Hows my little old fogie?

Dear Diary,
How do I know when I've grown up?
Sincerely,
Twenty Something...

Dear Twenty Something,
I've decided to take this opportunity to answer your question for a change rather than existing a rhetorical question muse. First off, you signed your question with "Twenty Something", dear lord you aren't old, now when you hit the post 50 mark, you might want to start considering yourself older, maybe not quite old yet, but get used to the idea for the following ten years.

Next.

Why do you ask? Is it you've been shopping for and have purchased a new refrigerator for your home? If that's the case than yes, you are getting old, no more do you live under those carefree days of buying whatever you needed and wanted in the same trip. Now it seems like you could be looking for a single product that will eventually SAVE *gasp* you money as well as something you can imagine yourself having for more than 10 years in a row. Yes, you are old when you can imagine 10 years into the future, this is a fact.
Just hypothetically speaking of course since you never mentioned anything about a new refrigerator. I would recommend a Black Kenmore Elite brand with a bottom freezer because you are a tall glass of water and that will really make you happy to just peer straight into your newest food cooling apparatus to see the things you might be in search for. Also I happen to be very fond of French Doors above that freezer and black is not only sexy but it matches the rest of your appliances in your kitchen. Not to mention stainless steel really only costs more, you can't even stick a magnet (go figure, right?) to it, so why waste your time AND money.
So if you were to have purchased said fridge I'm certain you would be absolutely thrilled about such an every day item, thus solidifying your 'agedness' in fact I bet you would be so excited you would make the 20 minute drive home on your lunch break just to check out this device for a few minutes. Not only would you be considered old but a dork who gets off checking out inanimate objects as well.
In short I would say that there are certain things in life that will make you look and feel old especially considering your perspective on things in your day to day life. A new refrigerator could be one of these things so I will answer, approach with caution, this may make you very excited and give you that youthful feeling in your loins, but a new large kitchen appliance signals that you are in fact in it for the long haul, and if you're not already old you're getting there.

Enjoy this new product because in less than two years something wont work right and you will call this newest device of yours a piece of shit and wonder what you were thinking when you bought it, just like everything else you own. Appreciate the value it brings to you and over the years with a little less worry and hate on your mind you will feel younger than your peers and appreciate the leg up on your early maturity.
That is of course if you bought a refrigerator.
Love your rambling diary.






PS
In hindsight, a single door model would probably fit your space better....oops!

Hows my little laxidasical blogger?

Holy shit I skipped the ENTIRE!! month of October in blogging? O. M. G. I'm sorry.

Dear loyal fans who for some reason continued checking,
I love you.
Love, (is that too much love?)
Tony

Anyway, things have been great around here. Laura and I are still happily betrothed and have a really big chunk of the wedding planning out of the way, which is pretty great really.

I've gotten a lot of new trinkets lately and after I got the last one I went, wow, I didn't really need any of this, I totally went against my life statement earlier in the year about simplifying things. On one hand I did get rid of a lot of Playstation things (thus unpacking our FINAL box from the move!!!) in order to upgrade to the new one GTA5 is pretty sweet, but I'm still not too good at it. But still.

We have recently come into a projector which now projects said PS3 onto a wall and the screen is about 7 feet tall. HEART!!!

I've brewed two batches of beer in the past month, a nut brown we are calling the brown nut and my first recipe from scratch, a pumpkin wheat! Which I am pretty excited to try, although I'm not sure it will have much pumpkin flavor. But if it does I will definitely post the process online since I don't think there are enough pumpkin wheat recipes on the interwebs.

We also started a wine for consumption in honor of our wedding, which should be really awesome. But its a sauvignon blanc so it might not be a crowd pleaser.

My sister got married! holy shit! the wedding was really great it was fun to be there and dance and see my brothers and their families and meet the Harvey family (who are all wonderful) and ahh, yes it was great. I'm extra excited to have all the people important to me for mine now.

I've also begun to work on ideas for the honeymoon, the world is SO big, oh my goodness I don't know where to start. I think Laura wants warm and I just want to cross an ocean.

I don't even watch baseball but f you yankees.

I've been trying to sleep more lately and I feel a lot more chipper in my day to day, imagine that.

