When I got off work yesterday, there was a voice mail on my phone from my girlfriend saying that she'd hurt herself working out and might need to go to the hospital. I jumped in my truck and high-tailed it over to her place to see what exactly she'd done. It seems that while doing one of her tricep workouts, she'd felt a pop in her chest and it hurt whenever she took a deepish breathe or generally moved her arm/torso in any exaggerated motion. I put in a call to First Nurse and we were told that it'd probably be in her best interests to have it checked out by a doctor, so off to the ER we went.

This marks my second ever trip to the ER in Ames, neither for myself coincidentally. The first was to assist in taking Mr. Thunder, on the links over there, to the ER after his arm fell off while punching a box into a dumpster a la Mario Bros. That's right, I'm friends with someone who would seemingly get his ass kicked by an 8 bit overweight plumber, hooray. After his heroic bout with the empty box, he simply turned to my room mate and I as he said "Hey, perhaps maybe we should go to the hospital." Now it seems to me that if my arm where to FALL OFF... I'd address someone for help with a bit more urgency than "hey, you know, when you have a second, if perhaps we could, oh I don't know, go to the hospital, that'd be great." So needless to say, we thought he was kidding. Turns out he wasn't so in the car we go and off the hospital.

Funny thing happens when your arm falls off, you can't very well do much of anything. So once we get to the hospital, another friend and I have to reach into his pocket and get his wallet and fill out all the paper work for him while he just sits there, enjoying the events. Now what they don't tell you in the EMERGENCY ROOM, is that unless you are actually past the threshold of death, it's not an emergency in their eyes. Just please have a seat and we'll be with you in around 2 or 3 hours. Hooray. So my first visit to the hospital in Ames consisted of one friend being carted off somewhere for the better part of the evening, and the other friend and I critiquing the wonderful picture of flowers on their waiting room wall. Good times.

Back to my second trip.... My girlfriend and I arrive to the ER at about 5:00 in the afternoon. We check in, fill out some paper work and commence waiting. Then we wait some more. After about an hour a nurse asks for her and she checks her heart rate and all that fun stuff and then we..... return to waiting. Hot damn, I could have applied for a degree in waiting. Amazingly however, in the amount of time (5 minutes) she was getting her vitals checked out, the waiting room turned into day care. Holy crap there were a lot of little kids in there, and lucky for all parties involved (if you were under 3) the only channel in the waiting room was Disney. *Sigh* I know for a fact when I was a kid, we had good shows. Have you seen the stuff on there now? I HAVE! Because when you have to wait over two hours to be seen by a doctor in the EMERGENCY ROOM, you can watch a lot of frickin Disney Channel. Anywho, like I said, we waited a little over two hours before being ushered to see an actual doctor, that visited for approximately 5 minutes. Grrrr. On the bright side it's nothing serious, just a pulled muscle or cartilage that will heal in about a week, in the meantime, hello Ibuprofin.

I purchased this DVD this morning. It's Big Head Todd & The Monsters: Live at the Fillmore. It's a pretty decent little ditty. I've enjoyed their music for quite some time and I just became aware of this dvd so I thought I'd pick it up. If you enjoy live music, especially along the lines of a kind of blues/groovy feel, this would be a good pick up for you. It's really best for some good old fashion lounging music. I'd say ideally for myself, I could see kicking back in a lounger chair with a beer on a summer night and just feeling the music. (Also why it's important to spend money on a good sound system, especially speakers and receiver. It just heightens the entire experience)

Happy Monday. I hope today finds you well.

I'm in the midst of writing a 10 page mid-term for my advertising 497 class, it's due Thursday, so at least I'm not waiting until the absolute last minute. The assignment is to write a 10 page paper on creativity. That's it. It can be anything to do with creativity, but that's the topic. It might seem easy, but trying to think of something to write about that takes up 10 pages, single spaced, isn't overly easy. On top of that, we are graded on our own creativity, our coherent content, the neatness and the risk we take in creating the paper. That being said, we are allowed and in fact encouraged to make it as creative in appearance and general presentation as we can. Drawings on the pages, quotes, whatever. Now I initially thought that would make it easier, less to write perhaps. Turns out that the creative process itself takes quite awhile, both in terms of ideation and actual creation of the product. Oh well.

