| I only filled out one bracket this year in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) anomie22's contest, found here.
I'm tied for 10th place out of 84 brackets. I have 13 of 16 Sweet 16 teams left and ALL eight Elite Eight. Next Thursday and Friday will really make or break my bracket, along with a lot of others I'm sure. But, I feel like I'm in pretty good shape. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| That's what I thought when I arrived home tonight. The gate to the side yard was open and our ~7 foot tall fence looked like a tree had fallen on it. Only, there is no tree. It had been bent down so the top part of one section was about 18" from the ground with a kink in the tubing. The chain link part was creased about a foot from the ground, as if something heavy had landed on it and it had been broken off from one of the support poles. The latch on the gate was bent, as if someone had forced it open without moving the latch up. Amy arrived home a few minutes later and was equally puzzled.
Finally, we went inside and Amy discovered a note taped to the front door.
Yeah, that explains a lot. Tomorrow, Amy's going to call and find out if they caught the person and who is going to pay to fix our fence. I'll try to get some photos as well. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| I'm pretty sure it's been around awhile, but I can't get enough of the David Lee Roth Soundboard:
http://www.thetyser.com/
I play with it everyday and it's STILL hilarious! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I posted a bunch of the best photos from 2008 over at www.pedalgr.com.
Also, I moved the blog so you no longer get that annoying forwarding message. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Last night I spent a 3 hours non-stop working my ass off. The result? A 3 door, 3 room snow fort that could fit at least 10 people pretty comfortably. I just hope it survives until our party Friday night. Supposed to reach almost 50 on Saturday, so it'll probably collapse then. :/ | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| We did a lot today, but it didn't feel rushed and it was perfect weather and an awesome day.
We:
-woke up late, around 10am.
-walked through the neighborhood cemetery, the oldest in the city, for the first time.
-walked to the West Fulton business district and visited a bunch of antique shops
-went to cut down our gigantic Christmas tree, our now traditional blue spruce, for $18.
-somehow managed to get the thing home (it was almost as big as our car! hahaha)
-somehow managed to stuff it through the front door and get it vertical with friendly neighbor Tim's help.
-went to see Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist at the 2nd run theater.
-cleaned the kitchen!
When I say this tree is huge...it's frickin' huge! The base of the trunk is about 5 1/2" in diameter. I had to cut off a foot so that it would fit inside our 9 1/2' ceilings. And it must be at least 8 feet wide at the bottom. When we were cutting it down, it didn't seem that much bigger than last year's tree. But, then when I had to get help to lift it onto the car and it was spilling over the sides...that's when we realized that maybe it was a bit TOO big.
Tomorrow we get to decorate it, but we're worried we won't have enough lights! It will still be wonderful though! We'll figure it out. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| And this video freakin' kicks ass!
I hope they continue to tour next summer. They are currently in South America, then in January they are traveling to Europe, spending all of February in the UK, before heading to Scandinavia and ending in Moscow on my birthday. Anyone want to send me to Russia for my birthday? :) If I were rich I just might become a Reel Big Fish groupie and follow them around Europe. haha. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| PedalGR - End of Year PARTY! (and ride) PedalGR, meeting at 6:30pm on Wednesday, 9/17/08 at Founder’s Brewing Company, 235 Grandville Ave SW. It’s September. The air is getting crisp, the darkness is coming way too fast, and the first season of PedalGR must come to an end. FEAR NOT! We will be going out in style! After a short 7.5 mile “Bridge Pedal,” in which we will cross the Grand River 6 times, we will have a PARTY at Founders, the MOST awesome place to party in Grand Rapids. Plus, we just might have a couple of crazy posed photos on the bridges and the Project X earth sculpture! Riders will get free appetizers and the absolute coolest bicycle photo cake that Grand Rapids has EVER seen! Rumors of ice cream have been swirling as well. Founders Brewing Company, as our generous host of these rides all year (and the only place in the city with enough convenient bicycle parking), has provided great prizes that some lucky bicyclists will be heading home with. The free food is being provided by the Rapid Wheelmen Bicycle Club, sponsors of great weekly rides and bicycle tours all over the Grand Rapids area. Need to Know: - This is a no-drop ride. Nobody in the group will be left behind.
- Ride is ONLY 7.5 miles and should take approximately 60 minutes so we can get to the PARTY!!!
- Water is recommended.
- HELMETS ARE REQUIRED on Rapid Wheelmen Club rides.
- We will try to leave right at 6:30 to maximize our daylight. Please plan to arrive a few minutes early.
- Don’t forget to dress appropriately - long sleeves may be necessary if it’s cool outside.
