Summer's Over

The start of the fall semester usually signifies the end of my summer. All in all, its been a good one. From hockey, to good friends, to SUYM - I've had a great time. Sure the chips go down sometimes (and in my case, stay that way for a while) but I guess once you hit the bottom, ya gotta get right back up.

I saw some people lately I haven't seen in a while. Heading off the list is none other than Karen Hall. Karen graduated with my sister and while she was in high school absolutely stunned me with her ability to sing. She held the lead roles in the high school plays from as far back as I can remember. Well, I ended up bumping into her at Wal*Mart the other day and I've got to tell you she's absolutely gorgeous. She caught me completely off guard that all I could muster was a "Hey Karen." and continued to trot on by towards the milk. It was nice seeing her again, even though we never really said much to each other during our time at Cal High. Everyone is growing up so quickly...

I also got to go to a cool party held by Molly & Mike. They had a lot of people I didn't see in a LONG time. Drew, Elliot, Josh, Tim, Marcus, Ricki, Dave, Jay.... soooo many names. It was awesome to hang out with them all again one last time before school starts. Thats what I'm talkin about.

Lastly I guess I've got some apologizing to do. Anne, Ted, Steph & the rest of the crew. I'm sorry I didn't go out with you guys. You all know I'd never want to do anything to hurt any of you. I love you guys more than you realize. :-) So, I'm sorry...

I'm sorry.

Further down the spiral.

So my weekend was pretty crappy. Ended up goin out with 3 ladies, 2 of which I never met before. Well turns out that after I buy all three of them drinks, the two of them aren't the least bit interested in even spending some time talking to me. (The other girl is one of my good friends, Stephanie who I consistently have an awesome time whenever we go out.) I mean these two girls were real ice queens. So my buddy & I end up just leavin halfway thru the night, despite the good time I was havin with Steph.

Couple that with Ted dropping me on my head after he picks me up and holds me upside-down for a while. Not only did this hurt my head, but it also gave me a really bad hip pointer and smashed my cell phone. The phone got fixed but the hip got worse.

I tried running my usual mile & wind sprints at rotary on sunday when the hip injury caused me IMMENSE pain in my quadricep. I got thru the mile just fine, but the sprints caused me to limp home. I never had so much pain in my leg before. So, I came home and relaxed for the rest of the day.

Later that day, I watched the Rugrats movie - which usually isn't so bad except the Nicktoons channel played it 3 times that night. Usually I'd just get up and change the channel but in a world where remotes are unheard of and injuries plague me, I figured that my best chance to get out of this weekend alive was to just endure the movie, again, and go to sleep.

Today I wasted an entire day at a customer's house trying to find a pipe that he insisted came out on the RIGHT side of the house when I told him it came out on the left. Always listening to the customer, I went with his advice until I explained to him that the pipe was NOWHERE to be found and that it would be more productive to let me try to dig where I thought the pipe was.

BINGO.

Pipe was where I told him it was from the beginning. I'm gonna eventually stop taking things on the chin.

Lastly, I've re-focused my efforts towards writing enough songs to release my album. (Those of you close to me have been expecting this from me since EARLY 2003, so I apologize.) I've made good use of the weekend to successfully orchestrate two songs and begin work on a third. I've got lyrics and music ready to go for recording. These two new songs have a sort of "Nine Inch Nails" overtone, so they're a bit different than "Pirate Crock" and "Underground Hoes". Please be patient and if you'd like to hear a demo, let me know!

Later on.

Air Brakes.

*Screeching halt*

When you're in free fall, there are no air brakes. That's pretty much what today felt like. I was introduced to a really cool dude who just happened to be the boyfriend of the girl I wrote about a few entries ago. Yeah, didn't see that one coming...

Boy you can imagine how red my face was when he introduced himself. Needless to say I apologized for assuming the wrong thing, and he was a real class act. At least he understood. The LAST thing I want to do is ruin a relationship for ANYBODY.

When I think back about it, its probably my fault for reading into the situation too much. (I used too much oversight, hindsight or overbite :-P) So there we have it - all of my questions were answered!

I hung out with my extremely good friend, Erin, the other day. She's one of my best friends from as far back as I can remember. It was awesome seeing her again. Since she goes to Waynesburg College, its not often we get to hang out.

