Although I think Jim Fassel should be the next Bears coach, you've gotta be pleased with Lovie Smith. First off, anyone who pronounces it "Bahr football" is OK in my book. Second, the fact that he thinks he's gonna run a Rams/Chiefs style offense is just cute in my book...as a coworker said, "Good luck with the personnel, Lovie." I know that sounds facetious, but I do like this hiring, although I think Fassel would have been the best move.

We learned the "She Goes" turn in swing dancing class. And while "she went" just fine, I kept screwing up the steps, taking too big steps a lot. It's gonna take practice. I also realized that I danced far, far better when I actually got to dance with Gina--for about the last 15 minutes of class this time, thankfully. The other girls are not particularly good, for whatever reason. I think it's because of the whole shyness factor again. I don't like it, because then i can't tell if *I'm* doing something wrong or if it's *her*. Given a choice, I'd rather not rotate. So me and Gina will have to practice. We're learning THREE new turns next week, so it'll be tougher. It was tough this week just learning one turn and dancing with one hand instead of two. We need to work on our arm resistance--we're still not applying enough pressure and balance, and that's key to this dance. And I need to keep taking smaller steps. But all in all, we did well, I guess. That's what the cool guy instructor said when we asked him to assess our dancing after class. So that's good. He's cool...the lady instructor (who was just filling in) is a little domineering and overbearing. But she'll be gone next week, replaced by the owner of the school--so we'll see how tough she is. :) At one point, the lady instructor came over and was like, "you need to loosen your arm up, you're so tense." And I was like, "I am? I don't feel tense at all...this is about as loose as my arm gets." And it was. I had to give resistance and all, you know. Ah well...whatever. :) Practice! Practice! Practice!

Today I have to go grocery shopping to pick up a bunch of stuff for dinner tomorrow with Gina. And I have to prep some things. Gina thinks she knows EVERYthing I'm making, but the joke's on her (maybe this will make her comment since she is reading occasionally!!!!!) Her birthday is next Wednesday, and we have swing class, so I'm making dinner for her tomorrow at her place since her roommate will be out of town. I'm trying a new dish that I've never made, that I found here. It's a Creamy Potato Pork Chop Bake. We'll see how it goes. i'm sure it'll be good. I'm marinating the chops in what I marinate them when I grill them, and I think it'll taste good--basically combining recipes. But it should work OK, I think...otherwise, the chops would just be plain, and no one likes plain chops. :) But there's more...she just doesn't know what else is coming... ;P

Gina's birthday party is Saturday...probably will start at her place and end up at Trader Todd's and who knows from there. Should, obviously, be a fun night. :)

Hmmm...I had a dream last night that would have made Laz wet the bed. I dreamed that I was doing laundry and there were these scary beetles (about dime-sized) littered throughout my clothes. They were scary, because they had inch-long stingers on their hineys...and they were hidden...like, I was worried I was going to grab a shirt and get stung without seeing the thing. And then there was some white film all over my clothes too. It was pretty gross. What does it mean?!?!?! :)

Here's another post for Laz, just for the hell of it.

Music recommendation: If you haven't heard the Foo Fighters latest album, "One By One," I'd suggest getting it. Or at least find and listen to the following songs on it: (on the radio already)..."All My Life," "Low" and "Times Like These" (not the acoustic crap, the album version). not yet on the radio..."Have It All," "Halo" and "Overdrive."

Foo Fighters' albums are very interesting. They are one of my top five all-time favorite bands--I have every album and many of the import singles (b/c they're good about putting unreleased songs on them, not just live or acoustic or remix crap). But, and I know this ahead of time, which is good...I typically buy the album the day it comes out, listen to it a couple times around and then put it aside...their albums are the kind that grow on me and eventually become my favorites but don't usually blow me out of the water on first listen. But, honestly, I could put all my Foo Fighters albums in my CD player and play them straight through and not skip tracks for the most part. They are quite talented as far as musical talent goes, and their lyrics are pretty good too. But I like their sound more than anything, especially what it's evolved into...they're not a cheap Nirvana punk knockoff so much anymore, which is kind of what they were when they started (lead singer is Nirvana's former drummer)...they're more straight rock, with an almost smooth finish to them. It's cool. Check out those songs though, particularly "Times Like These" and the nonreleased ones. The others on the radio aren't nearly as good.