I've pretty much given up on pandora and moved entirely to Slacker, no music stopping after 40 minutes of inactivity, yes please!

Last weekend Laura and I ventured up to the Wisconsin Dells for our annual rock out with the Austin family and boy does that never get old. I LOVE water sliding. Love it.

Who thought the "design" for the craigslist webpage was a good idea, my lord it is impossible to find information on there without using the ctrl+f function.

I really like the owl city track fireflies. A lot.

The not so new anymore Dave Matthews Album continues to steal a bit more of my love with each listening. For example, funny the way it is, the lyrics? wow! very very meaningful if you need some thought inspired.

Living in the south (most would argue this is the midwest, I would just say its the south without the confederate flag) does have its perks. You can find a republican to argue with whenever you want. But its hard to win said arguments because most of them believe every chain E-mail sent to them.

I'm halfway through War and Peace! And it actually doesn't suck. I just learned that it has the most characters than any novel, ever?. I would say that is the biggest challenge is keeping all these russian names straight. And there are quite a few names to keep straight. Especially when you thought they were dead.

I learned how to stain and varnish wood, I've seen my Dad do it a whole bunch through my life but I never bothered to ask how before. I helped Laura's dad put in a new little thing on the floor into our bathroom and it looks SO much better and it doesn't hurt when you slam your heel into it. Which is nice.

Is it bad to say I might like most of Lady Gaga's singles? Miz Fullah can probably guess what my next comment would be, considering her looks so ask her. But wow, she wears some very interesting outfits. If only there was less... =)

I still don't get twitter. Does that make me out of touch, old fashioned? Would any of you read my tweets.
"had corn floating in my poop today, wow!"
I wouldn't either.

A few days after we got back from vacation we had someone steal our ENTIRE pepper crop. Up to and including my red hot chili peppers. I still get really angry when I talk about it, and there is nothing I can do except be angry. I don't believe them when they say revenge isn't worth it.

I'm pretty sure meals taste 10 times better after working out, rendering it impossible to eat a sensible amount afterwords. Thus my lack of weight loss. Since moving here.

I've been slowly buying Reebok boxer briefs lately and my goodness do I feel sexy when I wear them. So I keep buying more because honestly how often do you not want to feel sexy.

I turned 25 and my insurance dropped $12 a month. Wait, I was excited for that starting the day I turned 22? Fuck that.

Hows my little colorado adventurer?

Ok This is going to be a HUGE! Post, because I want to tell you all about our Colorado adventure.

**Also, I stopped writing this halfway so please forgive the lack of photos and description.**

First off. The state is awesome. I love it. I would move there and live there and retire there and play there and love it the entire time. They have mountains, and hills and rivers and fake lakes that you can't swim in and all sorts of other excellent things that I love. It is a very Blue state which kind of sucks though. But on the other hand it is also a very dark green state, where fitness is almost a snobbish part of the daily life, which is awesome compared the the glut of fatties here in Central Illinois.

I'll try to keep this as brief as I can I promise, but there is a lot to cover in 10 days, hopefully the photos speak more than the words do.

First off we headed off into the sunset from IL to Lincoln NE. We made several pit stops to find some Geocaches the most notable one came in the town of west branch where we found a pink toilet (outdoors) a lot of bugs and a couple of geocaches. Naturally when I was looking for caches along our drive I could not pass this stop up. Between the bugs and the realization that it was a long ass walk, we decided to call this one quits long before the middle, let alone the end.


I should clarify we had very few if any plans before going into this trip, so if you are a fellow shoot from the hipper I would recommend to pay attention to the books everyone ignores at rest stops because they are full of some pretty awesome deals for walk in hotel reservations. We stayed in Lincolin for $35, which included breakfast, which if you think about it, at Perkins or something is a $15 value for two people. Not bad.

The next day was a good learning adventure, I was craving random cool side stops since we were taking a road tirp. We didn't find any Dr. Satan stops but we decided that learning a little more about Wild Bill Cody would be pretty cool. Afterall he was a big hit and the Colombian Exposition in Chicago. (Thank you Devil in the White City) So we stopped in North Platte Nebraska for some learning. We decided his ranch would be a fun whole day adventure complete with camping, so we decided to visit his park instead, which was closed. Lame. So the visitor center lady said we ought to check out the "Golden Spike" since it was in the same town we said why not it would be cool to see the worlds largest train yard from up high. Can you believe they charge $6 a person to take an elevator up three stories to look at the top side of a bunch of trains? Me neither. I bought a Post Card and sent it to my sister to tell her not to go.

