It's Been A Long Time

...and a busy week. This weekend should be a lot of fun even though we are expecting a snowstorm overnight that should leave us with around eight to ten inches of snow.

I have a basketball game tomorrow at 2:00pm, Blake's first birthday party at 4:00pm, and then Rick, Randy, and I are having "Metal Night" at 7:00pm. We are planning on watching American Hardcore, Get Thrashed, and Heavy Metal In Baghdad. There will also be a lot of frozen food combinations
that will blow the mind.

February needs to end ASAP.

Valentine's Day Eve Eve

I need to finish up getting everything prepared for Valentine's Day for
Cait tonight while she is in class! Two of my previous ideas for this
year have already fallen through so let's hope everything works out by
Saturday!

Tonight we'll probably head to Mike and Giselle's for our ritual TV
watching of The Office and America's Best Dance Crew. Thanks Randy
Jackson.

I've been listening to The Deftones on shuffle today at work and it's
been so great.

Toddlers & Tiaras

What a scary show. I feel bad for the kids.

A Taste Of Spring

I thoroughly enjoyed a taste of spring this past weekend with the weather getting up to 60 degrees and probably about 95% of the snow melting. Friday night consisted of our ever popular panino night, a new hair cut (which is starting to grow on me, no pun intended), and finished off by yet another trip to Margie’s Candies. Cait and Giselle found a new little grocery store in Bucktown called Olivia’s Market which just so happen to have Giselle’s favorite mustard, Honeycup! They bought some excellent deli meat and a spread of other sandwich ingredients for us to create our individual panini. After dinner, I headed out to get my haircut. It’s a full blown mohawk which even I was not anticipating, but I sort of like it now and I think I’ll stick with it for the time being. I meet up with everyone again after my haircut at Margie’s to indulge in Grandpa’s Turtle. Cait and I split on this time which ended up being the perfect amount for both of us. This has become our standard Friday night.

Saturday was beautiful outside. It was sunny and warm with a slight breeze and everyone was out enjoying the weather. Cait and I decided to tagalong with Mike and Giselle to visit a few of their potential wedding venues. We drove all over Chicago to stop at the 63rd Street Beach House, The Harold Washington Library, and the Architectural Artifacts Atrium. It was like we were tourist in our own city. All the places were very unique in their own way. By far my favorite was the Architectural Artifacts Atrium because of all the neat stuff they had their. I'll have to make another blog post with just the pictures.

Mike and I had a basketball game with Tom in the early afternoon. We had been undefeated up until this point. Unfortunately we got blown out pretty ridiculously and even worse, Tom got jacked in the lip and bleed pretty significantly causing him to sit the rest of the game out.

After showering up and waiting for Cait and Giselle to finish up their mani/pedi appointments we decided to eat at our favorite Mexican restaraunt, Pancho Pistolas. We all indulged in nachos and steak tacos. Cait and I wanted to go see Coraline afterwards, but we were both tired and decided to spend the night in, which eventually turned into a Back To The Future marathon because we ended up watching all three movies over the remainder of the weekend.

This has ignited our mission to watch (and re-watch) all of our favorite 80's and 90's movies.

Overall this past weekend was just a taste of things to come this year. The weather was a reminder that spring is on the way even though I know it's going to go back to below freezing soon enough.

Sick

I can't breathe through my nose and it's driving me nuts. I'm overdosing on orange juice and cough drops. At least my throat isn't on fire anymore. This weather this weekend is supposed to break into the fifties and I want to feel well enough to enjoy it.

iTunes Charts #9 + Totem Pole #58

Today was excellent. The new A Day To Remember album, Homesick, came out today on Victory Records and it is doing fantastic! Far exceeding expectations and out performing across the board. As of right now it is #9 on the Top Albums Chart on the main page of iTunes which is a huge milestone for me and the work that I have put into this album. I have to believe it will do better on the chart and continue to get closer to number one. To see this band grow over the past few years has been remarkable as well. I was there during their showcase in the summer of 2006 and I have had a hand in their development being in the sales department at Victory Records and I couldn't be more happy for them today! I'm anxious to see how well they will be doing next week!

Check it.

To top it all off I got my limited edition, Totem Pole design Johnny Cupcakes shirt. I received #58 of the 200 made. It is the first one I have been able to get that is a VERY limited edition because the majority of them numbered designs are only available in the retail stores. I look forward to adding more numbered designs (and non-numbered designs for that matter) to my ever growing collection!

Today was a wonderful day.

Groundhog's Day Update

The state of Pennsylvania must be the focus for every major news event today. First, the Pittsburgh Steelers win the Superbowl last night and now good old Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning. I am preparing for another six weeks worth of winter. Too bad it's supposed to be 47 degrees on Saturday which is going to seem like a heatwave. Goodbye snow!

Football's over so here's to the Chicago Bears 2009/2010 season! I wonder how many spots I'll move up on the season ticket waiting list this year.

Less than two weeks until pitchers and catcher report for spring training too! Major League Baseball is right around the corner. We need to get our tickets to a Seattle Mariners game in May during our vacation.

My very limited edition running of 200 Johnny Cupcakes - Totem Pole shirt is supposed to arrive tomorrow. I will be anxiously awaiting the UPS truck to see what number out of 200 I will have.




More to come...

Superbowl Sunday

I am expecting the Pittsburgh Steelers to win, but I'd like to see the Arizona Cardinals upset the Steelers. I'm looking forward to the commercials more than the game.

The Last Of January

The year is 1/12th of the way over already.

The last day of January was excellent. It started of with some nicer weather as we got above freezing for the first time in a long time. The sun was shining and some of the snow began melting. The hope for spring is all the more real with Ground Hog's Day tomorrow (even though it doesn't mean anything).

I had a basketball game at noon and we played extremely poorly by dropping passes and not getting rebounds. We were down by seven at half time but we started playing much better defense and we ended up winning by two within the last few second. So we remain undefeated at 3-0. In two weeks we'll have a double header and I already know that I'm going to be dead after that.

Cait and I received a gift card to Chili's for Christmas from my uncle, so we decided to use it up in one shot by taking Mike and Giselle with us. I didn't know Chili's was the hot spot in town because this place was packed with a 40+ minute wait! After about 10 minutes Mike was able to box out everyone out and snag a table in the bar area. We decided to get a bunch of appetizers and share everything rather than entrees and it worked out perfectly.

There is a Half Price Books around the corner from the Chili's and once Mike heard this, we had to go. I'd have to say it's his favorite store, not just because it's a bookstore, but because they are half price too! They have music and movies too and we found out that they have board games as well. We found a glow in the dark Ouija board for only $5.00 and decided to get it. I never had one of these as a kid and I guess none of my friends did either because I never used one and as a result have never had anything eerie or strange happen while using one. After asking several times if a spirit was present, we had no results. I'm not sure what I was expecting to happen, but I was bummed that nothing happened for some reason.

The only logical spot for dessert was to revisit Margie's Candies and get some more outstanding sundaes. It was crowded as usual, but there were some overly annoying people who were obviously not from the area. It was cougar-like moms and their weird tough-guy boyfriends/husbands. They were loud and started getting in the face of one of the people working there because they did not get seated fast enough. After getting the the poor guys face he mocked him by trying to be buddy-buddy with him and giving him a side hug. Kind of put a damper on the experience, but I still enjoyed the banana split, it's beats the milkshake.

After giving up on the Ouija board we watched a couple of episodes of our new favorite show It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and called it a night.

February is here.