Halloween

Yesterday was my first real shift working valet downtown. I was positioned at Fogo de Chao which is the easiest restaurant in the city center because it's two right turns into and out of the garage. It went well. I got to see some pretty wild costumes of patrons walking down the street. A few of the honorable mentions are as follows: a group of Alice in Wonderland, a group of Super Mario Brothers, and despite the cold weather there were many people walking around in sandals (and I don't think they were in costume).

After work I went to a costume party hosted by friends Treye and Jen. If you don't have Direct TV, you may not be as familiar with this commercial, but I see it all the time so I went as the well-to-do Russian Direct TV customer. Here is a link to the commercial in case you haven't seen it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjWYbcbpiWA I got components of my costume from Goodwill which now actually promotes their selection of items for Halloween. They had decorations (which I think were new) and signs that said something to the effect of Halloween headquarters. I thought it was weird.

This morning our pastor explained the history of the holiday: It began as All Saints Day, which we still celebrate, to honor those saints who had gone before us or were serving around us. So the day before or the eve of All Saints Day became known as All Hallows Eve to honor all of the Saints, known and unknown. The word Hallows is rooted in the word Holy or Hallowed and that is how Halloween is derived.

So Happy Halloween and Happy All Saints Day! Anybody else getting discounted candy directly from the store tomorrow?

I got a new phone!

Here's a copy of the event I put on Facebook. I thought it would make a good blog post:

I got a new phone, but don't worry, I still have your number, and I didn't change my number either. But if I didn't have your number before, then I still don't have it. If you would like me to have it, feel free to send it to me. My number is on my profile. Please txt me your number and include your name and I will add you to my contacts. Don't write it on my Facebook wall. That's just annoying. Then I have to manually enter it into my phone. And if I have to do that then there's a good chance you won't make it into my contacts list at all.

You're probably interested in why I got a new phone. No I didn't leave it in an airplane bin. I didn't forget it at the bar or drop it in the toilet. I didn't step on it, throw it or run it over with my car. It didn't go through the wash or fall into a bucket of paint (Amanda). I just decided I didn't want to have to charge my phone after every call I made. US Cellular doesn't have a market in the Twin Cities so my phone was always looking for a home tower.

So I went with Sprint. Got a pretty simple phone. Don't need it to do anything more than call and txt, but it does have more capability if I change my mind in the future. I have nights and weekends from 7pm to 7am and unlimited messaging for those of you who are considerate callers/txt'ers. :D

I appreciate you taking the time to read this meaningless event description. I just wanted you to know that I got a new phone. Thanks and feel free to attend!

Yesterday was a good day...

1. It was Friday!

2. I bought new shoes for work. Regional Elite requires all black shoes with their new uniform so I was preparing for that change that takes place at the beginning of next year. My new part time job as a valet also requires black shoes.


3. I found a book at work on Thursday on the topic of CSS. It's a language that defines the styles on a particular web page so that you don't have to do it at the beginning of every paragraph. It keeps the content area of your document cleaner because you tell it what to look like at the top of the code. I skimmed through the book at work yesterday and started taking notes on the stuff I didn't understand or wanted to experiment After a co-worker said no one has touched the book in over a year, I decided to take it home and play around with some of the examples. I may even try to clean up the airport's website a little bit.


4. They Yankees are out of contention for the World Series compliments of the Rangers. I watched a few games of the ALCS, but did not last night.

5. I found a $5 bill on an aircraft I was searching. It was one of the required searches I had to do, but ops also called me to do a "special grooming". Expecting the worst, I brought a broom and bucket, "barf gel" and air freshener. When I got there, all I found were some crumbled pretzels. I swept them up and continued my search. About halfway through I found my biggest "tip" ever.

I was going to see if I could get to 10 reasons but I think 5 is sufficient. Today will be a somewhat of a lazy day for me. I'm about to play around with the CSS. The Hawks take on Wisconsin at 2:30. Patric's dad and grandpa flew up this morning to help Patric put a new walk-in closet in the master bedroom. They will be framing out the area above the garage. I'll be taking pictures.

