Quote Of The Moment 3

So we’re on our way back from our St. Louis trip last weekend and we stopped at Subway for lunch. I love Subway. Anyways, previous to us stopping at Subway, Paul had been randomly screaming “BANG” in the car at the top of his lungs without warning. I guess he has an uncle or a friend that does it to scare/amuse people. He got me the first time, and I think Joe fell for it every time. So we get out of the car and Paul does it to everyone in the parking lot. Not effective by any means since it’s an open area, but funny none the less. At this point I think Joe joined in to try and scare the girls too.

So at this point I’m a little worried they might continue this behavior inside the Subway. So of course I preemptively attack the situation. This is what happened.

Jeremy: There will be no banging in the Restaurant.
Lena: That’s what she said.

This of course led to fits of laughter all around. Oh the youth of today.

All Stars!

Last weekend was the St. Louis All Star Quiz. Our district (Chicago Central) sent 10 kids to compete against several other districts. Several people who read my blog were there. Thus my not writing about it could have been quite distressing to them. If I don’t write about it, did it really happen? :)

Anyways, the trip was pretty cool. We left Thursday night, drove to Springfield and stopped at Steak and Shake for dinner. At Steak and Shake we met up with a bunch of the other quizzers and some other adult chaperones. After Steak and Shake we drove the rest of the way to St. Louis. For the most part the trip was uneventful, however we did start calling my car the “rave car” because of the music I listen to and the streaking cell phones Paul and Joe were waving everywhere. This was done in opposition to Sara’s “party van” which joe and paul did not get to ride in. We split up the boys and girls, because well….they’re boys and girls.

After getting to the hotel, we played a little Mafia and hit the sack. I never sleep well in hotels. I think it’s because it’s not my own bed, and the fact that I’m sleeping in the same bed with someone, so maybe I feel constrained. Either way I didn’t sleep very well and the morning came earlier than I wanted it to. Scott and I, along with several other volunteers spent the better part of Friday setting up for the quiz. We had seventeen rooms to setup, including chairs, tables, and quiz equipment. Sara, Erika, and the rest of the kids headed to the Science Museum where they did some stuff. I’d fill you in more, but I haven’t seen the pictures yet. I hear they’re coming soon.

The quiz started Friday night. I started out as a content judge in one room, but after 5 rounds I got pulled to help with stats since I’m computer savvy. I did a lot of running around for the entire quiz, mostly because we didn’t have a working wireless network, so to get the stats from each computer we had to plug a usb key in and manually download the stats. 17 rooms is a lot of rooms, especially when you have to grab stats from each of them every 3 rounds or so. Barry and Bill would have gone nuts if I hadn’t been recruited I think. It was also cool to hang out with Barry (since he wrote QuizMachine - the program we use to quiz) and talk shop with him. Somehow I let it slip that I love COBOL. Turns out he’s a big fan too. :)

So anyways, we had 10 rounds on Friday night and and probably close to 12 rounds on Saturday. It was a long quiz. Originally we were supposed to head back on Saturday, but the weather was pretty horrible between St. Louis and Chicago (lots of freezing rain, ice, and snow) so we opted to stay another night. We got back to the hotel, played some Egyptian Rat Screw, Mafia, and 4 on a couch (though we made up the couch since we didn’t have one. After that the kids played some “bang ahh ahh” game (yes that’s really what it’s called) where you shoot someone in the circle (by saying bang) and they have to say ahh, followed by the two people next to them saying ahh. Then the original person who said ahh gets to shoot someone. I guess the point is to try and get everyone out by making them make mistakes. I didn’t bother trying to play.

Sunday morning we got up, had some breakfast and it the road. We stopped a couple of times, including Subway for lunch (more on that later). We got back to Kankakee around 4 and I was home by 5. I ended up taking a 2 hour nap because I was so tired. You’d be amazed how much driving makes you tired. So that was my trip. I’m home safe (and I’m still safe 4 days later..imagine that!). When Marilyn puts up the pictures I’ll drop a link in the comments so you can check them out.

