Blodnick's Blog

12.31.2003

And tired as hell. More to come. Happy New Year!

12.21.2003

Well I made it to good ole Wyoming. Had a great couple of parties with Meg and Keith. Like really good ones. Then we went to a basketball game and had a wicked good time. Like a really wicked good time. My sister came up to hang out with us. That was fun, she has a new car and I thinhk that eventually she enjoyed being at the game. Today I head back to Casper to be with my family, and of course even more friends. Hope your holiday is going as well as mine!

12.18.2003

IT'S HERE! WOOHOO! Tomorrow morning at 11 AM I hope on a plane to Denver! I can not believe how long I have been waiting for this moment. Oh wait, right about 6 months I suppose. I got my project done and out the door and I am just rearing for a great Christmas break. I know it is going to just whizz right by, and I really hope I get to see everyone in my short time home. Remember to call my Mom's place if you want to find me though! I just can not wait!

To all of you whom I will not see, have a very merry Christmas or Hannuka, possibly Kwanzaa! I will miss the blog and the people who read it quite a bit while I am gone, but do not fret. I will have so much to talk about when I get back on the 30th!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

12.17.2003

Well I am one 12 hour day closer to being home this week!I really hope someone is noticing all the hard work flying out of my cubicle in the past week. I am pretty much designing an entire hospital (if Ken reads this I do know it is an MOB) by myself as my first project ever. In any case it is a lot of work and it all has to go out on Friday...so life has been at a hectic pace. It really reminds me of college, though now I get to go home at 8 instead of 12.

Getting so close now to being home though. Really looking forward to the party, really looking forward to seeing the Pokes play, and I just can't wait to see all of my friends. I already have a lunch date setup for next week!

Sad thing yesterday. I finally took the Wyoming plates off my car and put on the California boring white ones on. It kind of made this move thing offical and it felt weird. I will miss my Wyoming plates, but I suppose it was bound to happen. Maybe someday I will be able to get some again.

Be good and SEE you all soon!

12.15.2003

I get to go to Laramie and Casper, nah nah nah nah nah nah! Boy, can you tell I am excited to head back home? I hope it is as great as I have it in my head. Odds are it will not meet my dreams, but close would be nice! It will be so nice to see everyone, and get a chance to check out the Pokes again.

Until then though I have a major major project heading out the door. Work is a little nuts right now, but at least I get paid for the stress. Oh, and I get to take a trip to the DMV tomorrow! WooHoo!

Get ready to PARTY!

Yup, I am still dinking around out here. I have been incredibly busy since I last talked to you all. So let me fill you in!

Friday we had the children's matinee. 3000 children were bussed into downtown Sac to watch us sing. It really was quite amazing and made me feel like a rock star! We had glow sticks that we lit right when the lights went down. Holy crap they went insane!!! I hve to say that in this instance kids rock. The show went really well and we did not miss a ton of work. Speaking of work, Friday the sh*t really hit the fan. But I am slowly crawling out of it.

Saturday I had morning rehearsal (another 3 hour yawner). Then I went home with all of these great intentions before the actual concert. I ended up lying on the couch and falling asleep for about 3 hours. Oh well, I suppose I must have needed it. The concert that night went really well! The people were not screaming for us, but we did get a standing ovation and 2 curtain calls. The sound in the Memorial Auditorium is really not very good, so it was mostly just screaming, but it worked. It is however quite beautiful, so check it out!

Sunday was interesting. I got up in the morning and saw that we got Saddam! How cool is that! It brightened my day right from the start. Later we hauled on out to UC Davis, a 40 mile-ish drive to our next venue. The Mondavi Center is breathtaking! Simply put that is the gretest auditorium I have ever and most likely will ever sing in. Make sure you check the link to see it. The acoustics in that place are astounding. We could blend and just sing beautifully. Dayane and Jeff (nudist neighbors) came to the show and thouroughly enjoyed it. I was happy they came.

As for now? Well I have about a million and one things to do before I go home, but I am so super excited to go home you would not believe it!!! I hope to write more this week, but we will have to see wht time allows. Have a great week everyone and good luck on finals to those of you who need it.

12.11.2003

First off, sorry for the no shows lately. I promise I will be better next week. So we had our big office party tonight after work. Let me tell you something. Office parties are NOT for the employees, as you might expect. Oh no, they are for the clients and people we outsource work to. You should have seen all the hoopla surrounding this stupid party tonight. It was hard to get anything done at work, when for once I really needed to! I'll admit that the catered food was good, except the tri tip, I can make a better one with my eyes closed and a box of matches. There was asparagus wrapped in prosciuto, and raw salmon on 1 fried potato chip. Follow that with chicken on a stick and you have a meal about as far from Christmas as you can imagine. Where was the Chex Mix dammit!!!

