Ehh.. perhaps monthly

So, lets just go for a blah generic monthly update for the 3 readers I still have. The new job is going very well. You would think 5 o'clock meetings every Friday would suck, but when beer is provided, they seem a lot better.

Well, let's get to the important stuff, sports. Notre Dame. Yeah, well, we pretty much suck this year. I'm glad we're finally moving to Sharpley. Granted the ceiling is higher on Clausen, but sorry, the kid just ain't that good. We could probably live with this if there was anyone else on our team who knew how to play football, but unfortunately this isn't the case. Anyway, I'm headed out for the Navy game (um, if ever there was a year for the streak to end...lets just not think of this). I still have extra ticket if anyone's interested.

How about my good teams. The Red Sox were doing real well up until the ALCS. This is a fairly accurate representation of my feelings on this series, except for the Joe Buck/Tim McCarver thing. I wasn't that big a fan of TBS coverage, but it was still better than those to morons. Anyway, we only have one good starting pitcher, one fewer good relievers than Cleveland, and 5 guys in our lineup who can't hit. It's a bad combination. I picked a helluva time to start dating someone from Cleveland. (She's also a domer).

Moving on to a team I don't have any doubts about, the Patriots. I feel like this is like watching a High School prep team taking on the local public high school every week. It's nice to be able to sit down and watch a game, and not just know that you'll win, but that you're going to kick ass. That's all for now. I still have delusions of blogging more often, but lets hope I least keep this up monthly.

Remember when I used to blog?

Yeah, sorry about that. Let's do this chonologically.

This pretty much sums up my feelings on leaving ESPN.

To top things off, on my last day I worked until 8 pm. I meant to blog when I had a week off between jobs, but I took my decompressiosn very seriously, and did an amazing amount of nothing, combined with almost finishing the addiction that kind of kept me from blogging the past two months, Final Fantasy XII.

Anyway, I started my new job Monday. I was the next to last person to leave my office, at 6:15. Amazing. I rarely did that at ESPN. The day starts at 8:30, which is a little earlier than I like, but I get free breakfast, so I can deal.

Anyway, with normal hours, and my final fantasy addiction temporarily dried up, I don't see any reason I can't blog at least weekly, but don't take me off the the "Are you still alive" column just yet.

A "normal" week

Finally, a week where I should really have to work late, and I get to come home and have a little more free time in the evening, and where I can do things I've been neglectful of (such as blogging).

So yes, lets get to the major news. I've given notice to the worldwide leader. No, I don't have another job yet, but thankfully I'm in a career where freelancing is a viable option. I discovered shortly before I left for camp that there are jobs out there I'm totally qualified for that would give me about a 50% raise. That was the kick in the butt that made me decide that sticking around to the end of the year wasn't worth it, combined with the fact that I stopped getting lip service to my complaints made it clear that it was time for me to go. So September 7 is my last day....at least in marketing and sales.

Now I have to field the "what do you want to get into?" question. This is really hard, because I don't really care as long as I can play with and learn new programming languages, and that it is not in an ad sales environment. Whatever, it'll be nice to start regaining my soul. (I may be a dick, but that doesn't mean I don't have principles.) Now I just need to figure out how to stay motivated for another 2ish months.

Other news: Two weekends ago a one of my good friends from ND got married out in Chicago. The first night I was in the city, and started to lose some of my anti-Chicagoness. I'm still anti-Midwest, but I could probably deal with Chicago since I realized last weekend I probably have a better group of friends there than I do in NYC. The wedding itself was enjoyable, but it was kind of weird for me to see someone I spent so much time with during what can be argues as 4 of the most important years of anyone's life, grow up and get married. Now this is only the second wedding I've been to where I was friend's with one of the people getting married. The first one I went to was for someone a few years older than me and we weren't super close, so I was just kinda there and enjoyed the experience. This time though, I knew a lot more people there, and it was just weird to see someone I was really good friends with take that step. I think part of it for me is that marriage is so far away from where I am in life right now.

music: jesus jones - right here, right now

Jealousy

So I discovered this weekend, I'm totally in the wrong career. I say this because not only does my sister have a job instantly upon graduation, but her job gives her four weeks of vacation. That's right, 4 weeks. I have 2. Yes I'm jealous.

Weekend tease.

So we had the first beautiful weekend of the year. Last week I was hoping to go for a bike ride on Sunday. Unfortunately, as the weekend drew closer and closer, and after tow nights at the office to 10pm, it became clear that I was going to need to work on the weekend. I suppose I got up before 11 am I would only have needed to work on Saturday, but it's still the weekend, and I still sleep like a college student, consequently I sat in front of a computer Saturday and Sunday afternoon. ::sigh:: Somehow telling myself that I got more experience in AJAX technologies isn't particularly satisfying.

