Back to the Grind

This is actually an exciting post for me. I think that my knee is back. I've laid off of it for the last 5 or so weeks, just doing some jogging and a little work on the exercise bike, and it's been feeling good. So, I gave it a shot today when I hit the gym. I shot around for a little while (which I have been doing, actually), but then got into a full court game. It felt good, so I matched up against the other team's best player, a decent point guard.

My team had a point man who wasn't much of a passer and was telling people on our squad to shoot (even the bad players), an Asian dude who had jeans on, and a couple kids who were average athletes, but not too tall or very strong. I was easily the strongest player on the floor, and it turns out, the best shooter.

I sort of laid low on offense the first couple of possessions and hoped that the guys would move the rock around. That didn't really happen. I had some great seals on my guy in the post, but never saw the ball. So, I call for the ball, and get my left wing iso against my guy. I love this spot on the floor. I can go right and work for a pull up at the free throw line. I can go left and work for my 14' bank shot. This time I fake left, drive right towards the free throw line. Pull up from 14. Nation. Everything felt good, and I got okay lift on the shot. I thought that I was good to go.

Couple possessions later, same story. Almost the same shot, with the same result. A few possessions later, I cross to the left, but get cut off. One dribble drop step gets me my 14 footer at the free throw line again. All of the shots felt great, and it felt like I had nice lift on all of them. All told, I played pretty good D, only allowing my guy to get two buckets in the half court, both longer J's. I grabbed a few boards, threw a couple assists (would've been more had 1) I been running point and 2) my guys would've been able to hit a 5' jumper). Shot 6 for 9 with all of the misses being in close in the post (strangely enough).

Now the trick is, for the knee to not hurt afterwards. Right now, the legs are a little stiff, but I think that the knee is OK. Both legs are about equally sore, so that means the stress was distributed evenly, which means that I'm not trying to baby the right knee. Which is a good thing.

Let's get some ice on this bad boy, and see where it goes.

-Chairman

Home Improvements

"Really? Where'd you get the bolt cutters?"
"Which park did you get it from?"
"How?"

I like how my friends reacted when they heard that I got a park bench for my room in the apartment. They just sort of assumed that I stole it. Which, I have to say, I am very pleased with. Stealing a park bench isn't a simple task. You have to plan it out well - have the bolt cutters ready, have a truck nearby, have something distract people so that they're looking away. I like the fact that my friends think highly enough of me that they would think that I could pull off something like that. At least, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

For the record, I actually bought the park bench and a ceiling fan off at Home Depot, and got them both installed yesterday. Ceiling fans are surprisingly simple to set up. I figured that the odds of me either hurting myself physically or electrically were about even money. I managed to avoid both, though I will say this much... I can see why construction workers curse so much. When you're assembling things, there's just some inevitable task that is completely ridiculous. People who design things never really think it through very well. I managed to reel off a few nice strings of 4-lettered euphemisms regarding product designers and their mothers. But, the fan is installed, and runs great.

First thing that I did after everything was set up? Open up the windows and blinds so I could look outside and have the sun come into the room. The 2nd thing that I did? Popped open a cold can of PBR and sat on my park bench and enjoyed the breeze (from the fan). More importantly, now I can have homeless people stay in the apartment and feel right at home.

Happy Trails

Earlier tonight, I helped Schultzie pack up his moving truck. Big sucker. Lots of stuff, and we filled it up pretty good. Wasn't too bad. Got done in about 3 hours. And got some Papa Del's pizza for our troubles. It was sad, though. Schultzie was someone who I've known for years. Went to church together. Played hoops together every Sunday morning. He was my RB in flag football back in the day. We hung out at Guy's Night (which has become Sanctioned Gambling Night) on Tuesday's for the last 4 years. We've watched many Illini wins and losses together. He's seen me at my highest and lowest points. I stood up in his wedding. And I'll make him rent a tux if I ever get married. I got to play with his newborn son. And tomorrow morning, he drives up to Burlington, Wisconsin to close on his new house and to open a new chapter in his life. Another one of the TFS Extended Family who's headed off for greener pastures. Happy trails, my friend.

