Day 20

20! 20! 20!

So, as you can probably see, I helped my griend Craig move some stuff today. He needed to get a couch, loveseat and table and chairs out of his place today. So I gave him a hand.

He lives in a place on The Hill. which leads me to today's awesomosity. The Hill. An oft overlooked area of town, The Hill is a thriving Italian neighborhood. If there is still active mob activity, it happens in this neighborhood. In the back room of Mama Campisi's, Favazza's or my personal favorite, Cunneto's. this is of course pure speculation and I hope I don't end up wearing cement shoes for my theory, but it is sure fun to think about.

Here is what I propose. Get some folks together and go for a nice Italian dinner. Perhaps go for a tour of the area, and then grab a bite. While walking around shopping and eating, play a game trying to guess who is in the mob. It'll be fun. I don't necessarily recommend asking people you think are mob members for hopefully obvious reasons.

While you are out shopping, I recommend stopping by a place called Skiff at the corner of Marconi and Daggett. The owner is a lady that makes her own line of clothing she sells all over the country.

For more information on The Hill and its many shops and fabulous eateries, visit www.shopthehill.com.

Well, that's all I have for today, I hope you have enjoyed it. See you tomorrow!

Day 19

Almost to the big 2-0. Woohoo!

I got a suggestion last night for todays awesomeosity. I was going to make it this, a phenomenal short video blog featuring none other than Doogie Howser himself, Neil Patrick Harris. So my friend Joe, (you know, the one that gets lost in Oklahoma?) says to me, yeah that's funny, but you should check out this. About half way down the page, there is a "new" real men of genius ad, saluting the new owners of A-B and their mother country of Belgium. Awesome stuff, really. However, it is not the awesomosity of the day, but good enough that I will add the noeyeinpirate.tumblr.com blog to my blogroll.

So then, you ask, if neither of those fantabulous things are the awesomosity, what could it possibly be? I'll tell you. The DMV.

Not just any DMV, but the Des Peres branch of the DMV. I have always had good luck there, but maybe it is just good timing. By the time I left there was a significant line. Oh well, I was only there about 10 minutes, tops. But, Ben, what were you doing at the DMV you ask? Getting a new driver's license.

That's right, my driver's license actually expired. They now have these ridiculously long valid periods now. Now that I have my new driver's license, I don't have to get another one until 2014. Seriously, do they really expect me to look the same in 6 years? I don't think so, that is, unless I start using Rogaine soon.

So, I figured I would see how much I have changed since the last time I had to take a picture for my driver's license, and then show you the picture I have to live with for the next 6 years. First, the old picture:


Now, my new driver's license picture, which is doubling as my picture of the day, since it was taken today:


Not bad, eh? I guess it is just a driver's license picture. Awesome. Have a spectacular Friday! See you tomorrow!

Day 18

18 straight days. If I would have put a poll on that, I would have never voted to make it this far. Thanks all for reading and supplying me with the feedback to continue, I hope you enjoy it.

Ok, on to today's awesomosity. Today's awesomeness comes from my activities last night. I know, most of my blogs have been about things I do or stuff that happens to me. That's because everything I do is awesome. Why waste time on stuff that's not awesome, thats what I say.

So, last night I went to this thing that a church called The Journey puts on called Theology at the Bottleworks. It is part of a larger outreach of their church called Midrash, which, according to their website, is a Hebrew word that roughly translated means "commentary".


So basically what they do is get a bunch of people together, hopefully from all walks of life, to discuss issues that relate to our culture. Some past topics have been on the Iraq war and other controversial topics. Some upcoming topics are things like Do guys need 6-pack abs? and How are we going to feed the world as food gets rarer and more expensive?

So last night there are about 50 people in the back room at Schlafly Bottleworks (which in itself is worthy of the awesomosity of the day). The topic was, "Are pets the new people?" You may be saying, "How is that going to lead to an interesting 2-hour discussion?" Well, it was a great discussion to say the least.

The moderator started by asking questions like "Who are cat people?" and "Who are dog people?" Then let the "cat people" describe what it means to be a "dog person", and vice versa. Fireworks started when someone said that cats are fickle, mostly women are cat people, and that people like their pets to be similar to themselves. The moderator said, "So, your saying that women are fickle?" Great stuff.

Most of the first portion of the discussion was light-hearted and fun, but later in the discussion we began talking about things like whether or not pets (or animals in general) have emotions. A fight almost broke out over that question, literally. It was very interesting to hear people's opinions and to see how people interact with those that don't necessarily share their opinion.

