spend a day in the cold watching floats and fighting large crowds just didn't do it for me. So myself and KottenBallz (Hawkeye's roommate) are going to make Thanksgiving dinner and watch football. By us, I mean I will cook everything and KottenBallz might bring over rolls or Doritos. I decided that I didn't want to cook turkey in addition to everything else, so we'll have chicken instead.

I'm not the best cook (or even the second or third best cook), so hopefully I don't burn down the city tomorrow! :)

Go Lions!

Rare panic attack

I flipped out about an hour ago. I went to find my iPod so that I could charge it up and take it into work tomorrow. It has been a quiet week in the office with Thanksgiving, so I am listening to music since I am not in six hours of meetings a day right now. I grabbed my coat since I thought I put the iPod in my coat pocket before leaving the office. But wait, it's not there! Somewhat confused, I check the pants I wore to work to see if the iPod happens to be in one of the pockets. Not there either.

Now I am worried. The last thing I remembered doing with the iPod was setting it on the table in my cube as I put my laptop away at the end of the day. What if I left the iPod in the office? The nighttime cleaning staff there is full of kleptos. I've heard horror stories of thefts there in the past from friends of mine, so I was mad at myself for leaving an expensive "toy" at the office. There is a good chance that if I left the iPod at work that it would be gone by now, even though I left work about two hours earlier. In a fit, I sped over to work to see if I left the iPod on my desk. I get to my desk at work and the iPod is not there. NOT THERE! I look around and am pretty pissed at this point. I give an evil glare to the guy who is walking around emptying the waste baskets in that general area of the building. However, I refrain from making outlandish accusations until I am sure that the iPod was actually left at work.

I thought about stopping at the security desk on the way out and report my iPod stolen, but I decided to be patient for a few minutes. Since I only live five minutes from the office, I am going to go home and check again to see if I can find my iPod. I grabbed by coat again and searched every pocket, not just the ones I normally use. Thankfully, the iPod was there and I was worried about nothing, but not after going into a panic for about a half an hour. I'm sure if I had left the iPod in plain view on my desk that it would have been stolen. Phew!!

What's the moral of this story? I can think of two:

1) My stories are funny. Not laughing? Then are you banned for life from reading this blog.
2) iPods are cool.

The end.

Breaking the unwritten rule

Unwritten rule #1 is going to be broken tonight. I am going to write a work-related post. However, I am going to start with a new rule #1: There will be no mention of the company I work for or specific reference to any company related issue from myself or anyone else who comments on this blog. I don't want to get fired for some stupid comment written here.

Today's 10.5 hour work day was an unpleasant reminder that the next two months are going to suck. Workdays will probably last at least 10 hours through January, which is amazingly an improvement from this time last year. This is the time of the year where I have to produce a HUGE amount of work under fairly tight timelines (that usually overlap). This period was especially rough last year because none of the people on my team (including myself) had been through a year-end close of the financial statements (among other year-end related deadlines). At least I have one veteran along with myself on the team this time, so it should not be nearly as difficult. Hopefully I won't work 25 consecutive calendar days this January and won't have multiple nights where I work past 1AM. Excuse me for not looking forward to the holiday season right now. RoopDogg definitely feels my pain, even if the rest of you don't care.

TheCrazyCanuck made the best cupcakes ever tonight. The one she gave me was falling apart, so she added a little frosting into the middle of the cupcake to hold it together. Chocolate frosting inside the cupcake is AWESOME! If you haven't had a cupcake like that before, you have missed a great experience. TheCrazyCanuck has redeemed herself for her anti-UM blasphemy from last Saturday. It probably helped that she apologized as well. :)

Sad Day

I know that my loyal readers understand that putting today's football game into words is difficult. This loss hurt. Badly. Now I understand how OSU fans felt under John Cooper. They've won on our turf two of the last three times. You can't let that happen. But I don't want to rant about the game itself right now, so I'll stop.

I will rant about a game related item though. We had the kegs and eggs party at FlyingV's today. There were three Michigan fans, one Buckeye fan, and a handful of other neutral observers at the party. The kegs and eggs party was a blast and a great idea. I was very disappointed with TheCrazyCanuck though. When I was in Michigan in September, I bought her a hooded Michigan sweatshirt so that she could have something wear when I was watching Michigan games at the apartment. She doesn't care at all about college football (since she is from Canada and has no school allegiance). I never specifically said she had to wear the sweatshirt today, but she should have been able to understand that today's game meant a lot from me since I was so giddy and fired up all week. Well, she decided that she should remain neutral today since FlyingV's roommate went to Ohio State and would be outnumbered by Michigan fans today. I didn't raise a stink since I knew TheCrazyCanuck didn't really care about the game, but I was hurt. That hurt turned to anger when she ditched her green sweatshirt for a borrowed OSU sweatshirt from BuckeyeBoy about 2 mintues after arriving to the kegs and eggs party early this morning. I gave her a hard time and was trying to be light hearted about it, but I was pretty angry. She eventually picked up on the fact that I was angry, but she kept wearing the Ohio State sweatshirt until she left the party at halftime. I know she had a miserable time since I was giving her such a guilt trip, but I didn't care. TheCrazyCanuck offered to pay me for the sweatshirt I bought her, but I would not let her do since it was a gift. TheCrazyCanuck never offered to go back to her green sweatshirt that she originally wore to the party. I do my best to be a good roommate, so I was disappointed with the lack of support today. I know it's such a trivial thing to be angry about, but any Michigan fan can sympathize with how much this game means to us.