Guitar Hero and Los Olivos

You got me. I did say I’d post “tomorrow,” but tomorrow is so relative these days. OK, so maybe it’s not, but I have to come up with some excuse. It’s been 7 days since my last post. I haven’t posted for good reason. First off, I was in Arizona and with all the Guitar Hero I simply didn’t have enough time. I was too busy living the moment to write about it. Joshua tried to make me write, but in all reality he’s a panzy. He gave up after like 2 minutes. “Jeremy you should really post….ooh Guitar Hero.” :) After I got home I was pushed right back into work and it’s been fairly crazy. Now it’s Thanksgiving, so I actually have a few minutes to sit down and write something. I should have gotten a lot more done yesterday, but I ended up sleeping half the day because I had a terrible headache. Today I spent some time working, and I had quiz practice. I’m swamped I tell you.

So anyways, now I’m going to write a little about last weekend and fill you all in. Last weekend was a blast. I flew into Arizona on Friday night and met up Josh (who lives there) and Peter (who flew in from Minnesota). Josh and Pete are really good friends from college. I’m sure everyone is familiar with Josh by now as he uses my blog to make fun of people (mostly me) on an almost daily basis. Peter was my roommate my senior year of school, Josh, Pete and I were all in the Computer Science program at Bethel, and I was in both of their weddings. Needless to say we’re fairly close, but we don’t get to see each other very often. Josh moved to Arizona about a year and a half ago, as his wife is almost a full fledged doctor and she’s doing her Residency down there. Peter continued to live in Minnesota after school (since he’s from there). I came home to Chicago, after a brief on again off again living situation in Minnesota.

So now that you’ve got the history, here’s how the weekend went. Friday night we grilled out at Josh and Allison’s house, hung out, got caught up on stuff, got the tour, and mostly just hung out. I think we played a little Guitar Hero too. We pretty much played all weekend, so if there’s missing time in my story assume we were playing Guitar Hero. That game pretty much rocks. I’ve toyed with the idea of actually buying a Nintendo Wii just so I can play it with all of my free time. We also talked geek talk, which would bore most people to tears. However, all three of us would date our computers if we didn’t have wives (errrr I guess maybe I am dating my computer) so it was quite the fun talk about algorithms, programming languages, and .NET versus everything. We ended up staying up way too late as witnessed by my last post.

Saturday we woke up at about 10, had some breakfast and then headed to Sedona. Sedona is about 2 hours north of Phoenix, and I can honestly say it’s gorgeous. I’m going to say it’s one of, if not the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. God pulled out all the stops when it came to designing the landscape. Everything there is very red from the red rock that makes up most of the landscape. The plateaus and mountains were just stunning. I have lots of pictures of the Sedona trip (and not much else actually) so check them out in my gallery. In Sedona we hit up some lunch at an awesome barbecue place and then rented some mountain bikes and headed to the hills. Mountain biking was a ton of fun, but not without a few adventures of it’s own. I’m amazed at how some of these mountain bikers do it. I probably walked half the trip along the trail because if I had ridden it I would have fallen in a precipice. We were actually stopped at one point and watched a mountain biker (who was obviously a pro) scale up a 45 degree incline (which included very uneven ground) on his bike with no problem at all. Pete tried it of course, but in the end all of us proceeded to walk up the same path.

A little later I lost my footing and fell. Luckily I wasn’t on my bike, and luckily the fall was only about a foot difference (OK 7 feet if you count my height). I tried to catch the bike which had slipped, but gravity is a harsh mistress and she brought me down quickly. Luckily I was able to stop my fall with my funny bone on my right elbow. This in turn caused me to lose feeling and movement capabilities in half of my right hand for about 20 minutes. That was a bit scary. It was sore for a couple of days, but since then I’ve been fine.

After recovering for a bit we continued on, only to find out a few minutes later that Josh’s bike had a flat. We spent probably 20 minutes trying to figure out how to take the tire off unsuccessfully, only to realize that if we did get it off we’d be unable to remove the wheel from the frame since the back wheel didn’t have a quick release. That put a damper on things, since you kind of need a wheel to go on. We called the mountain biking place, who told us that if we re-inflated the tire it might stay inflated. I guess there’s some cool goo inside the tire which hardens around any holes in the tire. Luckily my bike had a pump (neither of the other two did), so we tried that, but to no avail. In the end we ended up heading back. Josh ran back most of the way with his broken bike, while Pete and I stopped to take pictures. We made it back safely, and the guy at the shop even gave us Josh’s rental for free because of the trouble. After we had turned in our bikes we took the long way home so we could see more of the scenery. All I have to say is “simply gorgeous.” We didn’t go into flagstaff, but the area right around it is really pretty.

part of Sedona…taken right after mountain biking…beautiful no?

