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 …

Peep this e-mail a friend of mine just got at work:

For SAFETY Reasons:
Fortunately (for safety) or unfortunately, we can NO longer have musical headsets in the office.
This is in protection of hearing loss since volume cannot be monitored.
This will be effective Monday, July 23rd.
You can have a radio at your desk; however, the volume must be turned low.
Thank you for your cooperation.

wtf is that??? The corporate world is out of control.

What if you get speakers and your music offends other people? What if your Christian co-workers take offense to rap or metal? What if the non-Christian co-workers take offense to your religious music? So now, not only do you have to listen to radios - you have to censor your music …

So, over the past couple years of living with Kari I've noticed something strange. There is a drastic difference in how much work I get done when Kari is home as opposed to when Kari is not home. See, when Kari is gone, I am so ridiculously productive. I sort of let my A.D.D. run wild working on somewhere between 3 and 10 different things in one evening. Sometimes I even throw in some skating and working out. It rules.

However, when Kari is there, I barely get anything done - and I can't figure out why. It's not her fault at all. I mean, it's not like she's bothering or distracting me. We don't even hang out together that much at night. I really don't get it. She is normally in a completely different part of the house than I …

For a new hip.

So, Ninja has been acting really funny lately, like his hind legs aren't working and are hurting him. He's been having a lot of trouble getting onto furniture, getting up stairs, and even getting up off the floor. Several times lately he's tried to hop into bed and got completely denied. And even worse yet, he has to use the stairs for nearly everything - even going to the bathroom. To watch such a young/playful dog have so much trouble has been really rough to watch.

That said, last night I took Ninja to the vet, he didn't feel anything wrong in Ninja's legs, so we x-rayed. The x-rays showed that his left femur is misshaped at the hip joint which is causing Hip Dysplasia. Mixed with the size of our dog, he's …

So last weekend, we hosted a 30th Anniversary party for Jeff and Teresa. It was quite ridiculous - lots of people, barely enough food, and lots of drinks.

Saturday morning, Jeff, Vic, and I went to 5 point studios to get Victor's ears pierced. He's been wanting to 0-00 gauge plugs, however he has never had his ears pierced. So we talked to Leo at 5 point to find out he could very easily pierce them to 2 gauge with a needle/taper, or use a scalpel to go up to 00. Vic opted for the needle. It was pretty insane. It took me years to get from normal piercings up to 2 gauge - Vic had it done in a matter of minutes. They pierced him with a 4 gauge hollow needle and then stretched it to 2 gauge with a taper. Pretty awesome. He said …

Hopefully I'm not speaking too soon on this one, but my second round of tattooing is healing a million times better than the first. I'm pretty sure this is completely due to a new healing process that I'm trying called Wet Healing.

Let me back track and talk about my first session, I was told to shower the night of the tattoo, then to keep it dry (no water), but moisturize with lotion 3 times daily until the scabs come off. At that point I could wash it, etc. It seemed simple enough, however the dark/heavy shading scabbed horribly. Everything else was fine. I got super thick scabs that cracked and ultimately resulted in me having to have the shading redone. I'm not sure if my skin just got too dry in between lotioning or maybe …

Man. If you know anything about Cornell, the Gammas, the Thetas, and how anyone involved in any of those sets can party - you'll understand why my weekend was completely and normally insane.

This weekend was Jacobi and Ashley's wedding in Charles City, IA, which was super nice. Not to rag on Charles City, because it's bigger than my hometown, but I did not expect such a nice event to come out of such a small town. I guess, I had only thought about how crazy it would be, which it of course was.

So Friday, Kari and I dropped Ninja off in Cedar Rapids and proceeded to party at Bill's in Marion with Lindsey, Vic, and Will. It was a good time. We met some dudes (Rob and Ray from Wisconsin) and played pool.

Saturday, we drove up …

Wow, what a weekend.

So, if you didn't know, Kari's grandpa, Morris Reynolds, died last Tuesday from a combination of old age and liver cancer. Whoa, right? Just jump right into it, Derek! Well, that's kind of the way it worked in real life. It just sort of snuck up on everyone... I mean, he was driving 2 weeks ago... sorta bumper cars style, but he was still driving.