Back to School.

Things are moving along. My glorious return to IMPE/CRCE will happen tomorrow morning. Hopefully, I won't die. It's been a few weeks, without much structured work. I've done a good amount of moving, so I've still got some strength, and I've been walking quite a bit, so hopefully the legs are okay. Not a huge week. Need to get some reading and a little write up taken care of tomorrow for class on Thursday. I've got my first day of class for our big freshman Intro to Marketing course, though I'm not really important there. Just need to show. I think that I'll go to the I-Life Fall Rally on Thursday to see what's happening. I really hope that something happens.

-Chairman

Welcome to the Freak Show

Wow. It's been a tiring week. Travel back to the Midwest went smoothly. Moving in was pretty good, too. Things are getting done - just the little things remain. TFS North is more or less functional.

The front room looks nice, though a bit empty... I'm entertaining thoughts of putting in a bar, although it's more likely that we'll be putting in more seating. The kitchen and eating area is pretty organized and pretty much good to go - maybe a few more random pieces of flair to make the place look nicer. The office is good, as well, with the important things set up. I'll need to arrange my books and stuff like that, but all the drilling and nailing is done. The washer and dryer come tomorrow, so the laundry will be set. It looks like CJ is all set up with his room.
The current project is my own room. I'm still not sure how I want to arrange it. I've got more room that I've had the last few years, and I want to take advantage of it. We'll see what ends up happening. In theory, I could put in a bench and a rack, though that may be a little too ambitious... maybe just a pull up bar? Or maybe I'll go the other way and just put in a nice recliner or small couch.

Anyway, I like the new place. Let's see if we can make the same sort of memories out here om 116 that we were able to in 117 (way back in the day) and over at 204.

Just one closing, random thought: that song from like 7 years ago, "Closing Time."

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

-Chairman

Bad Karma

I think that I believe in Karma. I’m not sure how this fits into Christianity, but it works for me. Some of our Armenian friends may think that free will would override Karma, and not like the concept. I suspect that our Calvinist friends would think that Karma may take away from the divine Justice of God, and not like the concept. But for now, I’m going to chalk one up for the Hindus, and find a way to merge Karma into my belief system.

So tonight, I was out in downtown Greenville again, just goofing around. I was at this Irish Pub sort of place called Connolly’s. Fun place. It had a decent act playing – two guys on acoustic who were pretty talented. I just wanted to drink Guinness at the bar and listen to music. The place started to fill up around 11. And up to the bar come two women, a blonde in her late 20’s and a brunette in her 30’s (being kind). The blonde was probably a 5 or so. Not unattractive, though a little dumpy. The brunette was probably a 5, too, but that was mainly because she was older. Twelve years ago, she probably could’ve been a contender. But that was then, and this is now.

They order a Jaeger Bombs, and proceed to down them. I peek over and see the blonde pay for the drinks after digging through the purse, and finding an assortment of bills all crumpled up. Right then, I knew that they were going to start trolling for drinks. When you show up at the bar with little cash, you’re relying on the kindness of strangers. So they just talk for a bit, and the blonde starts dancing around, semi-purposefully bumping into me with her butt. Yep. I was the first attempt. She asks for a light, which I do not have, but it did give her an opening to start talking me up. I find out that she’s Tonya, and her friend is Angie. Great. Somehow, Tonya let it slip that she had a boyfriend. Ding-ding! Dirty women trolling for drinks. Chalk one up for the radar.

So Tonya’s trying to convince me to do shots with them (on my ticket, of course). I’m asking where her boyfriend is. Turns out the gals just went out, and the boyfriend is still at home. Great. So there were two reasons that I wasn’t going to buy her a shot. The first is that I had no interest in her because she wasn’t very attractive. The second is that I’m not in the habit of buying drinks for strangers w/ boyfriends. I decided to be nice and focus on the 2nd reasons, rather than the first.

