Day 45

Half way to 90! Hooray!

Today's awesomosity comes from a good friend of mine and his wife. Michael Sharp, aka Tommy Bahama, and his wife Lauren Sharp invited me to their home for dinner last night. Well, actually, Michael and I have been trying to get together to smoke cigars for a month or more, but both have some pretty ridiculous schedules. Last night, the stars were aligned and we smoked cigars.

Michael called me in the afternoon to see if I wanted to also eat some dinner with them, they were having pot roast. I, knowing that Lauren is an incredible cook, said, "Absolutely!"

So, we had some pot roast and mashed potatoes and corn and it was all delicious. But then, just when it couldn't get any better, Lauren sets this in front of me:


And (I know its a bad picture) just what is that you ask? Single serving peach crisp, I reply. And, yes, it is as delicious as it sounds. I told Lauren that this was a fantastic idea. She said she made a crisp at one point, but doubled the topping recipe, so now all she has to do is microwave some fruit, put on the topping and ice cream, and there you go. Genius. She also told me it is healthy, since she used low fat ice cream and some other stuff. I tend not to pay too much attention when someone tells me the deliciousness I am eating is healthy, it might ruin it.

Then, Lauren went to Aldi and Michael and I lit up the cigars we spent 10 minutes picking out. They were good. We also had some coffee. Don't believe me? Well, check this out:


HA! Like I would lie to you anyway. Come on.

Michael and I sat enjoying our cigars talking about life and stuff for an hour or more. Which is the official awesomeosity for the day. Smoking cigars and talking about life with a good friend. There's really nothing better than that. For a while, we were doing this quite regularly, but the summer has backed us off a little, being busy and hot and whatnot.

Michael also told me a great idea for the blog, which I shall try to implement in some fashion at some point, we'll see if I can figure out a good way. His idea is to award "awesome points" for people that have done that awesomosity before. So, if you have smoked a cigar with a friend recently, 1 point. If you own a Llywelyns cup, 1 point. If you voted, 1 point. I think you get the idea. Any idea on how to pull it off?

I leave you with my picture of the day, comparing it to the best thing I have ever been called when I have a mustache, Ed Rooney, the principal from Ferris Bueller. What do you think? Similarity?

Ed Rooney

Me

Thanks for reading. By the way, today is my 3rd anniversary, which is pretty awesome to me. See you tomorrow!

Day 38

Well today friends, I am feeling a little lethargic. I was up too late last night. It was my own fault though. You see, I go to this group every Tuesday night, and last night was our biannual elections, a process that can take quite a while. This group is awful fond of coffee, as I am, so I had about 6 cups of regular coffee between 7 and 11. Not smart for someone that wants to sleep.

So, I went home (after stopping at Taco Bell for a high quality meal) and ate while watching episode 2 of the first season of Heroes from Netflix. Heroes isn't too bad, I guess it keeps me interested enough to watch more. But there are definitely better shows out there. I will wait until I'm through with the entire first season before I make a final judgment though. Some of my other favorites from Netflix include: Flight of the Conchords and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

So I finish my tacos and nachos along with Heroes, but I'm still pretty wide-eyed, so I turn to today's awesomosity, the writing of Stephen King. Notice Stephen King is NOT the awesomosity, but his writing is. No one else can make me turn pages like he can. It makes no difference what his stories are about, you just have to keep reading. He is an incredible storyteller.


This is the book I happened to be reading last night until about 1:30 in the morning. It is a book well grounded in reality. Same old stuff really; enchanted island, one-armed contractor turned painter whose paintings effect the real world and cause people to kill each other due to a death ship called Persephone (pronounced "Percy" for short) whose spirit lives in a ceramic doll that must be drowned in fresh water to end the nightmare, you know, the type of stuff that could happen to any of us. In the end it really makes no difference what the book is about, if Stephen King wrote it, it will keep me enthralled (except for "From a Buick 8", which I couldn't even finish).

