So I Can Go to Bed

1.) Tomorrow morning we leave to spend a few days in Tucson. I am going to of course visit my family, but I will see several friends that are very near and dear to my heart even despite the fact that I have not seen several of them for many many years. I am excited to exchange stories, take pictures, introduce them to Brandon, and gossip (in the best way of course) about others that we know. It should also be nice to visit Tucson, even though that city is still in the thick of summer. In many ways, I still consider Tucson home and always praise it when I can.

2.) I can't sleep. Whenever we have to get up early to catch a plane, my mind gets filled with all the billions of things I want to make sure I remember in the morning. My mind always paces with minutiae like "I didn't grab deodorant so I need to remember to pack that" or "I should take out the garbage so it doesn't stink when we get home" or "Should I pack another pair of flip flops?" I always debate, too, whether or not I should just get up and complete my to-do list but always decide to stay put and try to get my body at least start to relax. So here I am, in a relaxed position, only allowing myself to write for ten more minutes...just to get all these thoughts out so I can hopefully catch a few hours of nite-nite.

3.) Brandon worked a 14-hour day today. He has been dreading it for a while now and made it all the way through without a complaint. I appreciate that he works a few nights a week in addition to all his school work. He's the best even though he sometimes does hideous things with his facial hair.

4.) The DNC just wrapped up in our mile-high city. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see one lick of it. Is that lame or what? I was talking about this amongst friends tonight and someone put it perfectly, "It's like there's this big party three miles away that is off limits to us. There's no way they'd let us in anywhere and even if there was a hope, would it be worth the traffic? And where would we park?" So true. I at least wanted to see the tents, police in riot gear, and catch a celeb or two, preferably The Boss or maybe George Clooney. Oh well. That's what Real Life (aka a full time job) does to you, I suppose. Makes you less spontaneous and overly practical.

5.) The link to the blog where I write about my work is here. I don't write on it a ton and haven't learned how to keep my posts short and sweet. My job could be pretty consuming so this is where I tease it out so I can leave it behind. I write about learning the ropes, feeling the responsibility of my job, and wanting to actually make a difference. It might be a big fat bore to a lot of people, so this is your warning.

6.) My ten minutes are up. xoxo

A Couple Pics

Last Saturday, Alison and I biked out to the Cherry Creek Reservoir. Here's a picture of us and our human-powered hogs. The trip ended up being about 25 miles in length, which set new couple and personal records for us. Also, I believe that we biked farther than Michael Phelps did last week, which is something to be proud of.

I've decided to honor this soon-to-be-defunct handlebar moustache with a name. He shall be known as "El Stāche" (yes, pronounced with the long "a"). It would be wise not to make eye contact when looking at El Stāche because you will likely become weak in the knees and become overcome with a desire to submit your will to El Stāche's. Excuse another Lord of the Rings reference, but El Stāche is the closest thing to the eye of Sauron outside of Middle Earth. Also, El Stāche might steal your soul.

This is a completely accurate depiction of Alison's relationship with El Stāche. She hates him with her whole soul (which she has managed to retain despite El Stāche's constant presence) and wishes for his speedy demise.

A Few Items

Today has been a tremendous day for me in many ways, which I would like to share with you.

1. My fantasy baseball team exited the basement for the first time in many months--and we did it with style. I woke up to find a 5.5 point gain to rocket me from a solid 10th place to 9th and only 1 point out of 8th. This was a major moral victory for me. I've wanted it for a long time.

2. I'm super psyched about the Olympics. You can watch a different sport every half-hour or so. Plus, every fraction of a second of action is crucially important to these people. I realized that this is amazing. I can only relate it to March Madness because you can pick it up at any moment, but it's hard to put down. The Olympics have the potential to provide constant competitive stimulation. You can pull for someone you've never even heard of and if they lose you just move on to the next event which is likely to be equally as hard-core as the one before.

3. Seeing President Bush attending the Olympics has confirmed the fact that I have developed a solid man-crush on him. You can say what you want about the decisions he has made as president. I disagree with many of them myself. I just think that we could be really good buddies because he looks like he knows how to have a good time. Plus, don't you think that if he did some cameos in movies or hosted Saturday Night Live that he would be hilarious? I do. He cracks me up just watching him watch stuff.

4. You may have noticed a wave of manfulness radiating out of Denver this morning. The reason is that the handlebar moustache went into effect at 9:30 am. The handlebar moustache is the climax of my usual facial hair cycle. Scientific studies have shown that I get maximum facial hair splendor with the handlebars as graphed below.

5. I love the Batman voice. I want to master it so that I can really intimidate deadbeats into giving me information while remaining anonymous. Some people think that the Batman voice is over the top. I think that it is entirely appropriate and very impressive. I hope they make several more Batman movies and then someone edits out all of the Batman-voiced lines and compiles them into an album that I can listen to in the morning to get psyched up. Batman is freaking awesome.

Facebutt

Brandon and I recently sold our souls to the World Wide Internet and became social networkers via Facebook.

(For all intensive purposes, I am calling this site Facebutt. I had a dear dear friend in college (Hi Anderma!) that taught me the trick of inserting immature words into the names of common corporations/institutions. It works best if the name is also a compound word so you can just substitute one of the words with the immature word. The word "butt" is my favorite one to do this with. Every now and I then I throw out a Buttbuster or a Buttmart into the conversation and it makes me roll with laughter, even if it is only on the inside. Normally, that sort of trick is in Brandon's domain, but for some reason, this one's mine and I'm holding on tight. For a while, I toyed with the idea of calling Facebook, Buttface...it is still very tempting, but it doesn't stay true to the original word).

So Facebook. We resisted for such a long time, knowing full well that it is just another way to waste time on the Internet and ignore real face-to-face relationships. I dipped my toe into the water first, mostly because I have this scary thing coming up at the end of August that I don't really want to talk about because it involves the phrase 10 year and high school all in the same sentence. Anyways, I had been thinking more and more about this scary thing (which is a also known as a full blown anxiety attack) and decided I would find people I cared about before the dreaded event to determine the extent that I wanted to sign up for it.

Once I got on Facebutt, we spent an hour one evening looking up all of Brandon's friends and then he too decided that he should sell his soul. A few evenings later we were sitting next to each other on our sofa, our laptops on our laps, Facebutting together (romantic, eh?). We were kind of enjoying seeing pictures of old friends while also kind of feeling like our Precious Time was just floating out the window.

When we finished, Brandon visited his regular sites (an evening ritual for the both of us) and coincidentally, this article/jab popped up. It nailed everything that had been running through my mind about the essence of Facebutt. Please read it, you will laugh (especially if you've been on Facebutt).