I’m 40 now. Almost dead.

So, as I approach my final years (RIP), I’ve been reflecting a lot on the past decade and what I want going forward.

On my 30th birthday, I moved to Chicago to kick off a new, stressful, and fruitful trajectory in my life and career.

In that decade, I took some risks, took advantage of some big opportunities, worked hard, had some big wins, lucked out, and burned out.

On paper, our net worth quickly went from negative to a couple milli. We got a new house. New cars. Traveled a lot. It felt like success. Not quite "made it" success, but definitely success..

After buying the house, we immediately started remodeling it, which turned into the biggest set of personal construction projects that I've undertaken. It was …

So, my friend Carol has this theory that you truly begin your middle aged life once you become thirty three and a third. She's based this on the idea that if we live to be ~100 years old (yea right), the first third of your life is from 0 to 33.3 years old, the second (middle) third is until you're 66.6 years old, and so on...

She totally buys into this thing too. Like she'll even make you a 33.3, middle aged narwhal birthday cake if you're lucky like my buddy, Nick.

So anyway, with that said, Carol tells me that today marks my 33.3 year old birthday... and by her standards, I'm now officially middle aged.

And to be honest, even without this incredibly important milestone, I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

Over the past few …

So, most of you know that in our house, we celebrate birthmonths rather than birthdays... and now that my 27th birthday month is officially over, I figured it's safe to go ahead and blog about what's been up.

My actual birthday is August 5th, however this year it officially started June 22, haha. See, if you know my wife, you'll know that she absolutely sucks at keeping secrets and hiding gifts. She gets so damn excited about the gift that you pretty much get it immediately - and if not, she'll ask you every day if you want to open your present.

So, that said, on June 22nd, Kari pulled into the driveway from Target and immediately handed me a Nintendo Wii. Happy (early) birthday! haha.

I'm pretty stoked to finally have a Wii, …

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 …

Ahhh, another weekend well spent in my home away from home. I love how comfortable I'm getting with Chicago. It's quite nice.

This time we visited the city for 2 milestone events - Vic's college graduation and Kari's 25th birthday. Thursday was Vic's ceremony, which ruled. They had 30 graduates so it was only like 40 minutes, haha. Plus Vic gave me a rose. We celebrated with much Giordano's.

Friday, Kari's B-day - ridiculous. We started the day out right with some mad omelettes at ihop. Then we met up with Kari's dad to shop around Michigan Avenue, etc. Kari got lots of clothes, we all got new Levi's, I got this insane mashup by Girl Talk, etc. We then hung out at a Viand for a second before meeting everyone at Sushi Wabi. …

Welp, as most of you know, Nathan, Chuck, and I went up to Minneapolis this weekend, which started out as a birthday bash for Josh, but ended up being a celebration of all our birthdays. Mine's in August... Nathan's is in June, and Chuck's is in November, haha.

On the way, we ended up making a last minute pitstop into Clear Lake to pick up Monica and drop her off at her BF's place just outside of the cities.

We got to our hotel around 9ish, which was in a pretty rough part of downtown - greyhound station, dudes getting handcuffed, etc. Actually we saw people getting cuffed on 3 separate occasions right in front of our building, haha.

So, we quickly threw our stuff in the room and walked straight to Gluek's bar. As soon as we …

What an insane birthday. Seriously. And now that my life is 1/3 over, my insurance should go down now, ha. W00t.

Ok. Thursday, kari and I went to my parents' house for pizza, hanging out, etc.

Friday morning, we met my grandparents for breakfast, then headed into chicago for lollapalooza - my birthday present from kari. First we got the hotel - on the 37th floor of the grand Marriott on Michigan ave - my birthday present from jeff. Then we headed to lollapalooza, checked out the grounds, met up with the DSM peeps, and ended friday's fest with Ween. What a live show - incredible.

Later, we all met up @ Sushi Wabi for my bday dinner, which was amazing as usual.