So Nebraska sucks. If you can find a way to avoid it go right ahead and do it. Fun facts about Nebraska: There are more cows in Nebraska than people (holy shit!) The ratio of cows to people 3:1 (holy shit!). Another fun fact. When the Corn Huskers(!) play a home football the stadium becomes the 3rd largest city in the lame state. There is a reason the mid-west states are called flyover states, Nebraska ruins it for the cool States, like Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Chicago ;)

We got into Colorado and did some excellent hanging out and catching up with old Pal Rich and newer pal Ali. We attempted to reach the summit of our first fourteener (a mountain over 14k feet above sea level) and Due to harsh weather conditions and the snow! we didn't make it to the top, but we did find a cool geocache nearby. They also have a really great little one called Adrianne, she is a hoot and when she cries she makes baby Chewbacca noises, I love it.

After our adventures with Rich and Ali Laura and I headed up toe Estes Park Co. Probably the coolest city I've ever been to. A little tourist town nestled in the mountains with two gorgeous (and natural?) lakes! My goodness I feel in love with that cute little town. And the donut shop! mmmmm.

(ok I started writing this post ages ago and I've been holding back on posting other blogs until I finished this one. I just really hate the blogger picture loader and I wanted to post bunches of photos and tell even more, but now I'm like a month overdue so here is a quick summary of the rest of the trip)

As a list from here on out:

* Camped in Rocky Mountain National Park.
* Heard a funny quote about that time of year, "The only people who come here are the nearly wed and the nearly dead" so true!
* It was elk mating season, the noises they make are CRAZY!
* We hiked a mountain and began our engagement to marry.
* We drove around the park and took a ton of landscape photos.
* Saw a Marmot
* Drove to Colorado Springs
* Visited the garden of the Gods, next time I would like to go climbing there
* Took a driving tour of the city.
* Decided CO Springs is a great place for a family adventure. Not nearly weds
* Took the Cog railway to the summit of Pikes Peak, found a Geocache there
* Saw Mountain sheep.
* Spent another excellent night with the Keller Family
* Drove back in one long grueling 16 hour trek.
* Listened to Stephanie Meyer's Newish book, The Host, Will not recommend that to anyone looking for a book as satisfying entertainment. Good concept, poorly finished.
* Reflected and loved the whole adventure.

Hows my little reDirect?