Okay, enough whining about that. It is not that I did not appreciate the free food and drink, its just that I think I would have rather seen my "free" company engraved wine glass in cheque form.

Rehearsal was a joke tonight too. We had to be there for 3 hours, only to listen to the orchestra rehearse. I think we sang about 15 minutes (really not exaggerating) in that time period. Darn, I could have been watching the last survivor and eating tri tip that didn't taste like my K-Swiss!

I hope to catch up to everyone soon! Sorry I have been so distant the past few days. In all honesty it will probably be like this until I go home for Christmas. I hope you are all keeping plenty busy to fill the Nick void though!

12.10.2003

So we did not win the game. In fact we lost pretty badly. But it was still a great time. There were probably 30 or 40 Wyoming fans there rooting them on. We did all the classic cheers, even when we were down by 25. It was cool to talk to this person who was from Sheridan, and that person from Cheyenne and Gillette. Some graduted in the 90's, some as far back as the 50's. But all were devoted Poke fans. It was fun.

Oh, and they lost our tickets when we first got there, so we stood in the media entrance for about 20 minutes while they tried to find them. Well as we were standing there, obviously Wyoming fans, some guy who was dressed up nice said "Hi guys" to us. Turns out it was Dave Walsh, the voice of the cowboys! After he put more mustard on a pretzel than I ever imagined possible, he came over and chatted it up about the game and about Wyo. It was so cool! I mean, in Wyoming that man is a major celebrity. I have been listening to his voice on the radio all year long. Nice.

We also took some time and walked around the campus. Berkeley is really an incredible campus. The buildings are just awesome and all of the walkways put most I have seen to shame. But their bookstore sucked compared to UW's!

12.08.2003

Oh I have so much to look forward to right now! The concerts are coming up and I am getting really excited for those. Tomorrow I am doing my duty as an avid Poke fan and driving out to Berkely (and missing some work....oh the sacrifices I make!) to see the Cowboys play! And then it is now only a week and 3 days before I will be partying it up in Laramie with my good friends! Good Lord there is lots to be stoked about! Oh, and I almost forgot that there is another Simple life on tomorrow night! Do not fret though, the VCR is already set up.

And now it is time for my reflections on not being in college right now. The last week before finals is traditionally the most stressful of all the weeks of the school year. Many teachers do the students a favor by moving the finals to the week before. All projects are always due the week before finals, and certainly every paper I wrote (which I admit was very few) always ends up being due that final week of normal class. How do I feel? I feel freaking great that I am not in that position right now. Work has been a bit stressful from time to time, but nothing like that week. I mean, I have 2 company Christmas parties on the same day this Thursday. I do not remember many of my profs giving out cookies and ham for finals week. Not one in fact.

My heart goes out to those of you in the dire straights known as the week before finals. You may now feel as I did back then, like it was never going to end and soon you would succumb to the desire of shoving a plastic spatula into you ear. However, it does end, and I am living proof of that. Good luck guys and gals! (suckers!)

12.07.2003

Oh yeah, it had better be good too. I need something to make up for the turkey disappointment!

Nice and lazy weekend. I beat a whole game on friday with my friend KEn. We rocked it! 8 hours of killing orcs and olaphants. Very very fun. Ate what could only be defined as a ton of wings dripping in vinegar and just had an all around good time.

Let me tell you about this week. I am stupid busy the whole time, so try not to get too mad if I miss an update. Monday I have the normal 3 hour choir rehearsal. Tuesday Ken and I are driving to Berkely to watch the Pokes beat the hell out of whatever they are. Wednesday I am sleeping I am sure. Thursday is another 3 hour rehearsal, only this time with the orchestra. Friday, Saturday and Sunday I have concerts. Hopefully I can still breath at the end.

Have a great week everyone!

12.05.2003

1. Do you like to shop? Why or why not?
Sure I like to shop. Well I like to shop my way anyway. I am not much of a clothes shopper and I really cannot stand millions of people. Pretty much I like the electronic stores and the home decorating ones.

2. What was the last thing you purchased?
Now I should not go saying things I just purchased round Christmas time. It might give it away! (For myself though it would be the Calphalon. Drool!)

3. Do you prefer shopping online or at an actual store? Why?
Shopping online can be a heck of a lot of fun, though really easy to overspend. eBay is a beautiful thing my friends. But then again you always have to pay for shipping. Ah screw it, I will just go to Target.

