I write, occasionally

I just wrote this big long article about how owning a house is weird and when I hit submit my session timed out and I lost the article. I really hate web sites.

Anyway... I've lived in my house for about 3 weeks now. So far it's been really cool. I'm sorta poor, but I feel so rich, haha. It rules.

It's weird because it seems like everything you do for a house both sucks and is really rewarding at the same time. Like building a work bench, setting up wireless internet, setting up an entertainment center, even cleaning the garage. Planning for new stuff is the same way. It all sorta sucks because it costs time and money, but it's so awesome once you get done. One thing that sucks all the time though, is Ankeny Sanitation. …

So this weekend was my cousin, Scarlet's wedding. She's the first of our generation to get married in the family.

So Friday, Kari and I drove to my parents house to hang out and stay the night. It's nice to get back home sometimes. Then, saturday my grandparents took Kari and I out to eat for her birthday. We went to Belgium Village where we ate reubens bigger than our plates, it was crazy. After lunch, we checked into the hotel. I mostly hung out with my little cousins... Soaping, running around, and being goofy. Lots of fun was had.

So the wedding was in this pretty cool church. It was kinda weird to see Scarlet get married. I've never even met the guy she's marrying, haha. But it was nice to see everyone. I got to see …

So my buddy scottv contacts me yesterday and is like, "BROOKS, need your help, asap. I don't have photoshop here and I need some quick work done." He then goes on to show me the sexual harrassment lawsuit against Bill O'Reilly (from the O'Reilly Factor) and his strange falafel fetish... So Scott told me to photoshop an image of O'Reilly with his arm around a gigantic piece of falafel. Which I did (in about 3 minutes - as you will see).

Long story short, scott bought falaphilia.com and came up with a pretty good definition of "Falaphilia." Harper is hosting the site and it's getting hit pretty hard - which is awesome. O'Reilly is a pretty sick dude. And we (the guys that own the sun) rule.

Update: I just wrote the official fala…

A while ago I wrote that me a couple guys I work with started an "around the world" adventure at the cAb. I am the last of 3 guys to finish the journey, but now that it's all said and done, I have a good understanding of what kind of beers are good. You can see my picture, comment, and rating of every beer, here. You can see our collective ratings here. Also don't forget to check out Nehru and Nick's pictures and comments.

So what now? I'll be going back to hard drinks... Plus I'll try new beers that may show up. Man I'm glad I'm done. Now maybe I can cut a few beer pounds. Stupid stupid beer.

This weekend was homecoming at Cornell, which resulted in a ton of fun. BUT for some reason I didn't take any pictures, wtf. I'm really mad about this.

Friday, Kari had some Theta thing, so I hung out with Mira a lot. I even let Mira drive my car... lots of peeling out and crazy driving was done. She set off this dude's car alarm with my exhaust, haha, AWESOME.

Later I got to hang out with Kevi, Kari, and many many other people. I basically just ran around all night - typical Mt Vernon behavior for me. Getting people all riled up, making new friends, starting fights, talking to old friends, etc. I love Mt Vernon.

Saturday I hung out with Kevi most of the day. We're working on a rap for his new CD, it's pretty good so …

I feel like I've been complaining a lot lately. But I really don't think it's my fault. Crappy things are seriously happening to me. So, while I'm at it, let's talk about Grimes Automotive and how many times they've screwed me. The first few times I went in there, they were really honest, did a good job, etc.

Then, one time my car was acting weird. I went in there, he checked it out, told me the MAFS was bad. This is a $600+ part. He said that everytime he slapped the air box the car would almost die. I tried slapping it in my garage and couldn't get it to stutter once. So I asked my neighbor, he said it was spark plugs. I replaced them and the car was fixed. Instead of $600, I spent $8.

Another time I had an appointment …

So yesterday was Kari's 23rd birthday. It was fun. I was sorta stressed about the night and how it wouldn't go well due to my lack of planning, etc. But it was a good time. First we went to Bistro Montage which looks like this hole in the wall on Ingersoll. But the place is really nice. The chefs are right there, they come out and talk to people, etc. Very cool. Plus they made some awesome food. It was definitely edible art.

