Thanksgiving weekend

What a great weekend. I'm well rested and ready to bust this week in the groin. (<--Admittedly over graphic statement)

We spent Thursday and Friday at her parents house in Ft. Wayne for Thanksgiving, and then Friday Jeanette and I went downtown to the annual Festival of Trees to see all the Christmas trees decorated for Charities... then we went ice skating and took some pictures. Unfortunately the camera died every time we tried to take a picture of us kissing there at the skating rink... We DID get some cute pictures of us all bundled up, but I'll have to put them up later, I left the camera at her place last night. Then after ice skating i took her to the coolest theater ever! It's a Dinner and a Movie type place. You order your food and they have tables there in the theater. We saw Chicken Little, Very Funny movie. Then we came back to her parent's house and watched tv until bed time.

The next day we drove up to Michigan and spent the weekend with my parents. They took us to the COOLEST restaurant ever. a little place we like to call Rockin' Robin's. I had a Bacon Cheeseburger with (get this) a fried egg on it. Lemme tell ya, that was awesome. Oh, and I failed to mention they have bottomless steak fries like other restaurants have chips and salsa. they were awesome. The next day we went to church with my parents and then I helped my dad hang christmas lights outside on the gazebo. We came back to South Bend and did some Christmas shopping and then planned out these next few weeks.

Holy crap. Jeanette has a final paper due next tuesday so I'm not gonna get to see her much at all this next week, but that works for me because I'm studying for my Microsoft Certification, we also need to reschedule our engagement pictures, get on the waiting list for a 2 bedroom apartment at Irish Hills, I need to schedule my Microsoft Test, Jeanette has 3 christmas concerts coming up in the next two weeks.

... aaaaand breathe.

New Email Subscriptions

For those of you who are visiting my site daily (both of you) you've probably noticed the new addition to the sidebar there, Email Subscriptions. If you aren't familiar with RSS or would just rather receive my posts in your email than visiting here daily, you can put your email address in that box and as soon as I post, you'll receive it in your email. How sweet is that?

Very sweet.

Beating the System

Ok before you start... I already know. But I have 2 friends who have done offers on this site and have gotten the stuff. One got an IPod and the other an Xbox game. So i'm serious it works.
I'm trying to get a free Xbox 360 because frankly I don't have the money for it. Yes, i know it's a pyramid scam. I'm ok with that. I'm smarter than the pyramid so I'll give you the trick to beat it so you can help me with this.

Go to the site above, creat an account. it will start asking you to "complete an optional survey" this is a dumb scam, close your browser and go to http://xbox360s.freepay.com(the main page) then click "Complete Offer" Scroll through them, if you see something you like, feel free to sign up for it, but I recommend the one from REAL. you sign up for a free 14 day trial and then after 1 week you discontinue your membership and you're done. That's it. People get caught in the trap when they don't remember to cancel their membership. So I'll help you out. If you do this, and email me when you do it, I'll email you in a week and remind you to cancel your membership. I just did it for a friend and it took me seriously about 5 minutes. I'll set a reminder for a week from today to cancel my REAL account and he'll be one person closer to getting his xbox360 and thats all it takes.
seriously.
So here's the link. click it and follow the above directions to help me get the best Christmas present of the year.
Free Xbox

oh and here's the specs on it:

Xbox 360 - Complete Premium Edition

• Official Release Date: 11/22/05


• Backwards compatible with previous Xbox games


• 20GB detachable hard drive


• Wireless controller


• Wireless Xbox Live headset


• HD game displays on HDTVs


• High-definition AV and Ethernet cables


• Xbox 360 Media Remote Control


• Detachable faceplate


• Xbox Live Silver membership


• Stream media from portable music devices & Windows XP PCs


• 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM


• 3 symmetrical cores - 3.2GHz each


• 500MHz ATI graphics processor


• 12x dual-layer DVD drive that supports: DVD, DVD+-R/RW, CD-R/RW, WMA & MP3


• Built-in Ethernet port


• 2 memory unit slots


• 3 USB 2.0 ports


• Wi-Fi ready: 802.11a, b & g

Why I'm not a teacher

My solution to whiney kids running to the guidance counselor complaining because they were changed from soprano to alto:

"I say you go in there and tell her if she doesnt shut her little yapper you'll switch her to tenor and she can sit between "Billy" and *insert butthead male's name here*. Then you kick her in the shin, and pile drive her through the guidance counselor's desk to the sound of the guidance counselor saying "ahem, umm... lets find a less violent way to let out our aggression." and then you can say "sorry, i just felt that this was a situation for tough love." and then after a short discussion you warn "Lucy" that if she starts cryin' again you'll give her some more tough love through that table there by the door."

*Names changed to protect the brats.

Light and Breezy

Well after the problems I had with that last post (I had made it in flock) I've decided to try something a little different. I'm trying a tool called w.bloggar. It's pretty sweet so far, so enough about it. How bout I get on with what I'm gonna write...



Every morning when I drive to work, I pass these kids waiting for the bus in my apartment complex, and every morning I see the same guy standing there. He looks like Carl from Family Matters, and every morning he smiles at me as I drive by. I really like this guy even though I've never talked to him, because every morning he stands at a bus stop with his 6 year old daughter and holds her giant pink backpack for her while she plays with the other kids. I don't know the guy, but he's one of two fathers who stand and wait for the bus with their kids. I don't know anything else about his parenting, but that's something I want to be able to do with my daughter when she gets to that age.

Congrats to you Carl, you win the father of the morning award. Thanks for setting a good example.

Notre Dame vs Tennessee

Tea and Sympathy

Giving advice is tough because most people either don't want it or aren't planning on implimenting it in the first place. This is hard for me because I think I'm smart and can fix most people's problems.

So today I've decided to try this a different way. Instead of thinking what I would do in their situation, I'm gonna first try to empathize with the person's situation.

So here we go.
The problem is huge to them. Giant. They're trapped in it and can't get out of it. Everyone knows about it and feels sorry for them and everyone is more than happy to offer one more piece of advice about how you can do "this" or have you tried "that?" and the person HAS tried This or knows That would never work for this situation. They want help, they want to hide, they want out... but they can't Get Out. Thoughts of Perserverance and Trying Again and Getting Up and facing Tomorrow only make things more difficult for them. Yesterday was tough, the day before was tough and even though the day before that might have been ok, they don't remember that. They're focused on the now and the hopelessness of tomorrow.

The part that baffles them is that they remember being good at something very similar to this. "I was able to handle X why can't I handle Y?" Thoughts of failure and impotence flood their mind. They can't do it. It doesn't matter what or how they try... They are going to fail tomorrow. Just like today.

They ask for help, people assume they mean advice, but what they really want is a way out. Immediate comfort is nice for the right now, but it won't help them tomorrow when they have to face it again. And they feel like such a burden bringing this up all the time. They're supposed to have their life all figured out by now, and the reality is that under it all they're looking for that child who always hid behind the furnace downstairs to cry... but the child is gone. There's an adult standing there who won't fit in the cubby hole anymore.

I'm a fixer. I want to help, it's my nature as a man. It's hard when I can do nothing, sometimes the person has to and sometimes the person wants to do it on their own.

Maybe I'll just sit still and shut up.

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