After dinner we went to Sonotheque to see lady sovereign play. …

blog, blog, blog. i hate not having time to blog, cause then i have to write these really long articles about a billion things - then everyone is all like, "that is long, i'm not reading that." it really bugs me when people don't blog. i like to know what's up, and then i don't do it - stupid.

so yeah. last weekend kari's dad came down for his 50th birthday. the plan was originally to see some sweet aerosmith and cheap trick, but steven tyler apparently turned into a pansy all of a sudden, haha. stupid 60 year old rockers... always getting weak. instead we just did the normal thing, ate lots, made beer, went out, etc. it was a good time though. we toured a dude's insane homebrew setup and learned quite a bit.

during that …

Whoops, I forgot that I have a web site to write on. A lot has happened lately - tons of wedding planning, Kari had a birthday, Aaron, got married, and I've been having fun.

We ate a lot of nice food for Kari's birthday, I got her a K2 Skyla snowboard, and a Tiffany bracelet. I'm excited to snowboard with her. Maybe she will be better at that than inline skating, haha.

We also went to Aaron's wedding in Canton. It was a ton of fun, we goofed around alot, you know. plus they had the sweetest little towny bar next to our hotel called Josie B's. We had a blast there - Ben rules (he even gave us a penguin sign). Other than that, it was pretty weird being in a wedding 2 weeks before ours. It definitely got a lot of things going …

This weekend was pretty laid back but full of awesome food. Friday, we went to Sage with Nick and Nicole for Kari's little pre-birthday celebration. I love that place. We've gotten the same waitress everytime we've gone there and she rules - really knows her stuff. After that we stopped by the Cab of course.

Saturday I cleaned, worked on videos/web dev, stopped by Trent's house, then Kari's parents came over. Her dad and I went to buy a 4g iPod Nano, but apparently they sent all the 4gigs back to get better screens, heh. The advertisements don't really show how small they are... because all the advertisements are HUGE. But their size is pretty incredible. Too bad they are only 4gb. After iPod searching, we went to dinner at Bis…

So this weekend was nice, lots happened. Thursday I met some buddies at Rock Bottom, then went out to DMMC's True to the Art show. It was really good, probably the best Hip Hop show I've been to in Des Moines. Everyone had really good sets and there were 175+ people there - big for hip hop in Des Moines. Aeon Grey and Really Real had a great set. Gai Den was a little off, but still good. The Gutter Bros (Brandon J Atlas and Shaoo Zulu) were definitely decent. Rebel's Advocate (the guys whose music video I'm working on) were awesome. I recorded most of the show so hopefully video will be available on their respective sites soon.

Friday nothing really happened, just cleaning, hanging out, and Simpson's.

Then Saturday I tanned …

Man, San Antonio was pretty nuts... not nuts like off the chain, but nuts like lots happened. Kari and I drove down Friday morning (my birthday) to get to our hotel and Bre'anna's wedding rehearsal. It was obviously incredibly boring, but definitely necessary. Weddings are such a production. Especially in this mega-church. If it werent for the decorations on stage, you wouldn't know this place was a church - more like an auditorium of some sort. This was a huge huge complex. I think the place held 4,000 people. After the rehearsal was the rehearsal dinner where we ate, people gave toasts, and people cried. It was pretty funny, Chris's family had like 7 people toast, our side had 1, haha, we rule. After diner, Kari and I went out …

Man, things are crazy. Thursday was Kevi's birthday so of course we went to Drink to celebrate. Then Friday Kari's parents came into town to buy a truck. They took us to 801 Grand to celebrate my bday. It ruled so much. We ate the best.

Saturday was 515 Alive. We went down early to see Luke, Gai Den, and other hip hop acts. Then I had to come home to meet my parents so they could stay the night on their way to Texas. We hung out a bit, opened presents, etc. After I put them to bed Kari and I went back down to 515 Alive just in time to catch the end of Rukkus' set and Ming + FS. All good things.

Sunday we had a little party at the Cab for my upcoming birthday. The whole place was ours, Larry worked it, it was awesome. …

Ok, so as everyone has probably heard 100 times, my birthday is being stolen by my sister's wedding, which is sweet. However, Kari is doing a pretty freakin awesome job of making up for it. Last night she took me to Tony Hawk's Boom Boom Huck Jam. First of all Wells Fargo Arena just opened Tuesday, so this was the first event to come there... plus Kari got us 3rd row seats, basically right in the half pipe. Moto-X guys were jumping over our heads, etc. It ruled so much.