Good morning all! It's a beautiful Friday morning, the sun is out and it's actually warming up. I'm pretty excited for spring to get here. Usually I like winter and all, but I do very much enjoy an afternoon nap with the windows open and that fresh breeze blowing. It also means that baseball is well on its way, oh how I missed you baseball. How I miss the loses, the bad pitching, the strike outs, the shut outs, the errors. I miss you Cubs! I also miss playing catch with an old friend who moved to other side of the damn state. We had many an afternoon on campus throwing the ol leather around. Chasing after a little white ball in hundred degree humid Iowa summers. Good times, good times indeed.

This morning has been pretty eventful as I've really tried to begin working out regularly. I play raquetball on Mondays now with another friend (The score of this week's match 21-8; 21-9; 21-7), then I work out on Tuesdays with the better half, and I'm trying to fit in a session on Fridays and Sundays. As I didn't have to work this morning, I went at 9, a time I figured most people would be at work and it might be fairly slow. While it wasn't bad, it was busier than expected, what's up with that? I began with 30 minutes of running and watching MSNBC. Funny how when you take enough business classes, the whole world of business suddenly seems to make much more sense and is oddly interesting. (Scary, I know) Then I did the ol muscle stuff before coming home to shower. Hopefully I can actually make this a ritual of sorts.

My post shower experience finds me relaxing in my now comfortable apartment, Jammin to some DMB, Live in Chicago. I say "now comfortable" because it's finally the way I like it, it feels homy. Although I've lived her for 6 months now, I've never really had enough money to buy just a couple more pictures or trinkets to make it feel comfortable. However, for Valentine's day my girlfriend got my a large LiLeger print to hang above my couch, finally something to fill that horrible void. That pretty well prompted me to bite the bullet and just finish. So I purchased some half price frames from Hobby Lobby for things that I already had, as well as picking up a couple new prints to hang in the bathroom. A few hours of measuring, nailing, screwing and leveling and my apartment is home. A place where I could open the window and spend all day listening to music and be perfectly content. Ah, how nice to be home, my home.

Hello again. It's been too long, too long my friend. I'm not always the most consistent poster, if you haven't figured that out yet. I truly have good intentions to post quite regularly, it just seems that my days are shorter than they used to be and I can never find time. Some day perhaps I'll be like Dooce, and post everyday. It's not for lack of content generally. I think of tons of things when I'm walking across campus, I should start dictating as I walk and then just post when I get back. Might warrant some weird looks, but what can you do?

Here's something that is actually on some sort of topic. I was selected for jury duty, about a month ago, but my case was canceled, so this morning was my backup date, and I actually had to report. It was actually fairly interesting, and I"m somewhat annoyed that I wasn't actually selected for the jury. The whole process is interesting to me, and I really enjoy the parties presenting their positions and the fact, etc. Granted we never really got to much of the real facts, but the beginning was fun. Perhaps in two years I'll actually get to be part of the jury...

Some of you may have figured out by now that a friend and I have taken up weekly raquetball matches. It's a little hard on the body given I haven't really played since high-school, a solid six years past. There was a time when I'd play 3 or 4 times a week. It started out simple matches at an outdoor handball court across from house with my step-dad. I'm fairly certain I've never actually won a match against him to this day. If nothing else it's a good way to the learn the humility of defeat. Once we moved it indoors I began playing other friends. One such friend, whom I haven't spoken with in about 5 years, and I would have marathon matches decided by 2 or three points that would leave us on the floor trying to catch every little gasp of air that happened by. Those days, however, are long gone and my body has many more miles. After a few light matches I find my hip a little sore and my knees disgruntled. Curse you age!

