last week(end)

(In Brett Michaels elimination-time-tone)
Okay, I've got lots to say about last week, so lets just get right into it.

Last Thursday and Friday I attended some UNIX training on the South Side. The class was a five-day class, but I had already taken the UNIX I portion of it in November, so I opted out of the first three days. Well, on my way into the city I decided to follow my Garmin instead of going the route I knew. I did this for two reasons; first - I had left early enough to account for any traffic I may encounter, and secondly - I trust the Garmin far too infrequently. So, my good Garmin shoots me down route 51 to the liberty tubes. No big deal. I catch some serious traffic, but nothing I hadn't expected. I had "It was a good day" by Ice Cube playin', and I indeed didn't have to use my A.K. Through the liberty tubes I drove, and got onto Forbes. I soon turned onto 10th, and it was there I got a real treat. A young woman was walking in a crosswalk after a car had just fully stopped at a stop sign directly in front of her. She proceeded to walk into the crosswalk and made it about five steps before the car at the stop sign chirped tire and nearly hit her dead-on. Startled, she jumped back a little then (and I love this part) she monkey-stomps his bumper - HARD! Power to the people! After stompin', she casually walks away as if she won a small victory against the car-oppressor. The dude in the car even had his window down, but said NOTHING to the woman. Good for this chick, man. I tell you, if that would've happened to me, I wouldn't have thought to stomp the bumper, thats for sure.

Saturday brought the Spirit of St. Patrick's day out in full swing. Reese, Rollo and I started the day off by waking up at 7:30am and driving to South Hills Village. We hopped on the T and rode into Pittsburgh. Market square was alive with drunk-bodys. We caught the tail-end of the parade (which was pretty cool) that included some smallish terrier dogs, some large Irish Wolfhounds and an an Irish band in a dumptruck. Now that's a unique way to round out a parade!

Market Square wasn't quite so pleasant. On one hand it was awesome to see Stephanie Altomonte there, and catch up with her. On the other hand, though, while we were catching up - some dude decided to urinate on the wall right behind us... then turn around... then brag about it... then kick some of the puddle he made towards us... With some harsh words, we chased him off, but that pretty much summed up Market Square for the afternoon. Asses-to-Ankles. It was also the first time I had ever seen Joe look terminally ill. All of this on top of $4 beers made me really re-think my decision to come here. I don't mind a big party but I don't wanna have to pay $16 to get a mild buzz. Bah.

More about the weekend in a later post!

(Back to Brett-tone)
Well, weekend, we didn't connect on as many levels as I thought we should. I'm sorry but your tour ends here.

my fiscal year

As of Saturday, March 8, I closed the books on another productive year. Of course, I follow the Gregorian calendar as best I can but when it comes to my hobbies - the fantasy baseball draft kicks off the start of my fiscal year. And WHAT a year Crock Enterprises had! This year, I won my first "Triple Crown". That is, I convincingly won championships in three major sports; baseball, football and hockey. Recap with me, won't you?

I started things off right by trouncing my to-be fiancee, Reese, in the hockey championship by riding my then-stellar pickups of Andrew Raycroft and Peter Budaj to victory. Those two goalies weren't even thought of on draft day, but I'll take a hot streak especially when its a two-fer! This indeed was a sign of things to come.

I regularly participate in two baseball leagues - my own and Drew's. While Rollo tore through my league with his rag-tag team of AL-East castoffs, I turned my attention to Drew's league. Again, I mined significant talent, this time riding a player I found in the last round of the draft. Who'da thunk I'd unearth a talent so immense that he alone could propel me into contention. I speak of the one and only Russell Martin (I'll take a 20/20 season from a catcher ANY DAY). I'm so damn proud of that pick (a pick I made in both leagues, mind you). It'll probably be the best final-round pick I'll ever make. I took out some dude's dad in the finals, thanks in no small part to Russell Martin's amazing season.

My football team seemed destined for doom from day one until I pulled off a trade that brought my team back from the brink. Five games into the season, I sent Tony Romo and Brandon Marshall to "The Pizzy Guys" (a perennial failure of a team) for Joseph Addai and Eli Manning. Sure the price seemed steep to begin with, but now my team was armed with Colts (Peyton, Reggie, Addai) and ready to put up some serious numbers. Fortune was on my side again as I joined the Colts in having a memorable regular season. Much unlike the Colts, I defeated my season-long nemesis (Necciai) in the playoffs en route to handing Drew an upset of a lifetime. My final roster? Not to go into details but (my, God!) I had Todd Collins handling my QB duties. Hey, a win's a win!

