The Missing Month

Ah yes, it’s about that time again. The time to fill everyone in on my comings and goings over the last month. Since Sterling there’s been a whirlwind of activity. I won’t go into all the detail, but I’ll give you a bulleted list of various things. If you want more detail you’re certainly welcome to ask for it.

* We hired a new guy at work. He’s working out great.
* After a rough Sterling quiz, the K3 team returned for more quizzing at the Indy quiz. I actually watched them this time (4 or 5 rounds out of 8) and they got 10th. It was a funny joke to think I had anything to do with them placing that high, but in all reality Sara’s a great coach and she has great kids.
* I attended Erika’s 29th birthday party. Happy Birthday Erika! This was immediately following Indy and included meeting some new people, playing Apples to Apples, and performing improv plays from a little girl’s princess devotional book. I got to play mom who was playing Jesus.
* We finally fully moved out of our old offices and cut all ties. Unfortunately a bunch of pop machine money was stolen, but then someone returned it. It’s a good story. I should post about it.
* CCD had it’s last regular district quiz at Chicago Heights (or Cheights as they like to call themselves). My girls combined with Manteno and took 11th out of 13 teams. I quizmastered since all the college students had spring break. Seriously, who said they could have a week off? I remember when I went to school I never got a spring break. I also had to walk 27 miles in the snow uphill both ways all year round.
* It snowed again. I officially added winter to my “I’m mad at you” list.
* I bought some new clothes at the Gap. I still need a big boy jacket.
* I thought there was more.

So there you have it. An entire month of my life condensed into half a page. I hope you’re happy.

Sterling

So the Sterling Invitational Quiz was last weekend and since it’s been a week, I figure I should write about it. Several of you have already made several statements about me not posting, so hopefully this will quell any riots that may soon break out.

Sterling is an invitational bible quiz that’s been going on for many many years. I’m not sure exactly how long, but Karl (one of the other adult volunteers at the church I coach at) has been going for 29 years (back to when he was a quizzer). So it’s been going on for a long time. This was the second time I’ve attended. The first time (last year) I was a content judge in room 1. That was pretty fun, but a little stressful since I had to content the final round which consisted of the two best teams. Some of these kids really know their stuff, and you’d be amazed at how much they can say in 30 seconds.

This year I was a stats geak. Since the stats guys have figured out I’m a computer guy and that I know what I’m doing I’ve been sucked into their little group. Basically it consists of making sure all the computers are working since each quiz room has one, collecting stats inbetween rounds (basically you run around with a USB drive), and generating team and individual stats so that we know who goes where once the tournament starts. Generation of the stats is pretty straight forward. A lot of it is done via qmserver (the server application that links to quizmachine), but some of it has to be manually done. Sometime a name is wrong or a team name is wrong, and these things need to be corrected before stats can be verified as correct.

Basically I helped with running around and grabbing stats and fixing computer problems. I also helped generate some of the final team standings. Inbetween all of that I worked on a website for Q2008 which is coming up in July. Q2008 is the national quiz tournament that’s held every year and this year I’m responsible for the website. It’s a bit of an undertaking as they want quite a few things, but during the quiz I was able to work on getting some of the stats pieces working so that people who view the website can see where people or teams rank. It should be a pretty fun project, but it’s just a matter of finding time to work on it. Anyways, I had time to work on it during the day, so I got quite a bit done. Part of that involved talking with Barry (the writer of quizmachine) and figuring out the best way to do things.

I did get to watch some quizzing, though as Sara and Lena have both pointed out I didn’t watch K3 at all. The quizzing that I did watch was mostly in the afternoon (after the tournament seeding had been decided) and K3 didn’t make the tournament (I almost cried). In the morning I was busy doing stats stuff and in the afternoon I was trying to work on the website that I knew I wouldn’t have time work on any other time. I have yet to work on it since then. I probably could have made more of an effort to make sure I watched them, but I didn’t. I think I probably would have made them nervous anyways. :)

The trip itself was very fun. My team from Northside didn’t go (they would have gotten creamed), so I drove with the K3 gang. We played a bunch of Rook on the way there, at the hotel on Friday night and on the way back on Saturday. We also stopped at Culvers (I love Culvers) on the way home, so that was fun. It was a little extra driving as I had to drive to Kankakee to go with the gang instead of going straight west, but hanging out with them was way more fun than driving alone.