In other news...damn how about that sweep of the Yankees! The back to back to back to back home runs were almost orgasmic to watch. I'm still a little concerned that we only one the whole series by 4 or 5 runs against a team that doesn't have ANYONE to pitch, but I'll take the result.

I went grocery shopping last night and noticed a woman checking out the expiration dates on the bottled water. This bothered me for two reasons. 1)Water has an expiration date?!?! Do the polar water molecules eventually eat away the plastic or something and make the water less safe? I find this unlikely. Is there a chemist lurking on this blog that can explain this to me? 2)The expiration date wasn't for like 2 years (after the woman looked at them i felt the need to do it myself), how long are you going to hoard water in your apartment? Are you planning for the apocolypse? Why would spend money on bottled water and then not drink it?

Two weekends ago I went through a downloading binge (what else are you doing to do on a rainy Sunday), and today I got around to thinking, I wonder if I shoudl download songs that I have tapes for. It's not like you can easily rip them to a computer, or like I ever listen to them, but a lot of them have music I like. I just get hung up on the fact that I paid for the music once (even if it was like 15 years ago), and I don't want to do it again.

getting caught up.

So the weekend after being woken up by runners I was woken up by workers sawing through bricks on the building across the street. I thought the blue collar people in this city had unions that told them not to work on weekends, then someone pointed out to me that the unions actually tell them to work on weekends so they make time and a half. I can't win. It's like some divine sing telling me I should grow up and start getting out of bed earlier on the weekends so I do something productive with me day. Personally, I'd rather make a lot more money and move into a high rise apartment building where I'm above all the noise. They seem to be equally difficult, but the making money idea seems a lot more enjoyable.

In other news, the second busiest time of the sports year after football season, is march madness. I may disappear for a little while.

Speaking of sports, I missed ND's loss in the tournament. I'm disappointed obviously, but I didn't see the game so I can't really comment on it. I will comment on the lack of underdogs in the sweet sixteen though. This is the most boring tournament in years. At least the women's tournament has an underdog in the sweet sixteen. I'm officially on the Marist bandwagon, but I'm pretty sure Tennessee will kill them in the next round.

Friday night I was supposed to hang out some old coworkers from Bristol, but then that whole nor'easter thing happened, and they decided it wasn't worth risking their lives to go watch the Knicks, which I can't really blame them for. Anyway, the Knicks donned green unis for the game which I thought were pretty tight. If I cared about the NBA at all, and was a Knicks fan, I definitely would have spent too much on a jersey.

St. Patty's day I found myself back at MSG for the Rangers vs. Bruins. This game was a blowout, but it was also the first time I've seen the goalie get pulled, only to see the replacement get pulled later and have the starter go back in. After this I did bit of bar hopping and ended up meeting a couple of cute girls. Good times all around except for the hour of time missing when I tried to take the subway home. That was a little scary.

How not to get promoted

Accept Big East Tournament tickets at 10 am, and then leave the office for 3 hours to go watch a basketball game. But hey we won!

Look both ways

It's official, I'm the only person in my office who can do my job, so if I get hit by a bus everyone is pretty much screwed. Also, if you were planning on murdering me, and have some strange hatred for my company and want to screw them over, now would be a good time to get on that. Of course this morning, I almost took care of that myself when I tried to cross the street which was a sheet of ice and I wiped out 85% of the way across the road. I blame this on not skating recently enough. I should do that this weekend.

Little Things

Just a few little things since I feel like posting. I need to figure out what I want to do for the Sugar bowl. I was kind of hoping for a New Years Day bowl, but alas, this is now a difficult task with the current bowl structure. Anyway, I need to talk to the usual gang of idiot to see what's going on. I almost I feel I should just go to New Orleans just for the party, regardless of whether or not I get tickets. My counter argument is I don’t feel like dropping a grand on food, plane tickets, hotels, and possibly football tickets, as well as killing 2 or 3 of my 12 vacation days in the first week of the year.

Speaking of vacation, since I've been pretty thrifty with mine, I'm taking the next two Friday's off. I might get out and do some Christmas shopping. I'll probably just sleep late and then sit on my ass and play video games all day. I'm trying to think of it as saving my ambition for the new year, when I may decide definitely that the actuarial route will never happen, and start focusing completely on the career that seems to come quite a bit more naturally for me.

In other news, I have a new roommate. At least for about a month. He's a friend of my real roommate who most of you know is never here, so my real roommate is lending his friend his room while he looks for his own place. I apologize for the overuse of pronouns. Anyway, I now have to get in the habit of doing things I haven’t done since I lived here, like closing the bathroom door, which I pretty stopped doing. One of the perks though, is that he gets himself into the bathroom just a little before me in the morning, which is nice because I no longer have to wait 5 minutes for the hot water to make it up to my apartment:-)