And getting rid of this part of the site. I see no potential pros any more, only people I don’t want to see this will see it and those who I want to stay in touch with have many other means to keep in touch. In the mean time, hope all is well with you

As usual, not a whole lot going on in my life. Been picking on ASU students/alums a lot lately. Quite possibly one of my favorite things to do. They get so pissed off at the suggestion that their school isn’t in the top tier of public schools, but it’s not. It’s a party school and nothing more. Sorry if that bothers you, but the more upset you become about it, the more you’ll hear from me about it.

Money has been on my mind a lot. It’d be nice to have a lot more money, but I can’t complain given that I’m 24 and own a house. However, it’d be nice to not have to pay student loans any more, that’s for sure. I do have to say that I like being able to pay my bills a hell of a lot more than trying to make it work when you make crap money.

It’s almost sad in a way that I have nothing to complain about any more. It’s almost sucked the life out of me. It’s a great problem to have though, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. I’d definitely freeze my life right now if I could.

As always, I’ll begin with an apology for not updating more frequently but nothing is happening in my life so it’s to your benefit that I don’t bore you with trivial updates from my life.

I guess I’ve calmed down a bit in my old age, nothing has truly gotten me into rant mode lately, I’m not sure why. I guess it’s because I’m pretty content with everything. Most everything is working in the house, just need to hang a door which has been an inconvenience because apparently door hinges aren’t all at the same height on the same size doors… That’s beyond me.

Working on getting the grass in the backyard planted then the house will be at 100% finally. I’m excited at the prospect of that.

Oh, I actually do have a story, I guess.

My buddy from high school, Mike McGillicuddy, got married a couple of weekends ago, and I was his best man. The night before, his future cousin-in-law wanted to take him out to the strip club, bars, etc. Typical bachelor party. Things are going fine until about 1:30 AM when Mike, in a car that’s following Hoss and I to our next stop, suddenly disappears. We back track and search, to no avail. Mike doesn’t have a cell phone. Here comes the call from the bride to be! Apparently they had to pull over so Mike could puke (standard) but what wasn’t told to me was that he faceplanting in some gravel… You’ve never felt shitty until you’ve fucked up one of your best buddies’ face the night before his wedding. Luckily there was a makeup miracle, but needless to say I’m a persona non gratis in the McGillicuddy household until the wedding pics come out okay… Which I haven’t heard anything about… Which can’t be a good thing.

I can either give you a boring play by play of my trip to Paris/Rome/Madrid (though I will quickly tell you about the knife fight I saw), or I could tell you how I spent my Friday at work … Surprisingly, the latter is the better story, at least in my mind.

First, the knife fight. We were walking through Paris, finally crossing over the Seine on our way to see the Eiffel Tower, and crossing the river, there are these African guys making bracelets (that Darren warned me not to let near you) and after telling him a few emphatic “Non”s, we were approached by a guy trying to sell his art on the same bridge. We said “Non” and continued to cross the street. We just had to wait for the light to turn red so we could cross. So we wait… and we wait… and meanwhile, the art guy starts yelling at the bracelet guy. This yelling escalates with each guy having some ally or friend or something, so there are four guys yelling at each other. All of a sudden, BAM, art guy pulls out a knife. Bracelet guy responds in kind, and now we have two guys with knives, while Lauren and I wait to cross the street. The signal refuses to change. The two friends manage to diffuse the situation, and by the time it’s diffused, the signal changes. Of all the places visited on this trip, I thought I’d most likely see a knife fight in Madrid, or, even more likely, the Atlanta airport (kidding… sort of…).

You haven’t experienced excitement until you’ve watched a knife fight from 10 feet away, while trying to cross the busiest road in Paris.

So now, with no segue required, here’s my second story.

When I first switched to office life, I was afraid I’d never adjust and bore myself to death (sort of). After 9 months, it sees like I’m finding ways to adjust. So on Friday, with not much to do, I decided to do a little sociological experiment. About a week and a half ago I put my broken washing machine on the free section of craigslist and received 15 emails in about 20 minutes. I figured this type of response was typical, it was a completely broken washing machine, so a ton of people would respond to something of value.

Clearly I can use this for evil… or at least my own entertainment.

Enter my ad on craigslist. Free gold watch. Insert sob story about some girl breaking up with me (the girl happened to have given me the watch) then “threw the watch” to a location that just happened to correspond to right outside my office window. After being flagged a few times and reposting, I finally got it to stay, and it stayed up for about 45 minutes. In that 45 minutes, we spotted 3 very obvious people searching the field for a gold watch. The only unfortunate thing (for them) was that the location wasn’t near any convenient parking (see map) and that baseball field (where the watch was allegedly located) is behind 2 gates. This meant that you could see the people from a mile away as they came in looking for the watch.

