Fantasy Football - Week 3

Alas, 2-0 I am no longer. Kurt came along and beat me. Sniff Sniff.
Ha...that's OK...it's all in fun and games.

But..since a few of my players aren't up to par, I decided to take 2 of Shosta's players and trade her two of mine. I feel terrible, though. I'm such a meanie taking my dog's players. See what you did to me, Mom? (Just teasing...but only slightly)

TURD BLOSSOMS (1-1) @ FUDGE DRAGON'S (2-0) Lakeview Turd Blossoms 108 Roscoe Village Fudge Dragon's 81		NASTY MINSTRELS (0-2) @ WARRIORS (1-1) Black Swamp Nasty Minstrels 103 West Loop Warriors 86
KRAP (1-1) @ BROWNS ROCK (1-1) Columbus Krap 57 Cleveland Browns Rock 125		CHEWY LIZARDS (1-1) @ STEAMERS (1-1) Shosta's Chewy Lizards 83 Cleveland Steamers 76
GRAY (2-0) @ BENGALS (1-1) Team Gray 90 Who Dey! Bengals 109

Sigh...The National

Sigh...as always, The National put on a fabulous show. I only wished it would have lasted longer! They are such a magical band live - they really put a lot of heart into their music. And Matt Berninger is a phenomenal singer/showman. He draws you in and allows you to feel all of the emotions he does when he's singing. Now we just have to wait another 6 months to a year to get our "National" fix again. Sigh.

We went to our first "indoor" show here in Chicago, so we were kinda excited to see what the venues were like here. The Vic (where we saw the show) is a pretty awesome place. It's a former theater turned concert venue, so you can go upstairs to the balcony and sit during the concert. Even though I would have liked to get up and dance, it was nice to not have to stand for hours before the show started. Although, from the time we left home to the time we got home, it was only 3 hours! The Vic is only a mile or so away! Woohoo!

Speaking of concerts, we justed added a few more to our plate. October is going to be a SUPER BUSY month of concerts. I think we have something like 8 or 9...WOW. There's no way that we would have been able to see all of those shows in C-bus. And, we are able to see some lesser known bands that probably wouldn't go to C-bus anyways. Ahhh...the joys of big-city living ;o)

Ok...I'm gonna end this...I've already written another one today...no need to inundate you with posts about concerts. Ha!

Take care!

Kurt is home - Yipee!!!

Kurt is home - YIPEE!!!!!!!

I picked Kurt up from the Rosemont El stop last night (it's the first stop outside of O'Hare Airport). I t was so nice to see him again ...we missed each other quite a lot, but we both did fine. I had a few nights where I was spooked, but Shosta took care of me ;o) She's a very alert dog, aware of just about anything going on. But, at night when we were getting ready for bed, she seemed super aware of any little noises. And she checked out the door and the closet before we went to sleep. It's nice to know I have a little guard dog when Kurt goes away.


We've had a relaxing day thus far...watching football ;o)


MICHIGAN BEAT PENN STATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Penn State was ranked 10th, so this was a HUGE win for my team!


Speaking of football....


Kurt's fantasy football team (Lakeview Turd Blossoms) plays my football team tomorrow (Roscoe Village Fudge Dragons). We've sent each other the hilarious "Smack" cards (dissing each other's team), but it doesn't really matter to us who wins ....
(but I'm gonna beat 'em good...)


OK...gotta go. We're going to see The National tonight at the Vic Theatre. This is our first indoor concert here in Chicago, so we are really looking forward to it! AND, they are one of our fav. bands (As if you couldn't tell from all of my other posts ;o).

Take care and have a good week!

Woohoo!

Kurt is coming home tomorrow night! Yippeeeee!

Fantasy Football Scores - Week 2

Woohoo!
Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm ranked first in my division!
Congrats to Kurt who won his first game.


Steamers def. Browns Rock, 95-89
Fudge Dragon's def. Krap, 119-115
Turd Blossoms def. Nasty Minstrels, 107-89
Bengals def. Chewy Lizards, 45-34
Gray def. Warriors, 111-82



Kurt and I are scheduled to play this week...we'll see how it goes!

Denver....sniff sniff.

Welp...Kurt's off to Denver this week for a big "geek" conference. Actually, it's a conference for Sequel Server Database Programmers (same thing to me ;o).

Sniff sniff. As cheesy as this sounds to most people I meet, we've never been apart since being married - and we prefer it that way. Neither of us are looking forward to being separated, but I think he's looking forward to going to a big conference. And, it's all paid for by his company. His boss is going as well, so at least he'll have someone to hang out with on occasion. I don't think they are flying together or even staying in the same hotel, but I'm sure they'll meet up at some point.