Now I know many of you are thinking, "I'll never pick up a Stephen King book, I don't care how awesome his writing is!" Well, he has written several books that are quite entertaining and not the least bit scary. You may have seen the movie "The Shawshank Redemption" starring Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins. Well, that started as a short story in a collection called "Different Seasons" by Stephen King. One of my absolute favorite books of his is called "The Eyes of the Dragon" which is a fairy tale almost and a great read (probably still not kosher for those of you with small children to read, but that's what Judy Blume and Dr. Seuess are for, right?) And of course, he has an epic work (7 novels totalling over 10,000 pages) called the Dark Tower Series. The first in the series, The Gunslinger, is what got me into Stephen King in the first place.

So, I hope you check out a Stephen King book at your local library sometime soon. Tell me how it goes. Check out his website here, it's actually quite a website.

Here is my picture, looking tired in the office. See you tomorrow, have a splenderiffic day!

Day 36

The start of week 6. Only 46 more to go after this (unless I write this for more than a year, we'll see).

Yes, anyone that want a Llywelyns cup can just ave one. You don't have to give me anything. Just let me know.

Anything else uniquely St. Louis?

It is hot today. I know this because I have spent a decent portion of the day on the exterior of the world. I'll start in the middle somewhere, because that suits my purpose better.

So, my parents have a huge yard. On a hill. I mean, it's almost an acre. And all on a hill. And all of the grass was pretty tall. Dangit. At least my parents have a 42" walk-behind (where you get to ride one of those little platforms on wheels things), so that certainly helped the cause, but those things are way harder to control than you might think. I know, you're saying, "I've seen hundreds of I am sure legal immigrants riding those things all over, it looks easy." Well, it's not incredibly tough, but it is tiring and can be a little tricky. So, I mowed the lawn. I almost made the lawnmower the awesomosity, but really, a lawnmower, just not that awesome.

After that I helped my dad replace some incredibly hard to reach spark plugs in his van. Soooo fun. Let me tell you. Well, after we got all those in, we tried to start the van. The alarm (of which he hasn't used in years and doesn't even have the remote for anymore) start shrieking. That is annoying (I eventually stuffed some rags in it because it kept going off). Now neither of us are experts when it comes to anything vehicular (see post where my brother helped fix my truck), so we can't figure out how to disarm this thing. Worse than that is that it has a starter kill feature. So the truck won't start. And we can't disable the alarm. Aarrrghhh!

After crawling in some very awkward positions to look at all the wiring under the steering column (and after we disconnected some stuff like the backup battery for the alarm), I found some fuses connected to wires going to a black box that looked like an alarm brain. I pulled one of those fuses just for fun and...presto, van starts. Woohoo!

Then I showered and here I sit. A/C feels so good about now.

Now, I skipped over this morning, because it includes today's awesomosity. You see, I have a good friend Ben Shepard (he and his wife Erin were previously mentioned on the blog for coming to watch my short film premiere, which you can see again at the Tivoli in November). Ben and I try to get together somewhat regularly to just talk about life, have some accountability, and just build our friendship. Ben works at SLU (dorm director or something, he lives on campus), and I live in South City, so the Central West End is a decent place to meet. We met at the Coffee Cartel this morning, and that is what is awesome today. For one reason, check out their TV commercial here. You can also look at their webcam (courtest of Fox 2) on their website here.

I think my personal favorite thing about the Cartel is that they have normal sizes. They even have the cups on the ledge by the register with the sizes written on them; small, medium, large; 12oz, 16 oz, 20oz; little, middle, biggest; etc. But then to beat it all, they have all the not sizes that other national coffee chains use such as grande, venti, etc. crossed out. (I'm the guy that always orders a medium or large at Starbucks, then when they say whatever Italian word that correlates to what I say, I reply, "sure".)

They have a huge patio, they have live music on weekends. People tell me they have decent food. They have FREE wi-fi (unlike some national chains). They are open 24 hours. They are not full of themselves. It's just a cool place, and I recommend it to anyone that has not been there before.

After that, I got home and noticed my parents outdoor cat, who had been getting pretty fat, was not so fat anymore. After a little searching and some help from my mother to get them situated nicely, here is what I found:

Awwww

Yes, she had 5 kittens last night. No, we are not keeping them. Does anyone want a kitten in about 6 weeks to go with the Llywelyns cup?

Here is a picture of me all sweaty and dirty in front of my parents huge lawnmower:


See you all tomorrow! Have a fantabulous Monday!