I explained that I thought that it was bad Karma to buy drinks for some dude’s girlfriend. If I had a girlfriend, I wouldn’t want her trolling the bar for drinks. I think that’s a reasonable policy. Of course, her reply was that she didn’t believe in Karma, that he wouldn’t care, and that it would be okay because she wouldn’t have to make out with me or anything. Which let me play a little bit of the other reason at her. “So why would I buy you a shot if we aren’t going to make out?” She didn’t have a good answer for that one. Basically, I just decided to put my foot down. I had no intention of buying some girl a drink who I knew I wasn’t going to get any action with. It’s one thing for someone to be buying girls drinks if he thinks that he has a shot at her. It’s another for me to be buying some chick who wasn’t all that hot drinks when I don’t even want to take a shot at her.

Of course, this just seems to be the modus operandi for at least a handful of women at every bar. They just stroll in there, expecting guys to be falling over themselves for the chance to buy them a drink. Screw that. There are plenty of other jabrones who will buy those women drinks. I don’t need to be one of those jabrones. And sure enough, a few minutes after Tonya knew that I wasn’t going to buy her a drink, she buys herself a drink, pounds it, and turns to the guy to the other side of her and starts talking. Within 5 minutes, she and Angie were drinking on some poor schmuck’s tab. I got to listen to the band in peace while I sipped on my 2nd Guinness.

The rest of the night was pretty plain. Two more bars w/ bands. One was a pretty standard bar (called The Gathering Place) with a rock band playing (decent), and the other was a dive (called The Bait Shop) with a blues band playing (mediocre, but fun). I capped off the night at a sushi/sake bar, called Wasabi. Excellent snack to end the night – great value at that place. An order of Uni (sea urchin) actually contained two pieces. The order of salmon roe had quite a bit of roe on there. And one of their specialty rolls, the Texas Rainbow Roll was huge – would have filled me up by itself. This huge roll was a Spider Roll about 3 inches in diameter, topped off with a number of slices of salmon, whitefish, tuna, and avocado. Actually, I ended up eating a little too much, as there really was enough for two there.

Well, Saturday figures to be pretty laid back. I’ll probably wash my car and clean out the inside of it. I’ll also probably do a little more running, and may even take a few laps in the pool again. And I’ll do one last load of laundry and pack up the car. I’m going to take off first thing on Sunday morning, and hopefully will be back in Champaign by 6pm. I think that instead of the southern route that I took to get here, I’ll go back to my more customary Knoxville-Lexington-Louisville-Indy-Champaign sequence. With any luck I’ll be able to move in on Sunday night, instead of having to wait until Monday morning. Until then.

-Chairman

SC: The Adventure Continues

Today, I got a little exercise in. Took another quick 15 minute jog/walk around my folks’ place. I’m still having some issues with running for distance, so I’m still doing the “run until it hurts and then walk until it doesn’t hurt anymore and then run again” routine. After that I went over to the pool and the sand courts. I worked a few side-to-sides in the sand to try to build up a little lateral strength in the legs. It was ugly, but I got through a few. And since it was like 95 degrees today, I went right over to the pool for a few laps and some leg work (kicking against the wall).

Out at the pool, I was hoping for a little eye candy as I worked my laps, but there was no luck. I think that only old folks and families with young kids live in this subdivision. But, I will have to say this much. As I walked around downtown Greenville last night and out at the mall this afternoon, I have to say that compared to the Midwest (like Chicago or Champaign), that the girls in the south have to rate on average a point higher. When you walk around, you see 6’s or better all over the place.

Welcome to the Rating Game.

A quick aside on “the scale,” which I don’t believe that we’ve discussed: I like to use a modified bell-curve type rating system. The 4.0-6.0 range is the most common, with about 50% of the population falling in this range. Since we’re not trying to actively hurt feelings (though we do accept that there will be some level of casualties), we’ll only describe the upside of the scale. Overall, we’re left with 25% of the population that rates from 6.0 to 10. Next comes the 6.0-8.0 range. This range goes to about the 95th percentile. A lot of very attractive women fall into this range. If I were to get serious with a gal who was a “solid 7” I would be more than happy. After that, you move from 8.0 to 9.0. Another 4% or so of the population is covered here. After that, the remaining 1% falls into the 9.0 to 10 range.