If you want to see some pictures from the trip you can go here. You’ll notice from the pictures that there’s no actual evidence that I was even there. Sara didn’t take any pictures either, so it’s doubtful my presence was documented at all.

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…

Visiting With Gram

I visited my grandmother 2 weekends ago and I promised I’d post about it in my last post. We hadn’t seen her in close to a year (well, at least I hadn’t), so we went out to Virginia for a four day weekend to visit and hang out. We left on Wednesday night (after an hour and a half delay) and came back Sunday night. It was nice to get away from work for a bit, since it’s been so hectic there, and it was nice to see Grandma.

We went out to eat a lot, and watched a lot of Law and Order: Special Victim’s Unit. I think I saw more SVU in 4 days than I have all year. :) We also watched some Nationals games, since Grandma is a Nationals fan. We also got to celebrate Grandma’s 83rd birthday with her since she turned 83 on the Friday I was there. We were able to get her some gifts during the day and then take her out to eat that night. It was cool to be there for it, because we hadn’t been around for her Birthday in a long time. I actually can’t remember when we had been around for it.

I also finished Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets (the second one) since I had some extra time to read at night and on the plane. It was pretty good. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

I also suck because I didn’t give my friend Lexa a call or go visit her while I was there. It just slipped my mind. I suck at life. Next time for sure you’re on the list Lexa. :)

Places To Go Before I Die

So I’ve decided to keep a list of places I’d like to visit before I go to be with Jesus. There’s simply too many places in this word that are simply gorgeous for me to not go visit them. God created quite the planet, and humans have done a fairly OK job of erecting cool structures throughout time. Suffice it to say there’s plenty of material.

I came across this picture earlier today, and I’ve added it to my places to see. It’s simply magnificent, and the fact that it’s been around for so long is just plain cool.

Here’s the link to the wikipedia article on the history of the church. I thought it was pretty fascinating.

Virginia Trip Part 3

My goal was to write this last night, but when I got home I had zero energy. Once I got home, I ended up helping out one of my clients with something, fixing the EC camp database, and heading to bed. I slept pretty well, but this morning I was super tired. It’s probably because the weekend was so tiring.

Anyways, yesterday was the funeral for my grandmother. It occurred at 11am, and took place in the Church she went to for 50 some odd years. It was also the church where my parents got married. The funeral was very nice, though the pastor who presided over the service had only been the pastor for 2 and a half years, so he didn’t know Grandma at all. He told a lot about her history, as well as what she stood for and what she believed, mostly from what people had told him. He did a very nice job of speaking about what it meant to be saved and that Grandma would have wanted all of us to be saved. The pastor made a conscious effort to really try and preach the gospel which I appreciated, because I believe it’s important, and Grandma would have thought it was important too.

After the service we had a small ceremony at the gravesite and then a luncheon. That was pretty cool because I was able to hang out with a lot of extended family I didn’t even know I had, plus spend some time with some of the family I did know I had. I was able to talk with Jay and Paige (who were married about 4 months ago), which was nice, because at their wedding I really didn’t get to talk to them. They were too busy talking to the gobs of people who were there. :) I also found out one of my cousins worked for Staples as a Sales Manager for a couple of years. For any of you that know my history with Staples this ia a big blow. I practically had to cry myself to sleep last night. :)

After the luncheaon I said my goodbyes and headed to Fairfax which is where my last remaining grandmother lives. She’s my dad’s mom and the only grandparent I have left. I hadn’t seen her in about 6 months, and I had some time before my flight, so I opted to stop in and surprise her. She was very surprised which was cool. We were able to visit for about a couple of hours, and then I headed to the airport.