After dinner we met Nick and Nicole at Club Aura which is a club that opened in West Des Moines a year ago. My aunt has been telling me to check it out for so long... I finally did and it was worth it. It's pretty retro inside with lots of places to sit. Plus, they have DJs that are actually spinning …

2 days after I move in, my car breaks. I went out to my car this morning, turned the key, cliiiiiiiick. Didn't have enough juice to turn over.

So I met my first neighbor this morning. She brought her car around to jump me. After about 5 minutes or so, it started... but ran really really rough. Then I put it in drive and my Check Engine light came on. Seriously, my car sounds like a Harley V-Twin when it's accelerating... and it has zero power.

I think it's firing on 2 cylinders or something. So I drove it straight to the shop and now i'm waiting to hear the damages. I hope it's a cheap fix.

Well, I moved into my house.

Friday I took off work at noon to start moving, then my parents showed up around 8ish to help out for the weekend. We moved a lot of stuff. It was lame. I'm so tired and sore. Plus I had to buy a washer and lawn mower, and pay mortgage and rent. I am broke. Then we had to run a gas line to my dryer because my house is setup for an electric one... BUT my dryer is setup for LP and I have natural gas... So then I had to order some parts and change those out sometime this week. Working with gas sorta makes me nervous. On top of that, I have a LOT of unpacking to do... :(

Saturday night kari's family met up with us (and gave me some pretty nice house warming gifts). We went to my aunt's house for an …

Yeah it's been a while since I've updated, which doesn't happen to often on this site. I've basically spent most of my time packing for the big move. Actually I can't really think of anything cool that I've done recently... except get more poor.

Anyway, today I got the keys to my house. Wow it feels good to step in it for the first time and be all like, "this is mine." Haha, rule! So tonight until Sunday I'm going to be moving and unpacking, etc. My parents get here Friday to help out. Big things goin on, BIG THINGS.

So this weekend was pretty productive. I really had a lot of fun.

First, Zach and Kevi met me at the cAb after work, then we ate at Rock Bottom. Rocktoberfest is out again and it is oh so good. After Rock Bottom we started filming our new movie, which we're entering in the Good Morning America: Scary Movie Contest. We finished filming about 1:30 AM and then hit up Legends for a quick game of pool. Our video is pretty good, it's almost ready to send in - Hopefully we win. ;)

Saturday we woke up, ate at HuHot, checked out Jordan Creek (where we saw this XTerra), then did some skating. And for dinner Zach wanted to try sushi so we had dinner at Taki. After all that it was time for Tech N9ne at Val Air Ballroom. It was a great …

Alright, after months of dealing with this exhaust order and getting the wrong system I went ahead and installed it. I didn't want to wait until spring for them to correct it. So yeah, I now have a 3" stainless steel exhaust from my turbo all the way back through the Magnaflow straight through muffler - awesome. I also installed the Catco high flow cat for now... I might take it off someday. But anyway...

I spent most of the afternoon Saturday trying to get my old exhaust off. The thing was so corroded that the flanges were almost 1 solid piece, haha. So I decided to unbolt the whole thing and saw it off above the rear axles. While taking it off I spun off every bolt that was hooked to the rubber hangers, haha. The broken …

So this was the first weekend that I've been home in weeks. It is literally the second time that I've been in Des Moines for a weekend since June, haha. I mean, I've gone to Cornerstone (Illinois), Heritage Days (Mt Vernon), L.A., Denver, Quad Cities twice, Minnesota, and Chicago Twice. The only other weekend I was here was during 515 Alive. wtf.

My plan was to relax, chill, etc. So, Friday night I watched my cousin's soccer game and then went out to dinner for his birthday. Saturday afternoon I went out to Big Creek lake to go boating/fishing with Chuck n Nathan. That was a good time. Then we picked Kari up and all went out. Lots of pool shooting/dancing was taken care of, haha.

Today I spent most of the afternoon …

This weekend, Kari and I went to a pretty out of control wedding - it was freaking incredible. They reserved a couple rooms for us all to stay in at the Palmer Hilton of Chicago.