Life is full of changes and surprises. Meeting someone you love and feel like you can spend the rest of your days with tirelessly is one of those changes and surprises. My love happens to have taken the form of Laura Davis. Quite a catch I would say, and many (at this point I'm pretty sure all of) my friends would agree. So from the beginning of my relationship with Laura I knew we had something unique that I hadn't experienced before, I thought gosh I could probably marry this woman, never before had I seriously thought that about anyone I spent time with. So that was a big step for me.
Several months ago I was talking to Laura's brother on the tele and he was telling me all sorts of "fun" baby things and I said, gosh I'm not jealous of you at all, and he came back with something along the lines of well we decided after waiting for so long, if we're not ready now we never will be, and that is when they started growing their family. And that was my *Aha* moment. If I'm not ready to marry her now I never will be(of course there was a lot more thought before I reached that conclusion). So fast forward a month or two, I built up the courage to ask Mr. Davis if he would mind if I asked Laura to marry me. He said no, I like you, and a bunch of other things. That was pretty great, I was crazy nervous for some reason, but now that I think that part is out of the way I won't be nervous for the actual moment(future tense because I haven't asked yet) We'll see though.
Fast forward another month or two and Laura heads out of town, a perfect chance to go ring shopping! Hurray! For those of you fellas looking for rings, let me tell you, do your homework first. All jewelers are willing to train you and teach you all about the qualities of diamonds. I also encourage you to use bluenile.com to learn more about settings and you can build your own rings, this way you have an idea of what you like and you can cut your in-store shopping time down to sometimes just a few minutes. The first store I walked into by myself I had a lady say, how can I help you and I said confidently I'm looking for an engagement ring! I was expecting to be all timid and shy but no, not at all, it turned out I was excited to go shopping for this.
Back when I first got my job down here in Illinois I left a "secret" bank account open with Wells Fargo to save for this very purchase. I initially decided if I save a little bit from each paycheck I would have enough for the ring I wanted by this coming October. [My thoughts about the timing were: well if we get engaged in October we wont marry until 2011 maybe, sweet!(I wasn't ready yet) I've changed my thinking on this route for various reasons now.] Anyway of course this savings account has my mom's name still on it, and I'm pretty sure I told her what this account was for. So a few weeks ago when I made my first withdraw of the account my surprise, was lost, I'm pretty sure.[9-20-09 Not So! Apparently my mom had forgotten about this account and had no idea how much money was in or going out of it...or so she claims...:)] Which was kind of a bummer to me since I wanted everyone but me to be surprised, now I know I have one person actually expecting it. And when she sees the rest of the account drained this week sometime she will know its coming. Of course I can't get her name off the account either, lame!
Back to shopping!
After walking around in the malls in the area I realized something, most of the sales people treat me like I want the biggest diamond for my money and that I don't know what I want. Also there are a hell of a lot of nasty looking rings at the big (kay, Halzberg, zales ect) chain stores. So I opted for a local shop, thinking two things, yay help the local economy and yay I'll get treated better. Sure enough, both happened. I found the ring I wanted at Christoper's Fine Jewelers in Champaign and was like wow cool AND you can do custom work, fantastic. So I picked out something I like, (after all its my ring for Laura to wear) and the guy said that will be... and I went HOLY SHIT! I wasn't ready for that part despite my savings.
A month or so later I came to my senses and said, that isn't so bad, and called them up, sent a check and had the work started. About a week after that I realized I have officially overstayed my welcome as Laura's BF and sensed she is officially antsy about moving forward with our relationship. The following 5 weeks couldn't have moved slower in that sense.
About two weeks after that we were looking at rings in a catalog or online or something, and Laura points to a ring I very similar to what I have already paid over half on and said, I'm not too sure I like these. FUUUUUUCK Fuck fuck fuck. Is what I said, at that point I decided, F that I bet she will like just about anything (within reason) as long as I'm the one giving it to her. I really like it, and I'm sure it will grow on her. The one part I'm a little wishy washy about is if she will like the emerald cut or not. I like the shape but they aren't sparkly diamonds like most are.
On Friday I got a call from the jeweler, The ring is ready! Still not sure how I'm going to ask her. Or how I'm going to pick it up for that matter.
I want to ask her in a place that we can never ever be again, to make the moment unique, but those are hard to come by. I thought about doing it in an airplane but I'm afraid the TSA will out the ring since its metal, I'm not sure I want some fat lady inspecting a ring pulled from my belongings with Laura's eyes lighting up. So nix that. I don't know we will see, but before the end of the month, I should be beginning my engagement to marry Laura Davis.