I guess I threw you guys off with that "intelligent" post yesterday...sorry. I'll do better to not make you think. :)

Laz is right. "24" kicks ass again. What a good show.

"The Simple Life," however, should be burned and never shown again. Luis has forced me to have it on my TV the last couple of times he's been by the apartment, and I just wander around and the few parts I actually catch are so stupid. And Paris Hilton isn't even that good looking--I'd much rather have Britney (or, as Starbux Princess says, "Bitchney") Spears than Paris Hilton. She's hideous to me, really. But that's just me.

Also, Fox News Chicago, though we already knew this, is quite possibly the worst example of broadcast "journalism" out there. When reporting on Lovie Smith, who is expected to be the Bears new head coach, they actually said something like, "and he's even smart and well-spoken and knows his football" or something along those lines. What? Do they just give away defensive coordinator positions nowadays? You don't have to know football or be smart or whatever to get that job? Idiots...I made a thoughtless crack at the TV saying, "What? Why do you say that, because he's a black coordinator?" I realized what I said and was embarrassed at first, but then I thought, wait a minute...maybe it was. Who knows? Ridiculous...of course he's smart and well-spoken and knows football. He's a freakin' defensive coordinator, which means he's pretty well-accomplished. Maybe I'm overdoing it, but it's just ridiculous. Oh yeah, and I think the Bears are ridiculous if they hire him. Just so you all know. Jim Fassel should have been No. 1 on their list.

In one of my favorite books, Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle," there's a belief in a religion in the book (called Bokononism) in a thing called a "karass." As defined by the book: A karass is a "team [of people] that do[es] God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing". Humanity is organized into many such teams. One can try to discover "the limits of [one's] karass and the nature of the work God Almighty has had it do ... but such investigations are bound to be incomplete."

Well, aside from the God's Will stuff, I think I somewhat "believe" in karasses. More or less. I believe there are certain people in this world that coincidence or fate or whatever forces our lives to intertwine with each other, when there seems to be no apparent reason for it, or we may not even truly notice.

What makes me think of this? Well, it's silly, I'll tell you that right now...but it's odd and does truly fit this definition, if you will.

A certain former NU quarterback, we'll call him Zak K., has come, once again, within reach of me, in terms of communication. Let me tell you the ways in which I've had "access" to Zak K. in the past.

1. Obviously, we both went to NU at the same time, and although I didn't meet the guy, I'm sure we probably passed each other on Sheridan Rd. sometime.
2. The ol' QB is from the Southwest suburbs, and his cousin brings his car in to my dad's work for maintenance. Through that connection, I got the ol' boy to do a draft diary leading up to the draft for us and talked to him on the phone and everything. Cool enough...
3. He was never selected in the draft, but he did end up on my Miami Dolphins, so if I'd needed an interview of a practice-squad QB, I probably could have buzzed him and had no problems.
4. Today, my coworker announces that the ol' QB plays basketball with a friend of theirs, and the two of them want to play on the team my coworker has put together, of which I am not a part, sadly.

Now, of course, Zak K. hasn't really talked to me other than when I had the draft journal gig going...he probably wouldn't even remember me. But it's odd that he keeps showing up in the periphery of my life. Don't you think? I sure think so.

"I got shot in the fuckin' face!" Just had to use that reference, if Steve Buscemi is going to be playing me in the movie about my life story. :)

Wow...thankfully, I think this week at work will be a tad easier than last week. That's good. I have more than enough to do. Swing dancing class on Wednesday, I'm making dinner for Gina on Friday since her birthday falls on Wed. next week--swing dancing class will get in the way--and then Gina's birthday bonanza on Saturday. Tonight, of course, is "24" night, so that takes up much of the evening. But that's OK.