After we got home we headed straight to one of Josh’s favorite Mexican restaurants where we had dinner. It was really good Mexican food. Better than here, by far. I guess it has to be with it being so close to the border. After dinner we headed home, played some more Guitar Hero, and then played a rousing game of Risk. Pete destroyed us, but then again he’s the world dominating type, so it fits. I got knocked out first, and since it was 3 in the morning, I opted to take a quick nap on the floor. That was a mistake. :) After some more Guitar Hero we headed to bed.

Sunday we slept in since we had stayed up so late, got up and had some awesome egg bake Alison had made. It was yummy. Then we watched some football for awhile, hung out, and talked some more code. At about 1PM my friend Suzy showed up to pick me up. She recently moved to Arizona, so I hadn’t seen her since Eric’s wedding. We hung out at Los Olivos (another great Mexican restaurant!) and she shared some exciting new things in her life with me. Then we walked around downtown Scottsdale as she gave me the tour of her childhood. Then we headed to her place where I got the tour there. Her place is really nice. It’s pretty big in comparison to condos here in Chicago. After that we headed to The Sugar Bowl (where I did not order a bowl of sugar against my better judgement) and we had ice cream. I ordered the Banana Split and Suzy got a sunday. I actually finished the whole thing too. :) Once we were done at the Sugar Bowl, Josh and Pete picked us up, we headed back to her place to say goodbye and then Josh, Pete, and I headed back to his place.

After getting to his place we had pizza from Papa John’s (which as of right now I realized I never chipped in for. If you want some mulla for the pizza Josh you know where to find me.). We finished the entire pizza, including almost 4 slices by yours truly (I didn’t finish the crust on one piece). After that we had another rousing time playing Guitar Hero and then we watched Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (probably one of the funnier Will Ferrel movies to come out as of late). After that we decided to play a little poker for about an hour, which we had to quit when Josh went to bed (something about getting up early to work…pffft :)). Pete and I of course jumped at the chance to play some more Guitar Hero. :) Sadly we went to bed soon after.

Monday morning we woke a little earlier than Sunday, mostly because my phone annoyed the heck out of Peterman with it’s incessant beeping letting me know I had a text message. The text message was from my friend Melissa (another friend I was hoping to get to see while in Arizona). Melissa came and picked me up for lunch and we headed to the Macaroni Grill. It was great to reconnect with her as well since I hadn’t seen her since Eric’s wedding either. She used to live in Chicago, but moved down to Phoenix about a year and a half ago. Lunch was great. We got to reconnect, talk about old times, eat some food. After lunch we headed back to Josh’s place where the boys were playing guess what…Guitar Hero. We had talked about going hiking up a mountain, since I had missed out on a hike with Pete and Josh the day before when I was hanging out with Suzy, but I opted not to do it, since I was tired, and we had only about 3 hours before we had to leave for the airport. So instead we finished our poker game (which was mighty fun I might add). Then it was off to the Airport, with a quick stop at the In and Out Burger for dinner and so Pete could buy his lovely wife a t-shirt. Josh dropped us off about an hour and a half before our flight, we said our goodbyes and that was it. Vacation over.

I was actually really bummed on the flight home. I really miss those two guys. I get to talk to them online or on the phone from time to time (and Joshua is a regular here of course), but it’s not the same. To be able to hang out with guys you love, that you can be real with is awesome. We talked about making this a regular occurrence (a once a year guys trip), so I’m hoping it comes sooner next year rather than later. Maybe next year we can make it longer, though Peter is having baby number two in February so that may be difficult. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Wow, this is pretty long. It actually took me two full days to write this off and on, what with Thanksgiving, and the various things I needed to do over the past two days. Was it worth the wait?

The gallery of my pictures can be found here. The pictures Joshua took can be found on his flickr page here.

The Wild West

I got to Arizona safely. It’s 3:11 in the morning (4:11 AM CST), so I really should be in bed, but Josh is forcing me to write on my blog before we can go to bed. So here we are.