This is a fairly different scale than most people use. Most guys that I’ve talked to claim to use a more linear approach, where the points match up with the percentiles. I don’t personally believe that if they were to track their scoring, that what they claim would indeed be true. That implies that there are as many people who rate 9 to 10 as there are who rate 5 to 6. Of course, whenever girls have the misfortune of stumbling in on one of my discussions about how attractive someone is, they’re often disgusted at how low the scores are that I give, at which point I try to defend my scale, to no avail. They’re used to having attractive girls (remember, 7 on my scale is attractive, maybe 87th percentile?) scored as “10’s” and they consider 7’s to be mediocre. It’s just a marketing issue. It’s strange. I think that girls use another, completely different scale to rate girls. Their scales generally cover 0 to 2, and then jump to 7-10, leaving out the crucial 4 to 6 range. There are some other girls that are either disgusting to them or they just hate. They get the low scores. After that, everyone that they like, regardless of appearance, garners at least a 7. You hear things like, “she’s gorgeous.” Then, you expect this gorgeous gal to be at least an 8.5. But then you see them, and they’re maybe a 6, which wouldn’t be bad, if not for the false expectations that had been set earlier.

Now, the actual scores assigned are very subjective. For example, my old roommate Matt is definitely into white meat, regardless of race. For you vegetarians out there who don’t eat chicken, you can read that last sentence as, “Matt likes boobs.” So, a gal with a larger chest automatically gets a higher rating, no matter how else she’s put together. Another example would be that CJ likes redheads. If you have red hair, you automatically get a bump. I find that having a pretty face is more important than a perfect body, so anyone who plays for the Cincinnati Bengals (you know, cool uniform, ugly helmet) automatically gets a penalty of at least 2 points.

One way that we’ve worked around this is by assigning different scores to the face and body. So someone who’s got a great body (big chest, tight abs, little waist, nice ass and great legs) but has a beak, a lazy eye, and bad teeth would get a scores like, “Well, she’s awesome, maybe a 8.5 body, but a deuce on the face.” Of course, the follow up comment would be something like, “But that’s no problem. Just flip her around and make her bark.”

Then there’s the whole personality thing. As you take into account how someone dresses, you incorporate some of their personality already. If you’re not into goth chicks, you’ll automatically dock a point or two from anyone dressed like that. Personally, I don’t think that you should factor that into the score directly. Personality is a whole different beast, and one that we don’t touch on when we play the rating game. That is one reason why we generally don’t play the rating game with girls that we know. If these proprietary documents ever got out, none of our female friends would ever speak to us again. It sort of defeats the purpose of why you’re friends with people – because you get along well and like similar things. Okay. Sometimes, we become friends with girls because they have hot friends. But that’s a different story altogether.

So long story short: my scale is more of a bell-curve type scale, and therefore it’s easy to score in the 4.0 – 6.0 range, but it’s hard to score higher. So my scale has been established from the girls that I’ve known back in Albany, NY and out at Illinois. I’ve got a decent idea of what a 5 is. That’s average. So walking out and about, I’m looking around, and I’m finding that more than half of the girls that I’m walking by are rating higher than 5. I’m guessing that the average here bumps out to like a 5.7 or something on my scale. Of course, there could very well be a difference in sample size – I’m probably going to end up in places where the average is just higher, but not representative of the region. Which is no good for stats, but is just fine for me.

Youth is Wasted on the Young.

Of course, just because you’re a 7 or better doesn’t mean that you’re interesting. I’m out in Nashville the other night, and I head to Demo’s (a great place to eat, actually – probably going to get a write up over on foodgeek later). I’m there by myself, just waiting for my table, when three very attractive young ladies walk in. They couldn’t have been more than 22 years old. Probably around 20 if I had to guess. All dolled up in black and white dresses that you would see at a semi-formal (or even a formal) dance. All had nice tans, nice bodies, and were at least reasonably cute. They end up getting seated diagonally from me. Right behind me were two older couples, probably in their mid-50’s. Guess which table had the more interesting conversation? That’s right. Mine. But the old folks were a close second. The conversation was non-stop behind me, talking about kids, friends, whatever. I don’t know if the girls across from me even said 3 words to each other. They just looked bored out of their minds, and actually started digging for their cell phones to call up other people. I don’t know. I’m sure that when I was 21, I was a moron, but still… all dressed up, out with friends, and you have to resort to the cell phone? Depressing, to me, at least.

