End of '08

I can't believe how fast this year has gone by. I have today and tomorrow off from work and it feels like I have a million and a half things to do. The most important has to be going over to portage and grabbing some Sonic for lunch today. We finally have a Sonic close by and I'm sure I'll be traveling over to that side of town a lot more. I also have a lot of cleaning and I would like to do some baking sometime today along with laundry.

Tomorrow welcomes in 2009 and I'll be heading back home for a few hours tomorrow so my dad can check out my Jimmy. It was acting funny this past weekend but now its working fine. Crazy stuff, maybe it was confused with the weather changing so much this past weekend. The start of the new year also wants me to make a lot of changes in how I live my life and I really can't wait to make them. I want to change how I eat, drink, spend money and my time. I also am going to set a goal to blog everyday. I really miss doing this and would like to get back into it.

My dirty clothes are calling have a safe and happy new years!

Un Original Singles

A few years back I was big into country music. I kept up to date with all the latest Nashville news and gossip. I also traveled all over to concerts and listened to the music non-stop. Well in the past few years my dedication to the music has fallen but I still somewhat keep connected to it. Every week I get an email that lists the latest top 50 songs and also lists singles releasing in the next couple of weeks. This week's email showed Josh Gracin will be dropping a single next week called "Telluride." I got to thinking and I remembered a few years ago hearing Tim McGraw sing a song with the same name so I clicked on the link to listen to Josh's song and sure enough its the same one Tim recorded a few years back that is on his "Set This Circus Down" album. I have to say Tim's recording is a lot better than Josh's. I don't know what it is about Josh but I just don't care for his re-recording of other artist's songs. His covers of Marchel's music were pretty flat and boring. Josh doesn't give the same amount of punch and kick as the other artists do.

I'm trying really hard to get back into the country music scene. Whats gotten me really excited is the news from my favorite artist Michelle Poe. She and Keith Burns are getting together for a new group called Burns and Poe. The first single is supposed to drop in January and its called "Gone as All Get Out" and their second single will be "Always a Woman." I can't wait to hear the new music.

As you can see I've decided to go back to a standard blogger layout. I just don't have the time right now to work on a custom layout for the blog. The more time I get I will tweak different parts but for now I'm going to a plain jane look.

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Now playing: Tim McGraw - Telluride
via FoxyTunes

The New Experience

I didn't think today was ever going to get over at work. With gun season started and cold weather here, my work load has pretty much dropped off. Its probably going to be like this for a another couple of months. On my way home from work I stopped into Target to see if they had Lips in stock and of course they didn't so I hopped on into Gamestop. They had it in stock so I picked it up. I debated all day whether or not to get it but finally decided on yes to get it. I've played a couple of songs on it and I like it, I need to play around with it more to determine if Singstar is the better of the two. What I do like about Lips is the wireless mics that light up.

Before I could play lips I had to load up the New Xbox Experience. Then I had to create my Avatar. I'm not sure which is better the Mii's on Wii or the Avatars on Xbox360. The Avatars have a little more style and have arms and legs. After making myself on the Xbox I installed Netflix for the Xbox. This is what I had been waiting for the most. I've been using Watch Instantly on my laptop but when I do that I pretty much can't use anything else on the laptop. Now with it on the Xbox I can watch tv shows and movies from netflix on my tv and do work on my laptop. Now I just wish my internet was a little better speed wise so I wouldn't have to worry about the movies pausing while the internet speed goes down.

Crash

Yeah I was in a car accident....it was nothing too bad. I would say 10-12 cars. I was driving to work down west main and just before wkzo there was a patch of black ice and cars going in all directions. I thought I drove my way through it but at the very end I heard a bang so I pulled into little ceasers parking lot to check it out. My right rear bumper corner piece is broke with a decent size hole in it. I was very lucky since other cars had a lot more damamge. I had to wait around and hour and half for the police to finally get to me so I could get a report. I didn't get to work until 9:30 and man the day went by really fast. It pretty much snowed the whole day and I had about an inch to clear off my car tonight after work.

I'm playing some Singstar on the PS3 right now. I'm totally addicted to music games, especially the singing ones. Lips is coming out this week for the Xbox360 and I'll probably pick that up. I can't wait for Wednesday to get here. I'll finally be able to download the new xbox experience for the 360 and be able to stream netflix through it to my tv. I'll be using that feature most of the time. No more having to watch movies and shows on my computer. It'll also give me a reason to turn the xbox on. I think its been almost a month since I've turned it on.