We were supposed to hang out again today, but she never called back. I also have an unbelievable headache I can't seem to shake. I got it while at work today when I caught some glare from the sun in my eye while in the dump truck. I was using the air brakes to slow myself down the hill, when the sun got me good in my left eye. Man, I took today on the chin...

All-in-all, I think I had better just slow down some more - put on the air brakes and just sit back and let life come at me. I made myself a promise a long time ago regarding life, though I had hoped it wouldn't come true... We'll see where these next few days go before I reveal the promise...

-Air Brakes-

More thinking.

Since SUYM hasn't been updated in a while, Jaker and I made a video. It's called "Jakerman Bird" and it will be available shortly in the shutupyourmouth.com movie section. Hope you all enjoy it. Rollo's taking care of the update.

So whats goin on, guys? I don't really have much to talk about after spewing my soul all over my last blog update ;-P. Nothing much has changed since I last blogged.

My manager, Amos "Moose" Friend, has been bitten by the love bug and is absolutely crazy about this girl named Lexi. I've yet to meet her, but it's Moose so she's gotta be awesome. Congrats on your smittenness, you rapscallion. I hope to meet her soon.

I'll let you all know if anything changes around my way. Times are good. Life is good. Hopefully it stays this way for quite a while.

Stay young and agile. :-)

What's on my mind lately.

Hey all. Here's whats on my mind as of late.

The engagement of Ted & Andrea is absolutely huge. I can't get over how terriffic that is. Congratulations again! Moving along, I've got fantasy football to look forward to which I wholeheartedly enjoy. School's starting soon too. To me, the start of the fall semester pretty much signifies the end of summer. That's a bummer. Lots to look forward to in the fall though...

My birthday is in October, so there's a bright point. Also, campfire season is almost here - which means we'll probably end up burning a hole in Ted's lawn again. LOL. I've yet to take my annual "dive into large body of water" this year, so I'm sure that's just around the bend as well. All in all, lots to come.

Finishing up, I'd just like to ramble about my lovelife a little bit. Over the course of the past month I've come to know a really special girl. She's got so much in common with me, its sometimes bewildering. It seems like everything is just "right" with her. (I don't wanna read into this too much, use too much hindsight, oversight or overbite on this, so I'm gonna withhold her name for now.)... I don't know if she even reads this blog thingy of mine, but if she does here's a little something.

I think you're the coolest girl in the world. :-)

The whole lovelife things are kinda grey. I mean, I don't even know if she feels anything similar to the way I do. I've got a good idea about where I stand, but heck, I'm still just a guy. Curse me for wanting everything to be spelled out for me. Then I get the idea that if she's so much like me, maybe she thinks like me; in that she can show a genuine interest in me, but remain somewhat distant. Who knows. One thing's for certain, though: I'm falling head over heels for her.

Catch ya all later! :-)

Engagement Announcement!

On behalf of my two best friends, Anne & Ted, I'd like to announce their engagement via my blog. Congratulations, you two. I'm so happy for the both of you! :-)

The two best friends made it official over the weekend while on their vacation. I said it before, and I'll say it again: If anything is right in this world; these two are. I'm thrilled that they're finally engaged!!!

Congratulations again guys. You both rock! :-)

5-4, Final.

That was the score of our last hockey game. We lost. The season's over and it leaves me wondering what else I can possibly do to help this team. After our playoff loss last season, it became obvious to me that I needed to do something to help the team win. I decided to work every day during the offseason to get myself ready for the upcoming season. I created a running program with a unique diet that allowed me to drop 65 pounds. This increased my speed and endurance, so this season I was able to play an entire game without a rest and barely break a sweat. I thought that was enough...

Turns out we end up being the mediocre team in C-League that is on the verge of three straight first round playoff exits. The last time we actually won a series was three seasons ago when we made it to the finals, only to lose there.

I guess I've got more work to do.

Starting Monday, I've decided to not only continue running & diet program into this offseason, but also include weight training. I guess I got so wrapped up in losing the weight that I overlooked the importance of lifting. I should have listened to Tony - he kept telling me that I should include weights in my program. Well Tony, I'll see you in the gym in a few days.

Here's looking forward to next season. Thanks to everyone on the Thundercats for a great season. I came in second on my team in total points. Here's how my final stats looked:

Thundercats

#83 Joshua Crockett

9 Goals

2 Assists

11 Points

Til next season... :-)

It is complete.