A few highlights include: - Downtown YMCA
- Basilica of St. Adalbert (aka, the big green dome you can see from I-196)
- Historic 6th St Bridge
- Grand Rapids Project X earth sculpture (the lone hill, but it’s a doozy)
- Belknap Hill I-196 dowtown overlook
- Michigan St. Medical Hill, including the new Lemmon-Holten Cancer Pavilion and the currently under construction DeVos Children’s Hospital and MSU Medical School
- Ah-Nab-Awen Park and Gerald R. Ford Museum and Burial Ground
- Rosa Parks Circle and Monroe Center
I really want to thank everyone who has come out for a PedalGR ride. If you haven’t, you’re missing out! But you can still come to this last ride, and there’s always next year! I also want to specifically thank Steve Faber of Newberry Place, Kristin Tindall of Blandford Nature Center, Suzanne Schulz and Clare Wade with the City of Grand Rapids, Nate Versluis of Versluis Orchards (mouthwatering PEACHES!), Eric Bouwens for sponsoring our free tacos at Tacos El Moroleon, and Norma Jansma and Lois Huisman of Hillcrest Community Gardens. All of these people helped me to make PedalGR even more interesting and helped the riders learn a little bit more about this great city. When I started this, I wasn’t sure what to expect or what it was going to become, but I’ve had a blast, met tons of great new people, and seen a lot of the city I never knew existed.
More info at: http://www.pedalgr.com
| | comments: Leave a comment |
| Tomorrow night I'm going to see classical music superstar violinist, Joshua Bell. I'm excited.
Then I go on my trip. So much to do before then. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I just ordered the cake for my PedalGR party on 9/17.
It will have this printed on it:
Love that picture! (Thanks to my lovely wife for thinking of doing a group picture there)
We're also going to have prizes donated by Founders Brewing company, where the ride is held. It's going to be great! I'm hoping I can turnout 50 people with the prizes and the free food. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Thank you Hurricane Gustav for bringing rain to my thirsty, thirsty lawn and garden. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| - Took my 14 month old niece for a 45 minute bicycle ride
- Rode to one of my favorite cafes, Cherie Inn, for lunch
- Rode to the Sunday Artists' Market
- Rode to the Polish Harvest Festival at Calder plaza downtown
- Rode to AJs in Comstock Park where I kicked Amy's ass in mini golf (we each had one hole in one, but mine was much better :) ).
Amy and I spent a lot of time on the tandem today and it was awesome! I want every Sunday to be like this! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Well, it's set and I'm so excited!
I'll be taking the train from GR to Chicago on the morning of 9/10 for only $15 as I got a Weekly Special fare. I'll arrive around 10:30a and spend the whole day in Chi-town. Not sure what I'm going to do yet. The White Sox are in town and tickets can be had for cheap on StubHub. Or perhaps I'll finally go to the Science and Industry Museum like I've been meaning to for the past 10 years. Hmmm...
Anyhow, not sure if my cousin Dan will have Wednesday off from work to hang out with me. Thursday morning we will head on the train to St. Louis. I was able to get Weekly Special tickets for only $19.50! Not a huge savings off the regular $23 price, but both are a great deal! We'll arrive in St. Louis at 3:00p and have tickets to the 7:15 Cubs vs. Cardinals game at the new Busch Stadium (purchased through StubHub and printed straight from my printer tonight). I'm a little late paying up on my "best man" present to Dan, a ticket to a Cardinals game at their new stadium. Better late than never. :)
Friday and Saturday will be spent seeing St. Louis. A good portion of one of those days will be at the City Museum climbing all over and through everything they have to see and do. I'm so excited and I've heard great things about the place. Other possible sites include the zoo and a stadium tour. I'm going to look into finding us some loaner bicycles and also a place to stay through Couchsurfing.
Early Sunday morning we take the train back to Chicago and if it's not ridiculously late, we might have a few hours before my train returns to Grand Rapids. The ticket back on Sunday is $40, because Fridays and Sundays get the most traffic on the Pere Marquette route. But, I'll only be spending $97.50 round trip to get to St. Louis and back. That's only $3 more than Greyhound! Good deal!
I'm SOOOO excited! I'm sad I have to leave Amy at home, and she's not terribly happy because I'm leaving her here with the dogs while I go on vacation and there was a bicycle ride we were going to do that weekend, but it was the only time left that the baseball schedule and my work schedule worked out.
EXCITED!!!! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| These are the showtimes for Friday:
12:01 a 4:00 a 7:30 a 11:00 a 2:15 p 5:30 p 8:45 p 11:59 p
Every show is completely sold out except for the 7:30am show. And the 4am showing sold out BEFORE the 11am.
Wow. Don't think I've seen that before. This movie has some serious hype to live up to. I've read that some of action sequences were actually filmed for IMAX with large format film. AWESOME!
There are still some showtimes on Saturday available. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Just for fun.
Here I am at the 4th of July parade in Grandville. I have between 13 and 16 pieces (I lost count) of bubble gum in my mouth collected from the parade.
Here I am riding home from the Farmer's Market on my "truck". It's an Xtracycle hooked up to this year's police auction purchase. I love the friction shifters, not that you can see them. :)
 | | comments: Leave a comment |
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I actually didn't know anyone on LJ. I was looking for a way to share my stories from my trip to Europe and this was the best way I found. That was May of 2001.
http://fotoman311.livejournal.com/2001/05/17/
BTW, don't read that. I'm kind of embarassed. I sound like a 16 year old. :)' | | comments: Leave a comment |
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