Daily Life
The surprise birthday party!
Like a number of days lately, I have been off from work. I had a productive day. I started the morning off by working on my blog for an hour. Then I had a rigid schedule of alternating studying and following up on different tasks. I followed up on some freelance work, and I also checked in on my stupid laptop with HP. They didn’t pick up:(
Not a week ago, the chair on my nice office chair broke off. I called and emailed the company, they are on the west coast, so the phone call didn’t work. Hopefully the email will.
Later on I ran an errand to the vacuum store just up the road to drop ours off to be looked at. Turns out I didn’t something with it I shouldn’t have that may have not damaged it permanently, but it will need a tweak. That’s fine, we’ve never even had this hand me down looked at, and it looks like a hunk of junk. They are going to fix the bag door, and work on a better system for storing the cord.
By the time I got back, I had a little bit of time to study and then I went and lifted with Dave.
Onto the big event for the night. This is the story. The three girls(Sarah, Kim and Kate) originally had this big scheme. Brian turned 30, Wes will turn 30 in a month, and I was right in the middle, not turning 30:)
The idea was, throw the two of them off, by giving them a surprise birthday party at the Rothe’s. Or, that is what I heard the plan was. I wasn’t supposed to hear that at all, actually. Sarah said Kate sort of let it slip, it was supposed to be for all of us. Naturally, I was pretty bummed about that. In my mind, the party wasn’t at all for me anymore.
Wes and Kate got to our house after work, and from what I was told, Brian was supposed to show up, and the three guys were supposed to leave and have drinks or something. (The girls cover was a “jewelry party”, the whole story had quite a few holes, but it all ended well.) Brian never came, and I just assumed that the girls wanted us to leave, so Wes and I headed just down the road to try out some of the “local” bars.
We stayed at the first one for about 5 minutes, with country music blaring, a guy and what looked like another guy making out, and some other interesting characters it was a little too much “local” flavor for the both of us. The second bar / restaurant was better and we stayed there until about 7:45.
I figured Wes had it all worked out before we left, and when we got back I thought it would be obvious, but he was still surprised. We had a good crowd, 20 or so people, the usual folks from church and another 6-8 of Brian’s high school friends and Wes and Kate’s neighbors. Brian ended up having to work late, and was under the impression the surprise was for me, so he was waiting for us to come back when he saw some of his buddies show up, and then he was surprised. Just not in the overwhelming instantaneous fashion.
Party was great, people stayed a long time. The people we didn’t know as well stayed until probably 11, and the core group hung out and chatted until after midnight. The guys were outside, joking and laughing by the rip-roaring fire, the girls inside on the couches laughing at the guys.
It was a great party, and the arcade games got some good use, maybe 45 minutes or so I got to show off the Jr. Pac-man and people played Pengo on the new 96 in 1 Pac-man kit that I installed last night.
Great night. Wish I could have been part of the surprise…but maybe next year.
On the road home again
I got to spend some time with Justin in the morning before they went to church. We watched another couple episodes of Scrubs, we said our goodbyes, and I waited for Sarah to return from Grand Haven to get me. I had some breakfast, watched a few more episodes, and then just before noon we were on the road.
The trip was long and arduous as usual. It didn’t help that we got pulled over, but nothing came of it fortunately.
We got back to the Indianapolis area just a touch before 4. I was going to stop at a friend’s house on the northside, he had a switching power supply he was going to give me. We waited for awhile and listened to the beginning of the Colts game before I figured out that I hadn’t communicated as well as I thought I had and the friend wouldn’t be back home for awhile. So we left.
I thought for sure that Indianapolis was going to beat the Patriots yet again. We were up 20-10 at the half, Tom Brady looked sloppy, and our running game looked awesome. But the much maligned Colts Achilles heel is our inability this year to stop the return. The Patriots held us back in our territory a couple of times forcing a number of kicks they returned for great field position. Tom Brady was intercepted twice in the game, but in the end, they won it 24-20. We had great defense for most of the game, but our passing game just wasn’t up to snuff without Marvin Harrison. Manning did good, he threw one interception, but looked poised for the most part, as long as the defense kept him safe.