That said, this weekend was full of Reynolds family time and funeral activity. As with any death, it's never a pleasant experience. The visitation is always awkward, lots of hugs with people you don't know, etc. I was pretty ok through the entire thing, but Saturday at the funeral is when it really got me. We went to breakfast at Morris's favorite breakfast …

Fathers Day this year was pretty fun - and reynolds style. It seems like all of my family gatherings are becoming more and more reynolds influenced lately. And by that I mean they are 100% based on Food and Drinks. Probably a little too much of each. Well, the drinks thing may be a little more influenced by college than Kari's family... I guess we all have to bring something to the table...

So this year, we made huge reservations at Taki. Basically a reservation for 20 people around a grill. Before hand, people trickled into our house for homebrew, cocktails, games, and swearing. It was a good time. Then we piled into cars and went to Taki, where we got treated to good food and free Hennessey. And finally back to our house …

So... Back to Kevi's wedding weekend. Friday after we got to Orlando, we checked into Hawthorne Suites, which rule btw. Kitchen, living room, 2 queen beds, an amazing free breakfast, open bar from 5:30-7:30 daily, free wifi, and a nice pool - all for only $90 a night.

So after checking in, Kevi gave us some pretty rad gifts. Kari and Amy got wine and Zach and I got branding irons for stamping steaks, etc. I might use it to stamp some of my woodworking things as well. He also gave us some nice grilling spices and such - I'm excited to try it all out.

Later, we went to rehearsal and dinner at Ohana's where we got more gifts. I got a bottle of Glenfiddich 12 year scotch and Zach got some Effen vodka. <3 Kevi. Dinner was …

I really hate to rain on someone's wedding, which I won't do. But I'm totally about to blow up about traveling to Kevi's wedding. Omg.

So first of all, Thursday, Zach, Amy, Kari, and I were scheduled to fly out of Des Moines around 5pm and show up in Orlando at 10:30pm. So we arrived at the DSM airport around 3:45 to check in, when we met an NWA employee named Betty. Imagine Betty as the bus driving Chris Farley in Billy Madison - only thinner, older, and more female. She was totally stressed out, mumbling things under her breath, and yelling at people. There was one point when her glasses were falling off her face and she had 2 phones - 1 on each ear. I completely missed a golden photo opportunity. So anyway, Betty informed us …

Well, let me rephrase that. Mosso tries hard to be awesome - they just released a beta application without the beta label. Harper convinced me to join Mosso based primarily on the billing/user management system - which rules by the way... but it's really the only part that rules.

When I first joined Mosso, Harper and I got to have a conference with one of the founders of Mosso, Todd Morey. It went really well; we all liked each others input, and aside from a few minor provisioning bugs, it seemed like things would work out really nicely.

The fact of the matter is that my sites are not reliable. I know nothing about server management, but when I had my own box, I was down less in 2 years than I have been in 2 months with Mosso.

As of last Friday, I've been at Pioneer for 4 years... and I'm still an entry level programmer! Haha, weak. However, I somehow carried over 9 days of PTO this year... which Brings me up to 18+9... 27 vacation days for the year + 1 floating holiday, yesssssss. Plus, only 1 more year until I am completely vested in Pioneer Pension.

Aside from that, I should note that I'm slowly making progress on the bar. Rico came over Saturday morning and we got the actual countertop all mounted. Time and Funds are killing me. I should be able to work on it again in August, haha, sad.

Later Saturday, Jeff and Iulia stopped over to grill. Then Elizabeth, Jon, Joe, and Andrea came over. And even later, Cedric, Nathan, Chuck, and Ando stopped …

I am getting a little bit tired of blogging about weekend events. I'm not really good at writing about them anymore. It's so cookie cutter Friday this, Saturday that. Maybe I should quit and just post photos... or become a better writer, ehhh. At least this weekend I have something that I really want to document.

So, this Memorial Day wasn't quite as insane as the last 2 years, but it was definitely fun.

It started Friday when Doug kicked us out of work at 11:30am, which was sooo nice. I basically hung out for a bit and got the house ready for company. Then we met up with lots of peeps at the Iowa Cubs game for a sort of "going away party" celebration for Stacy. As always, it was lots o fun - despite getting beat 13-3.