I write, occasionally

We just went up to the vet to have Ninja's leg looked at. It turns out that he completely tore his cruciate ligament in his left leg.

The good news is that his knee is easily fixable with TPLO surgery.
The bad news is that it costs over $2,000.
The worse news is that his right knee is partially torn.

So right around Christmas time, I suppose we will be buying Ninja a second knee.
$5,000 on our free dog and we decided to go through with it.

...And don't get me wrong, I would like our 3 year old dog to have new knees, especially if money wasn't an issue... but the truth is - money is an issue. A big issue.

Please send money for Christmas presents this year...

This weekend was full of sweet, sweet food and drinks.

Friday, Kari and I celebrated our anniversary at Lucca, which was a great meal with decent service - I think they need at least 1 more server in there.

Around dessert time, Kari decided that none of Lucca's desserts sounded awesome, so we called Sage to see if we could come over. Here is some customer service that everyone should take note of....

We called Sage from Lucca at 9:50. Sage told us they close at 10 but since we only wanted dessert and drinks, they said to come in anyway.

We got there about right at 10:00 and they had a table set for us. But, since we wanted to stay out of their way, we just asked to eat at the bar... they weren't crabby about the set table …

This weekend was quite odd. I spent the entire time working on things, but I really got nothing done for myself, haha.

Friday, I drove to dad's house, we moved my old Nova engine from our old house to a scrap pile. :( I didn't know what else to do with it. But it was actually kind of fun. We couldn't get a hold of an engine hoist so we used old school tools. Like levers, ramps, wheels, and a 5 pulley system, haha. It was awesome.

Later we met up with Rich and Amanda at this new place in PB called "It's on the River" ... Clever name.

Saturday I woke up and took some "after" pics of dad's house, which turned out quite well. So check out the pics of his house renovation.

Afterwards, I met up with Ben, and then went over …

Basically Kari's birthday (so far) has been the usual: eating, drinking, family, friends, ya know. It's been good I think.

I got her a mafia book, a spa massage, a special t-shirt, and a fancy meal. Nothing too incredible... but yeah.

This weekend was pretty nice, Steph, Lindsey, and Kari's dad all visited for her b-day. First we hung out at home and pushed our political beliefs upon each other. Then we met a bunch of friends at Taki to celebrate. It was good as always.

After dinner we went to Red Monk, which I'm really starting to hate. It's a small hidden bar with fancy foreign beer, which is a great concept. However, there's at least 1 bartender there that just hates his job. It's ridiculous. The last few times that …

So I got a new truck. An 8 year old truck that looks like it's 1 year old.

As most of you know, I (for some weird reason) was in the market for a truck. The truck that appealed to me most was the F150, but I didn't want the F150 that you pass 76 times a day on the road. I wanted a unique one. So I got online and started researching.

While reading about F150s on www.fordf150.net I came across a "Lightning Clone" in the classifieds. It was in Ohio, looked super clean, and was really close to my budget.

Fast forward a few e-mails, calls, and weeks later to this Saturday... Kari's dad and I drove out to buy it. Even though the guy (Dan Mann) seemed nice and trustworthy and the photos looked amazing - I was nervous. I mean, if …

I've been meaning to write about this for quite some time. It's pretty funny to have had a hernia when you were only 16, and my experience was fairly awkward... so here's a story about my very first hernia.

So, like I said, I was 16 years old. One night I was laying in bed feeling my balls, which is nothing out of the ordinary - especially for a teenager. As I began to juggle them around I noticed 1... 2... 3... wait, 3!?! I double checked, then I triple checked, and yelled, "MOMMMM!" She came into my room and asked what was up, to which I replied, "um, I have 3 balls." "Derek! are you serious?! Let me see!" "NO, MOM! I need to go to the doctor."

So the next day I go to the doctor to find out that I had an inguinal hernia, which …

I snack. Oh man I snack.

When I lived alone I never had snack food because of this. I made sure that all the food I had were things that only worked for dinner, like microwavable meals, frozen chicken breasts, and salmon. But now that Kari makes sure our groceries are fully stocked it's getting out of hand.

I have always craved a carbohydrate of some sort. Whether it's bread, crackers, or beer, I love it. 90% of the time that craving is Wheat Thins. But sometimes it's Wheat Thins plus a beer, which is a great after-work snack.