We knew one team would leave with their first loss of the season (Patriots 8-0, Colts 7-0). Too bad it had to be the Colts.
There wasn’t much left for us the rest of the night after that. I wasn’t feeling motivated, so I just watched my cartoons and did a couple little things on the computer before calling it a night. At least I am not going to work tomorrow. I feel bad for Sarah, after such a short weekend she was back at it on Monday.
U of M vs. Michigan State Football
The big game was a big part of the point of going to Allendale, Michigan this weekend to see Justin and Jennifer. University of Michigan vs. Michigan State game is a time honored rivalry between two college football teams dating back 100 years. They invited friends from both sides to cheer on their school of alliegence, so we knew today had the potential to be interesting. But before I get ahead of myself.
In the morning Justin and I watched a couple more episodes of Scrubs until the pool at GVSU was open. At just before 11 we headed out, Gary Goosen drove, it’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen him. It will be like old times in high school.
I was really looking forward to getting back into the pool. It has been quite awhile, if I have even done freestyle since we have moved to Indianapolis at all. But it wasn’t meant to be. We got onto the pool deck and the coach told us that they had a meet today. We could swim for 10-15 minutes if we wanted, but they we had to head out.
So, we managed to get into the gym so I did some lifting and the other two did some stomach work and whatnot.
When we got back, Justin and I watched a couple more episodes before the game, we’re moving right through them. The game was to start at 3:30, and people started showing up around 2:30.
It was a fun evening. They had an amazing amount of people there, all close friends. That was really cool for them, to see those people show up that the have been building relationships with. When they had their house warming party, they had a ton of people show up, but there were a good portion that weren’t close friends, just people from work.
Sarah came back from Grand Haven with all sorts of news from her fun day with the dog and both of our parents. She fixed Nokes collar, took the dogs to the beach, made carmel corn, and did some shopping.
The game was pretty pathetic on both ends. State had a ton of penalties, and all Chad Henne did was air out a whole bunch of Hail Mary’s and hoped Mario Manningham caught them. The percentages were there for long passes to possibility of catches, so we were bound to get a few and in the end Michigan won the game 27-23. The best part of the game was possibly when the cameras showed Henne running out. He did this little jump to hit the field goal pole, and totally bit it face first. It was awesome.
People left pretty soon after the game was done. About half of us stayed around, had some more beer, started up a fire and had some smores. Everyone called it a night pretty earlier, most people crashing around 10. Sarah left at that point too, knowing that Nokes would need some attention before bed. I was wide awake until midnight. Justin and I got in a few more episodes together, and then I watched a few on my own before hitting the sack.
The joys of driving US31 to Michigan
I finished off my week with three days off. They were productive days for sure, it is always great for me to be at home, get to things that I never seem to have time for during the week, and reach a certain level of satisfying productivity.
I have been able to spend some time in working on the blog this week, getting some advertising setup and getting some more of that great content added. Not to mention add some reciprocal linking which should help get the site higher in the rankings and bring in more revenue as well. This morning I tried to figure out what to post in the arcade section, so I worked on some vector stuff.
I was actually killing a little time. It was freezing outside, and I knew that today was our day off from the gym so that meant I needed to take Noksie on a walk. It wasn’t that much warmer when I went out around 10. It was the best walk I have had with him in recent memory. Granted, he is a very good dog and obedient in general. But today he just seemed to heel the whole walk and not pull me in some odd direction with all of his nearly 70 lb might.
On the walk I had a lot of time to think, and when I got back I wrote down those thoughts concerning my future in the rough form of a plan.
Then I worked on a layout for a potential client, which was actually really fun. It was a gift for a part that he will be giving me for an arcade game on Sunday.
Soon after it was time to get things ready around the house. I took care of some of the small things I knew Sarah would want done and put in a pizza for a late lunch / early dinner.
