Well, then… it’s been a while.  The grand majority of 2008 went undocumented from my end, but I’m going to start trying to make a comeback in ’09.

Let me give you a run-down of what’s happened in my world:

• I worked at SH until early August ’08, then got involved with the notoriously well-run campaign in the city of winds.
• I went on RAGBRAI yet again… and it was awesome yet again.  You can, of course, see our exploits here:  http://www.spokeeasy.com/.  I don’t think I’ll go into detail at the moment.  You can find our Facebook group out there, too:
  
• I attended Halloween and NYE 2008 @ Travis‘s pad, which was solid.  It was a good break from previous years when we ended up at expensive or lame parties.
• I moved out of my West Loop apartment after living there for 3 1/2 years.  All my stuff was packed up, shipped off and moved to storage in the cornfield state.
• I’m now in Washington, DC, and I had to stay with friends for a time while looking for a job.  The last gig was over on January 31st and I was looking until June 15th.
• I then got a gig with ServInt as Technical Support, which was a really great atmosphere. The staff was awesome and they really have a lot going for them with the opening of the new LA Data Center.
• I now work for a non-profit organization in Washington, DC, which is making gigantic strides in assisting with the passage of the new American Clean Energy and Security Act.

Anyway, 2009 has been a pretty decent year. Bring on 2010! I hope to update again before Dec 31, however.

Today was another day in the wait for results.  My time is being spent between Caribou Coffee, random meetings with previous coworkers, sending my resume around to everyone I know and a lot of web surfing.  I haven’t yet hit the wall, in terms of feeling worthless, which is good.  Hopefully I’ll land it before hitting that barrier.  Gotta stay positive, yo!

Otherwise, weekend was fairly uneventful.  Traveled to Springfield, VA to meet up with college roommate, his wife and daughter for a birthday celebration in the burbs on Saturday afternoon, then met up with roommates in Adams Morgan.  Fairly uneventful.  Giant pizza slice was consumed post haste in the cab on the way home.  Today = movie/chill day.

Hopefully bigger news to come tomorrow!  Check ya then…

BTW, have you ever checked out the real Couch Surfing site?  CLICK HERE

Well, then… it’s been a while.  The grand majority of 2008 went undocumented from my end, but I’m going to start trying to make a comeback in ’09.

Let me give you a run-down of what’s happened in my world:

• I worked at SH until early August ’08, then got involved with the notoriously well-run campaign in the city of winds.
• I went on RAGBRAI yet again… and it was awesome yet again.  You can, of course, see our exploits here:  http://www.spokeeasy.com/.  I don’t think I’ll go into detail at the moment.  You can find our Facebook group out there, too.
• I attended Halloween and NYE @ Travis‘s pad, which was solid.  It was a good break from previous years when we ended up at expensive or lame parties.
• I moved out of 180 North Jeff after living there for 3 years.  All my stuff was packed up, shipped off and moved to storage in the cornfield state.
• I’m now in Washington, DC, staying with friends for the moment, looking for a job.  The last gig was over on January 31st and I’ve been looking ever since.  Big interview yesterday, so we’ll see where that takes me.

2008 was a pretty decent year.  While I didn’t have that much money towards the end of the year or at the beginning of this year, it felt like some of the most productive months of my life.  I was able to make a number of new friends and my network has never been larger.  I’ve been able to be in DC and experience new situations during a week in January and now for a couple weeks in March.  I’m very close to finding a solid job in the new atmosphere here in DC.

I really don’t know what else to say.  I’m sure there will be more updates coming soon.  Like I said… I’m going to try to stay on top of this blog!

So that happened.  WTF?  Ugh, what a weekend.

Five separate school shootings at Universities over the past week. Five. It’s starting to be a dangerous business going to college. This scares me because I hope it doesn’t start deterring kids from gaining post-high-school education. My college years were some of the best of my life.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/17/shooter.girlfriend/index.html

Why? Because of this:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1802126

Want some laughs after that?

http://www.funnyordie.com/

Or, you can laugh at me:

Good night!