Then we started getting string cheese - and who doesn't like string cheese? Beyond carbs, I crave cheese... so now I've got this perfect cracker, cheese, beer snack. It's like heaven.

Then, a …

was a blast. It was pure chaos all day. Just driving around seeing people you "knew" in amazing cars all throughout the day. It was a good feeling for sure. Most of us were connected only by your love of cars and driving... we were all buddies for the day. Fun, fun.

Anyway, I'd venture to guess that this is one of the biggest video projects that I've ever done for someone. The amount of planning and organization required to pull this off was ridiculous. I definitely couldn't have done it alone and maybe could've even used even more help.

So, if you're not familiar with how a rally works. It's basically a set of checkpoints spread out over hundreds of miles. In between the checkpoints are routes, called "legs" that take you …

Man, I really haven't had the energy to blog... but I suppose it's time to write about last weekend.

So, Nathan, Josh, and I met up in Minneapolis for another big going-out fest, similar to what we did last year for Josh's birthday. The plan is basically to go to Minneapolis on Friday and come home on Sunday - that's it. Everything else just sort of falls into place, which is generally chaos.

We first walked into our hotel, right next door to the greyhound station and a salvation army home, to find that a goth festival was going on. There were tons of goth/metal kids and all sorts of "Crypticon" gear - the name of the festival. It was pretty hilarious.

So after checking that out, we decided to venture downtown for dinner. …

As a computer programmer I like to stay on top of new technology - like computers. That said, I think it's important that you buy a new computer at least once every ... 5 years, haha, wtf?

No, for real, I bought my last computer 5 years ago this month, which is pretty baffling.

Don't get me wrong, I upgraded it a bit over the years, but it's still ridiculous. Especially since I think my wife (who uses her computer for e-mail, aim, and myspace) is on her 3rd new computer since then, haha.

So, since I haven't really looked at computers in so long, I was sort of amazed by how much the specs haven't changed. The processor speed increase has slowed quite a lot... but we have faster buses, and dual cores. So here's what I just …

What's been up lately? Well yesterday we had another outing at Lake Panorama, which was nice. I golfed for the first time this year and shot pretty good - only hit 1 duffer and 1 slice. However, Nick and I got paired up with JD in a best shot "tournament." And if you don't know JD... all I can say is that he's really good at golf. So our group ended up 3 under, which was a 34, w00t! ...25 of those shots were JD's, haha.

After golf we went to Nehru's for a fantasy football draft. I'm not into football really, and especially not into fantasy football, but since Doug couldn't make it - I drafted his players, haha. I hope he does good. I have no idea what I picked.

Aside from that, Kari and I have been sticking around town. …

Why are windshield wiper controls so different in every vehicle? Seriously. I somehow wound up driving a LOT this weekend, in 4 different vehicles. Between Kari's SUV, mom's new car, dad's SUV, and Jeff's truck. By the end of the weekend I was almost taking Jeff's truck out of gear just to clear some rain off the windshield.

Anyway, Kari and I visited the QC to visit some family and celebrate my birthday this weekend. It was nice to see everyone. However, this new "splitting up time" thing is really draining.

So Friday, we met my mom, Juliet, Jeff, and Nina for dinner, which was a good time.

Saturday we woke up and went to Galena with Nina and Juliet. I really don't remember Galena being so big. I imagined it more like …

My car has been running horribly lately. The engine sounds horrible, it idles bad, etc. I mean, what can I really expect from an engine with 175,000 miles on it.

Well... Monday I pulled into the garage, shut the car off, and heard a new *CLUNK* noise. I thought, "great... something else is broken" However, I sort of just brushed it off for the evening.

The next morning, I tried to start it up and got an awful awful noise. Not like a dead battery or anything. Just this loud whine and the engine never turned over or anything. So I was basically stuck working from home.

Throughout my work day I made periodic trips down to my car to sort of mourn and gradually check things out as I thought of them. One of the first things I …

And we broke it in.