So, Shosta and I are left to fend for ourselves ;o) Tis' O.K. though. I'm pretty sad, but I'll keep busy with school, work, and cleaning. Kurt and I will talk every night, I'm sure. And if anyone tries to mess with us (I highly doubt it ;o), Shosta will take care of them just fine. HA!

Moving on...

We've had a nice weekend thus far despite Kurt having a nasty cold. We went to the Renegade Craft Fair at the Division St. Festival yesterday. It's a bunch of mod/hipster crafters who make all sorts of cool stuff. If only I had a bunch of money - I would have bought one of everything! There were some amazing pieces of jewelry, but they were all at least $60 and I can't spend that kind of money on myself without feeling guilty ;o) So, WE bought a concert poster instead.

And, of course, we've been watching some football all weekend long ;o)

MICHIGAN BEAT NOTRE DAME 38-0!

Not that I'm excited or anything ;o) Ha ha.

Funny thing...
We've had some nice fall weather lately, but it's been getting down to mid 40's at night. And, since our apartment apparently does not have the ability to maintain a steady temperature (as was evident by the nasty heat in the summer), we've been FREEZING inside! Poor Shosta - it's only half the way through September and she's already shivering! Needless to say, we are preparing for a VERY cold winter. We don't have forced heat, so we heat the upstairs with in-wall heaters. They work pretty well (we used one last night), but it seems like they might be a fire hazard to us. Oh well. We know what to look for in the future. Good water pressure and central air/heat!

OK...gotta get to work.

Have a good week!
I'm sure I'll be posting more this week!

Fantasy Football Scores - Week 1

Howdy!

Our first week of fantasy football is over! We managed to draft our players fine since our internet decided to work again Saturday morning.

Here's this week's scores:

Fudge Dragon's def. Bengals, 102-88
Browns Rock def. Nasty Minstrels, 93-86
Krap def. Turd Blossoms, 95-71
Warriors def. Steamers, 69-68
Gray def. Chewy Lizards, 112-54

Woohoo! My team won!
Not bad for a chic ;o)

New Additions to our League!

This just in....we have two new additions to our league!

Shosta's Chewy Lizards - Shostakovich (yes, I had to make a league for our dog, we didn't have enough teams to draft!)

Team Gray - Belinda


We're drafting soon! And, of course, our internet connection had to go on the fritzes. SO, we'll see how it goes.

Wish us luck!

Fantasy Football!

We're Drafting Fantasy Football Saturday!!!!!!!!!! WOOHOO!!!!

Go Roscoe Village Fudge Dragons!!!!!

Our line up is...

Roscoe Village Fudge Dragons - Me
Lakeview Turd Blossoms - Kurt
Columbus Krap - John
Black Swamp Nasty Minstrels - Scott
Cleveland Browns Rock - Matt
Who Dey! Bengals - Mark
Cleveland Steamers - Justin
West Loop Warriors - Nate

(The "Poop" theme was not intentional!)

I'll keep everyone posted on our games!

SCHOOL!

So...my first couple of days of school have gone well...one more to go.

On Tuesday, I had my first Accounting class - good times. It's pretty easy thus far, but there's a lot of homework. I've been chiseling away at it a little bit every day.

Yesterday was my long day. Class from 3:30-9:30. My first one is call "The Music Industry Think Tank" and is taught by the Music Bus. concentration director. His name is Kimo Williams - very strong personality, but a lot of AMAZING experiences to back it up. He's even so highly thought of in the music industry that he gets to vote on the GRAMMY AWARDS! WOW! So, this class is going to beat me down...very difficult. There's not a lot of homework, but a lot of thinking. The purpose of the class is to state what we believe is wrong with the music industry, and be innovative and forward thinking enough to figure out how to fix it. Everyone must give 1 10 min. presentation to the class on an innovative aspect of the music ind. Kimo's Asst. (who is team-teaching with him - he already owns his own online music distribution co.) brought up an amazing website called lablogoteque that shows spontaneous music making by amazing bands. Since I'm fairly familiar with the site, I chimed in on the discussion about the "realness" that you feel when you watch, as opposed to modern music videos and their "fake-ness." SO, Kimo was like "OK...next week give your presentation on that website. I wanna hear all about it." HA! There were two other people already assigned for next week, so I offered to go on the 19th. Phew... We have to have a fancy presentation all set with handouts and everything. I'd rather have more than a week to work on it!

Anywho...in this class we are also writing (in small groups...of course my group has some dude who wore a shirt that said "Drink Responsibly - Jason's 21st Birthday" - classy) a treatise. His goal for this large group paper (30-ish pages) is for us to tell the music industry "Here's what you are doing wrong, and here's how we can fix it." He wants to get these published in all of the Music Industry magazines and journals. Then, he wants to take them to conventions and present them to RIAA people and all of the higher ups of the recording ind. Whoa... He's got some crazy connections, so I can imagine how awesome this is all going to be...not to mention an insane amount of work.