I walked away from the discussion wondering what I felt about pets. Now, I currently don't have any pets, but I am a "dog person" and do want a dog (as soon as I can afford it and am going to be home often enough to let it out to play). What I am wondering mostly is stuff like why do I want a pet? Is it purely a selfish thing to want some companionship? Do I want to "rescue" a dog fromt he pound to feel good about myself? Or do I just love dogs? It may not sound that interesting, but I will challenge you to go to one of these discussions (3rd Wednesday every month 7-9pm at Schlafly Bottleworks) and see for yourself if you don't leave there at least somewhat challenging your opinions of the topic.

Quickly I'll throw in the reason that I was there (with my good friend Katie from church). We are considering starting something kind of similar through our church. We don't really want to start totally from scratch, so we thought we would see how other people doing similar things do it. I'll keep you all updated on how that goes.

Before I throw in my picture of the day, I will briefly address the latest and possibly next poll. The results were a little less than overwhelming, but you all voted for me to keep the format the same. Well, actually, you all voted that I was awesome, for which I thank you, but as far as whether or not to put the awesomosity in the title, you said to leave it the same, 4-3. I will have another poll up soon, possibly on whether or not to attempt to commercialize my own blog, keep checking back!!

Here is today's picture, in which you will see I am resting comfortably on my parents couch and that the beard is coming in nicely.

Thanks for reading, see you manana!

Day 17

I can't believe this awesome blog continues daily for 17 days so far. Awesome.

Now, I told you all yesterday that I had to hurry to do some awesomeness. Well, that awesomeness is today's awesomosity. If you followed me on Twitter, you would already know the story. My dad and brother and I played horse hookey.

Every Tuesday, Fairmount Park has races all afternoon. This Tuesday they had 8 races. Most were 6 furlongs (I have no idea how far that is, I only know that means they start on the other side of the track and finish in front of us). They did have 2 mile+ races, where they start and finish in front of us, now that was awesome. Hearing them jump out of the gate thingy (you can see I am a horse racing aficionado), and watching how fast they take off is quite spectacular.

This is the horses actually finishing. I had the horse that won to place, which got me $3.80

So, watching horses run is a lot of fun. What makes it more fun? Betting on them. And there are so many bets you can make. An Exacta, where you pick the top 2 finishers in order, a Trifecta, the top 3 in order, a Superfecta, the top 4 in order and so on. Then you can do something like an Exacta box, where you pick two or three or four horses to finish in the top 2. But you are really just placing more bets. I'll try to give you an example. You think that horses 1 and 2 will finish 1 and 2, but 3 also looks good. You may do an Exacta box with 1, 2, and 3 for $1 each. That is a $6 bet. You are actually betting they will finish 1-2, 1-3, 2-1, 2-3, 3-1, 3-2. Does that make sense? It didn't to me either, but you pick it up quickly.

How much would something like that pay off? An Exacta may pay off $20-$30 on a $1 bet. It all depends on how much people bet on what horses. There was something like $30,000 bet on the 6th race. Crazy.

You can also just bet that a horse will finish "in the money", which means 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. That would be a "show" bet. Or you can have a "place" bet, hoping they finish 1st or 2nd. Or obviously, the "win" bet.

So, enough about the horses and the betting. (By the way, I bet a total of $24 and won $10, so I was -$14 on the day, not too bad.) The other stuff. On the Tuesday special, it costs $1.50 to get in. Tip sheets are $2 (GET A TIP SHEET IF YOU GO, its well worth it) and programs are $2. Soda is 50 cents, hot dogs are 75 cents, beers, for those of you that drink, are $1.50. So, for about $25, you can have a great day at the races. If you win any of your bets, you just might come out ahead. Apparently, some guy won like $70,000 there a few weeks ago, but he hit a Superfecta, which is ridiculous.

So, we've got horses racing, money betting, cheap food, but what about the atmosphere you ask? All kinds of awesome. You have old guys, kids, families, and this guy:


Do I need to say anything else? Really. But in all seriousness, it is a great place for groups to go. You don't have to bet, you can just come to watch the horsies run. Way too much fun. They also race on Friday and Saturday nights, which I am guessing is a ball.

So, that's today's awesomosity, I hope you enjoyed it.

Last day for the poll, VOTE (for change) NOW!

