This evening is one of those nights. Oh, I know full well why I feel this way … that much is not a mystery. I suppose what still is the mystery to me is am I never to learn, will the same type things always get me feeling like this? Will I grow numb to the triggers or will it do it to me every time?

I ask because I’m torn … while it would be nice to avoid feeling as I do now, I believe that the highs of the good times would not quite be the same if I also wasn’t feeling the lows of the bad times. Am I odd? Am I normal? Do I care? I know the answer to the last question at least for now is no not really

I think I’m going to try and get some work done and see if I can get distracted enough to distract myself from my own thoughts … maybe that will help?

I was not surprised at how lousy I felt that whole weekend. I am surprised at how much of that feeling has lingered into this past week plus. I’ve had many pets, I’ve lost many pets. I don’t think that Sasha was the pet I felt the closest bond to (that would be Caramel my fuzzy little study buddy up there!) … but I have caught myself with several moments still of “oh I better let the dog in before we head to work” and things like that. Like all parts of my brain have not yet caught on to the fact that I don’t have to tend to her, or expect her to greet me at the door when we come home, or chase a skunk, or any of the other good things and bad things she would do. When I catch myself and have that little “oh yeah” moment I think about her more than I realized I would. I thought I was to the point where I was understanding what I was going to deal with when a pet died. Apparently I am wrong. I have to say its not an overwhelming feeling of sadness or anything, but every once in awhile I wish I could give her another pet of that soft red headed fur.

I’m also bummed I apparently never met this lady, because I so could have used one of those shares of Abbot Lab stock! I’m not greedy, I wouldn’t need all 3 or anything

Busy weekend ahead, starts with the Hawks vs Vancouver game tonight. Ready to zap past this day and get it started already!

In other hockey news, Marist plays St. Rita in the deciding game 3 of the Kennedy Cup semifinals tonight. You can see a video interview with the hockey coach @ the Coach’s Corner Show website. Good luck to the alma mater!

Now speaking of the alma mater (or in this case, alma materS) … There was an article that announced that the Marist / Bro Rice football rivalry (aka “The Pulaski Road Super Bowl”) is back on for at least 2 years starting in 2011. Mt. Greenwood will be rocking again!

Also apparently getting closer to being announced is that the Illinois / Northwestern 2010 football game will be held in Wrigley Field. I’m due for a road trip to watch that game and I would so go and watch at Wrigley just to say I was there

Also if you hadn’t noticed the news relating to the recent blog about the missing Andrew Koenig, apparently that has not ended well after all.

In the meantime my next goal is to upgrade to the latest version of the blog software which I’m hopeful will be helpful in continuing to keep the amount of work to keep things tidy around here minimal.

What I’m trying to say is, feel free to post away actual humans, we have regained control again!

Now the building has been reused already and a new place (Guava). Guess we’ll have to give that a shot sometime soon!

We were without power for 4 days, all that time I was at least able to use the generator I’ve had for years now that was bought and never used because we kept getting power back right before we’d actually go and fire it up. This time it was greatly appreciated!

To date the only issue is no cable still (and therefore no internet). I’m getting around the internet issue by using my broadband card on my laptop. At least that keeps me in touch with the outside world

I’ll of course have photos online as soon as the official photographer of the MAJOR damage hooks me up with the pictures she took (hint hint)

Coming up on the Vegas road trip at the end of this week. I’ll miss a couple of things this weekend to do the trip but everyone should get in a Vegas trip in their life I figure. Will fill all in when we’re back!

Thanks to a strange quirk in my family I have now lost the last living uncle, but still have at least 3 living great uncles (I kind of get bad with the whole family thing beyond a certain limb on the family tree).

Speaking of 20 year old pictures, I ran across a picture of my fave cat Caramel aka “Study Buddy” aka “Caramel Grobarcik”. Starting from the end, we signed the cat up for some dating service at one point and would get calls to the house asking for him until someone finally fessed up that they were trying to reach a pet. He was deemed Study Buddy as he would often spend the late nights with me as I worked in my natural time frame and got my homework done in the wee hours. If a cat could learn calculus and physics from rubbing on a text book, he was a super genius. The pic served me well in absentia while I was away at school, always being displayed near by study area. Alas he has long since passed, but it was nice to run across the blast from the past. Its now serves as the POITP.

Attention ciscom - if you continue to avoid me you will find that I creep ever closer to you … I am now < 4000 points!!

Tomorrow (ok today as I’m writing post midnight) is the annual “whole family takes in a Hawks game” day. Means more hanging with the kiddies and the sibs, yeah!