Sarah had a half day in service, so that meant we should be able to leave the house at a reasonable time. She got home at 3:30, and most everything was ready to go but load up the car. We loaded Nokes up, got some gas, and we were on our way.
Or so I thought. Driving up US31 through Indiana is always like a never ending screeching child. It’s tries your patience until you feel like you’re about to break and you have finally made it to Michigan. I knew we would hit rush hour traffic by Carmel because of the time, but today was particularly bad up north of Westfield. So we jogged over to 421 and went north parallel to US31. It was a nice drive. But by the time we actually arrived, with a quick stop to let the dog eat and fill up a tire, our total travel time was somewhere close to five and a half hours.
Sarah couldn’t stay, she was going back to her parents house. She dropped me off, said a quick hello, and headed out. We knew that Nokes would probably be crazy the rest of the night and the earlier she could get over to the Chapman’s the better.
Justin and I didn’t do much, we watched about 4-5 episodes of Scrubs and then hit the sack.
Colts vs. Panthers and Study Study
After church I got in a half hour of studying. Sarah made up some cookies, and we headed off the Christy’s house to watch the Colts game. We had been invited before, but hadn’t been able to attend. Lori and Kenny were going to be there, we’d have great snack food, and it would be a good time all around. They have a huge tv, something like 60″, so it was quite the upgrade from our house.
Colts won by quite a bit after a touch of a slow start.
When we got back, I did a small meeting with a freecycle person, played a little Jr. Pac-man, then got to studying. I studied right through until about 8:30 when I finally was finished with my two and a half hours for the day.
Didn’t do anything else for the rest of the night other than watch the second disc of Season 4 of Scrubs so I could return that as my last outstanding Blockbuster disc.
Board Cutting, Studying and Ocktoberfest
Paul was supposed to be over at 10 am to help me cut out a board to mount a monitor in the Tetris. He was on time on the dot.
I took us about an hour and a half, with all of the “try it again’s”, putting the board in the machine, and then putting the heavy old monitor through the opening to make sure it would fit. A lot of times we had to shave parts down, most of the extra cuts were to accommodate the screws on the sides of the monitor frame.
After Paul left, Sarah and I took Nokes on a walk. (Non Lifting day :)) We had a quick lunch when we got back and then started my day of focus. I studied for a good part of the day, two and a half hours to be exact. I would study for an hour and then take a break. An hour on, 20-30 minutes off. For breaks I would watch Scrubs, or play some Jr. Pac-man. I even chatted with Chris for a little while.
Sarah spent the day cleaning. She organized stuff in the family room, cleaned up the kitchen, did laundry, and kept reading the Harry Potter book. She is getting closer, I would say she is about half of the way through it, and I believe this is the last book. At about 4 pm she went out to the store to do some shipping, and get some food to make for tonight’s party. She didn’t get back until close to 6, apparently she had some problems. We worked together to try to get the cheesy potatoes made. The Revive part was at 6:30, but we didn’t get there until almost 8 pm I think.
Turnout was good for the event, mostly the regular crowd except for Emily who was home with her friend Sean for the weekend. She got a new car and we checked that out. But about half way into the party there was a mass exodus of about 5-6 people. The rest of us played a game of hearts and had a laugh until just before 11 when we all headed home.
I tried to watch some of the Rockies game when I got home. I saw Matt Holliday hit a 3-run homer that put Colorado within 1 run, but fell asleep and missed the whooping that Boston put on in the later innings.
Simpsonize Me – Sarah Rothe
I never did post this, and saw it on my desktop this morning so I thought I would.
Here is Sarah’s version of herself that she did in August on the Simpsonize Me website. The dog is there only because we have a dog, you don’t really get choices with that. Otherwise, the rendition didn’t come out all that close. There may be some small features that are the same, but mine looks a lot closer that is for sure. My mom had a similar experience, I wonder if it truly was the women that had a harder time finding matches.
