That was a DAMN FINE meal. :)

Nick (of cheshirekim fame) made pork roast, much to my surprise and enjoyment for their Thanksgiving Seconds dinner yesterday. The minute I saw it sitting on the table, my eyes lit up. Pork roast is, BY FAR, my FAVORITE meat. I love it. I would eat it every day if I could, so long as there's plenty o' gravy...Nick used mushroom gravy, which was top-notch--but Nick, I meant to say this yesterday--try ONION gravy next time, for variety--that's what my Mom uses (just the onion gravy mix), and it's just delectable. ;) My mom used to make it on Sundays in the "meal rotation," but I haven't had it in a while. My mom knows it's my favorite meal that she cooks (even better than her swedish meatballs, which UrbanTherapy can attest to the deliciousness of). Anyway, I enjoyed about five slices of pork roast, and Donna's stuffing, which was fantastic too. That's really all I ate though was the pork roast and the stuffing--and I was just gonna eat the pork roast, because I love it so much. :) Oh yeah, and the cake, which I realized I don't know who made/bought it, was good. :) But it was a fantastic meal, without a doubt--excellent food, excellent company and even some Kung Faux. You can't beat that. Just like you can't beat a picture of my armpit hair during a NU pickup basketball game. :) Blade it up.

I left there around 8:30 and headed back to my place, where Butch's housewarming party was about to start. I arrived, and there were two people there, both of whom I knew...but the deluge was just about to start. We packed the place. Those of you who were here for MY housewarming--at its peak, I thought my housewarming was crowded. But yesterday, you couldn't walk from one side of the apartment to the other yesterday. There was often a two-person line for the bathroom even. :) It was packed. Everyone seemed to have a good time...I had a really good time. Butch's brother even hooked up the ice maker in our freezer, but I discovered that the hose, which runs through the basement, was leaking and flooding the basement. So we had a mini-crisis that fortunately didn't ruin anything (we hope). And the icemaker is still not working. So we need to replace the hose now. There were so many people here last night, it was ridiculous. And I knew only about half of the folks in attendance. But that's OK. I was able to hang out with the folks I wanted to and kind of just have a good time instead of running around coordinating everything.

Poor Kazak...he's a very social and relaxed dog, but I think yesterday was just TOO much for him. He wouldn't lay down for a long, long time, unless he could actually SEE me. That is, until the folks who were "in his spot" on the couch left. Then he went on the couch and pseudo-slept. Everyone loved him, of course. :) Everyone was stunned at how good he was, and "wow, you have him trained so well," to which I said, "well, I have to give credit to whoever his previous owner was too, because he was a lot like this when I found him." So that was cool. People trickled out as the night progressed, and I haven't discovered anything missing yet, so that's good. :) I was proud of myself for not sitting in or near my room with a baseball bat. I was a little worried, only because there were just so many people I didn't know. Not that I have all that much worth taking. :) But I survived. I was actually more worried about Kazak slipping out the door while someone was coming in or out. But he behaved and stayed put. Our upstairs neighbor (the nice girl) and a couple other people stuck around and talked shit until about 5am, when me and Butch finally went to bed. Fun times, fun times. So kudos to Butch for putting together a kick-ass party! :) My friend Erin from Hawkeye's (no longer, actually) even showed up, and she brought me a gift--so I have an ornament for my tree now! :) I have others that my Mom is in possession of, but this is technically my first ornament for the tree. :) So that was nice.

Tonight, Starbux Princess unveils her apartment to us...more housewarming! :) Lots of housewarming going on lately, I gotta say. :) I guess that's a good sign that all of us are "moving up" in the world or something along those lines--at least trying to better ourselves somehow, right? :) Anyway, Gina and I will be heading there, likely meeting many of you there too. :) Butch and a couple folks are heading to Erin's new place of employment, up north of our place somewhere, and that's cool. I'll have to head there one of these days...

But first today, I think I'll head down to my parents' house and do some laundry and pick up my Christmas tree. :) I'm using my grandpa's old tree. Don't know when I'll put it up, but I'll at least have it, ya know? :) It's a 4.5-footer, and I'm probably going to set up a train board below it...just a single loop, for "decoration" more than anything. i don't have room to play with my choo-choos. :) Maybe someday when I have a house. Ha! So, off I go...everyone who's reading this on the weekend, have a great day. :)

Ahhh, nothing like sitting around. I feel like that guy on that one commercial, too. You know? The guy who is surfing the Web and the CPU says something like "You've seen everything there is on the Internet, please go back." or whatever. I wish I could just leave here now. I have a call to make in 10 minutes and then it's just waiting and waiting and waiting for returned calls...I hope I can leave at 4:00, 4:15 or 4:30ish. I'm out of here at 4:30, period, if I can help it.

Not bitching ahead...just stating a point. Really.