Moving on, and speaking of connections...My next class was the Music Industry Workshop, taught by Maurice White. Not the Earth Wind and Fire Maurice, but close.

This dude is AMAZING! He is friends with Clive Davis (big time record producer), his dad "broke" Earth Wind and Fire into the business, Aretha Franklin lived with their family while she was in her early stages, he's worked for MCA and a bunch of other labels, he's on the "in" with the CEO of Capitol Records, and so much more. The stories he had were jaw dropping. I can't wait to work more with him! He even gave us his personal cell phone number "If you need anything...even after we're done in this class." Very cool.

I tell ya what...6 hours of being a sponge...that's tough. By the time 8 rolled around, my brain was hurting. Thank goodness Maurice let us out at 9:00...I dunno if I could have taken any more.

So after class, Jeanette (A girl from all of my classes that lives literally a block away...crazy) and I rode the El home. Good to have a late night train buddy, just to stay safe.

So...going backwards a little bit. During the "Think Tank" class, as we introduced ourselves, I mentioned that I was a teacher, but still enjoy arranging music for bands/ensembles. Kimo was quite interested and asked if I used Finale of Sibelius. I mentioned that I used Finale, but had a demo of Sibelius that I've played around with and really liked. So, he then asked if I would transcribe some music for him if he gave me Sibelius for free (I've always wanted Sibelius - a fancy music notation software - but never saved up the money...it's $500+). I said sure! I assumed he was just joking around, but after class he came up to me and discussed it with me again. SO COOL! I emailed him at his request and he replied. Crazy - he said that he wanted to meet in October, but that in the meantime, I should try to find out how much Sibelius costs so he could get it to me in time to play around with it. CRAZY! He's buying me Sibelius so I can transcribe for him! That's a pretty good trade-off!

Funny thing...he has a Grad Asst. every semester...it's a pretty prestigious position because if he likes you he "will get you a job." Here I am, not his GA, but transcribing his musical arrangements! SO COOL!

So...one more class tomorrow (It's a 4 hour seminar) then my week is done. Next week I'll have all of the classes I mentioned, plus a Monday Night Marketing class...fun times!

Howdy!

Hello to all!

Hope everything is going well for everyone and that you are all enjoying your labor-less day!

This past weekend we went back to Ohio to visit with family. We got to hang out with Kurt's Parents, Gramma Piotrowski, Max, Evyn (our niece and nephew), and Kyle (his sister) on Saturday. That was a nice afternoon. And, the kids got to meet Shosta - she was a bit nervous, but did fairly well.

Saturday night we went to Findlay to meet my parents at our favorite Chinese restaurant ever - Ming's Great Wall. Then we went to Meijer to go on a gluten free shopping binge. It's pretty strange that they have more gluten free products than Whole Foods! And EVERYTHING is cheaper in Ohio ;o)

Sunday all of my Mom's side of the family came over for our annual labor day party. It was nice to see everyone. Back in the day, I used to see my cousins quite a few times a year. Now, we're lucky if we see each other 2 times! Nonetheless, it was really great to see everyone and remember the good ol' days. My how we've all changed!

So...we left last night after the party and didn't get home until 11:30-ish central time. We were pooped! Poor Shosta had a rough weekend, so she's sacked out on the couch today. She didn't even TRY to pull me along for our normal morning walk. We didn't end up taking one (for reasons later explained), but she wasn't complaining! She slowly sauntered up the steps and headed right for the couch for a long snooze.

SO...we have a fantasy football league that we/I am in charge of. We were going to try to draft today because there are some games Thursday night, but I'm slightly stupid and can't figure out the site. We've spent the past 2 or 3 hours trying to figure out the darn thing (which is why we didn't go for our walk). Turns out, though, that there are tons of drafts today and we think the website might be down/inoperable/not cooperative. SO...we're going to draft next Saturday, our original plan. We're pretty excited to have a fantasy football league. We're certainly doing this all for fun, because we don't have the slightest clue about fantasy stuff. We just love football ;o) (Turns out not many women like football - all of Kurt's friends think it's cool that he's got a wife that watches it right along with him and can hold an intelligent conversation :O)

Well...tomorrow is the big day! I work from 10-2 and then have my first class from 3:30-6:30 - Accounting. I'm SOOOOOOO looking forward to it! I've been doing my homework (that he just told us we didn't need to do, oh well) and have read and studied the first chapter a lot. Yipee!

OK...enough for today. We've gotta do our weekly grocery shopping and we still need to eat lunch (we had a late breakfast after sleeping in). THEN, I need to go over all of my notes for class tomorrow.

Take care and enjoy our last few days of summer!!