Wow, that was a quick week. I think is was because I just had so much going on. I had to finish up my work here at school and then go home for Thanksgiving, and then be back at school because Resident Life required RA’s to be on campus for at least half of interim. I have to admit I was a little upset when I heard this. I was planning on enjoying my break at home with my family and friends but not anymore.  I was also going to work at Running Unlimited all break… guess not.  Luckily, I will be able to get some hours when I don’t have to be here on campus.

I just have one more thing to get off my chest before i move on. Last night was the worst night of sleep that I have ever had at North Central. In Seybert each room has a radiator. They are the loudest pieces of junk I have ever known. All night mine sounded like a herd of elephants running on a tin cookie sheet. I can usually sleep through about anything (its a talent) but not when this banging, clanging, bumping heap is right there. I’ll figure something out.

My Thanksgiving was awesome. I think that it is my favorite holiday and let me explain before you go accusing me of hating Christmas (because I like it too). I love Thanksgiving because it is virtually the same holiday as Christmas except without all the hull-a-baloo of Christmas. Family gets together for being thankful and to be with each other where presents get to be a distraction. Mine was great this year. I ate way too much and then passed out on the couch for an hour to wake up for pie. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM…….

But now that Thanksgiving is over and I weigh more than I ever have in my life, it is time to come out of retirement. I am going to try to run everyday again. I feel that running put something into my life that is not there anymore and I need to get it back. So far I have put in 2 days in a row with intentions of continuing that trend. I will need all the encouragement i can get so leave a comment with some words of inspiration or something to keep me going. It is a lot harder when you aren’t on a team.

For my motivation I am putting a picture up of a time that as one of my favorite running moments. It was my senior year in high school when my teammate, Glenn Morris, and I were leading the MSL Conference meet. The team won the conference meet and we continued on to State where the team placed 2nd. I loved that year and that team!

It is time for my final thought. Right now I am listening to the band Third Eye Blind. They are awesome, but getting a little old. I remember listening to them in eighth grade. Thinking about that makes me wonder what music will sound like when I am my parents age. Will it sound like noise, or will I still like it? AND will my kids like my music that will probably be played on oldies stations? Sad thought to know that the great bands of today may not get the respect they deserve. See-you-bye…

Well it is Wednesday again, and that means couple of different things. For one, that means that my finals are over! Its not that I get very stressed out about them to begin with but, its nice to know that I have a nice, long break ahead of me. A great time to see family and catch up with friends. Speaking of friends, again J-norts, thanks for your comment. Great job last weekend at the wrestling tournament. It being Wednesday also means that it is time for another delightful blog by yours truly. I have had a lot happen in the last week.

As an update, I would like to say that I made it through week #10 with ease. Although I had all those projects and papers, they seemed to take care of themselves and left me to enjoy turning them in.

It was also my first time working the Holiday Inn Tip Off Tournament for the men’s and women’s basketball teams. I worked eight games and had a blast. Both men’s and women’s won the tournament, and the men did it in exciting fashion. In a high-intensity game, the final decision came in the first overtime, after an assistant coach got ejected from the game and Mitch Raridon received six free throws. Congrats teams!

Personally, I dabbled a little bit in all the duties. The first one I did was the official score book. This is probably the most important job of them all. The time-outs, fouls, and score are all officially recorded. That means in discrepancies, they look to the book for answers. I was definitely nervous at first but definitely got the hang of it.

I also did what was called spotting. To take stats from the game it needs to be play by play typed into the computer. My job was to call the game, who shot and from where, and who got the rebound, who turned it over and stole it. That made it easier for the statistician to get the info correctly in the program. Considering I haven’t played b-ball in at least 10 years, I had to learn a lot about the rules and had to learn it quick because of the pace of the game.

Hopefully I will be able to work more games in the future because I enjoyed doing it at the tournament. Other jobs that I didn’t do this week included the shot clock, game clock and the announcing. For the men’s games we had the one and only Jim Godo as the announcer (there is your shot out ;))

Moving on to some of the finals I had. One of my classes was argumentation and debate. This class was awesome. Throughout the latter half of the term we partnered up and debated other pairs in class. Records were kept and on the last final day, the best two teams went head to head. I am proud to say that my team made it to the final round (where we lost horribly). But don’t worry, I learned a lot and the other team are thinking about trying the debate team this year. I also received a nice certificate, honoring my teammate and I as the second place debate team in class. It is definitely going to find a place on my fridge.

Well now that the first term is over, and we are going on an extended break, I want you to know that I will continue to blog over Thanksgiving and Winter Breaks. I’m sure that I will have plenty to talk about and you won’t be bored, so keep checking over the next month and a half.

My final question is more of a reflection. Laundry is not hard. I know how to do it, I have enough money to do it, yet I always find myself without underwear because I neglect to do my laundry. Instead of just getting up and doing it, I have decided to wear running shorts as underwear until I have more time to buy more underwear. I figure that if i am going to run out of anything it should not be underwear. Why is it that this seems easier than just doing my laundry? It is not going to do itself, and it just will keep building up. Until I do that though, do not judge me because I wear shorts as underwear for a week.

I guess I could pose a question from this… why is it that my Mountain Fresh scented detergent does not smell like mountains, and definitely not fresh mountains at that? Shouldn’t there be a clean clothes smell, like new car smell? Think about that.  See-you-bye!

Well it is that time again! Bloggin’ time! Again I would like to thank Aunt Irene and my buddy Scotty for commenting on my last post. It means a lot to know that people are looking and actually reading it. And of course, Mom, thanks for commenting too.  On a different note, I would like to congratulate the North Central Football team for their playoff birth. It has been an exciting season and more is to come!

I need to apologize because in my eyes I didn’t do anything exciting in the last week. Instead this will show you a typical 24 hour period in my life. I will start out last night, when I invited about five of my buddies over for a viewing of Heroes.