Mark has informed me that he has booked our flight/hotel for Vegas in May. We’re finally joining the ranks of normal men who have trekked out there by now! None the less i’m ready to go, i could use some good drinking and fun.

A final thought, a muddy yard and my dog are not a good combination …

Hope everyone survives the night of 1 less hour of sleep!

Mouse hunting continues …

In other news, I have further cut into the lead of the dread pirate ciscom23 in our xbox gamer score battle. He is now less then 5000 points ahead. If I could stop being so utterly pathetic at Halo I could say I’m actually approaching his skills, but alas that is really not the case. While I do a better job at some games then him, shooter games are still a world he dominates (this concession could count as a bday gift you know).

Thats all for now … til next time faithful readers!

Scenario 1 - AZ DOESN’T get a safety but does come back and score their last TD and hold the Steelers for a 21-20 win and a big win for me.

Scenario 2 - PIT scores only a FG on their last drive, we go OT where I win at least a reverse (big win depending on who actually scores) on a FG or safety.

Scenario 3 - AZ scores on their last drive for a 30-27 win and a reverse win for me.

Either way, I scored a reverse win for quarter 3 and managed to make a little over 1/2 my money back at least. I was cheering for the Steelers to get a turnover before the half as I would have won that quarter as well then, but I didn’t mean for them to return it 100 yards, that kind of defeated my request. Oh well. The loss I chalk up to entertainment costs for the game

Betting interests aside it was a GREAT game to watch, especially after the Cardinals settled down after their blah filled first quarter (and for that matter first half). The Cardinals played a heck of a game, one that I could SEE them doing but going into the game I had no way of knowing they would be doing that night. I’m glad the playoff Cardinals showed up and not the regular season ones.

As far as the commercials, the only one I really laughed out loud for was the Teleflora ad. I liked the flowers telling her that no one wants to see her naked. I generally don’t think movie ads count for good Super Bowl ads, that being said I of course have interest in the release of Star Trek, Transformers 2, and GI Joe (not necessarily in that order, I’m not sure what order I care about them frankly).

Afterward we decided to wing dinner and wandered a bit before ultimately deciding on Nick’s Fishmarket. I as usual saw risotto and leapt right on that (specifically Shrimp and Lobster Risotto). Mark went with the mixed grill which looked equally good to me (and was in fact my second choice). We can also recommend that you grab yourself some of the lobster bisque.

All of this and the Illini beat the Badgers as well. Damned good way to spend a day.

While just about to sit down for dinner Pete did ring me up and offer to head over to Katy’s Dumpling House. Its a place he’s talked up and I am DYING to go, but alas he picked a bad day to be free as I was not. Here’s hoping that we get another shot at that soon (hint hint).

But the real reason for the post is because I saw that some guy is suing a strip club because he was clocked in the face from a flying shoe fresh from the foot of one of the dancers. I had thought “now that’s a unique lawsuit”. However it turns out that its not so unusual at all! I found a few other examples of exotic dancer mishaps on the web. First of, apparently stripper shoes can be quite dangerous when launched into a glass ceiling tile. And its not just men who can get a face full of stripper foot as here’s a woman who took some toes to the nose. Finally, check this out for a short list of other random exotic dancer lawsuits, such as some poor canadian lover of dance who caught a face full of stripper shoe. Who knew??? Beware the next time you’re tucking that buck into the gstring people.

Tomorrow Mark and I are taking in Spamalot, I’ll have some sort of feedback for you afterwards, stay tuned!

Spent most of the weekend laboring away on long overdue laundry. Exciting, yes I know. We had our dryer take a crap on us so we replaced the washer/dryer together and I put them through their paces. I also went and made the folks at LunarPages happy and made sure the blog is all patched up and ready to go. While I was copying updated files up I dug a little deeper into some of the stats I have available to me for visitors. One of the things I found was a nurse who worked in the hospital where Mark and Chris had their liver transplant had linked over to Chris’ story that I have shared from this site. For the sake of international relations, I’ll link to her blog so you can check out this ex-Chicagoan over on the other side o’ the pond. Maybe now I’ll even get some more of those Britains I’ve been clamoring to visit … I also learned that people googling for Fusco are the top 10 links visiting to my site. I just now noticed that I’m the third choice on Google if you search for his name there. Otherwise a lot of visits seem to be headed toward my Rose Bowl pics, with various searches that get hits over there.

As long as I’ve mentioned some of the high school crew, those of you who have me as a friend on Facebook have already noticed that someone (specifically Erik’s ex gf) had posted a photo of us before we headed out to our senior prom. For those of you that HAVEN’T, well 1. do so and 2. here is said pic so you don’t have to if you don’t want to (but I’m still going to try and guilt you anyway).