The only downside to our seats was that we couldnt quite see the 30 foot drop in and 20 foot quarter pipe that were on the outsides of the halfpipe. Plus we were so close that the safety net was messing with my camera focus... Whatever though, they had 4 screens …

This weekend was pretty unproductive, but definitely had some good times. Friday I drove out to Rich's for his birthday, and to see Tech N9ne of course. It was nice to see everyone, mitch, rankin, ben (somehow there are never pics of ben), and tons of other peeps that I don't really know that well.

So first was Tech N9ne at Quad City Live. We got in free because apparently we knew someone that did some work for the owners. So yeah, the show was crazy in more ways than 1. As always Tech N9ne was awesome. He is seriously one of the most insane rappers ever. So much talent, so little props. I love his shows. It's also nice to see Kutt Calhoun and Krizz Kalico again. But probably the most insane part of the show is this... I used …

Yeah so I haven't really written in a couple weeks - things have been crazy. Everyone's birthday is now so a lot of partying has been done. And outside of partying I've been working on the shed. I'm sort of getting tired of building it. Stupid shed. It's gonna rule to have a clean garage though.

Anyway. Yesterday I was at Home Depot getting some door hardware and Harper IMs my sidekick while I'm leaving...

Harper: dude. i wish you were a nerd again.
Me: haha
Harper: you are no fun when you are grown up
Me: dude, i just ordered a pocket bike and i'm aiming while driving.
Me: so stfu.
Harper: hahahaha.
Harper: word. don't die

See the friends I have to deal with? So later yesterday, I realized I needed some more …

omg. I'm so busy, it's retarded. Like, it is seriously bringing me down like mad... and now that all my friends are moving here/visiting, it makes it even harder. For the next 3 weeks I'm not hanging out with anyone, haha. So don't ask! (except when I go to Mt Vernon and Chicago)

So besides that, this weekend ruled. Thursday I went to a show at Vaudeville. Luke (aeon Grey) rapped, Soulcrate was awesome, and RSK was not good... well at least their DJ wasn't.

Josh was in town this weekend, so Friday we all met a Champps for a couple drinks, then Nathan, Chuck, Josh, and I ran around Ankeny, saw some band that was good at Roadhouse. We got stopped by cops cause josh tried to wiggle a sign out while we were running past it, …

Last Friday started out so so lame, but then after driving to Ames and Mt Vernon, things got much more fun. First of all we brought Elizabeth a birthday cake with a little chub in it. Then we all celebrated her birthday. It was fun, I drank ecto cooler out of a boot and met Elizabeth's "brother" John, who was awesome. Later we ran around town, saw friends, goofed off, hung out with a spanish professor, etc. Later, I found Matt in his bed, and then I climbed into another random guy's bed... haha

The next day, we met Jeff at Lincoln Cafe, and then went to Theta formal in Waterloo. I wore a bright shirt, a wide tie, and some bling, RULE. Jon and I hung out more, Elizabeth wore a poncho-in-a-football, people wrestled, and of course g…

This weekend was supposed to be so chill, but then all of a sudden everything happened. I guess it was still pretty laid back, but a lot of visiting happened. I love visiting.

Friday it was my cousin Gabe's 11th birthday. We met them at the Cheesecake Factory, which was different and better than I had planned. Gabe's pot pie was not small. After dinner, Nick and Nicole came over to hang out. Plus Ben happened to be in town so he hung out also. I wish I was going to the Psychopathic All-stars show this week. The combination of work with living in Iowa kills my roxtar aspirations.

Saturday after marriage counseling I started building a new box to grind on (hehehehehehehe). Then Zach showed up to help me finish. It is such a …

So the week of watching my cousins is finally over. I've learned that I will not be ready for kids in a long long time. I think I'll just stick with pets. At least the only thing that got broken was my basement handrail.

Saturday we had a party for Nick at my house where we tied lots of knots, played poker, hung out, etc. There wasnt as many people as I planned, but it was still fun. Kevi and Stacy drove up for the night. Nicole's brother and his friend came - cool guys. Cedric, Nehru, MH, Chuck, Nathan, and Jared also stopped by.

Besides that, Kevi decorated, Ninja slept, we hung teddy bears, and Nicole stayed sober. It was a low-key, fun night.

Sunday, Kevi and I decided to film Eternal Apprehension 2. It is so so gay …