I landed at about 7:30 PM tonight and the weather is absolutely gorgeous. I’ll post more details later, but basically we ate, played some guitar hero, drank some vault, and introduced Peter to Facebook. In fact here’s his new profile picture…

More tomorrow…

Only One Hug

The third quiz of the 2007-2008 quizzing season was this past Saturday. Our team (Chicago Northside) took 13th out of 17 teams. So that’s an improvement of 2 places. We still didn’t get very many jumps, but my girls seem to be getting better. I didn’t actually coach them this time as we needed extra quizmasters. Luckily I have a rock star volunteer from Moody Bible Institute who helps out with my team. Mary coached them for the day and I was able to quizmaster. They were in my room once, and I was able to see half of another one of their quizzes when my room finished super early. I did miss my team for most of the day, but I also got to quizmaster which I had been missing over the last two quizzes since I had been coaching. Quizmastering was fun. I was a little nervous for the first coupld of quizzes, but I quickly settled into a groove. It’s like riding a bike I tell you. :)

All in all it was a good day. I was able to reconnect with some of the kids form other teams I hadn’t been able to hang out with and I was able to hang out with my team for lunch, some of the quiz, and of course on the way there and back. The ride back was pretty interesting, in that Angel (one of my quizzers, a 6th grader) wanted to go to a pizza place before I dropped her and her sister off. She had been asking for it all day and I had already told her no several times. By the time I dropped them off it was almost seven pm, so I wasn’t going to ruin their dinner by taking them out to Pizza. This is the quote she used in the van before we got back to the church (I’m sure you can all relate)…

>”I like it when I get what I want.”

Don’t we all….don’t we all. Mary and I had a good laugh at that one. She asked again when we got into my car so I could take them home and I again said no. She then proceeded to tell me she got mad when she didn’t get what she wanted, and she wouldn’t talk to the person who made her mad. So I tried to explain to her logically what she was doing and how that wasn’t a very nice thing to say, but just as my sister doesn’t get my logic, neither did Angel. Normally when I drop them off I get a hug from both Agnes and Angel. Yesterday I only got one from Agnes. One can only hope that Angel won’t remember this very long. It didn’t really bother me, but I couldn’t help thinking if parenting would be like that when I have kids who are that age. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.

German For The Tired

German last night was fun. I was really tired though. I was so tired that it was hard to concentrate. Understanding English is tough when you’re wiped, so German was an absolute struggle. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever get good enough to be fluent in the language. We had a subtitute, because Tom, our regular teacher was out of town. She was really great, but she talked really really fast. I also fumbled over her “Warum studierst du Deutsch?” (Why are you studying German?) question (among other conversations she tried to invoke). I think this was mostly because I was tired. I swear. Overall it was good. We studied Personal Pronomen (personal pronouns), which was a good exercise. I guess it’s all about learning a little bit at a time.

After class I decided not to go out with my German buddies because I was falling asleep as we waited for Margaret. They also wanted to goto a pizza place instead of our regular German bar (and said Pizza place was about as far south from school as my house is north), so I went home, watched some TV and fell asleep pretty much right away. Oh sleep. We love thee.

I Need a New Jacket

So I need a new winter jacket. As many of you know I have a large orange ski jacket that I’ve had since maybe college or a little after. It’s been awhile for sure. Anyways, it’s a great jacket for the winter. It has a removable inner fleece which make it super warm and its water proof. The inner fleece has seen better days (the zippers are a bit jacked), but the jacket itself is doing fine.

My main reason for wanting (or really needing) to get a new jacket is not that it’s old or because the fleece needs new zippers. No, the reason I need to get a new jacket is because it’s bright and orange. A few days ago I had a client meeting downtown. This client is a Philanthropy company. The issue is that their lobby is bigger than our entire office suite. They’re simply a high class company. I always dress up when I have meetings with them, simply because that’s the level they’re at. No I don’t think dressing up is in any way a sign that someone knows what they’re doing, but I do believe people base perception on outer appearances a lot, as sad as that may be.