Lately that show has not lived up to its potential. There needs to be more action and use of their special abilities, yet the producers and writers are focusing a lot on the storyline and mystery. I understand that until I need action. The producer actually realized this and issued a national apology to his viewers. It can be read here. I like that because he realized that something needs to be done. This show has so much potential, and now the writers know what to do about it.

I love having everybody over though. It is always fun to have all the guys over for an episode of Heroes. Here is a picture of most of the Heroes group, with the exception of Manta (sorry).

For this next part it is important for you all to understand that it is week 10 here at NC. That means it is the last week before finals. All of the research papers, term projects, group projects and presentations are due this week. Personally I have three research papers due, along with two classroom presentations. Luckily, I am not a procrastinator. I feel sorry for anyone who waited to do all that now. I had most of my work done and was still up until about 2 am last night making some changes. Finally, after feeling comfortable with where I was at in my paper I chose to go to bed.

When I woke up, super late, I went for a run because it was such a beautiful day. Gotta love that Chicago weather. I’m sure by the end of the week we might be seeing snow. But anyways, it was a great run through the neighborhoods of Naperville. I ran past the train station, and then through a neighborhood with some unbelievable houses. One house looks like it belongs in Mexico, so some friends and I call it “the Alamo.” Then I circled around to the River Walk. It was great. I love going there and running by the river, scaring the geese and ducks, seeing all the artwork and fountains. Right now Naperville has some dolphins and sea turtles (my personal favorite) around. It was a great run, and I loved it. I am finding my enjoyment in it again.

The Riverwalk

When I got back, it was back to the paper. 10 pages! Sometimes I swear professors only want quantity not quality because I had to stretch a lot to hit that minimum. But of course I did get the mark and will not lose points from that. So that concluded my research papers, and the stress that comes from them.

The next part of my day was actually exciting. I received in the mail, a letter congratulating me on a scholarship I earned for this year. It asked me if I could write a thank-you note to the family that donated the money. I was so excited because I am so glad they will find out how much it means to me to be able to go to school here. In addition to the letter I decided I would thank them here too.

Thank-you to the Spencer Family for your aid in my college experience.

Like I said before I apologize that this was a boring episode. Sometimes its these that makes the others that much better. But for those who were looking to see what happens in a typical day of my life there it is. ..enjoy!

This brings me to the end with a posing question. It is in regards to the Ohio St. and Illinois game. I will not apologize, even though I am sure plenty of people will hate me for this, I am an Ohio State fan. How can the number one team lose to the Illini? That is just absurd! That should have never happened. I am still an Ohio fan because I am loyal just like I was loyal to Rex Grossman even through some of his worst performances (but look what he did this last weekend too). But I still am baffled at their performance.

Well, the blog launch was a success! I emailed just about everyone I knew about it, and encourage you all to send it to others also. I even got a comment from one of my buddies from Palatine (thanks Scotty), and another from one of my friends on the wrestling team here at NCC (Thanks Joey).  I also got several emails about how cool this is. I would also like to point out that most people seemed to have a fancy for Raphael of the TMNT. This was surprising to me, but whatever floats your boat. And my last update is to say, Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

***I am sorry I do not many pictures from this weekend. I will try to get into a habit of carrying my camera for your viewing pleasures.****

I know that this is another week and that all of you are just itching to find out what is going on in my life this week, and I don’t think that you are going to be disappointed. This last weekend, my buddy Tim Brodeur, and I decided to take the train into Chicago to visit some friends. After classes on Friday, we hopped on the Metra and bought a five dollar weekend pass and our journey had started. Neither one of us new what was in store for us this weekend.

So I don’t bore you, I will skip to the exciting part….. After a fun time of hanging out with old friends, it was time for Timmy and I to go back to Naperville. Our train that we needed to catch was at 10:30 am from Union Station. We NEEDED to catch that one because that would get us back to Naperville about 11:40 and Tim had to work at 1 pm. We woke up at 9 and were going to hop on the brown line into the Loop and just walk the rest of the way.

We were reflecting on the old times when we heard the announcement that the brown line was having difficulties and wouldn’t be operational for a while. If we wanted to, the CTA suggested taking the #11 or #74 buses. We gambled to stay on the train but opted to take the #11 bus. That was a big mistake. Not only did we have to wait for the bus to arrive it took us several blocks out of the way!

We started to walk towards the Loop, thinking we were close until we saw a map at another station. We were very far but still had some time, so no worries. The walk continued with us trying to hail a taxi without any luck. Eventually time became our enemy and we were not good taxi hailers. Timmy and I being runners, decided to, in our PJ’s and backpacks, run to Union Station.

It took about 15-20 minutes to get there and we definitely were cutting it close. It was about 10:25 so good thing we decided to run. Timmy and I started to go into the closest entrance and couldn’t figure out where the even number tracks towards Aurora were. To our advantage, this homeless man (He told us that his job was to help travelers out like us), started to lead our run (yes, he was running with us) to the right place. We gave him five dollars for his leadership because he got us on the train with a minute to spare.

Timmy (Picture of us) and I were both relieved that we had made the train home. I would like to point out that neither one of us sat and got mad about what happened. We just took each problem we had and found a way around it, and we ended up in the right place at the right time. This is where I am going to get preachy, but take a lesson from this. If something doesn’t go as planned, don’t get pissed, do what you need to get around the obstacle.

I guess this is the time that I pose an important life-changing question… Why is it that the original Starburst has four flavors, but if you open the packages there are never any pink or red ones? I mean those are the best flavors. Everyone wants them, so why not, if anything, put more pink and red in the package, and lessen the orange and yellow colors? Some things in the world may never make sense. Until next time, See-you-bye…