That's right, 6 months later and I finally finished the the basement bar project. There are still a couple accessories to add: lighting, stemware rack, stools, and a shoe rail. But finally the bar's in a completely usable state and I can forget about it for a minute.

before

after

The party went pretty well. Actually it was sort of a strange party - very laid back. I invited 80+ friends hoping that 40-50 would show up, and we ended up with 30. Lots of people that I hoped would be there couldn't make it. And lots of people showed up who I totally didn't expect. It was good though. We drank all the beer, smoked cigars, and Kari made sure my birthday was celebrated. Diverse even made us a custom mix to …

My last 2 birthdays have been the most insanely awesome/draining weekends ever. My birthday, in Chicago, on Lollapalooza weekend. The best thing about this year was that I saw every band that I had written down to see, except for silverchair. I even saw some shows on conflicting schedules, yessss.

However, my feet always kill me during the entire weekend. I either need some better walking shoes or a better walking job. I sit way to much for walking 1.5 miles from the hotel to the park, which is 3/4 mile from end to end. I bet during lollapalooza weekend I walk 20-30 miles, which is about 1 mile for every pound of food I probably eat.

Anyway... here's how the weekend went.

Thursday

We got into town and went to visit Harper …

So this weekend we went to South Dakota to visit my second cousin in law, Jerry Cozad, haha (Jeff's cousin). I really had no information about the weekend except that we were going to some Lake near Sioux Falls. I had no idea what to expect, but I certainly didn't expect to be in cabins nicer than my house... which is exactly what we found. And these weren't full time houses for these people, they were just weekend cabins. Seriously ridiculous. And the owners weren't like 60 year old doctors - everyone I hung out with was in their late 30s or early 40s, acted my age, and basiaclly made some huge bank. I would really like to figure out a way to live that life. I guess I got 10-20 years to figure it out...

Anyway, it was a really …

July 6
me: this mountain dew hoodie currently has 2,728 entries
me: there are 300 winners
Josh: 1 in 9
me: is that a 1:9 chance?
Josh: yep
me: and i have 18 codes
Josh: 2:1 chance
Josh: 18:9
me: those are good odds
Josh: Mathmatically, you should win a hoodie
Josh: very
me: maybe even 2 hoodies
me: haha
Josh: If someone would take the bet, I would bet $100 that you win a hoodie with those odds
Josh: haha

July 6, IRC
<broox> anyone want to make a bet for $100 that i win a hoodie from this mountain dew contest?
<npl> i do not
<npl> but thanks

July 10
me: i never did enter my codes for that hoodie that day
Josh: haha
me: so i have 23 now
me: today's current entries: 2409
me: 300 winners
me: i bet we can assume that …

I'm going to put mine right out there...

The thing that I hate more than anything else is my money situation over the last few years. I keep telling myself it'll get better, and I keep trying my ass off to make it that way, but it never gets to a point that it's bearable. I am seriously, seriously depressed about it. It's retarded. It's really the only thing that gets me down. Like, if anything else goes wrong financially, I think I will for real lose it. At this point it looks like that something will probably be my car, but really, it could be anything - furnace, AC, leak in the house, damage from a storm, some medical condition. Whatever it is - I don't have the money to be able to handle the situation.

My savings account …

I'm a big fan of rating music so that I have playlists of things that do not suck. However, I've come to a dilemma. What happens when a song is so horrible that it's amazing? I mean, I want to know that it's horrible, but I also want to know that I love it.

For example, Ill Mitch is this Russian Rapper - who may or may not be real and/or serious. He's definitely not the most talented rapper - in fact he's quite the opposite... but I really love it, haha. Do I rate his stuff high or low? And what if he has a song that's just amazing good? So now I have 1 for real 5 star song by Ill Mitch. Then all the others that are so bad they're good I've rated a 4 star? This is confusing. The same goes if he has a song that is so bad it's …

Saturday, 10:15am. We cracked our first beers while waiting to depart for the river. We'd just set up camp and were in for a great day - and a great day it was.

So yeah, Nathan put together a little tubing trip down the Iowa River through a company called Rock-N-Row Adventures. It was originally mostly couples, then 2 couples backed out and 3 girls backed out. Which left us with another amazing sausage fest with a couple wives and a sister.

Everyone met at my house at 8:00am, then we drove up to the campground in Eldora to setup real quick and then head out to the river. We tubed for quite a while - it was hard to keep track of time, but I'm guessing somewhere between 3 and 6 hours, haha. And after the float we hung out at the …