I'm sure I have time somewhere...

After a few brief weeks of being a bit of a social butterfly, my friend Brian went back to New York state, and since then I have only socialized once. Ouch. I was really starting to get into it. I was having fun. I was trying new things. I played Just Dance 3 which is friggin awesome!!! Karaoke was tons of fun as well. Instead, I find myself either working or at home. Even though I have a stack of books to read, I have stagnated on that as well. I haven’t gone for an honest run in weeks. I am really not sure what it is. But it isn’t all bad. I am so very glad that Castle is back on the air. For my mom’s birthday last week we watched the first new episode of the year, and it was fantastic. We also started re-watching Firefly. I am not sure what it is, but Nathan Fillion just seems to be a great actor for our family. Well, those that are still home. Both my brothers have bones to pick with Fillion, Castle, and Firefly. Where my mom and I find the smarmy arrogance of Fillion’s characters fun and an addition to the show, T and Brando find it irritating. That is what I have been able to gather from them thus far, at least. Even his roles as Captain Hammer and the OB/GYN in Waitress fit his perceived persona perfectly. To be quite honest, he probably is rather like that in real life, but I do not know seeing as I have never met him. It is a great deal of fun to look back into old episodes after watching new ones and see how much weight he has gained, though. It is also fun to realize other roles he has been in, such as watching Saving Private Ryan and realizing he is the other Private Ryan that does not need to be saved because he is not Matt Damon. Fun stuff! But 1 episode three days a week is far short of the rate I was watching them before I had a job. That really takes up my time.

So I think what I am getting at is if anyone is in Sheboygan and is looking for a good time, please come up with a good idea, cause I ain’t got none, and try and catch me when I’m not working. But I guess what I'm kinda trying to say is, does anyone know how to squeeze a movie in the 37 minute time window I have available?

Not as Soon as I Would Like

I used to try and post to my blog each and every day. Then, the college football regular season ended, and I was only posting every 2 or 3 days. Then, the Packers were eliminated from the playoffs, and I didn’t post for 2 months… okay, it didn’t quite go like that, but it is kinda close. I was pumping out posts like crazy when I first started, but then on my mission I could only post once a week, and I found that worked fairly well. There are some instances that will make it better for me to post more often, when something important arises. This is that type of post.

My plans to return to school have been put off another semester. I was offered my old position back at the bank, and I accepted. I will be working here for a number of months in preparation of returning to school. This was not the only factor keeping me from returning to school. I did not get a reply from the Admissions office until late November, and then I did not receive a financial aid package until mid December. Because of this, I was unable to even begin to sign up for classes until everyone else, including procrastinating Freshman, had already snatched everything up, leaving me to take classes that A) I didn’t need, B) I had already taken, or C) that were at 3 in the morning.  I want to only spend another 2 semesters at school, and going back this next semester would be far too costly relative to the minimal progress I would make on my degree.

It was a decision I wrestled with. Even though I was given a raise, and flexible hours, and every Sunday off work, it was a wrestle within myself to decide to not return. I want so badly to be back at St. Norbert, to wach the ice flow down the Fox, to see the leaves turn and fall across campus, to get to see my friends more than just those rare occasions when I can come up. The biggest reason for me to return this spring had nothing to do with academics; it was solely for the opportunity to see you all again. I am sorry to those who greatly anticipated my return. I will be doing what I can to visit, which I know is nowhere near the same. Take care, enjoy your graduations, many of you, and I look forward to a return.

Not Quite a Confession of a Not Really Shopaholic

I think I may have become an online shopping junkie. I have spent such a great deal of time perusing Amazon, and eBay now has a large selection of buy it now items that operates very much like a far more sketchy Amazon. Due to this, I have spent over $200 since Christmas on these two sites alone. I have also planned spending as far ahead as the end of March. I continually find things that are of great interest to me on these sites that have NO USE OR ACTUAL WORTH!!! It’s so very similar to window shopping, but far easier, and without the guarantee that the clothes will fit. You can effortlessly flit from an electronics store to an auto shop to toiletries to whatever else you so choose. It is not for me… because I like it way too much and find it far too enticing.

My standard technique for not spending money is simple; leave my debit card at home when I go to work. No problem! By doing this, I never use my debit card. But when I am at work and what something to munch on, a complication arises; I work in a grocery store, so even if I have cash on me, the constant smells and the allure of the Snickers bar a mere 40 yards away from me proves to overpower my weak self control. Solution # 2; leave my wallet at home. BOOM!!! No cash, no card, no spending, right? WRONG! I work at a BANK in a grocery store. This means I can get money whenever I need it, meaning that I can always buy that tasty, diet killing snack. But wait, there’s more! We do not get a great deal of customers here at Associated Bank, Sheboygan Festival Foods, so I spend a great deal of time on the computer. When I become overborne with tutorials and online classes and organizing the back room, I turn to the internet and find that if I log into my Amazon or eBay account at work, MY DEBIT CARD IS ALREADY POSTED!!! The fact that I left my card at home has no hindrance to capping my spending. So now I am fat AND broke… a bad combination.