All in all, today really sucked. I've decided that I cannot watch the Michigan-Ohio State game in this state anymore since I am 0-3. The only time Michigan has beaten OSU since I moved to CT was the only game I have attended. I really need to see this game with college friends who understand the significance of this game.

Hopefully PSU hangs on to win today because they deserve the Big Ten automatic BCS berth. In honor of Anonymous RoopDogg, "WE ARE..."

WooHoo! 3 day weekend

I'm taking tomorrow off to sleep in. Life is good!

Actually, I have to get a haircut, get the oil changed in my car, go shopping for a couple items, and clean my room. Other than that, Friday will be a relaxing day of getting fired up for the big game. Beat the Buckeyes!

So, um, yeah. I don't have too much good gossip to share now. Maybe soon, but not yet.

I'll be back in Michigan from December 18-25. I haven't spent more than a 3 day weekend in MI in a few years, so I figured it would be a good time to come back to town and see some friends. All my faithful readers better make some time in their busy schedules to see me! :)

Kegs and Eggs anyone?

I was speaking with BuckeyeBoy at the weekly Wednesday happy hour about this weekend's big game. BuckeyeBoy and FlyingV are throwing a party for the Michigan-tOSU game on Saturday and we are all really psyched about the whole event. This is the most awesome week of the year, right?

Instead of gathering at 1PM for kickoff, we are thinking of throwing a pregame tailgate worthy of the UM Golf Course. The current plan is to meet a 9AM, cook some eggs, and order a pony keg. I haven't had a "kegs and eggs" tailgate in years. This is going to be a blast. Maybe I'll even get drunk before the game.

Is there anyone else out there not excited about the game? If so, you are banned from reading this blog FOR LIFE!

Once Michigan wins, we can root for the Spartans to send us to the BCS! :) Go Blue!

Sorry my posts have sucked lately. I've been tired from a slightly longer work week (7:15-5:30 most days this week) coupled with my usual problem of staying up too late. At least I get Friday off to sleep in!

Beat the Buckeyes!

The Day Woody Hayes came to Ann Arbor by Bob Ufer

That was Saturday, November 22, 1969,
the day Ohio came to bury Michigan.

All wrapped in Maize and Blue,
The words were said,
the prayers were read,
and everybody cried,
but when they closed the coffin,
there was someone else inside.

Oh the Buckeyes came to bury the Wolverines,
but Michigan wasn't dead,
and when the game was over,
it was someone else instead.

22 Michigan Wolverines put on the gloves of Gray,
and as Revelli played the Victors,
they laid Woody Hayes away!


There has been some friendly trash talk with my Buckeye friend here in CT this week. I sent out the poem above as well as a recap of the 1969 game referenced by the poem on Monday, and he followed up today with a picture of Bo Schembechler when he was on the OSU coaching staff (in OSU gear). I'll send out friendly reminders of the OSU choke jobs in 1995-97 later this week. It's on now! GO BLUE!

Actu-faires 26 Fi-nancies 14

The long awaited flag football game against the fi-nancies was a lot of fun this morning. The fi-nancies were bigger and stronger, but the actu-fairies were much faster (myself excluded). Speed kills. The actu-fairies took the early lead in the first half thanks to a couple great QB scrambles. The fi-nancies drove right back down the field on their next possession and capped the drive off with a trick play. We showed the fi-nancies how to run a better trick play on our very next play with a well executed halfback option pass that went for a 50yd score. We took the 14-6 lead into the lockerrom and gave their offense nothing in the second half except for one 5 yard pass that they broke for a 50yd TD thanks to a couple missed tackles. We scored on our last two possessions of the game on well executed, methodical drives to end the game 26-14.

I really didn't play very well. I played center and had the assignment of blocking their biggest guy. He bowled over me a few times and I am pretty sore right now. I think the only times I successfully blocked him were when we had big offensive plays.