Today's Matches: 21-9; 21-8; 21-2

Happy Olympics day to everyone. Here's Google's honoring there of...







I don't really have much to say today, or much time to do so, so I thought I'd just change up my lyric, and post last weeks raquetball scores. Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Scores... (Me / Opponent): 21/6; 21/4; 21/3

Last lyric: "Take a Jimi Thing Just to keep me swingin' I'd like to show you what's inside I shouldn't care if you don't like it" - Dave Matthews Band "Jimi Thing"

So any of you out there who perhaps follow/listen to Dave Matthews Band might know that in the past few years they've changed producers a couple of times, and with it their sound to a degree. Some people can't stand the change, others accept that it's part of a band's evolution and maintaining their sanity by developing new sounds and styles to keep them sane and not so monotonous. That being said, it's a fairly widely accepted fact that Steve Lillywhite was probably the best producer they've had, the sound that emerged is what cemented DMB as the group that they are and found their amazing following. All that being said, Steve Lillywhite won a Grammy tonight for Producer of the Year. (U2's "How to Dismantle and Atomic Bomb" as well as Jason Mraz's "Mr. A-Z") Congrats to Mr. Lillywhite.

Some of the Albums Lillywhite has produced: (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
-Peter Gabriel:
---Peter Gabriel (III or Melt)
-Guster:
---Lost and Gone Forever
-Dave Matthews Band:
---Under The Table and Dreaming,
---Crash,
---The Lillywhite Sessions,
---Before These Crowded Streets
-Phish:
---Billy Breathes
-The Rolling Stones:
---Dirty Work
-U2:
---Boy,
---October,
---War,
---Under a Blood Red Sky,
---The Joshua Tree (some songs, not all),
---Achtung Baby,
---All That You Can't Leave Behind,
---How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
-Coldplay:
---X&Y
-Counting Crows:
---Hard Candy
-Jason Mraz:
---Mr. A-Z

Perhaps I'm the only person who found it odd to see Linkin Park, Jay-Z and Sir Paul McCartney together singing "Yesterday." I liked it, don't get me wrong. It didn't sound the greatest, they're not exactly the most harmonious trio ever, but it was certainly interesting and entertaining. Kind of like a few years back when Elton John and Eminem shared a stage together. It's nice for the sake of music and creativity that artists from different generations and genres can come together to make music. Good job Grammys.

So there are some interesting benefits of being up before 90% of other college students. For on this morning, they are sleeping off their drunken endeavors from last night whilst I sit on my couch and watch Lionel Richie sing "Brickhouse" live on Good Morning America. Score one for the Gipper!

Happy Wednesday all! It's Career Fair day here at the ol U. It's kind of intimidating and I haven't even gone yet. I'm actually in the process of getting ready. This little adventure will find me sporting an entirely new ensemble from head to toe, how exciting. I've only gone to one of these before and that was as a freshman. Needless to say the point of that outing wasn't the great search for a long and prosperous career (as a Vulcan), but rather to collect free stuff. WOO HOO FREE STUFF! This time out it's a bit more serious as it seems that in three months I will be thrown from all that I've known and lived for the past 6 years and be forced to find something else to do with my time. It also seems that I have a fairly impressive amount of student loans to pay back so it seem to reason that whatever I do with my time, it should involve making vast sums of money, not playing with a barrel of monkeys 6 days a week as I had previously planned. So now that you know, I wish that you wish me luck and a have most fantastic Wednesday!

Oh, and the results of yesterday's Raquetball match: (Me / Opponent) 21/10, 21/15 and a sore butt to boot.



Previous lyric: "I want to live where soul meets body, And let the sun wrap its arms around me, And bathe my skin in water cool and cleansing, And feel what it's like to be new" -- Death Cab for Cutie "When Soul Meets Body" (On a side note, it seems that the group "Postal Service" was in fact a good portion of this band, so if you enjoy their sound, I highly suggest you try DCFC)