Yesterday I hung up the three framed photos I got for Christmas (two from the SuperNovas ;) and one from my Mom) over my bed. It's amazing how three little photos on a wall can make a room look so much better. I also cleaned the bathroom--scrubbed the toilet, sink, bathtub and shower doors spotless. :) I was gonna continue to clean my room, but I got lazy after that. :)

We'll see what's on tap today. Hopefully a bearable week. :)

Interactive blog time! :) You're gonna love this one...don't know why I thought of it, but hell...here ya go. :)

Let's say you were famous or important enough to have a movie made about you. Who would play you?

Speak on it.

I've been up for, oh, about a half an hour now. I need to locate/update my resume for some part-time data entry work. That's priority No. 1. I'd like to get that done no later than 1pm. Because then I have to drive out to Bolingbrook to get Kazak, and I'd like to be heading back before traffic gets too bad. I have to stop at the parents' house too and pick up some laundry I left there.

I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to eat for lunch and dinner today. Financial straits are somewhat dire again because of SBC's fuck-up with my wireless bill. Well, and my fuck-up for using the cellphone too much the first two months. So I have to be careful again with my money. Discipline, dammit. It's all about being disciplined. I just hope I get the check I'm waiting for in the mail today for fantasy football winnings...otherwise, I could be in trouble. Big shock.

Anyone have any get-rich-quick schemes they'd like to pass on? Or just some money laying around? :)

OK...soon I'll leave work, hopefully. And it will (again, hopefully) be before midnight. It looks that way, at least. That's fantastic, because I have much to do between now and lunchtime tomorrow, which is when I was hoping to get out to Bolingbrook again to pick up Kazak, who "vacationed" out there with Gerard for the weekend. Basically, I have to update my resume for some potential data-entry side work and get it in by lunchtime. I realized the other day that, oops, when my hard drive crashed a couple months ago, it wiped my resume out. But I think I have it on my old Mac...so we'll see.

And now, I've been given the go-ahead to leave...so I'm leaving. :)

Well, I'm sitting here, doing nothing. That's the only bad thing about playoff Sundays. I have to sit at work a lot of times doing little to nothing and feeling guilty about it. So I'm flipping back and forth between the Packers and Eagles and "Backdraft." Soon, "The Rock" will be on. That's a pretty solid movie, as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully, this game will be over sooner than later, so I can just put USA on and watch it. :)

Now, I've been recruited to sort through and pass out our dinner when it gets here in a while. That shows you how unbusy I am right now.

I'm beat.

Yesterday, I played in my grammar school's now-annual alumni basketball game to raise money for the school's athletic association. I hadn't touched a basketball in about a year, literally. I didn't do too bad...made some mistakes but also actually played pretty well, even though my team lost.

However, much like when I work out for the first time in a long time, I'm sore as HELL today. I'm also a bit sleepy. My back, legs, arms and everything in between hurt. We went to JK's, the tavern on my parents' block, afterward. Everyone had a good, good time.

During the day I went to my parents' house to do laundry after sleeping in and going to Chipotle with Gina. She'd never had it before, and I think she liked it OK...good ol' crack in a tortilla.

Prior to that, I went with Gina to Bird's Nest on Southport on Friday night after I got home. The coach that I was waiting to interview blew me off, but I'm not shocked one bit. Bird's Nest was cool, and we had a good time. Gina had a few too many to drink, but it was $20 all-you-can-drink domestics and well drinks from 9-12. So we did that.

And that's that. We should be able to get out of here comparatively early, since it's playoff time and there are fewer games. Only one more week of Sunday work until I get a Sunday off (Super Bowl Sunday), and then we switch to our pseudo-monthly schedule and I get Sundays off most of the time. That will be good. :)