Anyways, I goto my meeting and I bring my bright orange jacket because it’s cold outside. I then realize while driving downtown that my jacket is bright and orange and greatly clashes with my dressy clothes. In a moment of panic I decide to leave my jacket in the car, which at first is an OK idea because the parking garage is semi warm. Once I get outside though, it’s a completely different story. It was only 45 degrees I think, but it felt really cold. It didn’t help that I had to walk 4 blocks to my meeting (and 4 blocks back).

So, in the same realm as the decision I made 2 year ago (where I vowed to wear fleeces and sweatshirts less - the college look as I called it) I’ve decided I need a new jacket, or at least I need a jacket I can wear to client meetings. I don’t really want to spend the money to get one, but I realize I probably need one. I guess little Jeremy is growing up.

I Hate Getting Tickets

I hate getting parking tickets. I really do. Mostly because they’re easily avoidable, and I somehow seem to continue getting them. I’ve probably gotten 6 or 7 since I’ve owned a car, so that’s probably anywhere form 300-500 dollars wasted with the city of Chicago. Stupid Department of Revenue.

I got a ticket in the mail this past Saturday. The thing that gets me is that it wasn’t even a parking ticket per se. It had to have been given to me while I was driving, because I’ve never parked at the address listed on the ticket, nor was I pulled over for the ticket (maybe I can contest it because he didn’t pull me over; it’s probably not worth it). The ticket was for expired license plates (this is probably the fourth time I’ve gotten that one - one year I got two :)). What sucks is that I knew I needed to do it, had just had a conversation about it, but obviously not in enough time. Actually even if I had gotten my plates renewed right after having the conversation it wouldn’t have mattered since the ticket was from 3 weeks ago.

What’s even more annoying is that I just tried to go by the sticker, and the link off of the State of Illinois’ website is incorrect, because it goes to a not found page. Fantastic. Anyways, it’s just annoying and I needed to vent my frustrations. Eighty dollar renewal for a hundred and thirty, that if I could buy it. Gotta love that.

The Week In Review

I was going to put these all in separate posts, but the last time I did that I set unrealistic expectations on the number of posts that could be expected, and we all know how that story ended. :) So here it is, the last week in review in shorts bursts. Buckle your seat belts and hang on.

**Last Saturday**

Last Saturday was the second quiz of the 2007-2008 quizzing season at Kankakee First Church. It was originally supposed to be at Danville Southside, but because of overbooked hotels we had to move it. My kids did OK, taking 15 out of 17 teams. At our first quiz we took 16th out of 17 teams, so we’re definitely moving in the right direction. I’m still working on getting my kids motivated to study. If I can do that I think we’ll be able to crack the top ten. After the quiz we went out to Blue’s Cafe for pie with the team. The girls (Agnes, Angel, and Leann) didn’t want to try the pie (supposedly the didn’t like pie), so they just got ice cream. Of course after all of us adults got pie they had to try each one and they said they liked it. Kids are funny sometimes. :) If you ant to see pictures from the event check them out here.

Also, a tragedy occurred when I woke up. As many of you have been following my eye injury (the stat on the right hadn’t changed since march), I am sad to report that I injured my eye again as I woke up on Saturday morning. My eye just got really dry and stuck to the inside of my eyelid. Fortunately it injured to the right of my pupil and not over my pupil so my vision wasn’t affected. However, it did make for an interesting morning as it felt like I had something in my eye for 3 or 4 hours. I have since updated the stat on the right to reflect the newest date. Oh so sad. I’m beginning to think I’ll never wear contacts again. I have started putting ointment in my eye before bed again, so hopefully that’ll help. I think the onset of cold weather is what’s causing it and I’ll just have to be more careful in the future. I’m also going to reinstate the use of a humidifier in my room.

**Last Sunday**

Sunday was pretty standard; church, small group, a brief nap, and then some volleyball with my small group peeps at an open gym in Glenview.

**This Past Monday**

My boy Peter visited me on Monday. He flew in to town for a client meeting on Tuesday morning, so he took the opportunity to visit me by flying in Monday night. I picked him up form the airport, we headed to Lou Malnoti’s for some deep dish pizza, and then hung out and talked for awhile at my house. As I’m sure Joshua will bring up in the comments (so of course I’ll preempt him here) we watched my performance in the Wizard of Oz when I was in 8th grade as well. Boy was I short back then. It was great to see Peter, and was a slight preview of my trip next month to see Joshua in Arizona. Of course when Joshua gets involved we’re going to take it to a whole new level.