Here is picture of me enjoying my parents hammock:

See you tomorrow!

Day 16

16 is my lucky number, and now I have gone 16 days in a row, I think I can do this for an entire year!

Today is a little special, I have not 1, not 2, but yes, 3 awesome things for you. You see, I got to hang with my brother Tim last night. It was awesome. First, we secured my broken truck door:


Now, I think it impossible for you to argue that this is NOT awesome. Seriously, who's gonna break in now?!

So, after dinner (delicious kabobs, even if slightly overcooked), we put the finishing touches on a new center console for my truck, since they don't seem to make one that fits my truck:


I know this isn't the greatest picture, but I think you get the idea. Plenty of places to put my krap. If you want to see more of it, let me know, I'll give you a ride in my new "hoosiered" out truck.

After we finished this, and a small fiasco with my nephew not letting my brother leave, we played poker with some friends of my brothers. I have a great set of pictures of my brother going from the big stack to out in a series of 3 pictures within about 6 hands. But I decided to save Tim the embarrasment.

Ok, sorry this is a little short, but I have some more awesomosity to get to, I'll write about that tomorrow.

Here's today pic, see ya'll tomorrow!

Day 15

15 Days. That's longer than some small animals life spans! Oh, and vote in the poll to your right. So far Joe, you are losing. We'll see, still a few days left to vote.

So, I was thinking, like always, about what today's awesome thing should be. Thinking about it all morning. Thinking about it while I was working at my parents rental house on Chippewa. Thinking about it in the shower. Thinking about it while I was getting gas at on of the 4 QuikTrips within a mile of my house. Thinking about it while I was driving (since I can't sing along to my favorite songs in the car anymore). Wait a second, QuikTrip! The most under-rated, under-appreciated gas station of all time.

You see, I almost always get my gas at QuikTrip since, as I said, there are like 4 right next to my house (and in every direction too, it's great!). I have begun to take QuikTrip for granted. I am fairly certain I have never heard anyone that doesn't love QuikTrip. Seriously, people always rave about that place? Why?

It's always clean. You can expect the same basic layout at every one. Their gas is usually cheaper (at least near my house). They have some great commercials. They also have some really annoying, stupid commercials, but really, who doesn't? While looking for a picture to go with this post, I came across this ad, which I had never seen before, but is awesome:


Come on! That's great! Ok, so there's a little awesomosity for your day. Stop at your QuikTrip the next time you need gas. It's totally worth it, even if you have to go a little out of your way.

Here's today's picture of me, taken at my office (I know its a little messy, who cares?). You may notice the pallette (my beard) is growing back, something fun coming soon, maybe ya'll can give me some suggestions?


See you tomorrow, faithful blog reader.

Day 14

2 Solid weeks! Only 50 more to go!

So, I was having a tough time coming up with today's awesomeness. I'm at Llywelyn's last night asking my manager and bartender what it should be, Sean (one of my managers) immediately said, "Car Bombs!" Referring to the shot, Irish Car Bomb. I had some mixed feelings about this, since I don't drink anymore. I kinda wish I had known about this shot when I did drink, since it sounds just delicious to me, but I think that in the end, it was good I never had a car bomb. For those of you that don't know, an Irish Car Bomb is about a 1/3 pint of Guinness, and then a shot of half Jameson Irish Whiskey and half Baileys. You drop the shot into the beer and slam. They tell me it kinda tastes like chocolate milk, but alas, I'll never know. Anyway, I took this picture:

That's my friend Carrie on the left and my buddy Sean on the right, both with Car Bombs in hand.

Now, I decided that Car Bombs were not going to be today's awesomosity, so that left me with what to do for today. I got to thinking (don't worry, I didn't hurt myself) and thought about what my Sunday was going to be like. I mean, I have a pretty lazy Sunday going on. Then I seemed to remember some SNL digital short about "Lazy Sunday", so I Googled it. I watched the video and remembered I didn't really like the song, though the video is kinda funny. However, at the bottom of the page, Google listed other related searches. I saw "Natalie Portman rap" and it showed me this; today's awesomosity:

Nathalie Portman Rap
Uploaded by kinosam

Not exactly what you might expect from someone like Natalie Portman, which is why I think I like it. Of course, I didn't see this when it was on SNL, because really, who watches SNL anymore?

Ok, I think today's post was kinda lame, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway. Let me know what you think, and please vote in my poll, there's only a few days left.

Here's today's picture, see ya'll tomorrow!