On Birthday Wishes

In which the long standing tradition of writing a blog post for a birthday continues.


We are fast approaching February the second. Which, as any long time readers will know, means that the topic for this week's post was suggested by my good friend Seth Rowe¹. Previous examples can be found here and here².

This year, when I asked Seth what he would like me to write about he asked me to have "a point-counterpoint blog about television. one pro-television and one anti-television³" that would span across two different blogs. I thought about it, considered who I would turn to to act as the second blogger⁴, thought about what I would say for each side of the argument, and then (in keeping with the birthday-blog tradition) took the idea and ran with it⁵.

Here's what I came up with. Happy Birthday Seth⁶.

Click on the images to make them bigger.

It is probably not all that surprising, but my view on the issue is a combination of both of the main characters monologues. Hope you enjoyed my arts⁷.
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¹ I'd link you to Seth's blog, but he doesn't blog frequently enough, so I've enacted a linking embargo
² The links are chronological
³ Quote courtesy of our G-Chat
⁴ Since I usually use Sarah Street's blog as a muse I was going to ask her to co-author with me
⁵ Like in a good game of charades, taking ideas and running with them Jimmy Mann style is a cornerstone of this blog
⁶ Isn't it amazing that I was able to fit so many footnotes into such a small block of text?
⁷ If you'd ever like your birthday present to be a blog post all you have to do is ask

On DIY Christmas Cards and Peaking

In which artistic peaks are reached, Christmas cheer is spread, and a return most triumphant


Annnnnnd we're back, after nearly a six month hiatus due to blogging hubris once again striking¹. As well as severe writer's block.

Quick life update: still job searching, working a local middle school in a study hall, not blogging. There, caught up.

At my job I try to find different activities to keep my students entertained, which can be difficult at times. I use daily brain teasers, word searches, crossword puzzles, I have even had them find and copy words out of the dictionary. Anything to get them to keep their mouths shut. One such attempt involved searching for printable mazes online, difficult ones. Easy mazes simply mean more paper on my floor². My Google search³ eventually let me to this maze:

It's about as intense as it looks, though not as intense as some others I found, and have really only had a handful of kids seriously attempt it. One of the perks of my job is that it is pretty mindless, as long as my kids are working quietly and not acting like total jackasses there isn't much for me to do. So I decided to attempt the maze. But instead of just picking a path and seeing where it led I decided to black out all the dead ends and reveal the path that way. Did it take a while? Yes. Was I concerned I would make a mistake and ruin hours of work? Yes. But away I went.

As I made my way around the maze I realized that I really like the way it looked. It had a minimalist look that I found fascinating, and it seemed like such a shame to take all the time to fill it in and then simply throw it way. So I began to think of what I could possible do with it, then it hit me, Christmas cards, more importantly DIY Christmas cards (that's "Do It Yourself" for the uninitiated in the crowd). I figured I could white out the words in the start and finish bubbles and draw little Christmas scenes and send them out. Then I took it a little further and decided to draw little before and after pictures in each so that if you followed the maze you would get to the next scene. Lastly I glued them down some red card stock and wrote some messages on the back. It was all pretty easy, now I just need to figure out how to mail them⁴.

The Grey Menace Strikes

A Classic Christmas Conundrum

This was the original card, which is why the pictures flow the opposite direction⁵.

This is probably my favorite card, I gave it to Abe Corry.

Snowball fight!!

#snowday

You can't go wrong with the triangle tree.

I also like this one. Baby Jesus has the darkest skin, scandalous.

This is it, I've peaked artistically. At least it has been immortalized on the internets.

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¹ Every time I talk about what my next blog post will be about it doesn't get written.

² In the form of: wads, footballs, airplanes, notes, shreds, and, once, a swan.

³ Literally "difficult printable mazes" or "impossible printable mazes"

⁴ It turns out it is easier and cheaper just to make some 6.5x9.5 envelopes myself, I hope they make it through the mail okay.

⁵ Also, because it getting sent to the southern hemisphere. Okay, that's a lie.

On A Year In Review

In which we look back on the year past, reminisce, reflect, and recount all while avoiding sentimentality.

If you are looking for a blog post that will look back at all the important events of 2009, you have come to the wrong place.  If you have come looking for a year in review of the greatest pop culture achievements of the last year, you have come to the wrong place.  If you have come for a reflection on failed resolutions and a promise to stay on track this year, you have come to the wrong place.  If you have come to read about whatever random events I can remember from the last 365 days, then you are right where you need to be.  Welcome!

The year 2009 had an inauspicious beginning as I was forced to leave the New Years party at Mike and Jessica's early due to my allergies acting up.  I can't say I was too disappointed as New Years is one of my least favorite holidays.

'The Great Blizzard of 09' hits at the end of January¹ dumping massive amounts of snow on Bloomington and the surrounding areas.  No school for a week was pretty nice, I would have loved to gone out to enjoy the wintery wonderland, however out crappy landlord didn't plow our parking area for the entire week, nice job guy².  We did use the snow drifts outside of our front door to keep beer cold.

In February I tried Shiner Hefeweizen, it had a really sweet bottle cap.  So I started collecting them, but I wasn't sure why...yet.  Dun dun dun.... 

In March I went to Mexico with my dad.  We stayed at a swank all-inclusive resort in the Mayan Riviera.  It was pretty awesome.  We went deep sea fishing and on a zipline tour of the jungle.  There were pools everywhere and everything to eat and drink was free.  Each night we picked a different restaurant to eat at.  Ironically enough the best food we had was the hibachi grill/sushi place.  If you ever have the chance to go to a place like this I highly recommend it, it is so choice³.