**This Past Tuesday**

Tuesday was game night. We played the Age of Renaissance game again, and I think I finally figured out how to play it. It’s a rather complicated game of trading/attacking set during the Renaissance. I did terrible the first few times I played it with the guys (mostly due to the Crusades card which gives a player a free sport on the board), but this time I was able to pull out a win.

**This Past Wednesday**

Wednesday I had German as usual, but I left during the break to head to Glenview to play some volleyball with my small group peeps. They joined a league on Wednesday nights and I was subbing for one of their guys who couldn’t be there. It was a ton of fun. I don’t think I’ve had that much fun playing volleyball in an awful long time. I was just playing well, getting blocks, hits, good passes. It was pretty amazing. We won 2 out of 3, though the game we lost was by a score of 29-28, and the last point was actually ruled incorrectly, so we might have still yet won. Ah well.

**This Past Thursday**

I got to play racquetball with Ben, something we haven’t done in forever. I also got my YMCA ID card made, after a year of being a member. Ben whooped me in 2 games (15-6 and 15-7), but it was a ton of fun to play again.

**This Past Friday**

I was pretty sore on Friday after playing volleyball and racquetball on back to back nights. It was a good kind of sore, but I was sore none the less. I also had quizzing practice on Friday night, which was fun, but a little stressful. Mary and I spent a significant amount of time trying to explain the Trinity to Agnes, Angel, and Leann. I never realized how hard a concept that is to convey to junior highers. I think they got it, but they’re still young so they’ve got some time to figure it out.

**Yesterday**

Yesterday was semi relaxing. I went to worship practice in the morning, and then spent a majority of the afternoon relaxing. I really meant to do some work / work on my room, but after my super busy week at work, etc., I just had no energy. I also attended the second annual Chili Party at Simon and Becca’s place. That was a ton of fun. I arrived late (due to reading the start time incorrectly and helping my mom with something), but I arrived just in time to have my chili judged in the competition. After sampling the myriad of chilis available mine didn’t have any taste anymore. :) We also played this super fun game called Telephone Pictionary. The concept is that you draw a picture, pass to the person on your right, they write down what they think you drew, then they pass it to the next person who has to draw what the first person wrote. You continue this way around the circle until everyone has drawn everyone elses’ picture or word. It was pretty hilarious to see some of the progressions of things. I think my favorite was the word “Half Zipper Fleece” turning into a “Magnetic Bear Trap.” Try drawing it, I dare you. :)

**Today**

Toay was also pretty standard. I had church, then hung out with some church peeps while I waited for small group, then had small group, then watched the end of the Bears game. After that I went home, cleaned off my desk and my night stand, did some work on my computer, and watched game 7 of the ALCS pitting the Red Sox against the Indians. I wasn’t really routing for either team, as I’d be happy with either making it, but it was a fun game to watch regardless. We’ll see how the Sox do against the red hot Rockies come Wednesday.

There you have it; my week in review. Please remain seated until the ride has come to a complete stop.

The Reason

This post is merely to explain myself. This is to let my faithful readers know why I’ve failed you once again and why I should be reported to the center for better blogging (no Josh that is not an invitation).

Two reasons. The first is I’m just busy. You know how it is. I’ve got work, all of my extra-curricular activities, and countless phone calls from women wanting to give me affection. It’s just too much for one man to handle alone. In all seriousness I have a ton of side projects and things I’m involved in. I have quizzing, german class, various ministries I lead at Church, and several websites I’m doing on the side. It’s really a lot of stuff.

The second reason is I get demotivated to write anything, or to better state it I get overwhelmed. I simply have so many things I want to write about that I just don’t do any of them. I feel the need to start at the beginning, but the amount of effort required to “catch up” to where I’m at is just daunting. I also try to put in a lot of detail. I like being through, and it takes a ton more time to write out everything that happened, rather than a brief summary.

So it comes down to this. I need to just throw away everything I was going to write about (or start from a relatively close point in time instead of 45 days ago) and start writing shorter posts that at least get the gist of what I’ve been up to.

So look forward to some new posts soon. I’ve already started working on them.