Sunday, February 26, 2006

Master of efficiency

So last weekend I decided to buy a TV for my new apartment, since the little 13 inch just isn't going to cut it for my viewing pleasure. So I went to Best Buy and bought 27 inch Toshiba. Since I drive a little Grand Am coupe, The TV had to be removed from its box to fit into my car. So I go home and see if I can move it myself out of my car. I decide its a little too big and awkward to move by myself so I start to walk up my back porch to get my roommate to help. As she steps out the door, I hear a loud BANG behind me. I turn around to discover my brand new TV lying face down on my driveway. Shit. I pick it up and take a look at it. The screen itself appears to be fine, but there is some significant scratching on the outside casing. Well, I bring it inside and plug it in and turn it on to see if it still works, which it does. Whew.

As the week goes by I sit down and doing some significant TV watching and notice there are funky colors all around the edge of the screen. Damn. I now need to pull of some shadiness to return this thing.

So yesterday I go to return it, with my cover story being "I scratched it bringing it into my house." (On an aside, I like to think of myself as an honest person, but I couldn't help thinking about the quote from Pirates of the Caribbean "Me? I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly... stupid.") Anyway, I get to Best Buy and I can't find the remote. Damn, now I have to drive back home to get it. I must have left it sitting next to the door. And I also forgot to go to the good will bin to donate some clothes I no longer have need for. So I go to the goodwill bin, first, and then get back on the highway to go to Best Buy (again). At this point I start wondering where exactly I fall on the moral compass when one donates clothes to charity and tries to con a major electronics chain for a new TV because of my own ineptness. While in the middle of this little quandary I realize I have now driven well past my house and need to turn around and go back for the remote I still don't' have.

So I get home and walk inside and look for the remote right were my roommate said she put it. Unfortunately its not there. Damn. So I look in the living room. Not there either. Not good. Well, maybe it did put it in my car. So I dig through the folded box I have in my trunk for the TV, and discovered the remote stuck in there. It's a good thing gas is cheap. Wait.......

Anyway, I get back to Best Buy and bring my TV in and ask to exchange, with the box, remote, and receipt. They just ask what's wrong with it. "There are funny colors around the edge of the screen." "Ok" they say, just get the one you want to exchange it with and bring it up here. Hmm...that was easy. So I make the exchange with no questions asked (don't ask don't tell ;-)).

Once home The TV was successfully moved without incident in my living room, and works beautifully.

...and there was much rejoicing.

songs: Punk Rawk Show - MXPX, YEAH TOAST!, Power Trip - Monster Magnet

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

New uniform, same team

I went to see ND v. UConn at the civic center tonight, and per typical ND we came from down by 16 to pull ahed by 4, only to allow UConn to tie it up and force overtime, where we blew it. ::SIGH:: As for the black uni's, I say the jury is still out. I still have a problem with ND in black, but I was so far away, I didn't get to get a good look at them.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Victory is Mine!

Well, after changing my search strategy on Saturday to include (and actually concentrate on) Brooklyn and Washington Heights, I ended up finding a fantastic place in Washington Heights. I have 1 roommate, who will apparently not be there a whole lot because he lives with his partner more often than not. Anyway, its real close to the Columbia medical center and like 2 blocks from the 1, A, and C train which will make my commute to work very easy. It's good to have this all taken care of.

In other news, I've stopped watching ND basketball, and they seem to have started winning. Of course, when I go to see the ND v. UConn game tomorrow, this will inevitably end, but I'm not gonna say no to free tickets. Besides, I watch to check out the black uniforms they apparently wore when the put up 102 on Seton Hall. ND in black just seems wrong to me, but maybe it's close enough to the navy blue road unis that will be ok. Apparently Brey had a black shirt that said "Fighting Irish" so he decided to experiment with black jerseys. What little I know about it is here. The black looks ok in the picture. We'll see what it looks like live.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

LIVE! From New York

SO I have 15 minutes to kill before my time runs out at the internet cafe in Times Square, so I'm posting on my day from yesterday. Don't be suprised if questionable spelling and grammar appears in this post. I did a lot of walking through Manhattan yesterday, and let me tell you, it was a bad day to leave your scarf at home. It was ok for most of teh day, but when the sun started to set it got real bad. Anyway, after walking aroudn midtown I came to the conclusion that I am nto going to live there. The places were just too damn small and too expensive. Though the apartment in Harlem was kind of interesting. That apartment itself was GORGEOUS. However, everythign around was, well, Harlem. I decided that my guage for saftey of teh neighborhood, woudl be "If I was drunk, would I feel safe here at night." And that was a big fat no for that apartment. Anyway, I crashed on my cousin's couch in Queens, and we had a discussion, on what woudl be the 5 netorks you would get, if you coudl only get 5 networks. Here are mine:

ESPN
SciFi
VH1
Comedy Central
NESN

I'd post more, but I'm out of time.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Apartment hunting.