SO I have tried some new techniques. I transfer all my money into my account that doesn’t have the debit card… oh wait, I work at a bank that instantly transfers money. Okay, I tell my employees to not transfer my money when I ask while at work, and also to not allow me to do a withdrawal. Done deal! Oh, I have online banking that allows me to transfer funds between my accounts at my whim, loading money back onto my debit card in the blink of an eye. So now I am only broke, but no longer fat. How do I stop spending the rest of my money on the internet?

I stumbled across this possibility by accident. I was pulling money out of my account in preparation to go to Arizona at the beginning of December, and then found myself in Fond Du Lac craving a burger and ice cream… Culvers, anyone? So I decided to drive over and get me my fix, when a thought popped into my head; how much money is on my card? I could not say for certain, having pulled out my cash to take to Phoenix and not really knowing what my account was at before and since I had to buy gas to get to Fondy, as well as Milwaukee on two separate occasions that week… well, the burger isn’t worth maybe over drafting my account. Finally! A great solution. If you suffer from buy-crap-at-random syndrome, and do not have a good enough interest rate at your bank to offset the risk spending your money, then I suggest pulling it out, and hiding it under your mattress. Except for the mattress part, that is what I have done. It works!... most of the time at least…

Now what am I to do with this new jacket I didn’t really need…

The new year can begin when I SAY it begins!!!

I don’t think I posted anything all December. I could easily check the dates on that, but I am currently at work and therefore am not supposed to be going online, therefore, I will be writing a post for my blog instead. Productive? I guess so, in a way, but not really.

It is now January 2^nd, 2013. I have another 28 days to continue to write ‘2012’ on forms for the year before recognizing my mistake, crossing it out, and correcting it, but I only have another 5 days to write in ‘12’ for the month with leniency. The days are going to be getting longer, the weather should start to improve, and I have a lot of work to do. I have high hopes for this year. I am really hoping to be better in oh so many ways, many of which I will not be telling the masses because I think that many of you have already read 8 such blogs so far today and will read another 15 by the time you decide you are fed up with Resolution Posting, 2012… uh, I mean 2013. So, let us take a different train of thought for a ride.

Country music. I have never been one to like it, but dang it all it is catchy. You hear a country song and it can stick with you for years. I once heard a song probably titled ‘Letters from Home’ while I was a teenager. I was in a car with a former MP; an intimidating man standing nearly six and a half feet tall, weighing 23 stone, and driving a very large pickup truck. He was a very nice man, a friend of my dad’s, and also owned numerous guns. Oh, and he listened to country. It was while driving home from church with him that this song came on the radio, and 8 years later I can still hum it in my head. So, when I was on my mission and one of my Zone Leaders had a country CD, and it was one of the few approved CDs that we had, so it was played very often. Weeeeeeeell, it got stuck in my head. When I left the field on mid October, my Zone Leader gave me the CD. Much to my chagrin, I listened to it. Multiple times. And still listen to it. It’s addictive. I know most of the words to many of the songs. “Ol’ Red,” “John Deere Green,” and “Dirt Road Anthem” play through my head rather often now, though the tracks we listened to in the field most were country adaptations of hymns and religious songs found in “Oh Brother where art Thou?”. But still, bloody country is all up in my head!

What I find to be a brighter note is that I am somewhat expanding my reading horizons. My brother has a great deal of time to read. He is stuck in a hospital hours upon hours a day and doesn’t want anything to do with much of what goes on around him if he doesn’t have to, so he does two main things with his time; plays Words with Friends, and reads between turns on Words with Friends. He has found a few new series of books and gave some of them to me for Christmas. I am now reading a book called “The Name of the Wind,” I think. I am only about 10 pages in, so forgive me my ignorance as to what it is about or even if the title is correct, but it comes very highly recommended by most of my family, so I give it a go.

I have also taken up being an imposter; I have posed as a dancer, a singer, and an athlete. In other words I have played Disney Sing it, Glee Sing It, Just Dance 3, and also I am back to playing Madden 08. I was okay at the Karaoke games, but I was surprisingly good at Just Dance, but I had a flashback to when I was at dinner with my Ward Mission Leader back in Lodi and his kids had the demo version of the game. The only songs they had were “California Girls” and “Dynomite” which played constantly from the living room. Good times.