Upon returning to Bloomington I got dominated by some 24 hour virus or something.  I alternated between burning lava hot and shivering.  I didn't leave the bed for two days and watch some really awesome movies on my computer, one of which was Starship Toopers, which is fantastic in its ridiculousness.

Around this time, in March or April, Brett, B-Carl and I went to check out Roadhouse Pizza.  The pizza was mediocre at best, and they sell cokes by the can, which is way lame.  However, there was a pinball machine that gave out free games like it was its job, we put in 75¢ and played for like an hour; just free game after free game.  Eventually we even attracted a crowd.  When we left there was a free game left that we passed on to a family waiting for their food.

In April I went to see the Little 5.  It was fun and the weather was great.  However, one of my old Wyldlife kids was riding in the race; that made me feel old.  It wouldn't be the first time it happened this year.

Graduated from college for the second time in May.  Now you may call me master.

Went to my second Indy 500 race.  It was a lot of fun; we were on the first short shoot, so some good crashes as well as A.C. Slater⁴.

On May 28th, 2009 the world changed forever, this day will be remembered always in the hearts of people everywhere as the day this blog began.  See it from its humble beginnings here.

June held in store for me a trip to Maine with the family⁵ and the most ridiculous job I have ever done.  I was essentially a hall monitor for the Upward Bound summer program.  I walked from building to building on campus and made sure kids were where they needed to be, when I wasn't doing that I was reading, or playing "David Jones Bingo™" it was simultaneously terrible and awesome.

Also in June we had our only week of summer weather.  It was unbearably hot, luckily it didn't last long.

July marked the end of an era.  Since I didn't know what I was going to be doing the following school year and our lease was up Tim Street and I would be headed to different locations.  Of the 120 months in this last decade I have lived with Tim for 60 of them.  That's pretty crazy.  And for the first time since the summer of 2001 Tim and I were living in Bloomington at the same time, but not in the same place.

At the end of July I moved in with the Feltons temporarily.  It would become permanent.  When I moved in I inherited a bowl full of bottle caps that the Feltons had also been collecting.  During the move I finally realized what I would do with all of the caps.  I had an end table with a removable glass top that covered a sunken in part.  I decided to fill this area with caps, but I didn't have enough, so the collection continued.....for now.

In August we had a Young Life reunion with a bunch of old leaders.  We played wiffleball and my team and an epic comeback that fell just short, but it was fun none the less.

A few weeks later I started my job at Jackson Creek in the in-school suspension room.  I ended up working there about 17 weeks.  During that time I read 20 books.

In October Bloomington Young Life put on their first ever weekend camp.  Years ago the whole state would come together for a weekend but it was cancelled due to sucking, so Bloomington just figured that they do their own.  Jeff, the area director, asked me to speak at the weekend.  It was a blast, but I was a little rusty⁶ having not given a club talk in 3 years.  It was a great time, the whole weekend felt very classy and professional just like a real YL camp week.

In November we received an invitation Kaitlin and Andy's wedding, instead of the traditional RSVP note card that asks you to check a box if you were planning on attending this invitation had a post card sized blank space with note on the top that says, "Please reply with number attending by November 28.  This is was we sent in⁶.

The first weekend in December my parents and I went down to Nashville Tennessee because my sister was throwing her boyfriend a surprise birthday party.  Despite the fact that she is, self-admittedly, a terrible liar Peter was still caught completely off guard.  It was great.  Also, weirdly, the night before the party my parents and I went to eat at a restaurant a block from our hotel.  When we were walking to our table I ran into David Pankake, a friend from IU that I hadn't seen in year, what a small world.

Mid-December marked the end of my tenure at Jackson Creek as I started a new job out at the Eastern Greene schools.  I will be filling in for a friend who will be on maternity leave until the end of April.  It is going to be exciting and exhausting.  I am guessing that the first four months of 2010 will fly by.

The first morning I awoke when I was home for Christmas I found that it had snowed about an inch and a half.  Two days after Christmas we had three inches plus.  On Christmas?  It rained, how lame.

When I got back from West Lafayette our house was a disaster area, which isn't all that surprising.  It is slowly getting back into shape.  I have been watching a lot of TV on DVD and enjoying my time off.  One of the things I did was continue to work on the end table/bottle cap art project.  I still have two rows to go, but it is looking really nice.  Two pictures are incoming.  One artsy and one to show the near-finished product.

So now it's the 31^st, not only does a new year start in less than 10 hours, but a new decade.  I think it will be a good one.  I'm hopeful about finding a new job, utilizing the gym membership that I just signed up for⁷, and seeing what God has planned for me.  Two things that I know will happen, I will finish the table, and I will have another long list of ridiculous things that will occur, many of which I will completely forget about.  But for now I am going to go grab a coffee with a friend, find something for dinner, take some allergy medicine, and head to Mike and Jessica's for another New Years Eve party, hopefully this year will start off a little better than the last.

Happy New Year, see you next decade!
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¹ Please note: it was not really a blizzard, and it might not have been January, I can't remember.
² This wasn't surprising, that jerk didn't replace our busted screens the entire year we lived there.
³ Line courtesy of Ferris Bueller.
⁴ I would have preferred Kelly Kapowski, but really who wouldn't?
⁵ Shameless self-promotion warning: Maine post.
⁶ Double sixes, aw crap.  Luckily they both involve the same person.  Talk editing and art work by Carrie Felton.
⁷ For as much as it cost I'd frickin better.