I think I'm starting to grasp the concept of a New York Minute. It seems that within a day or two of someone looking for or needing a roommate, the task is accomplished in NYC. I find this rather surprising. I would think that people would want to take a look at several places, get a feel for a lot of different people to fill a void in their given apartment to make sure they get the right fit. I've had enough bad roommate experiences that I have pretty specific desires on the type of people I want to live with. This all being said, I think I will have to change my game plan a little, and just spend 2 full days in the city this weekend, and see how many places I can look at on the fly, instead of the appointments several days in advance that I am trying to set up. Anyway, I have 3 tentative appointments right now. Hopefully I can secure a few more before the weekend. I suppose I should also inform my cousin that I need to crash on his couch Saturday night....

In a totally unrelated note, I sang "I touch myself" at karaoke last night and oh yes, there are pictures. I have no shame.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

New York State of Blog: day 2

I woke up Friday very refreshed. I got to sleep more than I normally do because my hotel was like a 15 minute walk to the office. As I was about to leave I noticed that not only did I get the New York Times, but I also got the Wall Street Journal delivered to my room. It's REALLY too bad the company won't pay for me to live in NYC, but I may have to see if I can make a few more trips down before I move....

Anyway went out to lunch with all the people that I will be working with when I move down there. I had the quiche. It was good. I would have preferred more quiche, and less greens, but oh well. It was probably the healthiest meal I have eaten all year. It was also nice to have the company pay for that too. Did I mention that I'm a whore? Anyway that lunch was entertaining, it seems like people are pretty close in this job, which is nice. I'm going to miss the fraternity that is the Bristol campus, but I really do want to move to the city. A few of them may have been concerned that I knew more about Urban Cougars than anyone else, but at least I waited for 2 or 3 other people to discuss it before I chimed in.

Since they don't' have a whole lot for me to do (yet) I decided to spend some of my time looking up apartments/roommates on Craigslist. I saw a listing on the East Side and decided to send the guy an e-mail. Someone acted as the voice of reason ('cause he's married and has a kid) and convinced me to go check it out before I left NY instead of going out to drink with everyone after work. I conceded to this logic because it would be good for me to see what an actual NY apartment looks like and it would give me at least some basis for comparison as I got further into my search. That and the guy seemed like a sports fan and there will be lease that starts March 1, which is exactly what I want.

Anyway on my way there I only took 2 wrong turns on the subway (wrong way once, me not paying attention to where I needed to get off the second time) so I could finally get on the train that takes me up to the East Side. It didn't help that I needed to change trains like 4 times to get form the West Side to the East Side. I'm sure there's an easier way to do it with buses, but I'm a long way from that point right now. Anyway, I got to the final stop and had like a 5 or 6 block walk to the apartment building. I finally get to the place and step inside to call up to the apartment. I reach inside my pocket to pull out the piece of paper that had my directions and the apartment info on it, and, um, it was gone.

Shit.

Ok, the guy had an Irish/Scottish last name, lets look at the listing on the wall. There's one Mc________. I give that a shot. No answer. Damn. A woman who lives there comes in and offers to let me in the building, to which I thank her, but unfortunately I have no idea where I'm going in this building, so wandering the halls really isn't going to help. I ask her if she has internet access, but she doesn't, so I have no way of accessing the information. Great. I now have 2 options, give and go home, or back track and see if in the 6 blocks I walked there is a 3-5 piece of paper sitting on the side walk (yeah right).

I decide to do a sort of diagonal towards a different subway stop to see if there is a kinko's or an internet cafe somewhere around,s o I can access my e-mail where I have all the relevant info. (I'd also like to point out that I've been carrying my overnight bag and my laptop this entire time, on my off (left) shoulder because my "strong" shoulder has a subpar collar bone.) Anyway, I tack through the East Side and come up empty. (For the record there are like 36 kinkos in Manhattan, and if I had walked back to my original subway stop, I probably would have seen one). I figured that with the East Side being largely residential, that there would be some demand for internet cafes, but apparently (in the 2% that I walked around) this is not the case. But I did pass like 10 Chinese restaurants. Anyway, I went home and wrote and apology e-mail to the guy to try to convince I'm that I didn't blow him off, so hopefully I'll be able to check the place out like next weekend or something.

At least I have started to get a better sense of the subways and the numbering system of the roads in Manhattan so I will have a better concept of where I'm gong the next time I'm there.

New York State of Blog: day 1

Ok, SO I wanted to post these last night, but blogger was sucking, so I'm doing it now.

Anyway, I spent the last 2 days in NYC on business. It's a shame I can't get the company to pay for me spend every night in a hotel while I work with them. Oh well. I actually tried to blog the first night there, but I naively thought that the internet connection in my room would be free, and I was subsequently shot down. Anyway, it was good to start to prepare myself for the bit of culture shock I will eventually be receiving. Also, in a moment of brilliancy, I wrote down the thoughts I had last night so I could blog about them now.