I also believe that Madden 08 is the best version that I have played thus far, and I have played ‘99 through ’12. My favorite thing to do is find the best players for the price at each position (Shawn Merriman, Tommie Harris, Patrick Willis, Frank Gore, Vernon Davis, Steve Smith, Jason Campbell, Kevin Schaffer, Deon Hall, Reggie Nelson, Nick Mangold, just to name a few), trade for them, and then proceed to see them hold out and demand massive contracts, or wait until their contract ends and ask for a ridiculous sum of money. It just isn’t worth it, though. It is also strange to see marquee players sit in free agency because eams can’t afford to pay them what they want. Marc Bulger (rated 94 or so in that game) is on a one year, $4 million contract to start the game. At the end of the first season, he becomes a free agent. He typically goes for about 5 years, $70 million. Many teams just can’t pay that, so he sits, waiting. Same thing with Julius Peppers. His contract expires at the end of the first season and we see him demand a substantial pay raise. If the teams can’t afford him, there he sits. I have seen a free agent pool with 10 players ranked 90 or more. Most teams are lucky to have 6 guys rated 90+, so there is, theoretically, a playoff team made up entirely of players that remain without a job. I think this is a very cool feature. I find it more within bounds of how the business side of football should behave. In the NFL that we see today, teams simply cut players, or restructure contracts, or pay front or back heavy deals to absorb a big hit to the cap now or push it off to the future. The way the game is structured, you can’t do that, so you end up not being able to acquire top tier talent because you made a bad couple moves by signing less than dominant players to huge deals, or those back heavy deals are now being played out by players far past their prime, but they are still making 8, 10, 12, 15 million dollars because they had 14 sacks when they were 26, or 15 touchdown catches, then tore their ACL 4 times. By playing within the structures of the game, I find I have to plan for five seasons down the road as much as I have to plan for winning now. It’s cool to me.

Well, I wrote far more on that subject than I thought I would, and I believe this is as good a place as any to stop. I had a fabulous time with family and friends last month, and look forward to good times to come. Happy New Year, and may the odds be ever in your favor… gosh, I’m a nerd.

Sacrebleu! INVADERS!!!

"So let me get this right. You aren't going to watch another football game for the rest of the year?"
"Yes... well, no. I mean, You are correct in that statement"
Long pause. "Why not?"
And here is where the background information shall be revealed. I shall start by saying it was a bipolar week; Wonderful highs mixed with painful and maddening lows. I shall begin with the end, as I have already done, and proceed backwards through this last week.
The reason I did not post a blog yesterday is because my father, in all his care and worry, but quite possibly in an effort to probably try and call what he assumed to be a bluff on my part, took me to the hospital to get my hand examined and x-rayed. You see, I had a rather unfortunate Sunday night as a Packer fan.I have allowed these events, which I have no control over and no impact on, to have a huge impact on the way my week goes. I have gotten amazingly better at accepting a win as a win, no matter how ugly, and everyone loses at some point so I can accept those with some form of dignity. However, when every contest against the Giants brings us a visual debacle in which receivers don't separate, lineman come out of their stance and then just get knocked back, linebackers seem to not flow to the ball carrier or their coverage assignment, and Rodgers refuses to get rid of the ball, seems frightened the whole time, and misses wide open catchers, then I get rather upset. No matter how how the Pack is and how downtrodden the Giants, we never play a good game against them. I stopped watching after McCarthy settled for a field goal at the 10 yard line. We had gotten kicked up and down the field to the tune of 24 points, and then got stopped 4 inches short of a first down. When you are getting beat that bad, a field goal is like putting a band-aid on a gash; it's a sign that you are resigned tot he fact that you are done, and you just want to make it seem that you are still trying. With 3:30 left in the half, you punch back and show YOUR team that you are still in this fight, that they are still swinging to win. I know I'm not no coach, and definitely no McCarthy, but that is my opinion. The Pack seemingly given up, so I gave up, and proceeded to spend the rest of the night doing two things; laundry and hitting my punching bag. I do not have boxing gloves, so both my wrist and my knuckles tend to get quite a punishment during my round with the bag, and in this case I appear to have jammed my right ring knuckle down and back into my hand and also pushed my middle knuckle (also on the right hand) further toward my thumb than is natural. My knuckles are scraped pretty raw, too. I was fine with it, but when my dad saw it in the morning, he began to contended warmly with me regarding 'throwing future away by letting my hand shrivel up and wear away' through lack of medical care. We compromised; I went to the hospital under the agreement that I would not have to do anything they told me. So here I am today, typing with a slightly mangled hand. Cheers world! It is due to this outcome that I have decided to not watch football for the rest of the year. It will be a great challenge, but I must resist. I have to know that it is not that important, that it has no right or reason to influence me to beat on a fifty pound bag for 90 minutes.
Anyway, the rest of the week was mostly better. We Spent Wednesday through Saturday with my Aunt and Uncle, Nancy and Keith, and their adorable daughters. I ate like a pig the whole time. I went through 5 bags of candy on the drive to and from Nashville. I had a serving of turkey on Thursday that would have choked a great Red Dragon. I ate an entire pie (pumpkin, of course). I had four steaks, topped with melting cheese and sides of mounding mashed potatoes. I devoured a half dozen turkey, avocado, bacon, and pepper jack tortilla wraps. I ate a salad that filled an entire serving dish, heaped with garbanzo beans, cheese, bacon, turkey, cherry tomatoes, and topped with a Caesar dressing. It was sooooooo good. YUM! The company was spectacular. The little cousins swarmed me, a little too much to be perfectly honest, but they are so sweet, so I was purty okay with it. On the way down we ended up driving through a fog that cut vision to maybe 25 feet in front of the car. Even driving 20 miles an hour slower than normal, it would have given us about .3 seconds to recognize the danger ahead of us, react, and bring the car to a complete stop... not likely. We were actually barely staying on the road while driving through Indiana. But, we saw no accidents and arrived safe. Christmas miracle!
The rest of the week was fairly ho-hum. Not a great deal going on. Doing good. Living... I'm looking for a good book to read though. Any suggestions?