4. Did you get an allowance as a child? How much was it?
You better believe I did! When times were rough and my mom was in school I got a hefty $1 a week, and boy did I enjoy it! I also got money for doing individual chores. There was a list we kept on the fridge with prices next to them. They were small generally, but if you lit a fire under your ass you could make some money!

5. What was the last thing you regret purchasing?
Now I do not go around brooding about my purchases very often. Most I think about long and hard before I buy them, but the most regretted item would have to be some headphones. $300 Bose noise canceling headphones to be precise. Why oh why did I do that? At least I got some of it back with eBay.

Not much going on this weekend, but I will be busy the rest of them for a while. Odds are I will listen to the pokes and play some Nintendo. Have a great weekend everybody, and drink a beer for me!

12.04.2003

Had a deadline moved up about 2 weeks today, so it was a little frantic. I put in a solid 11 hours, which is a little long for me.

Enough whining about that though. I gotta tell ya, living in the magic fairy land of student loans was great. Here they gave me money and I did not have to pay it for 6 months after I graduated! Wow, a whole six months. Seems like a long time. Like so far away you forget about it. Like so incredibly far away that when you get the bill for your first payment your fairy tale world disappears.

Damn me for wanting money to go to Taco Bell as a Freshman! Those tacos are costing me a heck of a lot now!

12.03.2003

Wow, I thought last night's Simple Life was good. Tonight's was awesome! Paris got totally decked out just to impress some country bumpkins. God she looked stupid, it was great. Then while they were working they went and got in the hottub. You know, if I decided to go jump in the hot tub in the middle of the work day, I reckon I would get fired.

Not a lot going on today, so I think I will share with you some of the search engine hits I have been getting from google and yahoo. Enjoy!

Google must rent list movies
Google free movie dowloading: pirates of the caribbean
Google victoria's secret catalogue trash
Google clubbing in san fran
Google cowboys
Yahoo ! pic of vanessa williams at california governor inaugural
Google embarrassing football cowboys
Yahoo ! nudist neighbor (this one happens a lot surprisingly)

12.02.2003

Quite possibly one of the best reality shows aired tonight. The Simple Life starring the infamous Paris Hilton was on. Oh my God it is going to be so good. The idea that it is only 30 minutes long makes me want to cry I think. They are SOOO out of place. Not to say that I could have plucked chikens myself, but still freaking hilarious! If you missed it tonight you HAVE to catch it tomorrow!

So I took my mom to the airport today. It was really great to have her out here. She spent a little money, I spent a lot, and she helped me get the greatest pots and pans ever. Hard anodized Calphalon! Oh yeah, you know it's good! The thing is I am kind of burned out on cooking after the whole Thanksgiving thing, so they will probably just sit for awhile. In any case they look cool.

Only 16 days left til my trip home. Sounds like things are shaping up nicely for my return. At least I hope so anyway. Have a good one tomorrow and try and stay warm (excluding Grandpa in Texas and, well, me!)

12.01.2003

Okay, so I am jamming out on my launchcast today when a song comes on and I start the toe tapping and the head bobbing. I was just kind of grooving in my little cubicle when I started to think "Who was it that did this son?" I opened up the little window for the radio and saw one of the most horrible sights in the world. Jennifer Lopez staring right back at me. I stopped tapping, stopped bobbing and just stared. How could I, a man who so vehemently hates J.Lo be duped into one of her songs?

Well the thing is I have always hated J. Lo, but not always Jennifer Lopez. She had one song, and I mean one, that I totally forgot that I liked. "Waiting for Tonight", one of her first in the big pop scene, came out when I was a freshman in college. That was back when she was known for having a huge butt, not tons of glam. In any case, I liked that song, and I admit it. I can no longer hide behind my poser ways. Now as far as every movie she has ever been in (minus Selena) and every other thing she has ever done I would like to point out sucks worse than anything sucked ever.

Welcome back to everyone! I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving, because I sure did. I ran around Northern California all the time. My Thanksgiving feast came out pretty well, though my turkey was a little tough. Not sure why, but it might be the brine. Oh well, the stuffing was excellent. Shane also made some excellent pecan pie (I know, I cheated a little).

We went to San Francisco and hung out on the pier and went to China Town. China Town is very interesting. There are tons of shops and they all sell the same crap over and over again. We ate at a restaurant though and had some really excellent food. Amazing that Chinese people can make better Chinese food than Americans!

After that we shopped and shopped and shopped some more. We drove up to apple country. It reminds me of what New England must look like in the fall. Just gorgeous. My mom and I have a few pics from out trip, and I will try and get those posted sometime tomorrow. We also did a little Christmas decorating. It looks good without going too overboard.

Well now it is crunch time at work, as I am sure it is for you college kids. Good luck everyone! I know I will need some. 18 days till I go home!