My first thought was, how much would one tip a bellhop? Thankfully I just avoided them so I didn't have to worry about this problem too much, but since I was in a pretty swanky hotel (The Essex Hotel), I did wonder.

My second thought is on the bottled water that was in my hotel room. It had an expiration date. Could someone please explain to me how water expires?

Third, I happened to stop on Fox News* while I was doing some channel surfing and the did a report on how ND is no longer supporting the Vagina Monologues and the Gay Film Festival. Now, I've seen the Vagina Monologues when they were at ND, but did not attend the Gay Film Festival. Now, I would absolutely support these, and argue against ND not supporting these in respect to free speech blah blah blah, and the fact that I LOVED being the devil's advocate at ND, but in my head, I really can't argue with Father Jenkins' logic of not supporting/sponsoring these events. While I thoroughly enjoyed the Vagina Monologues, and would highly recommend seeing them if you have not already, they along with the Gay Film festival, which I'm sure contains many things that are sexual in natures, really are not in line with Catholic teaching. I just hope that there is someone/something in the South Bend community with the money to make sure something like the monologues can still be put on at either SMC or ND.

*Disclaimer: I was channel surfing. Even as a republican I think Fox News has a crazy right wing bias to their reporting that I absolutely abhor. I just saw something about ND and had to watch it.

Fourth, I had a big problem with the inclusion of the YES network on the cable I got in my hotel. C'mon are they trying to force feed the Evil Empire that is the Yankees to everyone that comes to NYC. The YES network ONLY has Yankee things on. At least MSG covers other sports. AAARRGGGHH!

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Reconditioning

I'm out of shape. I'm not talking about physical shape, though I'm a little subpar there as well because I'm just not at 100% health wise (stupid broken bone). I'm talking about my day-to-day/weekly routine-life shape. The last time a I had a job, I had myself conditioned to function on 5 to 6 hours of sleep most nights, as long as I had a weekend were I could sleep for 12. However, due to my unemployment in the month of January, I spent most days getting 8-10 (waking up at like 10:30/11 everyday for a month was beautiful). Now after 2 days of trying to get myself into a "normal" routine, I'm exhausted. Thank god the traffic in Hartford wasn't too bad today because if it came to a standstill at any point I would have fallen asleep at the wheel. I believe a post dinner power nap is in order to try and get myself back on track.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Super blog

Steelers won, hooray! I'm glad I didn't bet, because I would have picked Seattle to cover. It was also nice to FINALLY see some decent commercials in the superbowl. It had been like 2 or 3 years since there was a solid set top to bottom. The halftime show was just atrocious. If I was the part of the motown crew that did the pregame show, I would be flipping over cars and burning things in Detroit. The stones are just awful. They're old and ugly, and there's no reason to have a British band perform during an American event. Ever.

Saturday, February 04, 2006

ND basketball

This is me with a kife.

This is me with a salt shaker.

This is me cutting my arm.

This is me sprinkling salt over said bleeding wound.

This is me rubbing the salt into said wound.

This is what it's like, to watch ND play basketball this year.

For those of you wondering, we lost to Louisiville by 3 in in OT, after leading by 3, with 11 second left in regulation, before they hit an NBA range 3 over our 6'11" forward, as time expired.

Friday, February 03, 2006

Big Ben, closet ND fan.

Drink like a champion folks. The font is wrong, but the coloring seems to be right.



I couldn't find a picture anywhere of the ones I remember at ND. A search of google images came up empty, as did a scouring of NDToday. If anyone knows of the location of a picture of the shirt I remember from school, feel free to post a comment.

I think was already rooting for Pittsburgh to win XL, but Ben's ND allegiance seals it.

The internet is for porn

This was blatently stolen from my friend Carolyn.

C'mon normal people!

Right-click


My right click is dying. If I give my mouse a good squeeze, it seems to get a little better, but its still not 100%. Apparently after 4 years and, getting peed on (uhh... twice, but it's been at least 2 years since the last time I was that drunk), it is dying. Now just have to stop being a lazy bum and go a half mile down the street to Staples and pick up a new one.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

MOVING TO NYC!

FINALLY! I'm getting the hell out of CT and moving to a real city. My dream city would have been Boston, but I'll take NYC (at least I'm a Giants fan). Even ND screwing up against West Virginia isn't putting me in a bad mood right now. That and I had a bottle of wine to celebrate. Anyway, I'm back at ESPN doing technical production (ie writing and editing templates) for ESPN contests such as the mascot challenge. I start Monday, and the company will be taking care of my move to NYC so I don't have to go rent a truck and recruit friends, they'll just take care of it for me. Sweetness. I'm psyched, even if I'm doing nothing with my degree and have one actuarial exam passed.