I’m at Least a 6.

So I’m wandering around the mall today. I walk by this kiosk, and all I see are photographs with no frames. I was curious to see what they were selling – celebrity photos, maybe? Autographs? So, I did a little double-take as I walked by. It was actually a talent/modeling scouting service. The gal working there smiles at me, and asks me something like (in all seriousness), “are you interested in modeling?” I think that I laughed out loud. While I certainly am ruggedly handsome and incredibly attractive to women (*wait for laughter to die down*), I had never had anyone ask me if I wanted to try to be a model. I said to her, “No, I don’t think that I’ve got the build to be a model.” She was a persistent one. “Well, we also are looking for commercial models.” Not that I had a clue what that meant. “No, really, I don’t think I’m what you’re looking for.” Of course, I was just wearing gym shorts, a basketball jersey and a baseball cap, so she looks across the arms and chest and goes, “We also look for fitness models.” I couldn’t help but laugh again and thanked her, but politely declined and kept wandering around the mall. If anyone saw me try to run earlier, they’d never confuse me with a fitness model.

But you know what? As surreal as that conversation was, it was flattering. So I think that means that I’m at least above average looking. Maybe even good looking? Hey, I’d settle for, “not unattractive” or “I’ve seen uglier.” All my life, I figured that my winning ticket was going to come from my brains, my charm, and my wit. Or possibly my brute strength. But now? All bets are off. Watch out, world. I may just use my stunning good looks instead.

Well, I think that I’m going to head back to downtown Greenville to continue my tour of the city. We’ll see what tonight brings. Maybe I’ll go meet girls and tell them that I’m a fitness model and see if that doesn’t get me some action.

-Chairman

Calling Audibles

You know what I like best about playing QB? The audibles. You have a play called, but you look around and see that the play isn't going to work. You stroll up to the line, look things over, and yell it out.

"Flip Seventeen. Flip Seventeen. Blue dog two. Blue dog two."

Maybe you throw in a couple hand signals, too. But you've got a new play. The defense never stands a chance. You know where they're blitzing from. Your receiver dead sprints towardsthe spot that the blitzing safety just vacated. The corner doesn't have a chance in single coverage against your 3 step drop and fast release. That ball is heading high and outside. The weakside safety is running as fast as he can across the field to cover, but he doesn't have a chance. The receiver makes the sharp break about 12 yards downfield back towards the outside and looks for the ball. The corner and safety are 3 steps behind him. The throw was a tight spiral that just drops down the chute, right into the bread basket 40 yards downfield. The wideout just keeps on running right into the endzone and starts his TD celebration. The blitzing safety didn't even have time to lay you out. That was a good play.

So today I called an audible. I'm currently in Nashville. Just got done working out and soaking in the hotel fitness center here at the Hilton in downtown. I'm about to get cleaned up and head out to get dinner and listen to some live music. Who knows what else I'll do. I'm like a block away from the nightlife, so no driving tonight. Just lots of food and drink. I need the R & R so I can get the mind and body straight before school starts up. It's going to be a busy semester.
Tomorrow? Off to Greenville. Until then.

-Chairman

Escape from NY

Okay. Back from NY, and taking care of some odds and ends before heading down to SC to see my folks and get some stuff for the apartment. The weekend was fun. It was good to catch up with Marshal and the cousins. It's funny - everyone's grown up now. All of the cousins are done with undergrad. A few of us are still working on doctorates or MD's. I've got cousins with 10 year old kids. Everyone's getting jobs and being all respectable and stuff.

