Breakfast

Orange juice

Blueberry pancakes

Sausage links

Update

Ever notice how sometimes life just seems to fly by and before you know it five months have gone by? Thus explaineth my lack of posts since last summer.  Life actually is very busy right now though, and not necessarily in a good way.  Work is going well, I’m putting in a bit more than twenty hours a week, and I’d much rather I was there full time.  Unfortunately, at this point I’m still taking classes and they’re chewing up way too much of my time.  I look at life in terms of ROI, and short term I’m getting absolutely nothing out of these four classes.  In fact, the only thing that makes them worthwhile is that this is my very last and final semester and I’ll be graduating in may.  Obviously the long term ROI outweighs the short term, but sometimes it’s a little hard to keep that in mind.  I’ve got so much reading to do this semester, twelve books to be exact, and most of it is very dry, dense, and tedious.

See? I wasn’t kidding.  Look at those titles, I mean are you at all inspired to great scholarly works? I’m certainly not.  I’ve been very ready for a long time now to move beyond school and into the working world full time, and with three months to go I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I was really just hoping for a light-hearted jaunt through my last semester instead of a forced death march.

And speaking of forced death marches, my ‘95 Cutlass may just be on its last leg.  I’ve had the car since March of 2001, and I’ve logged approximately 110,000 miles on top of the 103,00 it had when I got it.  At this point the hood is rusting pretty badly, the AC doesn’t work, the thermostat reports the temp about twenty degrees higher than actual, it’s leaking oil, the suspension is shot, the driver side door handle is broken, the driver side window doesn’t go down at all, and, to top it all off, the car has started consuming great quantities of coolant.  In fact, the coolant is disappearing at such and alarming rate I’m worried about how long the engine is going to last.  YAY!

Breakfast

Cinnamon mini-bagel

Lunch

Leo’s Lodge

Cheese bread

Philly steak wrap

Reading

Penny Arcade

Breakfast

Blueberry muffin

Lunch

Nacho Cheese Doritos

Dinner

Old Chicago

Strongbow

Garlic cheese bread

Pepperoni & Italian sausage pizza

Reading

European Politics Today, European Politics in Transition, European Union Politics

I was stuck in traffic this morning, it took me an hour to get to class, instead of the normal 15-20 minutes.

Cats are creepy sometimes.

Breakfast

Blueberry Muffin

Fritos (while stuck in traffic)

Some chocolate milk

An orange (consumption of which is imminent)

Dinnner

Frandor Deli

Two slices of ham pizza

Two breadsticks

Chocolate milk

A “Scotcheroo” too!

Reading

Draft of a Representation Containing a Scheme of Methods for the Employment of the Poor.  Proposed by Mr. Locke, the 26th October 1697

European Politics Today, European Politics in Transition, European Union Politics

Morning

An orange

A blueberry muffin

Afternoon

some Fritos

Should be in bed

(3) Cheese-filled breadsticks

(1) Oreo cookie

Chocolate milk–straight from the carton

Breakfast/Lunch

Orange

Blueberry Muffin

Wheat Thins

A glass of chocolate milk

Dinner

PB&J with organic whole grain wheat bread

A glass of orange juice

wheat thins

cold medicine

Reading

Does Legal Doctrine Matter? Unpacking Law and Policy Preferences on the U.S. Supreme Court. Michael A Bailey, Forrest Maltzman

Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in 17th Century England.  Douglas North, Barry Weingast

Lunch

2 cheese-filled breadsticks

10 pizza rolls

A glass of chocolate milk

Dinner

Bonnie’s Place

South West Burger–1/2 pound burger, pepper jack cheese, bacon, onion rings, and BBQ sauce.

Fries

Lemonade

Reading

Locke’s Second Treatise of Goverment

But now I’m back!  Well, I’m not writing any more than this right now, but I will soon, so keep an eye open.

So it occurs to me that not posting for about two weeks is pretty slacker-rific.  I really need to be posting at least once a week, just so I can keep what I’ve been doing lately fresh in my mind.  I may not hit every day, but I think once a week is going to be my minimum, at least that’s what I’ll be shooting for from now on.  I’ve managed to stay fairly busy the last two weeks, doing a bit of this, a little of that, so I’ll try and recap some of it, the bits that I can remember at any rate.

Let’s see, I went to a Lansing Lugnuts minor league baseball game on Thursday the 19th, that was a lot of fun.  Got to hang out with some friends I don’t see too often so I enjoyed that a lot.  I have no clue what I did the day after that, but on Saturday the 21st I stayed home all day, waiting for the cable guy to come and install a filter for basic cable.  I took advantage of being home to wash the BMW, and then I used a clay bar on it to remove all the fine dirt and stuff from the finish before I waxed and polished it with the buffer I got for my birthday.  The whole process probably took 3 hours anyway, and part way through using the clay bar it started raining so I had to finish in the garage, which wasn’t too bad.  Nice to have that option too… The cable guy was supposed to show up between 2 and 5 but he never did, and by 8PM I was sick of waiting so I went to Royal Scott and hit golf balls for a while.  That was the first time since January when I was in Florida that I’d even swung a club, so it didn’t go so hot.  Then next day I got up and played 18 with Tess at Groesbeck.  We got started about a quarter to 10 and I really didn’t start very well.  Thankfully we weren’t keeping score so that didn’t matter!  After a couple holes I started hitting the ball better though, although I did hit someone’s golf cart which was parked right behind the green on a par 3 as they waited to tee off on the next hole… oopsy.  I really started hitting my 3-wood pretty well (left he driver in the car so I wouldn’t be tempted) and hit my hybrid pretty well too, so all in all it wasn’t a bad round, had lots of fun and hit some good shots.  Just after we got done golfing it started to rain a bit and as we were on the way to Leo’s for lunch it started pouring, so it was really perfect timing.  I think after that I went home, took a nap, got up and wrote a paper on steel tariffs for my micro econ class and then went to bed at like 4 in the morning or something stupid.