(9/8/09) I've had the ring for over a week now! Hahaha! Little does she know... Well the plan for the Airplane is officially out, since I don't know the next time I'll be on one. Right now I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to smuggle this thing into a tiny car in my luggage that Laura could potentially be digging around through or in my clothes or our camping gear. But I've decided it needs to be able to be accessed quickly in case I see that I can propose on top of a giant ball of twine or something. I have a couple of pants that have a stash pocket that might work, but I want to bring the box around just in case the ring doesn't fit or she doesn't want to wear it for what ever reason. I think when I get home from work tomorrow I'll try and figure that out before she gets home.
OH! I forgot, I'm so clever, I picked the ring up on the first, I worked through my lunch and drove to Champaign to pick it up. I got to the store with like 10 minutes to loiter around and chit chat and drove back to Oakwood. I thought that Laura would have beat me home, which would have raised problems since I didn't hide the ring before I drove home, but conveniently she had to work late that night. Nice, lucky me.
I spent the first couple of days really upset with what I got thinking everything was too small and weird looking from the side (which I still think) but after a couple of days in anguish over purchasing something for so much that I didn't like, I snuck another look at it again expecting to nothing but hate and I realized, wow! I like this a lot! Sure the side looks goofy but I've decided that is ok, I just hope Laura likes it. After all the top view looks gorgeous. A pretty ring for a pretty lady! Maybe my next post will actually get published and I will say I did it!
(9-9-9) I got the ring out today and its in my pants that have the PERFECT stash pocket. I walked all around with it within touching distance of Laura tonight to get used to carrying it so I'm not all "weird" before I pop the question! The ring is growing on me. Still not sure about how I'm going to get the box there, that will be a challenge to hide now that we are packed. Wish me luck! I'm excited for our trip!
(9-20-09) Back from Colorado! We're Engaged!
How did you do it? Well the road trip didn't give me any giant balls of strings to ask her on top of but it did give me a mountain! ok Mushy nerd spot ahead but half of this blog is for me the other half you so read it and like it...First off Driving through Nebraska & Kansas Sucks to drive though there is a reason they are called flyover states. We spent the first part of our trip with Pals Rich and Ali Keller, and then we headed off to Rocky Mountain National Park. When we got there we pitched our tent and Laura said lets go for a hike before we get all of our stuff set up and I was like hey, that sounds great! I stashed the ring box in my ground mat and I wasn't ready to unroll that and have a box give away the surprise I had worked so hard at keeping for the last year. The weather wasn't really the greatest and so we hiked most of the trail under our rain coats. I had conveniently been wearing my shorts with ring stashed in them that day for just such a hike. After talking to the ranger and hearing him say it was probably a little too late to leave for a summit I lost a little bit of heart but since we are two young, mildly in shape people we decided to go for a hike anyway. We found a trail that was going to be a warm up for our big hike the next day, Longs peak (a 7.5 mile hike one way with over 5k feet in elevation gain) it was a 4.4 mile trek one way to the Summit of Flattop mountain. No Problem...right?
Holy shit were we wrong. We got about a quarter of the way up when we ran into a guy who had just come down from the summit and said yeah it just keeps going up. We had the choice of going to a pretty lake about the same distance or the mountain's Summit. I was like, well I can ask her at a secluded mountain lake that will be ok. But when Laura decided to head left and up to the Summit I went YES! good choice. So far things were going like I had wanted them to, and I didn't have to be pushy at all.
Little did I know we were only a Quarter of the way up at that point. After another hour of hiking we ran into some lady and I jokingly said we are halfway there right?! haha...She said not quite... I was like huh? Oh, haha she is just joking with me too. Silly mountain people. Turns out she was right.
After hiking the rest of the mountain and more and more frequent stops (hiking at altitude is tough stuff) I may as well have had a whip and gun to get Laura to the top. (in all fairness I was exhausted but I knew what was waiting for us at the top and I didn't need as much motivation) I only promised her it would be worth it once so that she wouldn't get any ideas.
About 100 yards from the summit the clouds and rain cleared and the most brilliant and vibrant rainbow materialized behind us and with one end on the trail we had just walked on! We encountered another couple who was on their way down who took our photo and we hiked the rest in awe.
Before then I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to say but the rain clearing and the rainbow and the glory of reaching the top changed all of that. I got a little teary eyed thinking of what I was going to say as I pulled the ring out to ask her. but after a few more paces I 'manned up' just in time for Laura to turn around and give me a big hug and say We made it!
"Its moments like these that I am excited to share with you for the rest of our lives, Will you spend the rest of your life with me?"
After I flashed her the ring Laura screamed and I nearly pooped myself it was so unexpected. After I thought she had cried long enough I decided to ask her if that was a yes, and she agreed it was.
After hanging out with her for the rest of the week I was just about ready to call her Gollum because she looks at the ring so often, but thats AOK because it makes me feel good that I got her something she liked, and most importantly (in the end) Something that I liked and thought would look good on her.
And that is the story of the ring and the beginning of our engagement to marry...