This week, I pretty much just ate too much. But it was fun. The wedding was this Italian-Chinese wedding out at a country club on Friday evening. The ceremony was pretty simple, but in a nice way. It was on the beach (Long Island Sound, out in New Rochelle), and it was a beautiful area. The cocktail hour was up on the 2nd floor balcony, where they had this huge set-up. There were two tables with Italian food, complete with people making pasta and risotto in front of you. They had all sorts of antipasto, and this awesome tray of cold cuts with different meats and this huge wheel of parmigiano reggiano. There were also two tables with different Chinese dishes. They had a martini bar as well as a bubble tea bar in addition to the usual open bar. And all this was before dinner. Dinner was nice. Fruit, salad, prime rib, wedding cake, chocolate fountain and sorbets. It was pretty nice, and I ate way too much. Which is how a good wedding should be.

The only downside to the wedding? Not exactly a target rich environment. There were a couple of cute girls there, but they were attached to guys already. But that's alright. I had my Heineken to keep me company. But, I actually danced a little bit. I think that the contrast between me and my brother is funny. He's a pretty good dancer for fast, club songs. I'm mediocre at best. I don't know if he dances to slower, older stuff, but I'm a pretty decent swing dancer and I can figure out other slow, more formal dances. But I got to show off a few of my swing dance moves w/ my cousin Lesley, which I think impressed the rest of the family, and was fun.

Saturday, I pretty much manned the grill and ate all day. We had a BBQ for both sides of the family out at Mary's (the mother of the groom) place. Grilled up burgers and dogs, and ate too much, as usual. We took a trip out to the Rockland Bakery, this awesome bakery that does commerical business, but also sells bread and pasteries to the public out of the same building. It's a commercial bakery in the back with a store out front. Very good bread, very neat place. I got a couple Italian cookies and cannoli and wolfed those down, too. Later that night, I went out w/ my aunt and my parents back to Queens and this Brazillian BBQ joint. Lots and lots of meat. Decent enough, but there needed to be a little more variety - all of the meats were pretty much seasoned the same.

I crashed hard on Saturday night, and slept a good 10 hours. Sunday was my day in the city. I wandered out to the Met and hung out for like 5 hours, and got brunch there and saw some exhibits and took a few pics. The big exhibits were the Chanel and Matisse exhibits, neither of which did much for me. However, there was some redemption in the modern art section with Tony Oursler, who did some awesome stuff w/ sculpture and video, projecting these moving faces and eyes onto these bulbous objects. Very fun, and very neat. Of course, I'm all about heading back to see the Monet paitings in the permanent collection, as well as the Van Gogh self portrait with him wearing the straw hat.

After that was Rockerfeller Plaza for a beer and a lobster roll. Then, on to Little Italy for some Italian deli food and a couple slices. I love the contrast between the two meals. It was $45 for the lobster roll and beer, but only like $8 for the rice ball, spinach roll, and the pizza. And it's equally tasty. I like how you can get great food for $2 or $20 or $200 in big cities. Anyway, after that I headed back to Queens to catch up w/ my parents and head out to Jersey to my uncle's place, so I could fly out of Newark in the morning.

Good times. I dig NYC, but I need to go with the right people. I like seeing stuff and wandering around. I'm not for utter chaos, but I'm not a big fan of structure. Just somewhere in the middle. Anyway, it's off to SC in the morning. Until then...

-Chairman

Ready for the Weekend

Why is it that I never watch MTV except when that new Jessica Simpson video is on? Gosh, she's awesome. Say what you want about being in a sissy boy band, but who would Nick Lachey be hitched to otherwise?

And in an unrelated news, I'm about to take a cold shower.

Pretty much done packing TFS. One more car load of loose stuff gets stashed away tomorrow morning (okay, afternoon), and then I get myself cleaned up and changed to fly out of here at 5:50 pm to head to NY and my little family reunion. Should be interesting. Haven't seen these folks in a while.