The Late Night Post with Curella Deville

It has been two weeks yet again. It is a bit harder to stay consistently posting each and every week when I no longer can only use the internet once a week. How peculiar it is that I seem to be accomplishing far less now that I have almost all day to do whatever I want. On to the real content!
WE have had some amazing weather in Wisconsin these past two weeks. I have gone for runs and ended up shirtless multiple times, I went for a walk tonight and wore only jeans and a T-Shirt. It just began raining again, but I even enjoy the rain at this point. I have always enjoyed rain, as well as fog, so I am hardly bothered by them.
Another wonderfully fun thing that I have done this past fortnight is playing with Quigley. He has seemingly been taking an even greater liking to me since I began to play with his balls whenever he wants... oh, I should probably let everyone know who doesn't that Quigley is my families overly active and exuberant Red Heeler. He is a magnificent dog. Now it is hopefully not so awkward. He has mellowed out a bit relative to where he was when I left for my mission, which is a very good thing. He was almost to the point where he was out of hand and we were considering finding a nice farm for him so he would have all the running room he wanted, but it did not have to come to that.
This past weekend was the highlight of the last 14 days. I was able to go back up to school and see people that I was planning on possibly never seeing again, because that is unfortunately what happens. Once graduation has transpired, your class comes together in a giant group hug, and you all swear to see each other every other weekend for the next entirety of your earthly lives. It is sad that in a lot of cases you never get together again, so I was very pleased that I could see so many of you. To those I haven't seen, I tried, but I am without my former cellular telephonic device, so it made it pretty hard to get in touch with anyone. I shall return!
Happy Thanksgiving to all, and to all a good night.

Home Field Advantage

I must say that I love Packer games. After the Packers went a combined 0-6 with me in attendance, they have won the last two when I have made my presence felt. That puts a good feeling in my stomach. I felt very guilty about cheering them into defeat for the last 22 years while sitting on the benches of Lambeau Field, but the last 10 months have been much better. It was a great win for the ground game, and the defense was great on (most) third down stands. Casey Hayward gets to the ball. I was unsure about him coming out of Vandy, but he has performed better than I expected. Brad Jones has returned to his rookie form after spending far too much time being purely mediocre. Ryan Taylor can block. Defenses are going to start watching Crabtree, the ugliest man in the NFL. Rodgers showed his feet but was both high and low on way too many throws. It was good to see some hard running from Green and Starks. I miss Kuhn, Nelson, Woodson, and Jennings, and will be missing Matthews.
This past Friday, I was given the opportunity from my great-great-grandfather, Adam Mason, to fly up from south Milwaukee. He needed a plane, and asked me to accompany him in fetching one. It was a lot of fun to fly at night. I have been doing a lot of flying the last six months, and will fly again in December. To Utah, to Cali, back to Milwaukee, then flying into Sheboygan. Next month, I will fly to Denver, where my brother Tom and I will be reunited in an overt display of flamboyance that would get us court marshalled if we were in the military. From there, we shall travel to Phoenix to see our beautiful sister, her hunky hubby, and our oh-so-cute nephew. I may even run a race down there in AZ.
I have also been doing some cooking. My mother has taken to sending me recipes and telling me to just follow the directions, and wouldn't you know it, it works. Isn't that incredible? I have added Chicken White Chili and a charcoal cooked Ham to my thus far still short list of achievements, but I am working on expanding my culinary horizons.
I think that about wraps it up... except that Ke$ha and Gangnam have been stuck in my head all week.