If I have learned anything from watching the NFL these days, it's that it is very important to have a good TD celebration. At the Halloween party last night, we spent a lot of time planning out our TD celebrations. We definitely used some good ones during the game. After the first TD, the guy that scored lobbed the ball in the air and the other 6 offensive players fell to the ground after the ball hit the ground ("The Bomb"). After the second TD, the guy that scored the TD lined up the other 6 players like bowling pins and rolled the ball into us. We all fell down and the player celebrated "The Strike". After the third TD, the player that scored teed up the football and pretended to take a "Golf Swing". The rest of us watched the ball fly threw the air like a golf gallery and then politely clapped. After the fourth TD, the scorer pretended the football was a "Machine Gun" and shot the other 6 teammates dead. Actuaries are creative!!

We'll continue to play our saturday morning football games, but hopefully we can line up a rematch with the fi-nancies because we all had a blast this morning.

I have nothing to write about the Halloween party because it was pretty boring. Sorry!

TheExCubemate is in town this weekend. He was one of my best friends here in CT and he moved back to Canada over a year ago, so I don't see him much anymore. TheCrazyCanuck and I invited some people over for a game night tonight. We may head out to the bar later. Should be a fun time.

Go Michigan. Beat the Buckeyes!

It's the Ghetto Villiage People

Tomorrow one of my actuary friends is throwing a Halloween party. Since everyone is done with exams and probably was studying during Halloween weekend, it is a good chance to catch up on lost time. This party is going to be more elaborate than the "post-exam post-Halloween par-tay" that Flying V and I threw last year. Unfortunately, my costume will be much less elaborate and funny than the brilliant "Where's Waldo" costume I created last year.

A few of us decided to dress as different members of the "Villiage People". However, we were all going to show up separately and see if the people at the party could figure us out. Unfortunately, I learned that it is very hard to find good accessories for Halloween costumes one week after Halloween. I am going as the policeman, but I couldn't find a cop hat or police badge at a reasonable price (I'm not spending $50 for some stupid costume). Therefore, here is my ghetto costume:

Jeans
Blue shirt
Toy gun
handcuffs
sunglasses
Paper police badge pinned to my shirt
No hat

It's really pathetic. The good news is that everyone else that is part of this group had just as much trouble putting together a good costume. Oh well. I'll have fun anyway.

PICTURES!

TheJSB e-mailed me pictures from the UM-Northwestern trip today. Here are a couple of my favorites from the AWESOME weekend:








Here is RockStar, myself, and TheJSB in the stands at the game. I like how Rockstar is the only one not sticking out her tongue when she is notorious for doing that in every picture taken of her.






Tailgating fun with Turk, Turk's girl, MizThang, and me. Notice the bottle of Boone's.

TheJSB and Bright

Follow up to yesterday

Thanks everyone for the comments yesterday. I got a good laugh from everything you guys had to say. I agree that the guy should insist on walking the girl home instead of making her walk across Ann Arbor at 5AM. I also admit that I have been stupid and not walked the girl home at late hours in the past. I learned my lesson, and hopefully Ju's boy learned his. Boys are dumb, myself included. Deal with it... :)

Mo, I'm sure there is a reason for every rule. How did someone you went on a date with NOT have their own private (or apartment) phone line?

I don't really have any rules other than no kissing on the first date (especially if I want another date with the girl). I probably just haven't been on enough dates because I am nowhere close to worrying about my "whore ratio" (as Mouse eloquently puts it).

I have no good material today. I'll be sure to write something interesting tomorrow. Promise.

Follow the Rules

Apparently the night before an actuarial exam is cause for going out to dinner. I always thought you were supposed to go out and celebrate AFTER an exam. TheCrazyCanuck's exam is tomorrow morning, so I went out to dinner with her and Hawkeye. TheCrazyCanuck was also going to select Red Robin for her "last supper", but thankfully she came around and eventually chose Outback. Unfortunately, I am STUFFED because I ate too much.

We had an interesting dinner conversation. Since TheCrazyCanuck has just started dating a new guy, we talked about dating rules (i.e., where to go, what you will talk about, how far will you go, etc). I was asked if I had specific rules for first dates and other dating related issues. Then, I was lectured about how I should behave when I am on first/early dates with a girl. I guess I should have expected this since girls like to lecture...:) j/k. I wasn't too surprised by TheCrazyCanuck and Hawkeye's personal dating rules (or lack thereof in some cases), but I never really thought about it much with regards to myself. I guess that means that I need to go on more dates.

In the spirit of this dinner conversation, I'm going to ask my two loyal readers (and anyone else out there who is too chicken to make comments on my wonderful blog) to comment on your own personal "rules" or your thought about the fact that other people have dating "rules". I'll gladly read and silently judge (unless you want me to comment).

Drunk Dials, New Nicknames, and Football. Oh My!