UD Homecoming 2010

I decided on Thursday evening of this week to make the trip to Dubuque for a few of this year's homecoming festivities and to catch up with several of my friends that I hadn't seen in a while. I didn't feel like driving the 5 hours each way and I was anxious to begin using my flight benefits again, but since there's no direct service between MSP and DBQ, I decided to fly into the Quad Cities Airport and rent a car. Moline is probably the closest airport besides Cedar Rapids and Waterloo, but they also had the best deal on car rentals. Cedar Rapids cars were way over priced (because that location owns their own cars) and the flight to Waterloo arrived much later and that location had limited hours.
My plan was to fly down on the 7:30 flight on Friday evening after work. There were only a couple seats left, but I decided to chance it. When I got the gate to request my seat, the gate agents was about to assign my seat when someone else got rebooked and took the seat out from under my nose. I was so frustrated because the lady who took my seat was sitting right next to me and I overheard her entire conversation about how she was supposed to go into Cedar Rapids. So I returned home and slept in til 7am the next morning. The earliest flight to Moline was at 10am and I had no problem getting on since there were only 8 other passengers listed.
My rental turned out to be quite a treat. I had reserved a compact car and the agent was about give me a PT Cruiser (ugh, kill me now!) but when I mentioned that I had previously worked at the Avis in Dubuque, he hooked me up with a dark blue Sebring for the price of the compact car. (I forgot to take a picture so a stock photo will have to suffice.)

It had leather seats and an aux input for me to plug my iPod into. I felt pretty swanky showing up to homecoming in this.
I went out with a friend to watch the Iowa football game. I put my name in a drawing and won a hat! After the third quarter we left to catch the second half of the UD football game. When we arrived the Spartans were tied with the Simpson Storm at 7 points a piece. I spent more time shaking hands and catching up with former constituents and classmates than I actually did watching the game. Before I knew it the Spartans had scored 28 unanswered points and the third quarter had come to a close. Wanting to maximize my time with everyone I decided to hit the road and meet up with my former roommate Tad and his wife (who is expecting, Dec 17). From there I met up with Trent and Stacey (who graciously offered me their couch to crash on). I picked them up and we went to drive past their new duplex on the west end of town. They will be expanding their living space quite a bit when they move in next month.
It was a good trip, but way too short. I wish I had more time to spend with each friend. I'm sure they would all agree our time was rushed. Hopefully next year I'll have the foresight to plan ahead more so that I can make an extended weekend of it.

October News

I really shouldn't wait to blog until I get bored or have nothing better to do, but I do. I always seem to find something that requires less effort. I've probably said this before, but my goal is to write every week so that the current events don't pile up and become a heaping mount of archaic tidings. Sometimes I struggle to find something that's interesting enough to share every week. The reason for delay on this report is that I was waiting for the news to be finalized. So, on we go with the meat and potatoes...
The big news is that I returned to work this week. Everyone was excited to see me again and it felt good to be back. Then I realized that it was still work and I wished that I could go back to being lazy and playing video games all day long.
I continue to go to physical therapy once a week and do strengthening exercises daily at home. My shoulder still feels weak and the numbness varies in location and intensity.
This week has also brought challenges in the form of wireless network troubleshooting. With the addition of two more computers and a wireless gaming adapter (for Xbox) to the network, things have become a little complicated. There must some sort of conflict because we've had problems connecting sometimes with the router and sometimes with the modem. The service has been unreliable but I can't tell if Qwest entirely to blame. I've spent several hours this week reconfiguring the network to work out the bugs, but it's like playing horseshoes (or bocce ball): just get it close and hope for the best.
This weekend I'll try to enjoy my three days off and be ready to head back to work on Tuesday. I have physical therapy on Monday and another followup with my orthopedist on Wednesday. The Hawkeyes have a bye this week and the Bears, well they need one after that pathetic performance against the Giants last week. However, they travel to Carolina to take on the Panthers and the Vikings will play Monday night against the Jets. Hopefully Randy Moss will give the Viking offense what they need for the remainder of the season without being a distraction to the team.
That's all for this edition. Since I don't have any pictures to include with this post, I leave you with this video of the badminton championships. The volleys don't start to improve until about 55 seconds so feel free to skip ahead.