This is why I'm not happy about being here at work today. First, I busted my ass on Wednesday to get stuff done ahead of time so I'd have a light workload today. Fine. I left some things to do this morning when I got in at 10am. Fine. It's 11:45 now, and I'm done with those things. Now, I have NOTHING to do, really, until 2pm or so, because I can't call my correspondents until then, per their requests.

So now I have to sit here. I could be home, at the worst, sleeping, but at the best, doing some cleaning and whatnot or maybe even figuring out my finances and how much money I wasted this month. Instead, now I'll write out some bills with a guilty conscience because it'll be on "company time" and hope the time flies. Meanwhile, many of you are at home relaxing or out shopping or whatever you do on the Friday post-Thanksgiving.

Basically, it's one thing to come in and work. But it's another to not really have work to DO. :)

Yesterday was nice...pretty typical Thanksgiving and all. Was made fun of constantly by my relatives, as usual. You know how it goes. We had the traditional Thanksgiving fare...turkey, stuffing, etc. Then we headed, traditionally, to my aunt and uncle's house in the burbs. We traditionally had cake and coffee and traditionally sat around the dining room table shooting the shit. (Someday, I know I will miss that when it is gone, now that us "kids" are all old enough to shoot the shit with our parents.) Then, traditionally, we went bowling at Suburbanite Bowl. I shot a 135, 106 and 141. I also lost $5 in that second game. We traditionally picked our names for our "Cousins Grab Bag" at the bowling alley. And then we went home. It was a good time, of course.

Tonight, Butch is having HIS housewarming party, inviting all of HIS friends (who mostly happen to also be my friends) to our place. That's the one nice thing about working--I don't have to be home to help him clean up or decorate or whatever he's planning on doing. :) I'm hoping to get out of here no later than 4:30, so I can head home and get ready for Kim and Nick's Thanksgiving Seconds dinner and then back to my place for the housewarming party. Butch is expecting a bazillion people, so hopefully they all fit at our place. And hopefully no one takes any of my stuff. :) There are some "unknowns" coming to the party, apparently...whatever. I'm not "worried," as I'll probably be there the whole time that the "unknowns" are there. A bunch of Butch's coworkers or clients or whatever. Again though, I'm not "worried" really, ya know? It'll be fun, most definitely.

But anyway, off to write some checks. :)

Crap, I was supposed to post when I got here, right? Oops. Well, I was sidetracked because I stopped at Gina's to drop off a "They Might Be Giants" compilation CD I burned for her...finally finished it. Then, I got back and didn't even turn the CPU on. I took all surface streets to get home, so it took a bit of time.

I met Billy and Steve and the crew from softball at Quigley's down in Merionette Park. It's formerly Reilly's Daughter. But they've renovated it...now it actually looks nice inside and is pretty cool. Almost North Side-ish. Whatever...

But now I'm tired, and I am getting up to play football at 9am up in Park Ridge...then I'll be off to my parents' house to hang with the family, and after that on to my aunt and uncle's house in Darien for more hangin' with the fam...hopefully I get some time to watch the Dolphins' game. I want to see how they do, for a change. :)

Happy Thanksgiving all, and goodnight too. :)

Well, this ought to be fun. I have traffic upon traffic upon traffic to sit in apparently. That's the only bad thing about the day before Thanksgiving — traffic. We hear it's 1 hour, 33 minutes from Lake-Cook to the Junction on the Edens as of now. That's not even counting the few miles I have to go on the Kennedy.

Maybe I'll take surface streets. We'll see. Those might be just as bad. Well, as long as I have some music, I guess. Off I go...Happy Thanksgiving, in case I don't post here tonight again or tomorrow. Maybe I'll post what time I get home from work, so you can feel my pain. :) I'm leaving in about five minutes.

So much for that...

Hope you all enjoy your Friday off. I won't. I'll be working. Glad I didn't make any hard and fast plans for the day, though it would have been nice to play some football with someone or maybe partake in some Christmas shopping (I actually have ONE present bought already--that's unbelievable.) So I'll be one of a handful (if that many) of guys here in the office. Great. Dammit.

Today was generally "uneventful" I suppose, as most Mondays are for me...

I went to Kmart and bought some screws and anchors, and our coat rack is finally on the wall. And it hasn't fallen under the weight of our coats yet. I also actually did some laundry here, which wasn't bad...though it cost $2.50 total (wash and dry). Glad I live close enough to home...I'll go there more frequently for sure. I spent most of the "morning" though downloading old cartoons for a "project" I'm working on, which will remain mum here, only because I don't know who reads this and who might find it. :) Yeah...anyway. :)

Then, basically I waited for Gina to call so we could go get dinner. She forgot she had a workshop, so we had to wait until after 6pm. We originally were going to drive along North and just find a place that peaked our interest, but then her roommate and her cousin invited us to get tapas with them, so we agreed. We went to Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba!, which I've never been to, and stuffed ourselves. It was just as good as Cafe Iberico, minus the "atmosphere." Of course, I've only been to Cafe Iberico on weekends, really, so the atmosphere could be lesser there during the week for all I know. But the food was just as damn good, as was the sangria. Man, I am still full. And Gina's roommate's cousin even picked up the check, which was odd, but appreciated...unfortunately, now I told him that he'll have to come out with us again soon (which is fine, he was cool) so I can pay his way. Afterward, we all went back to their place, because the teachers had to do some work. We watched some TV and I helped Gina by cutting out xeroxed coins while she worked on her lesson plans. Eventually, sleepiness set in though, and now I'm home...