I told my roommate about this blog yesterday. I don't know if she has or plans to read it, but she knows it exists. I mentioned that I was struggling to come up with a good nickname for her and she suggested "Crazy Canuck". Since that is a much cooler nickname than "roomerino", it will stick going forward. If you don't like it, get your own blog.

I went to sleep fairly early last night since I was tired/stuffed from wing night and I had to be up early on Saturday. However, the best laid plans don't always work out since I received a drunk dial from Mouse around 1AM. I don't really mind drunk dials, even when they wake me up. However, I was disappointed that Mouse wanted to talk about big ten scenarios that send Michigan to the BCS and not something more entertaining/humorous. Mouse, I know you are a more interesting drunk than that. I expect you to do better next time. :)

Crazy Canuck was apparently awake in her room and heard me talking to Mouse at 1AM. She informed me this morning that I was sleep talking last night, completely unaware that I was on the phone since I had gone to bed a couple hours earlier. I guess she is not used to getting drunk dialed.

This morning a group of us revived the post-exam Saturday tradition of touch football at a nearby open field near where I work. I play because it's fun, but I am the least athletic person there. I am not good enough or fast enough to cover anyone, so it sucks to get beat every freakin' down. Amazingly, my team won both games we played today and I caught one touchdown! At least no one else takes it very seriously. I am going to be really sore tomorrow though. Oh well...

Next Saturday we are playing flag football against a group of finance people from work, so we wanted to make sure we got a game in today. Our challengers next week have been talking some pretty serious smack lately, which is what caused this game to be set up for next week. They have even resorted to calling us the "actu-fairies" as if we were smack talking 3rd grade style. I think they are just bitter because the actuarial basketball team destroyed them in the intra-mural basketball league last year. Needless to say, we are motivated to destroy them in football next week. I don't know if I'll play much since I suck, but I'll be there regardless.

CT is fun again. YAY!

Now that almost all of my friends are done with their actuarial exams this season, I can see my friends again! I participated in Flying V and Redneck's post exam tradition of going to the casino last night. I haven't been to Foxwoods to play poker in several months for some unexplainable reason. I won $23 despite moving up to a higher limit for the first time, so I basically just paid for my gas money and dinner. Tonight, a bunch of us are going out for wings at this place out in Coventry. Although Coventry is basically in the middle of nowhere, this place we are going to is always packed since the wings are absolutely awesome. I'm excited!

I am trying to convince a few friends that there is no better way to spend the day Saturday than roadtripping to Happy Valley for the Penn State-Wisconsin football game. Don't know if I'll be going yet, but hopefully I can find some interested friends to join me. Of course, it won't be easy finding tickets since this is a huge game and we probably won't get into town until 2-3 hours before the game if we actually go.

Say YES to Peer Pressure

So the only people that post messages to my blog are demanding that I use the nickname "Roomerino" for my roommate so that there is no confusion with Mpls Ju's friend "Roomie". Since I don't want to lose the only groupies I have ever had, I will oblige. I reserve the right to change the nickname to something else in the future since I'm sure I can come up with a better nickname.

I had dinner tonight with my roommate emeritus, Flying V. I have seen very little of him in the long time since he has been studying for his big actuarial exam tomorrow in some undisclosed location. We went to Red Robin. I'm not a big fan of the restaurant, but Flying V deserved to eat where he wanted to the day before he takes the most vicious exam ever written. I hope he does well because I wouldn't wish failure on Course 8 to anyone, even my most mortal of enemies (not that I have any mortal enemies).

So I found out from Flying V tonight that a story about me from this past summer was fairly common knowledge among my friends here despite the fact that I have not discussed it with anybody here in CT except Roomerino (I didn't even say anything to Flying V before tonight). I'm a little disappointed that people were gossiping about me and no one asked me about the incident(s) in question. I hate gossip. I could rant about it for several paragraphs, but I don't think that is necessary.

Scary Movies Suck

Since I was still tired from last weekend, I planned to go to sleep early last night. However, Roomie and Hawkeye came over at 9:30 after a long day of studying and decided to watch a horror movie. I think it was called "The Saw". I don't like bloody movies, so I probably only looked at the TV for about half of the movie. Yes, I am weak. The acting was so bad that I did get a laugh out of it, but I was a little on edge when it ended. If you like good independent horror films with bad acting, you'll like this movie. It took me about an hour to fall asleep after the movie since it spooked me out. So now I am still exhausted from last weekend since I was up well past midnight.

I planned out my vacation schedule for the rest of the year since still have ten vacation days left and no plans at this time to leave town. Next week is the only 5 day work week left for me this year. Woohoo! I'm taking the week off before Christmas, but I don't have plans to go anywhere (yet). Anyone have any suggestions?