Tonight I washed dishes with the dishwasher. I had been so anti dishwasher because it always left a nasty film on all the dishes. So tonight when I was at Wal-Mart picking up my lunch food for the week I boght a bottle of Jet Dry for the dishwasher. After eating tonight I loaded the washer and away she went. With the Jet Dry the dishes came out a lot better than they usually do. No more hand washing for me now. I've been converted.

Well back to Singstar...Oh yeah I made it into the Home beta last week. I was pretty excited, now I just need to start chatting and meeting people on the PS3. I need to be a more social gamer.

A Little Bit of Food and a Lot of Alcohol

Tonight after work I stopped by Cheeseburger in Paradise with some friends from work. I don't really care for the food or drinks at Cheeseburger but that didn't stop me from eating and drinking. I tried out a sunken treasure and didn't really care for that and then had a pain in the Bahamas. The pain was good and for food I ordered the mini chili dogs, they were alright. I also had a shot of tequila that came with one of my friends drinks. Yuk, I hate takilla.

When I got home my Lock and Lock storage containers arrived. I ordered them off of QVC this past weekend when they had their 24 hours of cooking/food shows. I was in heaven.


Then tonight while I was going through my emails and watching disc 2 of Gossip Girl I received and invite to the Resistance 2 Beta. I'm gonna download it after Gossip Girl is done. Damn this show is addictive.

The Skills are Rusty

Its been a few years since I've dabbled in HTML and layout and web design and working on this blog has been some work. Its going a lot slower than I thought. There is so much I need to relearn and master. I also need to get back into the swing of things with photoshop. Tonight I finally added some color and thrown in the side boxes. Now I need to figure out all the things I want to throw in those boxes. I got lots of things swirling around in my head and I just need to figure out how to get them out of there and onto here.

Tonight I also finished up disc 1 of Gossip Girl. I had never watched it on TV but was curious about it so I added it to my Netflix Queue. I really like the show and can't wait to get the rest of the first season through Netflix. I think this will be another show that I will watch just on DVD and not bother with trying to watch it when it airs on tv.

I'm so glad tomorrow is finally Friday. This weekend is going to be a busy working weekend at home in the basement. I picked up some paint today after work for the baseboards. Were going to paint the boards before we lay down the laminate flooring.

After work today I stopped into Aldi and uck, I was not impressed. I guess I was expecting more for the store and when I walked in it reminded me of Save A Lot. There were so many people in there because it just opened that it just wasn't worth checking out for me. I walked down a couple of aisles and walked out. I will have to wait a few more weeks and recheck it out and see if it'll be worth my dollars. Right now I'm thinking no but I will have to give it time.

Its Taking Shape

There is no color or styling here right now, but what I do have is the foundation for the blog setup. I went through tonight and figured out all the different div's for the blog and got that all written up. I previewed it and it looked good so I saved it. Now I have to go through and figure out color, style and images for the blog. That shouldn't take me too long now that the foundation is set. I'm so glad its finally taking shape. I've been wanting to do this for a while now.

Working on the Layout

I sat down tonight and started working on the layout coding for the blog and I'm stumbling through it. I thought I had it all typed up correctly and then pasted it into blogger and its not working. There is something wrong and I have to go through now and figure out where my mistake is. Its probably something I'm gonna put off until tomorrow night or sometime later this week. I'm getting tired and I think I'm gonna play some video games.

This weekend I had to work Saturday afternoon, that went by alright. Went by fast at first and then slowed down when it got closer to quitting time. I didn't really do anything exciting this weekend, last night I played some video games and today I did more of the same. Also watched "Baby Mama" on Blu-Ray, did some laundry and decided on a Halloween costume. Now I need to find a yellow shirt, some yellow pants and a yellow hat. Yup, I'm gonna be the Man in the Yellow Hat.

In Love with Singstar

I've discovered and become addicted to Singstar. I have always seen the game in stores and its always caught my eye but I never really thought about buying it. I love to sing along to songs but I suck at singing. Well today I was doing my usual round of sites and checked out the daily deals at amazon. There was nothing good in the gold boxes so I went onto the video game deal of the day. Well today it was singstar for the PS3. I've thought about getting this game but its $60 at stores with a set of mics. Well today amazon had the stand alone game for $20. I did some quick looking around online and found out that the ps2 mics work for the ps3 and I have been hearing that there is going to be a patch coming out this fall that will let you play ps2 singstars on the ps3. With all of that in mind I decided to buy the game. I have a nice little stash of amazon credit from different surveys I take so the game cost me nothing. Now I was on a mission to find mics. I figured I could find some used at gamestop for cheap. Well I was wrong. I checked out all the gamestops in the Kalamazoo area and nobody had any for sale. My closest one had 3 different singstar discs used. I took note of that and headed out to portage. I ended up picking up brand new at best buy the 90's set because it had some songs on there that I loved. I then made my way back to my gamestop and picked up the three used discs. I love buy 2 get 1 free weekends. When I got home I finished watching the NASCAR race and then went on the search for my ps2 controllers. I new I had put them away somewhere but I couldn't find where. Finally I found them downstairs in the closet and plugged everything in and started playing Singstar. I was hooked from the first song. I personally have to say its better than all of the other music games out there. I used to think Rock Band was the best but I've changed my mind. I can't wait for Tuesday to get here so I can pop in Singstar on the PS3 and check out the online singstore. I was looking at it tonight on my computer and there were quite a few songs I liked. And I can't wait for next month when the Country version comes out. You know I'm gonna be playing that one to death.