Hows my little world traveler?

For some reason many of the people I know in our new neck of the woods think that Laura and I are world travelers. I think its because we leave the state more than once a year. I wish I could say I leave the country that often, but I guess I have to take baby steps.

This weekend Laura and I had a rockin good time at her Brother's family's new diggs just south of the ATL in Peachtree city, which has no peach trees. It justsohappens to be the 8th best place to live in the country according to the internet Whoddthunk it?

Anyway, they do live in a pretty cool town, and if you're a walker the golf carts can be annoying, but if you're a fat southerner, I'm sure the walkers are annoying. But I'm not sure if the guy who walked his dog while driving the golf cart can think anything other than actually lifting his arm to hold his steering wheel could be more annoying.

Aside from ogling golf carts and swanky abodes we did happen to enjoy ourselves. It was nice to see Scott and Brandee's house, ;) and we definitely got a good taste of the outdoors. I would also like to commend little Alia for raising my standards of baby hate because she hardly made a peep. But I would like to mention all of her hard work at impressing me was quickly wiped out with the baby who sat next to us on the plane ride home. After what seemed like an eternity of crying (probably more like 20 minutes(which seems like the coming of the 4 horsemen)) I have once again reaffirmed myself babies that are not anywhere in my planned future. Dear lord I was considering murder before our plane even left the ground. Thank goodness for The Used('s ?) new album I was able to mask the screaming a bit with another kind of screaming.

I've decided I need to realize my personal legend, I think I'm currently polishing crystal. Someday maybe I will be inspired to write a blog about some of the things/event that have inspired me in the past. I'm chalking the Alchemist (book i just finished) up as one of those things today. A must read for people who have an idea for a direction in life but just need a guiding hand to help with some motivation.

My next post will be about my road trip to Colorado with Laura! I'm pretty excited for it! I'm sure Laura is too but she, like me, doesn't know whats going on yet. Should be Supergreat!!

Hows my little moaner?

I know i've been on the fritz with my blogging frequency as of late but gosh I've just been devoid of insight and excitement....I guess. Meh, anyway life is good here in Oakwood. Yay! I made business cards for a feller at work, anyone know where I can get some cards printed that are NOT the standard size? thats my current hang-up.

Rants:

I listen to Pandora (streaming music) at work, religiously. I love it. So much in fact I've pretty much stopped acquiring new tunes because I have a roll of fresh songs from work on the daily. Heart. So imagine my surprise when last month on about the 15thish I get a notice from Pandora saying, We are bitches and you use our service much, enjoy your new 40 hour listening cap. They say it is to keep the service free and commercial free. HAAAAAAATE! I used to feel bad that I was running Adblock + while listening to my legitimate free tunes, now those suckers are losing revenue from me twice! Ha. Jerks. To make ammends though they did send me an apology letter saying, Tony, you can use pandora again at the beginning of August. Aww thanks. Here I am at the end of the month awaiting another of those letters. Grrr...

So with that I've tried out LastFM and would say I love it if it didn't cause me so many problems, I think I listened to one song and probably spent 30min troubleshooting it over the course of a day. So that lead me to...datdaadaaaaaa!

Slacker, I only heard of this source from engadget and the slacker branded gadgets. Turns out Slacker radio rocks my socks just as hard as Pandora did! Only complaint is the one audio commercial I'm forced to wait through is always for walmart. Why do they still advertise? One would think that everyone knows who walmart is and what they sell? Whatever

Best Buy,
I have a camera purchased from there and a extended warranty, turns out it doesn't cover everything like it says it does. 104$ later I will be getting my newish camera back. Fuck you best buy, and you stupid geek squad, I liked your customer service 10 times more before they took over. Should be, we assume you're stupid and treat you that way squad.

Know what else really grinds my gears?
Powdery mildew. This fungus said Hey we happened to be floating in the air near your squash and cucumbers a couple of weeks ago lets eat! So our squash and cucumbers are now in shambles and nearly dead in every way. Sad. We have one sad acorn squash clinging to ripen on the vine and a few cucumbers vying for a life of their own. Lesson learned? none, because I have no idea how to spot it before it attacks. Maybe I will install a vacuum shield thing around our garden so no spores float by. I'm going to go ahead and blame the corn farmers, for no good reason.

My phone is being a DICK! In places I used to brag to Laura about have 'full bars!' I get none and she is skipping along while talking to her peeps. So next time you call me be patient I'm walking to our front porch because that's the only place I get reliable-ish reception now.