I pulled up to a nice spot right in front of the house, more or less, and I noticed behind me was my jackass upstairs neighbor. As I backed up to parallel park, he made the move like he was going to squeeze into the spot behind me. Then, I see out of the corner of my eye him slow down as he passed me. Now, he asked me once before when I was parking if I lived here, as though I was going to give him the spot whether I did or not. I don't know if he was thinking the same thing, or what. But I'm not too happy with the "attitude" he demonstrated, and had he taken that spot even though i was backing into it, man, I would have snapped. This guy can't get kicked out of here fast enough...we need to check on the progress of the landlord booting him...because the one-week limit has passed, there's STILL crap in the yard and he doesn't even watch his dogs now--he just lets them out. I'm refraining from saying what I really think about this dude, let me tell you, for fear that little kids read this. ;)

Anyway, potentially busy two days of work ahead, so I can take Friday off. We'll see how it goes. :)

Well, here I am, in one of those boring lulls at work where I sit around and pretend like I'm busy. These sometimes occur on Sundays, and honestly, I don't like them. And another thing that sucks about working Sundays: I don't "get to" watch anything except football. "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" is on ABC right now, and I cannot watch it, lest I be mocked incessantly or accused of being a poor employee...dammit.

I have a minute little headache that I think is an aftereffect of yesterday's illness. Sometimes that happens. I took some Advil with my 3pm lunch and it hasn't gone away.

I'm interested to see how icy the roads are tonight, since it's been raining and raining and raining and the temperature is supposed to plummet. Should make for an interesting drive home at 4am. More interesting than last Monday morning, when I had to drive through the worst fog I've EVER seen...and that's not fun at 4am, when there's NOBODY on the road and you can't see literally more than 20 feet in front of you--even lights. You just pray everyone else is operating at 100 percent capacity like you at that point. So we'll see what happens.

Last night was fun, and for the first time in a while, I got to bed at the reasonable hour of 2am. Gina and Butch and I drove out to Lisa's and then we went to Pompei, where I ordered too much pizza. I order three slices of pizza. The lady at the counter was like, is that all for you? I said, "yeah." I guess they were big pieces. Well, I found out that indeed, they were huge pieces of pizza when they brought them to me. I needed two plates. :) Suffice to say, I needed a doggie bag. The pizza was also very filling, so I finished only one full slice. Also, I recognized that the dreaded spice/herb that makes me sick was in one of the pieces. I wish I knew which spice it was, so I could avoid it. But I know the taste by heart. I thought, well, maybe it won't be a problem.

We left Pompei and went to Arlington Lanes to bowl. We had to prepay for three games, which, thankfully we didn't prepay for four games, because we had gotten tired of bowling in game three. Sometime during game two, I was sitting there, minding my own business talking to Gina when the dreaded spice kicked me in the ass. I said, "Oh, damn. My stomach just turned over. I'll be back," and proceeded to the bathroom. Not fun, let me tell you. I then began drinking water only, and Lisa had some medicine I took. I was OK the rest of the night, thankfully. That would have been bad if I wasn't. :)

I bowled pretty well...Lisa's a ringer. I won a CD from the DJ who was working the Cosmic Bowling portion of the evening because I bowled a strike when he came over to our lane. Big deal. :) We had a very good time just goofing around...

But like I said, we kinda got tired of bowling, so we left and were like, what now? So we found a pool hall and shot some pool. That was fun too (I was on my game, so I was shooting well, though I hadn't played in awhile.), until the music turned for the worst. We were four of only about six total people in the place over 20, which was fine...whatever. The music was jukebox only, which also was fine. Someone played "Crash" by Dave Matthews Band, which was fine. But then, some Eminem song about killing his ex-wife and her husband or something comes on, and boy, was that a buzzkill. Then, "Crash" by Dave Matthews Band comes on again--the live version this time. Since we were done with our second game, we decided that was enough.

We proceeded from there to "The Curragh" at Woodfield, an Irish bar that was pretty nice. We grabbed something to eat and drink and that was that. We dropped off Lisa, then dropped off Gina, and Butch and I headed home.

I had a very weird dream last night that woke me up kind of early, and I was like, gotta remember it so I can share it here, but since then, I forgot it. Oh well...And now, I'm off to walk the dog and head to work. God I hate working Sundays. Man...have I ever mentioned that?