Fourth Week in February 2010

Monday morning, I'm still not used to sleeping in the new house. I used to have this theory that you would sleep better if you stuck with one orientation in relation to the earth's magnetic field. Sure enough, I changed from north/south to east/west, and sleep has been a little rough. Probably has more to do with the change in humidity, noise, and light levels.

After work I picked up Kevin and dinner. Then we, with Troy, headed out to the Creighton Swing Dance club benefit dance for Haiti. I had one odd thing said to me, a dancer who I don't dance with often said "Good thing you have a cute smile to make up for all the mistakes you make dancing." I'm not quite sure how to give the benefit of the doubt on this one. There is a reason I generally choose to dance with people I know. Onto the happy dance pictures:

Sometimes I take pictures just to capture the spirit of dancing, sometimes it works.


It certainly appears that Andi is doing most of the work here. Carly, feel free to put some effort into it!


I actually participated in a dance contest, I entered under the pseudonym "16". Photo credit: Matt


Good job Jocelyn for putting the dance together, every little bit helps.

Here are the rest of my pictures, Matt took some too, and you probably can't get onto Facebook without seeing more, Lisa put some up, so did Brianne, and Andi too, although hers may all be stolen, er, borrowed, er, from some other source.

Tuesday I headed out to work, and while I was there, they delivered my new bed. Zeke was not a happy camper, but later when I got the bed frame together and he found he could hide under it, he was considerably more at ease.

I headed over to the old place to clean up a bit, and while I was there made a dumb and potentially deadly mistake. I was taking some trash out and I managed to lock myself out of the old apartment ... and my car too ... with no coat, in 10 degree weather. It was cold. Fortunately I had my phone, and I called Troy and he came to get me. Right about that time, my old upstairs neighbor, Leslie, showed up to let me back in.

Wednesday morning I was awoken early because of a mistake from the night before, I left my car in the driveway and Troy couldn't get out. I did discover a lot of personal energy after a good night sleep in the new bed, almost too much for my coworkers.

At lunch, I met Keith and we moved the grill to Matt and Vivian's and my bike to my house. It was nice to sit with him over lunch and talk about, what else, women. After work, I ran by the grocery store, and then home and started cooking for VK. While I was doing this, I watched the Olympic hockey match between Canada and Russia. Every time I turned around to cook something, I missed a goal ... well, it sure seemed that way.

Anyways, I made spaghetti with gluten free noodles. Gluten free noodles pretty much taste the same, but they don't expand so much in the pot, so you get less per box, which kind of was frustrating. Live and learn. For some reason, when I was at the store, butterscotch pudding sounded good for dessert ... yeah, not so much. VK finished off my ice cream and I 'enjoyed' the pudding.

Thursday I woke up with energy, but somehow, no motivation. I was going to go over to the old apartment and finish cleaning, but somehow I just laid around the house and did nothing. Well I've started sneaking movies, since Troy has a ton of them, but as far as actual work, none.

Friday after work was the annual fish fry trip, Vivian and I were behind it and it was Vivian, Matt, Kat, Ben, Lisa, VK, and I. VK somehow managed to avoid the line to pay, then avoid the line for food, showing up the second we got to the front ... nice job VK! We had a good time eating too much, singing along with the musician, and taking an absolutely silly amount of pictures. Between myself, Matt, Lisa, and Kat with my camera, I am sure there were at least 300 pictures taken.

Vivian came to me and said "I want to photobomb Kat and Ben". So she did.


Frank sent a picture of us to Lindsay, and I sent a picture of Frank to her (via Sarah).


Finally, I could see clearly ... wait a second, I don't need glasses.

Here are the 75 or so (mostly) in focus pictures that ended up on my camera, those that I'm certain Kat took, are marked as such. A link to Matt's photo's begin here (no set). Lisa has put a bunch up on Facebook, so you can see them there if you are her friend.

After the fish fry, we went down to Jitterbugs, it was after all Maggie's birthday, and she needed a jam, like strawberry, or grape.

Hey look it's the birthday girl, she really has two eyes.


Another good dancing motion picture.


I tried something a little different here, it looks better at full size.

The rest of this set can be seen here, Kat took a bunch of these too. Both VK and I were tired, so we left the dance around 2300. I went home and slept.

Saturday morning my plan was to get up and go to the old apartment and clean by 1000. Okay, so it didn't exactly work out like that, but it did get done, just leaving a few items for Sunday. The whole thing probably took about two hours.

Saturday night I went over to Kaleb's for social game night. It was kind of weird, because I didn't play many games. When I got there, there was a game going on at the table, but I went to check out the pizza and talk. Eventually we played a game of (what Kaleb calls) Liar's Dice, I didn't win, nor do I ever expect to, since it's a bluffing game. We then played two games of Lupus in Tabula, the second of which CJ and I were the werewolves and were outed on the first two days, thus the shortest game possible ... darn that Ben.

This happened at game night.

Miriam, Kaleb, Ben, and I then played the game that I wrote, which has a working title of "Mean Ol' Levee". It was a rough alpha test, but it was playable to the end, i.e., nothing broke so hard that it couldn't be finished. Now for a first rules rewrite, a board redesign, a larger leaning towards cooperation, and a couple of gameplay tweaks. The basic mechanic is simple, so that worked. Kaleb won, and said he was impressed. Ben did not say much, but it seemed to me he was trying to figure out a decent strategy. The funniest part was Kaleb spilling a water on top of the game, which is currently just printed on card stock, he felt so bad, but it turned out to be no big deal, because it's all digital anyways.

There were also several games of "around the world" ping pong. We played with nine players. It worked like this, one person makes a legal serve, then moves to the line on the other side of the table, the play then rotates play by play until someone misses, they then get a point, once you have five points you are eliminated. It has more running than you expect, and setting up a shot with spin is difficult because the ball is usually over the net before you are in position. Eventually, the Nothnagel bus left, and so did I.

Sunday I awoke with no motivation again. Ugh, although it might have been more of headache than lethargy. I bummed around until the start of the hockey game. I'm very curious how the game did ratings-wise, but as far as the game went, it was a classic. I didn't think I was that into it, but then I yelled "Yes!" when the USA team scored their first goal, so much for international relations. The US power play sucked, if it was that good. The last two minutes of regulation was intense, and I didn't even have to look at the game clock when the US tied it, I said it was about 25 seconds (24.4 actually). So we went to overtime. I think hockey is kind of anti-climatic when it ends in overtime, well, when your team loses anyways. Congratulations Team Canada on your gold medal, congratulations Team USA on your silver, and go Blackhawks.

After the game, I went and did my final trip through the old apartment. I grabbed the one thing I knew I forgot, my ironing board, which immediately went to Des Moines with Troy. I threw out a couple of items, then put together the overhead lamp in the bedroom. With the keys dropped on the counter, I moved on. One thing is for certain, this first quarter of 2010 has been full of changes.

Check out my weather post.

Next week: dance practice, the resumptions of learning guitar, and more changes.