The weekend should be fun. Get in Wednesday night, and crash at my uncle's place in NJ. Thursday is open during the day - dinner with the family that evening somewhere. Maybe I can convince Marshal to go with me out to Queens to catch a Mets game. I'm going to throw out the idea of watching Wedding Crashers that night. Friday is going to be casual. Sleep in, drive out to the hotel where the wedding is at, and work out and go for a swim. Get changed for the wedding, which doesn't start until 6. After that, I'll be working on bridesmaids, and hope for the best. I think that Saturday, there'll be some sort of BBQ or something that's put on by the groom's parents for both sides of the family. I think that I'll be expected to go, though I'd rather go wander around in the city. Sunday will be my day to wander around the city (particularly the Met), before catching up with my parents and heading back to my uncle's place to crash. Flight on Monday is bright and early.

Hopefully, I'll throw in an update at some point.

-Chairman

Adventures in Babysitting

You know that a night will be amusing when it starts off with your buddy saying saying, in a slurred voice, something like:

"Okay. If anything happens... there's an insurance card in my wallet."

Damn skippy. So I was out with GQ, Becca, JP, and some others listening to this fun band (oldies and blues, brass section and a fun lead vocal) and playing some poker. Once again, I played good poker, until the end where I got a little frisky and ended up losing most of my profits. Being up 2 bucks isn't as nice as being up 12, but hey, it's still being up.
So I head back to the apartment, and I was flipping around on the internet when when my cell phone goes off at 2:35. My first thought? "Crap, this had better not be OD..." My second thought? I wonder who's drunk dialing me.

Of course, it was CJ. And that was when the night really started.

"Dude. Sorry that I'm calling real late, but I'm really drunk... and I think that I might die."

Nice. That's always a fun way to start off a conversation. So I ask him real quick about what happened. Basically, a few too many drinks in too little time. Only about 8 drinks in the last hour and a half, all on a lack of sleep and a long shift. So, he was drunk, but not "about to die" drunk. Apparently, he had tried to make a run at Maura, but had that effort nipped in the bud when he found out that she already had a boyfriend. I think that was followed by a run at drunkeness, aided by Powers Irish Whisky, Jaeger bombs, and straight rum.

So, I figure that my job is to get him to drink a lot of water, pop a few Vitamin I, and get some food in his body to soak up some acid. Not too difficult, so I also bring over a load of laundry. So, it's about 3am, and I'm doing laundry while CJ is going bulimic on me.

"Dude, I think that I have to make myself puke..."

Of course, I know that he didn't have enough to drink so that he would need a stomach pump or anything. So, I just kept making him drink from his Nalgene, while I fired up a small DiGiorno in the oven. So, I'm sitting there, waiting on laundry, reading one of the McEvoy poker books (pretty rudimentary stuff - not particularly helpful for decent players, but great for beginners), while CJ zones out and babbles something every few minutes.

Eventually, we get him sobered up and we actually had a nice chat about life, where we went wrong, and about some potential ideas about the upcoming year. We look up at the clock, and it's 7, and I go,

"You know what? You know what I'm thinking? Let's see if Cracker Barrel is serving chicken and dumplings."

Unfortunately, they were not, but the parking lot was sort of full. Who's up for breakfast at 7? Old people, that's who. Them, and respectable people. Not people who have been up all night warding off a drunken death. Not people who show up in gym shorts, a cut-off t-shirt, and a baseball cap. Not people who are wearing a white t-shirt with a little vomit stain. Not people who needed an Axe spray-down just to not smell like a wino. Generally, not us.

Of course, we got a few stares, but hey, we were awesome, and we knew it. But we didn't get the chicken and dumplings that we wanted. Oh well. A nice slice of country ham, followed by sleeping until 4:30 in the afternoon was pretty awesome, though.

But anyway, it's more moving... took one more carload over to Kyle's, and got to chill w/ Darren for a while afterwards. Probably another carload, but a light one. Just a little bit of kitchen stuff left, and I need to figure out what clothes I need for the next couple weeks. Everything else gets packed, not to be opened until TFS 2 opens it's doors on the 15th. So it'll be a little work, and a little more packing. Tomorrow will be some cleaning, and then ready to move the last load of stuff over. Maybe some poker at night. Off to NY on Wednesday... Who knows when this'll get updated.

But until then.

-Chairman