I even took second place in Rollo's annual March Madness pool. So, looking back, maybe I didn't brag enough. Actually, I'm sure I didn't. Boy, that's gonna change this year. After all, I am the reigning champ in over half of these leagues.

party town and bad britches

Alissa threw a party over the weekend that was quite a sight to behold. You can always gauge a party by guessing how many people the host knows. In my estimate, she knew about 80% of the people there. That's the "sweet spot" of partying. An 80/20 split between people you know and people you don't know is awesome when it comes to meeting people. You get a few drinking games going, see where these people are from, what they're doing, and connect with them. It's also great because there are too few new people to cause a party-shift; where a group will "steal" the party from the host (almost always resulting in drama).

This party was a good one. Reese, Rollo and I arrived around 9:30ish and immediately talked with some of our good friends, and got to meet some others. I found out that Kimmie will be leaving for Florida sometime in the near future, which I think everyone's bummed about. I met the much-heralded Jim McBride; brother of Ryan, son of "Papa McBride" (who has a simply astonishing full head of hair). I also got to meet Matt, who gave me his last name - but I immediately chose to ignore it, referring to him exclusively as "Matt Whohasnolastname".

As good as it was, the party had its weird moments. Ryan got his scurvy crew into going streaking. While this is not unlike McBride to suggest such a thing, certain questions crept into my mind. Questions like: "Why does this keep happening?" and "Wouldn't it be cool if we locked the door?" Ah, well...

On the way out, I got Rollo's car stuck in a snowbank. For the record, Alissa's house is built on a hill and the entrance to her driveway is on another hill, which means the better portion of her driveway is a valley. There were a lot of cars in the driveway so when we arrived, I parked as I drove in (nose first). In trying to leave, there was no place to turn around and little room to maneuver otherwise, so I built up speed coming down the hill from the house and only made it halfway up the other hill. Then began the laborious process of getting the car turned around. My 3-point-turn quickly turned into a 25-and-a-half-point-turn aaaaaaaaaaaand, we're stuck. Rollo gave a valiant effort by helping me rock the car back & forth, but we ultimately needed additional manpower. Luckily McBride heard Rollo's deep bellow for help and he rallied his troops to come push us out. Even more luckily, they all had clothes on. We really dodged a bullet there.

wedding registry

Over the weekend, Reese and I have finally completed our wedding gift registries at Bed, Bath and Beyond (Saturday) and Walmart (Sunday) (links to each are to the right). We practically spent an entire workday at Bed, Bath and Beyond picking out possible wedding gifts. Since we're having such a huge wedding, our adviser recommended that we go wild and pick out as much stuff as possible. I thought that would be a cool thing to do, you know - take a little ray-gun around the store scanning anything and everything we'd like to have - it would be nothing but fun!... or so I thought...

I'm gonna be completely honest here, when it comes to wedding registries - I'm damn clueless. Couple that with the fact that I'd never been to Bed, Bath and Beyond before in my life and we've got a recipe for a long ass day. Our adviser had us pick out fine china as the first step, which was fine. We chose a nice dinner set, some crystal and good silverware. Then, we immediately moved to the drinking room (?!??!?!). Now, don't get me wrong. I enjoy a cold drink as much as the next person, but in my mind I had assumed we'd deal with the really IMPORTANT things first, then progress to the fun stuff. Before we arrived, I put my mind in a zone where I was here to build a home, not to party. This obviously wasn't the case, so I had to quickly switch gears and make frantic decisions about which beer mugs go best with our yet-to-be-built basement bar. Not an easy decision. Looking back, I probably should have taken five minutes to collect myself and then pounced on the opportunity to get some sweet drinking paraphernalia. We did eventually get around to the necessary items, which was awesome because Reese and I were pretty much on the same page about everything, without us ever having serious discussions about color schemes.

The worst part of the day came when we were never given the opportunity to have a nice sit down. If we'd have taken two five minute sits throughout the adventure, then I'd probably have been much more jubilant about our "nine inch relish tray" or our "3 pack of whisks".

The Walmart registry was much kinder to my knees, but the ordeal took just as long. I was much more at home here and since we've already done one registry, it was simple enough to replicate the steps. We even got to register for some "hope-and-pray" gifts, like our 42" LCD HDTV.

So anyway, the dust has settled and the registries are complete. You can click the links to the right to get us some nice stuff. Do it.