Finally, Jaker and I have pounded this job out. We filled in the ditch after fixing the problem with the pipe underneath the house. It was an utterly difficult job. First we tunnelled under the house to try to find the good section of pipe only to come to the harsh realization that the ENTIRE pipe under the house was broken. We knew what that meant; we had to go into the basement and bust up the floor. Luckily most of the floor gave way after we tunneled under the house -- (this house was OLD. The basement floor was made of DIRT covered by a thin layer of brick. I guess this was the easy part of the job? Who knows.) -- So we replaced the pipe, but had to pour a whole new corner of cement where the side of the house was busted up. Afterwards though, all that was left to do was clean up and leave. I really could use a break.

Tonight I'm going to just lounge around, eat some grapes and watch the Nicktoons channel. Message me & I'll probably be around.

Ted & Anne, I hope you guys have a terriffic vacation. Lord knows you guys deserve one! :-)

Later all.

This week, thus far.

I've been so tired lately, and I apologize for the lack of updates to SUYM. We've got a lot of good stuff in the making, but its just not ready to be released. Patience, everybody.

Recently I've been extremely busy at work. Usually Jaker and I hammer out a sewage line installation in a 1-2 day period. We're pretty good at it and we usually get the job done quickly. The job we're working on now is a real back-breaker though...

I took this job way back in April - when Jaker was still working for PennDOT. It was only 50 some feet long and the hardest part was the fact that it all had to be dug by hand. This job is in some real closed quarters with severals bends and obstacles in the way. While none of this is a real problem, our luck is slowly running dry.

We've got the ditch completely dug - all 50 some feet of it - by HAND. It's about 3 feet deep at its shallowest point, and 6 feet deep at its greatest depth. I got stuck digging the 6 foot part by myself (which is only a slight bother since Jaker does SOOOOO much for me) so I didn't complain. It keeps me fit too - GOOD exercise ditch digging is! The only real problem is that we found out that one pipe is broken underneath the house and leaking badly. We found this out AFTER we hooked up all the pipes... Ugh.

This means that I have to rip the pipe out from under the house, tunnel under the house to find a good piece of pipe, attach the correct coupler and reattach it to the sewer pipe - all within about a 3 square foot space. We're setting the finish date for TOMORROW.

We're going to have to really hustle to get it done. I know we can do it though. For the rest of the week, I'm going to be pretty beat though. Not to mention we're going to start another job probably on Thursday.

So here's everyone's warning: If I'm too tired to go out or do anything this week, you can thank the above pictures for me being dead tired. I can't afford to be beaten down when it comes time for our playoff hockey game this weekend.

Wish us luck, Jaker and I will sure need it.

The Latest & Greatest

This is where I typically wrap up the weekend. Following suit, here we go:

Hockey games!
We lost our first C-League playoff game in the best of three series on Friday evening. Saturday we had a set of playoff games, both for our C-League & B-League teams. They were back to back games at 1:30 and 2:30 in the afternoon. Luckily our C-League game came first because it was the 2nd in a best-of-three series. We managed to win the C-League game by the score of 5-4 in overtime (we lost by the same score in our previous game). What really sucked was that the B-League game came directly after the overtime win. Our whole team pretty much was spent from the opening faceoff. Two other team members showed up to play the playoff game, but we got blown out. Last time I checked the score of that game it was 8-1. Game 3 of our C-League team is on Saturday. Wish us luck --- It's DO or DIE.

Moving along, Ren & Stimpy came back to the Nicktoons channel. I'm particularly psyched about this because prior to their return, I had to stay up real late and watch SpikeTV in order to catch a glimpse of these ruffians. SpikeTV also goes to infomercial around 2:48am, so most of the last episode gets completely cut off. You can imagine my happiness.

What I'm not totally happy about is the Angry Beavers spree in which the Nicktoons channel seems to be deeply involved. Nothing against the Angry Beavers, but I can only take so much of that show. It even interfered with Invader Zim's cut of the hour! Thats one of my favorite shows on that channel, and it only comes on at 10:00pm, 1:00am & 1:30am. I'm not awake for the second two showings, so you can imagine my disappointment when I expected Invader Zim and instead get two arguing beavers... Eh, if this is my only gripe, then life must be good eh? You're damn right.

I also got some premium footage over the weekend that will be seen at some point before the year's end.

Want some new movies? We'll getcha some.

Later on, folks. :-)