Ahh it appears that we have entered the time for enhanced political exchanges & events.  The candidates have been positioning themselves over the recent months with an abundance of TV/print/internet advertisements (as personally experienced during holiday visits to the parentals).  With the Iowa Caucuses gone by already, the New Hampshire Primaries happening tonight and the upcoming events still to happen, we should have plenty of political debates & votes to feed the fire until the popular vote 11 months from now.

Hillary’s taken this one (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22551718/) today in NH by a 2-3% margin.
Obama took Iowa (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/03/iowa.caucuses/index.html) by 9% over Hillary.

It’s all a toss-up.  Who knows, but I’m pretty excited to see a change from our current predicament.

In other news, The Goose finally made it into the Hall of Fame:  http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/hof08/news/story?id=3186626
Congrats, Goose.  Only the fifth reliever in the HOF.  Damn!

Off to sleepy land.  I’ve gotta be productive tomorrow!

Oh, you gotta see this one…

http://www.uploadgeek.com/uploads456/0/1197784327416.png

WEAK!  Retraction here:  http://www.bigspring.k12.pa.us/news.php?action=view_article&article_id=2130

Check out the original image after the link…

(more…)

… and there’s reason to believe… Maybe this year will be better… than the last.

Yep, that’s right, folks, 2007 is coming to an end. Has it been a good year or a bad year? Meh. There’s been a lot of ups and downs and a lot of unexpected announcements and movements going on here and there. I’ll probably say something to this in the coming days.

In return for your patience as to the above, I give you first this bit of disappointing news: Danny Haren has been traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks, along with Connor Robertson (Minor League reliever), for 6 players. The crowd that will be shuffling to the Bay Area shall include 3 left-handed pitchers (Brett Anderson, Dana Eveland, Greg Smith) along with infielder Chris Carter and outfielders Aaron Cunningham and Carlos Gonzalez. While this is a bit disheartening to lose an ace/the American League starting pitcher to the 2007 All-Star Game/bedrock to your starting roto, ya gotta respect the man they call Billy Beane and his ability to rebuild/recreate each new year’s team. Don’t you worry, they’ll be OK.

Something cool, you say? The new Batman movie “The Dark Knight” that they’ve been shooting in Chicago all summer long now has a new trailer that came out at 10:30-11 p.m.-ish tonight:

http://atasteforthetheatrical.com/

Awesome? Hellz yeah! Tons of shots from spots less than 4 blocks from our apartment. The new Joker (Heath Ledger) looks NOTHING like him in real life due to all the makeup. Pretty bad-ass, too:

Check out the other pages for the upcoming film, also:

http://thedarkknight.warnerbros.com/
http://www.thegothamtimes.com/
http://www.thehahahatimes.com/

If you saw it earlier, here’s a pic I got of filming along the Chicago River:

http://pix.drewzilla.org/chicagoriver/CIMG0887

In other news, I’ve secured a movable object with wheels to whisk me away to the cornfield state over the weekend before xmas into the 25th, on which date I need to have said whip back to the O’Hare impound by 4 p.m. That means work on the morning of the 26th. WHEEEEEEEEEE! It will be good to see some W’loo peeps, however.

THEN, to top all toppers, we’re hittin’ Hogs N’ Honeys for NYE. No joke. Really. Not. Kidding.

Someone send help. Seriously.

MySpace Blog Entry on this HERE

Above & Beyond were actually the ones who started playing this track and making it big. They first played it on “Trance Around the World” (their weekly internet radio show) on January 30th, 2007. Since then, I’ve been in love with this song. I can’t get it out of my head. If there was a way to vote for a “2007 Track of the Year”, this would be the one.

Quick note: this YouTube link is just audio and I’d fast-forward to the 55 second mark to avoid the club-beat introduction for mixing: