Day 152

Some of you already knew, and now you can all tell by the pictures that today was always planned to be an awesome day. Yes, its anothe Blues game, my 4th of the year, 3rd regular season. I am 2-1 so far, and 2-0 wearing my home jersey, which I am wearing today. So far so good. Its 2-0 us at the first break.

The plan was to go with my buddy Aaron "the man himself" Thorne, who has a 10 game pack. I bought him lunch at Houlihans before the game, it was the least I could do, right.

So, we finish lunch and walk on down to the game, passing about 28 guys very excited about selling us tickets, but we didn't need them, we have seats in 110, which are pretty good.

So as Aaron and I are walking up to the gate when one of the regulars from Llywelyn's says hey. I say, "hey Steve, what's going on?" and keep moving to the door. Steve waves me over. I say, "whats going on?" He asks me who I'm with. I say its just me and a buddy. Hey says he has two extra tickets to his box and asks if we want them. Aaron and I figure why not? Even if we don't like them for some stupid reason, we can always go back to sitting among the meager peasants.

So I am writing this from the 5th level. That's the one that you have to take an elevator to, they don't even have escalators that go up here. It is very awesome. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get some free food, grab another free soda, and then use our personal bathroom.

TASK o' THE DAY: same as always on game days, got to a hockey game, I'm always down.

Have a great day!

Day 151

Happy black Friday everyone. I hope you fared better than anyone working in retail this morning. I did.

In fact, today was a fantastic day. We (my family) has this tradition of cutting down Christmas trees on the day after Thanksgiving. We go with some of my parents college friends and their families. We are now up to quite a few of us, as you will see in a few minutes. This is actually the 25th year that this group has been going out there (there is Pea Ridge Forest, off 94 past Warrenton). My dad and I were trying to figure out how long we have been going, and its been a good chunk of that. I don't remember getting a tree anywhere else (not that that means much, I couldn't tell you what I had for dinner 2 of the last 3 nights), but we cut our own tree quite a bit.

At this point, I should also shout out to my friend Jana, who's family runs a Christmas tree farm in Indiana. I am sure she could tell you way more about Christmas tree farms.

Now, I like to be specific about the awesomosity, so I am choosing the most specialized piece of equipment they have their. Shakee, the Christmas Tree shaker. It shakes off all the dead pine needles. It's pretty awesome.

Shakee

This is a picture of the tree shaker off the companies website. Here is a picture of the actual shaker, being used to shake off dead needles from my folks tree.

Shakee in action

After cutting the trees, drinking hot chocolate and taking a picture with Santa, we go to Imo's at the Warrenton outlet center. Then a little shopping (I got a great deal on some flat front slacks and a thermal shirt all for under $20, aren't you proud Gina?).

All in all it is a fantastic day spent with family doing some really fun stuff. Now, I'm off to attempt to sleep for a few minutes before the madness bound to happen tonight at Llywelyns.

Here is a picture of my family just after killing a tree, then a picture of the whole gang we go with (and Santa Claus, who made a special trip from the North Pole just for us!)

Day 150

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you had a wonderful day of food and rest with loved ones. I also hoped you were able to catch "Alice's Resurant" on KSHE for lunch. Great song and tradition.

The awesomosity today is related to food and traditional Thanksgiving stuff, but its a bit of a sidebar. More specifically, it is about how we cooked our turkeys this year. You see, my brother, Tim, wanted to be able to roast a pig. So he made a pig roaster out of a fuel oil tank. It can cook a 250 pig whole, or 300 brats, or more than two turkeys, whatever food you may need grilled. Here are some pictures of it, and of my brother Tim checking our birds.

Tim proudly displaying his creation

The birds. Yes, that is bacon on them and beer next to them (Busch)

Another view of the delicious turkeys.

This is really a genius design for a BBQ grill. Here are some of the specifics. There are two charcoal troughs, both about 6 inches wide, and 10 inches deep, and run the length of the grill (about 6 feet). There is one in the front and one in the back. There are two doors on each side to add more charcoal while things cook. There are 5 air ports on each side of the bottom to control air flow. By having the charcoal on the front and back, the heat radiates around your dinner, eliminating "hot spots" on the grill. One of the coolest features is that the main food rack actually slides out onto some angle iron pieces on the front and doubles as a shelf. Way cool. All of this is permanently attached to a trailer, so it is fully portable. Anyone want to tailgate?

By the way, you too, can own one of these gems. My brother will be happy to build on for your needs, and for what you get, he'll do it for a bargain. Don't need the grill, but you need to cook a whole pig, you say? Tim will be happy to come to your get together with his rig and serve up some delicious eats for a small fee.

So, Tim made me put that little sales push in there, but if you're interested seriously, let me know.

Task o' The Day: Don't do anything. Take a nap, play a game, enjoy some family time. It'll be awesome.

Here is my family that was here on Thanksgiving.

From left: "Big Grandma", Aunt Bert, Momma, Annie, Tim, Me, Ahren,
"Litte Grandma", Adriane, Lydia, Dad, and Anne Marie.

I hope you all enjoy your day, I'll see you tomorrow!!

Day 149

Wow. This is a crazy week for people in these United States. Something like 13% of us are traveling. That is ridiculous. Thats 30 or 40 Million people that would not normally be on the move, that are on the move this weekend. Be safe out there. I am glad I only have to drive 15 miles to enjoy the 3 turkeys and 3 chickens that my family is cooking. I have no idea why we are having that much food, but we are. It'll be great. If you live in the Lou and don't have anywhere to go, let me know, we'll probably be able to come up with a plate of stuff for ya.

So, on to the awesomosity. I worked last night. I am working tonight. And Friday (were closed on Thanksgiving, or I am sure I'd be working then), and Saturday, and Sunday, and Monday. Seriously. I think I'm crazy. Ok, so I'm not crazy, but I know something that is crazy. The amount of beer that we have at Llywelyn's. You see, thanks to the holiday, no one will deliver beer to us until Monday. Therefore, we had to prepare for tonight (which is typically one of the busiest days of the year, next to St. Patty's and Mardi Gras), as well as get ready for this weekend, in which we would normally have a busy weekend, thanks to so many people being in town and off work and school, but we also have two of our best drawing bands playing this weekend. It's gonna be redunk.

Here is what our dry storage in the office looks like:

Now, here is what our cold storage looks like:

If you can't tell, that's a lot of beer. We got 330 or something cases delivered yesterday. 150 cases of Bud Light alone. Maybe some day, when we get through all this, I'll show you what these spaces normally look like. For example, on a typical expected busy weekend, we may stock 25-30 cases of Bud Light. So, we have at least 5 times our normal amount. If you are not a fan of crowds, Llywelyn's Pub in Soulard will not be the place for you until Monday, when you really should come up, I'll be bartending.

For good measure, here is a picture of our keg cooler. It doesn't really do it any justice, but if it helps, all those are stacked at least 2 deep, and there is normally a walk way through the middle there.

So, the awesomosity for today is stupid crazy amounts of beer, most of which I will be stocking and selling at some point over the next week.

Task o' The Day: Be thankful for something today. Today, I am thankful for a job that is fun and pays me fairly well. I need it, at least until under the line gets up, running, and profitable.

Here I am working at the utl studio.

Have a great day! Be thankful and enjoy yourself tomorrow! I'll talk to you soon.

Day 148

Holy cow, 6am came quite early this morning. I was up that early in order to get my business partner's (Sean) girlfriend (Emily) to the airport so she can see her family in Ohio. I thought I was going all the way to the airport, but in fact, I only had to drive her as far as the Metrolink station, which is like 4 blocks away, and you all know the awesomeness of public transportation.

Anyway, so what's awesome today? Trivia. I played some Tenacious Trivia (not necessarily a work or child friendly link, right there, but there are some entertaining videos on there that give clues to the upcoming trivia games, they just like to swear) last night at a place called Molly's in Soulard. It was quite awesome. In general, bar trivia is not meant to be family friendly, especially in Soulard. Tenacious Trivia is actually who does the trivia up at Llywelyns on Sunday nights. If you are not easily offended, come on up and hang out, it's great fun. 

Josh (the guy who reads the trivia) told me not to post this up here, but it was just in fact too awesome to not post as the awesomosity for the day. As it turns out, we won last night, and got a $25 gift certificate to Molly's, which is awesome, except that we couldn't use it last night, and we can only use it on Monday nights, so eventually were gonna have to go back. That's some great logic, eh? 

However, if you love trivia, and you're not a fan of smoky bars, or don't like hearing excessive foul language, check out this site, which is totally devoted to upcoming local trivia nights.

Task o' The Day: Go play some trivia. I enjoy playing some trivia, and I occasionally get some answers right. If you need an extra body for your team, let me know, and we'll see if we can't work something out.

On a sidebar awesomosity, I think we have come up with a name for the new company. It looks like were gonna go with (drumroll, please)

under the line Productions

So, what do you think? We've been working a little on a logo, and I was playing around the other day with Adobe After Effects, and then Adobe Flash, and I came up with this, what do you think (remember that I made this, and Sean is the graphic design part of our team, but its a starting place in my book)?

Please let me know what you think. Here I am at the office bright and early, lots of work to do. Have an awetastic day!!

Day 147

Done with my meetings now. If you didn't check the blog between 11:45 and 2:30pm EST, then that last statement doesn't even matter to you, but oh well.

Back to awesome. I had a great weekend these past few days, I hope you did as well. I worked all weekend, but I made some pretty good money, so that always makes it better. I also got out earlier than usual Friday and Saturday, by that I mean I left at 2am as opposed to 2:30-3am. Every little bit helps though. So, something that comes up when you miss a little sleep is the element of being awake and productive after a short sleep weekend. Know what is awesome and helps? Coffee.

Now, at home I drink Maxwell House (currently) or whatever is on sale at Shop n' Save when I need coffee. But more awesome than that is gourmet coffee, which is all we drink at the office (and by office, I mean Sean's apartment). Sean is a gourmet coffee guy, don't insult him with Folgers. Don't get me wrong, Folgers is good coffee, its just not great.

Now, Starbucks, or any other coffee shop for that matter makes much better coffee. I could get into all the ins and outs of fair trade coffee and whatnot, but I won't. I will give you a link to a non-profit that Sean used to work for that tries to have better than fair trade coffee. Read about Beans for Hope here.

If you don't necessarily care as much about fair trade in your coffee, then check out the Coffee Fool. They claim that you have never had fresh coffee until you have had theirs. And that once you have tried theirs, you will never be able to drink "normal" coffee again. I really want to try it, but I'm scared. I like my Maxwell House. It's good to the last drop. I don't want to rick ruining that!

So, a quick summary of my coffee adventures today. I brewed 6 cups (about 32 oz.) of some Maxwell House this morning. Then I got to the office and had some Starbucks Sumatra roast or something. That was good. Then I had some Companion coffee for an early afternoon meeting with a marketing company. It's been a good coffee day so far, and there is probably still a cup or two out there with my name on it somewhere.

Task o' The Day: Get some 'gourmet' coffee. Not a coffee drinker? Spend a little more than usual on some hot tea. No teas, you say? Get a premium hot chocolate drink somewhere. Hot drinks scare you? Get over it.

Here I am in the kitchen of the new office. Pretty sweet. Have a great night. I'll see ya tomorrow!

Day 146

Today has been a very good day so far. Full of family time. It was so awesome that I'm going to make family time the awesomosity for the day.

The reason I had the opportunity for such great family time was my niece (sorry for the bad picture) Annie's baptism. It was great to go to a different church for their service. I like it (Riverside), but their music wasn't as awesome as it is at Quest (you rock Dan and the gang). They were installing a new pastor at the church today, so there was a lot f ceremony in the service.

After the service we went back to Tim and AdriaNe's (my bro and sis-in-law) house for some lunch and family fellowship. Great stuff. White chili, minestrone and my favorite, chicken tortilla soup. Then my mothers world-famous caesar salad and pumpkin, peach and apple pies. And its not even Thanksgiving yet!

There was also great time with some extended family. I even made a good contact for my new business. Awesome stuff all around.

TASK o' THE DAY: I've done this one before, but have some family time. Maybe its lunch, maybe its just a phone call, just get in touch with some fam, it can be very awesome.

Have a splenderiffic day!