i love this place

more pics from the trip.

do this

Put Madness to a good cause - Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati Enquirer

Katy Hines is my cousin. and when i say cousin, i mean it in the way that black people use it. katy and i aren't actually related by blood, but her family were very close to our family and i called her parents aunt and uncle my whole life.

lame brag

i was chatting with a friend of mine here at work a few weeks back, just shooting the shit talking about our time here at this wonderful company. he told me he'd put in a good word with his boss for me. i've heard this from people before and usually nothing comes from it, i didn't expect this to be any different. however, it was different. apparently the senior directors of both the global supply chain and sourcing department have been "fighting" over me for the past couple weeks. over the past 2 days i've heard from my boss that the position title is sourcing coordinator and will most likely start by june 1, if not sooner (depending on how long i'm out for on short term disability), and that it comes with a 21% increase in pay. maybe the best part of all of this: i don't have to interview for the position.

it's been a good morning :-)

i love march

this is by far the best time of the year for sports. 3 weeks of basketball followed by the masters.
this is what i came up with on my first try, i'm sure i'll change a game or two by the time i have to turn my brackets in. the first time i filled it out i had all four number 1 seeds in the final four, i think there's a realistic chance of that actually happening this year.

ca$h cab

cash cab is one of the coolest shows on tv. i've become an avid watcher of this show and since i've started watching, i've decided that my life will not be complete until i am on this show. have you seeeeen the new season?! double the money and a loooot more red light challenges!!!! discovery channel, monday thru friday at 6p.
i haven't been to new york city in a while, but the next time i go i'm going to devote an entire day to riding around the city in van cabs with the hopes of finding benjamin bailey and the cash cab. when i DO actually make it in the cash cab, i'm pretty sure i'll know it right away and ben won't be able to trick me with his fake accents, nor will he be able to trick me into thinking i got a question wrong by doing that fake out thing he does. i dont get how people fall for the latter, but whatever. suckers. also, i feel that anyone who doesn't go for the video bonus question should have to forfeit their winnings. grow some gamble people, the question is NOT that hard!!

odd

it's kind of odd getting a friend request on facebook from the guy who's family had me suspended from school for 10 days and then sued for $6k-ish back in junior high..

edit: the more i think about it, the angrier i get. i mean, come on. going blind? seriously? how high were they when they came up with that story? maybe more importantly, how high were my parents and everyone else when they heard that story and actually believed it? his parents are what's wrong with this country. something go wrong? let's sue!! why? because we can!! what a joke.

incriminating

meet betty. betty is our next door neighbor. she's 70 something, has no teeth and lives alone. betty likes to talk about any and everything; her injured leg, the first time she did "it", the dog she owned 13 years ago and had to put down... pretty much anything in this woman's past is fair game for conversation. and the problem is she's always out on her porch when it's nice outside and she's memorized when each of us get home from work so she's there to harass us. i've become an expert at avoiding her. she caught colin today and well, see for yourself...
looks normal, right? then it came time to say goodbye...
awwww.

save the date

surgery is scheduled for april 15.


who's down for a round of golf on october 15?

snowday

and the driveway got shoveled in the process!

LOST

disappointing episode last night. then again, after "the constant" last week, most episodes would be disappointing. still, a disappointing episode of LOST > most other TV shows. i'm spoiled, i guess.

i've been re-watching the older episodes while kevin catches up and i found this exchange in season 2 kind of funny:

SAYID: Radio waves at this frequency bounce off the ionosphere. They can travel thousands of miles. It could be coming from anywhere.
HURLEY: Or, anytime. Just kidding, dude.

dun dun dunhhhh... that's the beauty of this show, the whole story has already been written. it's fun to go back and re watch the earlier seasons and pick up on the little hints the writers drop in each episode. it's nice to know that the show will (hopefully) never "jump the shark" because the ending has already been written, and the show will end with season 6 in 2010. i just can't get over how smart the writers are for this show, some of the things they do are just mind bogglingly brilliant. do yourself a favor and go get season 1.

on a side note, why can't starbucks make a cup that doesn't dribble coffee all over my desk? every time i take a sip there is a new drip of coffee on my desk. obnoxious!

on another side note, 13 inches of snow is coming because DEREK SAID IT WOULD! i love snow, and 13 inches sounds like it's going to be enough to keep me snowed in. i'm excited for this! now if only ohio had "mountains" bigger than 600 feet i could actually have fun in this snow!

politics

I should preface this post by saying that I don't pay much attention to politics and, for the most part, I find them boring. So take the following for what it's worth... Anyway, I don't understand how people can still be supportive of George W. Bush, or the republican party for that matter. The war in Iraq has seemingly divided the country in half. That's nothing new though, we've been in Iraq since when, 2003? So for the past 5 years the country has been split in half and the only defense Bush supporters had was that the economy was in good shape. Yeah, how's that working out lately? I just don't get it. Politics bore me, but with 2008 being an election year, its near impossible to not be overwhelmed with news stories about politics and the countless campaign ads on TV. Soooo I figured I'd throw in my $.02 since I have this blog thing to do just that.

btw, i voted yesterday for the first time. i can't really figure out why i was compelled to vote in the primary, but didn't bother voting in november or in any of past year's elections. whatever, i finally did it and i plan on continuing to do so, although hopefully i'll be a more informed voter on more races the next go round. other than obama, the only other thing i cast a vote for was the princeton school levy. that district needs all the help it can get. go vikes.

p.s.. apparently by casting my vote for obama i'm no longer welcome in my father's house.

the weather

i can't take this shit anymore. sunday and monday were sunny with temperatures in the 60's and 70's. i wake up this morning and raining and 38 degrees. i'm getting fed up. but sadly, i'm too much of a homebody to move to another part of the country, so i'll be stuck experiencing all 4 seasons each week for the rest of my life.

you know what they say about the weather in cincinnati, if you don't like it just wait 24 hours!! ba dum shhh

mystery word

can anyone define the word "triflin" for me? i have been fascinated by this word and it's use ever since i moved into princeton city schools and heard it for the first time way back in 5th grade. other possible spellings include triflent/trifling/triflen. i've looked on dictionary.com several times and i can never find a word with a definition that matches how it's used. example of the word in use: "that hoe is triflin!", or "ugh, people is triflin"(IHOP employee said this while cleaning windows). dictionary.com's closest match to triflin is the word trifling, and the definition of the word doesn't match the context in which it's used. urbandictionary.com has several entries for triflin and several different definitions. some of which are: "lazy ass man, relies on his woman for money", "a creep, someone whos nosy", and finally "dirty".

what is the real meaning of this word? what is the real word?! am i just a silly white boy for questioning if it's actually a real word? probably.

typical

if something is too good to be true, it probably is. see: shaun rogers trade. apparently the league rejected the trade because of salary cap problems, not because shaun rogers got a little rowdy in a strip club last year, what NFL player hasn't gotten a little out of control in a strip club? and as icing on the kick-in-the-balls cake, rogers was immediately traded to cleveland after the deal with the bengals fell through. i hate that city.

in other news, justin smith signed a 6 year $45 million contract with the 49ers. lol@that.