It was like “To Catch a Predator” but the only crime these people had committed was being naive, stupid, desperate, or all of the above.

Seems like I’m getting used to this office stuff.

Having doubts that anyone reads this anyway, I apologize to anyone who does for the space in between updates.

I hope all is well with you. As for me: Lots has gone on. Almost all of it good stuff.

Fully moved in to the new house, enjoying it very much.

Also, went to Europe for 9 days. Pictures are in the photos section.

Actually, that’s about it. Pretty boring, I know. I just really don’t feel like writing here when I could be in bed. Apologies. I’ll try to update more later this week with something of note. I’ve been rather uninteresting lately. Haven’t had a good rant in a while.

Sorry for the complete lack of updates… I’ve been spending the last week moving into my new house. More or less everything is going well, if you ignore the fact that only 1 of 3 toilets in the house is functional, but that’s better than 0. Every project I’ve done has resulted in failure, so it seems. Fixed the washer hoses only to find out that the washing machine’s pressure sensor failed, leading to an overflowing washing machine. Had to replace the whole machine, but luckily found a high efficiency washer for more than 50% off, so that was good.

Other projects included getting a new fridge… Not much of a project since all I did was buy the thing and have them deliver the thing, but upon trying to hook up the icemaker, they discovered that the connection at the wall was stripped, meaning I’d need to replace the whole valve. Needless to say, the valve will not come undone. That, as well as the toilets, seem to be my weekend projects. I haven’t even gotten around to the “easy” stuff, like replacing the locks and door hinges.

Hopefully all that crap can be fixed this weekend and I can upload pictures of the (complete?) house.

Went to Chicago for the weekend. Hung out with Papa Bear, Scotty Dub, Brian (who I just realized needs a nickname), Kevo “Clown Bag”, Colleen “Mrs. Clown Bag” and others.

Had a good time but it was 55 degrees and overcast. It makes me so depressed. That whole city does. I just don’t like it, and I don’t know why. It was the middle of the summer and it was still “meh”. I uploaded my 9 pictures over in the photos tab. It was nice to be in a city that actually feels like a city though. Phoenix just doesn’t feel like it. Chicago had people in a rush, horns honking, people jaywalking, nobody making eye contact… Almost like the East Coast. Almost. What I didn’t realize is how everything there operates on cash. What a pain in the ass THAT is. I love my debit card culture of AZ.

In other news, Lauren’s been in Door County for like 2 weeks. Seems like forever. She was supposed to come back the day we were supposed to move to the new house (seen in the aforementioned photos tab). However, the bank is sitting on their ass and we might not be moving in before the 1st, when my apartment lease ends. This is frustrating and concerning to me. I might have to move my shit to a storage container. That would be a major league pain in the behind.

I really just can’t wait to move into the damn house and get it over with.

Near my work there’s a pizza joint called Slices, where the guy who runs it (I think he runs it, fuck if I know) is from Boston. He cooks legitimate Boston-like pizza, and he shoots the breeze with you. I went in today for lunch and he was talking to the guy making the pizza crusts telling him that if the AL wins, crust-guy owes Boston-guy $10. I said “That’s not fair, the AL is going to win by 10″ Boston guy says “Alright, you get the AL and I get the NL and 2 runs, will you give me 2 runs?” Me: “I’ll give you 1 and a half” Pizza guy: “Deal. You win, come in tomorrow and I buy your pizza. Now I just need to have the AL win by 1 and I win both bets.”

The AL won by 1 run.

Fuck my life

A lot of things are going on in my life but at the same time, nothing is going on in my life… You ever had that happen to you? All this house stuff was taking up a lot of time. Long story short, the house appraised lower than our offer and so I’m getting it for even less, which makes me pretty happy.

Move in tentatively scheduled on the 23rd. I’m super excited but can’t wait to get it over with. The stupid hassles of moving… Forwarding mail, getting cable/internet set up, etc. And of course, the moving part. Luckily, this is my first move in the last 8 or so that didn’t involve putting everything in the back seat of a Corolla and driving across the state… or states. So I’m excited about that.

I baked some cookies tonight. The hardest part about baking cookies isn’t the break’n'bake part (which are the only cookies I make) but rather the 10 minute wait to let the cookies solidify. That is sheer torture.

Thinking about going to the DBacks game tomorrow, which will be my third of the year through the all star break. A little lower than I’d like but I just can’t get excited for national league baseball.

So my cat died today…

She was 18 years old, so it was no surprise really. When I was back home less than a month ago she was frailer than ever so I kinda expected it. Sucks, but 18 years is a pretty impressive run for a cat… She lived in 2 states and about 2 weeks ago she managed to catch a rabbit, so she was pretty prolific in her hunting.

Didn’t mean to depress you! I’m not sad, this stuff has to happen or else the world would be super overpopulated. But she will be missed.