At the airport I quickly made it through check in and security, but found out my flight was delayed. I couldn’t find any specifics on why it was delayed, but I proceeded to the gate anyway. At the gate they announced that my flight which was supposed to take off at 8:20, was actually going to take off at 10:40. That’s right 2 hours and 20 minutes late! Yikes. Luckily, about 10 minutes later they decided to give us a new plane and a new gate. Our new departure time was 8:45. We actually didn’t end up taking off until about 9:45, because we had to wait for 20 or 30 people. That’s actually the reason they gave. My guess is since they had postponed it two hours some people had left the gate and were out and about finding something better to do rather than waiting around. Oh well. When we finally did take off the flight was a little bumpy at first, but that’s because the wind was terrible around DC yesterday. The landing was pretty cool, as we took the scenic route around Chicago once we got there. It was very pretty with all the lights, etc. It’s pretty cool to see the city you live in from that vantage point.

After waiting for my bag for almost 20 minutes I headed to my car and then home. The drive was pretty uneventful which was nice. Anyways, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. :)

Virginia Trip Part 2

Today was the second day of my trip to Virginia. It was Sunday so I wanted to goto church. I had done some checking last night in order to find a church, but the guest book at our hotel was pretty unhelpful. They had a list of Churches, but no service times, so I took my search to the Internet. I guess I could have called around, since I had all the numbers, but I was scared one of the numbers would be a direct line to some pastor that I’d wake up in the middle of the night. That probably wasn’t the case, but I always worry myself. :) Anyways, I found several churches, but again no service times. I was trying to find a BGC (Baptist General Conference) church, since there’s all sorts of different churches these days, and I wanted to make sure I went to a Church with solid teaching. The BGC didn’t have a church in Staunton listed on their website, so I checked the Nazarene website. I found the Staunton First Church of the Nazarene, so I decided to go there. A quick call to the church let me know that they were still having their 6 o’clock services. No help there. So I opted to just go in the morning, and hope I showed up in time.

Fast forward to this morning. I woke up pretty tired. I didn’t sleep very well, but maybe that’s because my surroundings were different, not sure. Anyways, I woke up, got ready, and headed out to church. My plan was to make it to church by 10, figuring that was a good random time to show up. If church had been earlier I’d go somewhere quiet and do my devotions. If it was later I’d sit and wait for it. Seemed like a logical plan to me. :) I left at 9:45, and immediately got lost. By about 10:15 I was hopelessly lost, though I did find a baptist church whose services started at 11, so my new plan was to go there. I opted to get some breakfast at the local 7-11, and then just sit in the parking lot until 11. Once in the parking lot I checked a map on my phone and realized where I had gone wrong. So I decided to try to find my original choice, with the idea that if I still couldn’t find it I’d retrace my steps and head back to the church I had found. By 10:45 I had found First Church and services started at 10:50. Perfect timing.

Church was good. It was nice to not have to deal with any logistics of running a service and just enjoy worshiping God on my own terms. The sermon was all about being still before God and just listening. It really spoke to me because when I spend time with God I’m always talking about my problems, and what I want to say and I don’t do a lot of listening. What am I missing out on I wonder? I’m going to make a concerted effort to do more listening. I think God has some stuff to tell me. :)

After church, I came back to the hotel, met up with my mom and sister, had some lunch and then we headed to the funeral home. We arrived early so we could have a private viewing of my grandmother. That was pretty hard. I hadn’t seen my grandmother in a very long time. She’s had Alzheimer’s for the last 6 or 7 years, and for a long time she hasn’t remembered anyone. Her mind deteriorated rather quickly and when it did Grandma was never the same. She really didn’t remember anyone, so we kind of lost her a long time ago. This time it was her body that failed. I have lots of memories of her from when I was younger, and a lot of those came rushing back. It was cool, but sad at the same time. I also was able to see a lot of relatives that I haven’t seen in a long time. That was pretty interesting, mostly because a lot of people knew my mom, and I was “Shirley’s son” for the whole visitation.

After the visitation we headed to my Uncle Ray’s house and had dinner with most of my extended family. That included two uncles, one aunt, 3 cousins and various wives, 1 toddler, and various other people related via blood or marriage. It was a good time. Homemade fried chicken is the best! It was so good. I’m going to have to find the recipe for that. It was probably the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. After visiting for a little while, we came back to the hotel, and then I composed this post. And now I’m going to bed. :)