The wedding was for Steph's sister (Maryanne) and her man, Chris. I knew it was going to be quite a good wedding since their parents (Dr Bob and Sheryl) are awesome. Plus we got word that Oprah's make-up artist was doing the bride's maids' make-up, wtf.

So anyway, the ceremony/reception was on the 9th floor of the University Club of Chicago. It was really nice. It overlooked millenium park and part of the lake. I'm not really all that into wedding ceremonies but this one was great - it was under a half hour and really nicely decorated.

After that …

So this weekend I was scheduled to do a Heelys demo in Chicago. Kari was already going to Barrington (a suburb) to visit friends and see a Jimmy Buffet concert (dork, haha). So I rode along with her and cassie and got dropped off at a train station and played with my camera while I waited. Harper and I then went to Crobar at 2am with Jordan and Monica. It was nice to see Claudia and Red Hair Matt again too. They had some 70s disco theme going on or something - it was funny. We got back and went to bed at 5 - I love Crobar.

Saturday, I woke up early for a Heelys demo at Nordstroms In Woodfield mall. The guys I went with were really cool and the demo went awesome. After that, Harper and I met at crobar to catch our escalade limo …

On June 21 I ordered a custom exhaust from RnR Racing. I've heard great things about their products, they sound really good, and best of all, they're reasonably priced. I was super pumped when I ordered the exhaust. Here are the specs on my order:

Item: FWD Standard Turbo Back Exhaust - $675.00
Quantity: 1
Generation and size: 2g 3"
Standard turbo back
Turbo Back options:
Stainless Steel Bullet Muffler
Straight through design
Stainless Steel 3" Downpipe
Stainless Steel 3" Catback
4" Stainless Steel N1 Style Tip

Here's a timeline of how it went.

-June 21 - I placed my order at RnR Racing. The web site specifically told me that the avg ship time is 2-3 weeks.
-Ryan Fellows (who seems to be the head of RnR Racing) …

What a fun weekend. The days were sorta weird due to messed up sleep patterns. It kinda seemed like one long day. But anyway...

Friday, Kevi, Kari, and I drove up to Morgan to meet Josh Lueck for a Birthday Bash. We got to his house at 11:30pm, picked up Jolene and then met Josh at work (@ Jackpot Junction). Kevi and I played some Pai Gow poker, which is a really fun game and Kari found out that she hated casinos, which was funny. Once Josh got off work (@ 2am) we drove up to the cabin we'd be staying in at Leech Lake. On the way there we saw the temperature get down to 29 degrees, wtf. We got there at 7:30am and napped til about 1.

After that there was lots of hanging out with the family that owned the cabin. We played …

Sometime after I started at Pioneer, some co-workers and I visited this small (smoke free) bar in Johnston called The cAb. The cAb had this contest that if you put your business card in this bowl you could be drawn for the After Work Club. We all put our cards in, and almost all of us won. This club entitled us to 1 free drink per day for the year of 2004, so we decided, that we would attempt to sample every beer (~70) and rate them.

Since I was a late bloomer in actually enjoying beer, I decided this would be good for me. So we started on our Journey. Sadly, we lost a couple along the way, but Nehru, Nick, and I are still going strong... Nehru and Nick are going a bit stronger than I am though, haha. So here are the combined …

On Friday Marv organized our first RC Regatta on the Pioneer campus pond. It was a ton of fun. First we raced the little boats, then a few of us got to race the big boats. Awesome.

After work, Kari and I drove to my parent's house for Tug Fest, which is a tug-o-war competition across the Mississippi River between Iowa and Illinois. It was fun. Friday night, Rich, Mitch, Kari and I watched fireworks from my dad's little "beach." Then we did a lot of walking around down town. It's weird to run into my H.S. friends.

Saturday we hung out on my dad's newly built patio/fish pond. Then Kari and I went down to watch the Tugs. Ben tugged this year, which was awesome. I also saw my old buddy Josh tug.

It's so funny how serious …

So while shooting video at Jason's wedding, I got a shot of katie barker dancing with the flower girl. Together they are lethal.