Besides the gaming I didnt really do much else today. It went by super fast and now I should be getting to bed so I can get up and go to work tomorrow morning. First I'm gonna play a couple more levels of lego batman. I gotta finish that game up soon.

Life's A Dance

Its a quiet Saturday night at home. I'm down in the office and have the tv tuned to Music Choice Today's Country. Right now the song playing is John Michale Montgomery's "Life's a Dance."

Its been a pretty quiet and relaxing day today. Last night I went out with my friends and of course did the usual I'll go down for one drink and ended up staying until last call. I only had a couple of beers but when I woke up this morning my head was hurting pretty well. I would have slept in longer but my mom called me around 11:30 this morning and woke me up. I'm glad she called because my aunt was coming down today to meet me for lunch and I needed time to wake up and shower and dress and then clean up around the house. After I got all of that accomplished my aunt called and said she would be a couple of hours late so I decided to run out to portage to Best Buy and Gamestop. I wanted to check out Gamestop because they are running a buy 2 used get 1 free game this weekend. I picked up NASCAR 09 and Burnout Paradise for the PS3 and No More Heroes for the Wii. I then went over to Best Buy and used my reward zone coupons and picked up The latest Sims expansion pack Apartment Life. Driving over to BB and GS I noticed I think a new game store so I checked it out on my way back home. It was an alright place, they had the usual used games from the current gen systems along with old games. The selection was pretty small but I will definitely go back. They had old NES systems for $35, I want one of those. Right after I left there my aunt called me and said she was on that side of town and I told I was over there too and had her meet me at Bennigans. I got my usual Turkey O Toole. I love that sandwich.

After my late lunch I came back home and watched the rest of the Nationwide race and then played some Lego Batman. I'm just under 50% through the game. Still have a lot more to play and unlock. I played that for a couple of hours and then installed my sims stuff I bought and played some NASCAR 09. When I got tired of gaming I hopped on the computer and just surfed around killing time. I found a layout I want to try here and I just need to get myself to sit down and work on it. I'm really bad at making myself sit down and work. I'm too ADD when I'm at home. I really need to clean off this desk. Its a mess right now.

Office Set Up is Complete

It took just about two weeks but the downstairs office/game room is complete. Two weeks ago we started peeling and stripping of the wallpaper and by the end of the week we were painting. Then this past week we mounted my 32" Sharp Aqous 1080p to the wall and got the furniture and game systems in place. Now we got a sweet office setup where I can work on the computer and watch tv and game in hi-def.

Right now I'm sitting at the desk and watching the NASCAR Nationwide race from Richmond. I was all set to watch this Friday night but with the hurricanes in the south this weekends races were postponed to today. I was out with friends on Friday night so I set the Tivo for the Nationwide race and went to watch it yesterday and found out the races were moved to sunday. I didn't watch much of todays Sprint Cup race and I'm glad I didnt because the 48 won.

I'm finally recovered from last night. I woke up this morning not feeling all too hot. Last night we went to our friends house and I had a couple of beers and then we went down to the bar and I had a few more beers. Then after the bar closed we went to an after bar party in town and I had some vodka and diet coke and a couple of shots that tasted good. I was a pretty good mess last night and having a good time. Then I woke up this morning with a nice headache. I drank plenty of water and took some target brand aleeve and now I finally feel better.

I'm not ready for Monday to get here, its going to be a long week for me. I have to work Monday through Friday and then I have to work saturday afternoon this week. The only good thing about this week is I'm out at 4:30 most days and a couple of days I go in at 8:30 instead of 8:00.

With the office now setup I hope to have a lot more time to work on getting this blog up and running. I need to add lots of color here.

Its Born

you never know an idea is going to pop up. I have been trying the last few weeks to get an idea/name for my blog and it hit me tonight when I was outside watering the plants. Now that I have a vision, its time to roll with it. Hold on tight, I'm ready to kick this into high gear.