Wednesday the 25th was thankfully the last day of my Econ class.  I took my final in the morning, went to work, and after work I had dinner with Geoff and Jamie, Outback I think.  Seems it was delicious.  I’m drawing a blank here on Thursday, I know I worked, seems like I stayed pretty busy too, which was nice.  Did some running around there, worked on some stuff at the vet school too, so that kept me occupied.  I also found time to go to Leo’s for lunch, yummy yummy pizza pie.  Oh that’s right, Thursday night I went over to Pat’s after work and hung out with him and Eli.  We grilled yummy burgers that had this great rub on them, and then we made instant mashed potatoes that we also put the rub on, and then we had chocolate pie.  Eli had a bottle or two :)  It’s hard for me to believe how big Eli is now, it’s pretty amazing.  I remember him when he was first born, and he was a big baby from the beginning, but it’s just amazing how much they can grow in 7 months.  I’m sure he’ll be mastering crawling any day now, he’s so close.  I don’t think I did anything too exotic on Friday, worked, came home, watched the newest episode of Top Gear on Youtube.  I did cut my hair and start some laundry in preparation for my trip, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Saturday morning I got up and did some more laundry, then went to Kohl’s to pick up some more shorts and a couple shirts.  After that I went up to Mom’s so I could drop off the BMW and pick up my Cutlass.  I’m leaving my car at the Detroit airport for the better part of a week, so just to be on the safe side I’m taking the car I don’t care nearly as much about.  I had to jump start the cutlass since it hadn’t been driven in about a month, but it started without too much fuss.  I hung around Mom’s for a few hours and then made my way back home.  I washed some of the new stuff I bought and then headed over to Geoff’s.  We went out to dinner at Old Chicago and had some tasty pizza, then went back to his house and watched TV for a while.  Got through the first half of Escape from New York while periodically nodding off, then it was time to head on home.  Sunday dawned umm… er I have no clue how Sunday dawned, I was still sleeping, but by the time I’d gotten up it’s been done raining for a while, so after I woke up a bit I mowed the lawn, which hadn’t been done in about 2 weeks as it hadn’t grown much.  Then I decided to vacuum, which I also hadn’t bothered to do in a while, so I vacuumed almost the whole house, stair cases, my rooms upstairs, the basement, and when I was done the Dyson had picked up probably 2 whole cats worth of hair.  Seriously I had to empty it a couple times and at least once it was packed solid with fluffball hair.

After I’d finished cleaning and gotten myself all cleaned up I got a call from Thompson wanting to know how I’d feel about taking a little drive, to Ypsilanti.  He’d been waiting to buy a motorcycle from a friend down there and everything had finally gotten worked out.  The drive down to Ypsi was pretty uneventful with the exception of a huge traffic backup on 23 North bound just south of 96 of which we made a note to avoid on the way back.  We got down to his buddy Alex’s place and when we knocked on the door we didn’t get any reply.  Thompson had called him a couple times on the way down but hadn’t gotten a response but weren’t too worried about it.  After hanging around outside of the apartment for 15-20 minutes though, we were a little perturbed, so we decided to grab some dinner.  We’d passed a Memphis Style BBQ place around the corner that sounded more appetizing than anything else so we headed back that way.  The ribs were pretty good, Thompson had them with a dry rub–Memphis Style–and I had them smothered in BBQ sauce on top of the rub.  I don’t think dinner took as long as we’d expected, the ribs came out pretty fast, and when we got back the Alex’s apartment we still weren’t getting any response.  After checking out the bike again, along with Alex’s new Harley Sportster, which is absolutely gorgeous, I finally convinced Thompson to knock with some AUTHORITY and low and behold, Alex emerged from his cave.  Thompson then took the bike for a little test spin in the complex, they concluded the business transaction, and we were back on the road.  Coming back was without incident, we popped off of 23 before the backup, then realized that there was no longer a backup, but went through Brighton to 96 anyway, not a bad detour.  Made it back to Lansing and headed home after a busy day, then watched the Cubs and White Sox for a while, nice to have cable again.

This all brings up up to today, and if you’re still reading, well I salute you Mr. I have the most patience in the world guy.  Today I got up, ran some errands, and hung out with Geoff for a few hours.  We picked up Jamie and had a very late and very tasty lunch at Leo’s (I’m seeing a pattern here) and then I came home and started packing for Austin.  After I was done packing I went over to Hawk Island Park off of Cavanaugh which is a really nice park.  This was my first time there and I was really impressed.  Andrea had just finished a run so we walked around the little lake there, sat by the water and enjoyed the breeze and the sunset, and just enjoyed a nice Michigan summer evening.  Now I’m here blogging because Jeremy reminded me I’m a slacker

Which brings me back to Austin.  I’m flying out of Detroit tomorrow around noon so I’ll be leaving fairly early to allow plenty of time for everything that could possibly go wrong.  I’ll be staying with Jeremy and his wife until Sunday when I come back to MI and I’m really looking forward to it.  This is my chance to check out the city since I’m thinking strongly of moving there when I graduate, and it’s also a chance to just go somewhere for a while and be on vacation, which I don’t get to do too often, or at least haven’t up to this point.  I’m looking forward to doing lots of fun stuff like hiking, kayaking, just seeing the city, checking out fireworks for the 4th, seeing whatever is essential in Austin, the works pretty much.  I’m taking two cameras and my laptop, so it’s just possibly I may do some posting while I’m there, I’m sure I’ll be taking heaps of pictures.  That about wraps it up for me tonight, about time to get to bed so I can be off early in the morning.