Fun Stuff

Update time

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Happy 4th of July!

Before I get started, let me just say that Wendy’s (and the inside of my stomach) have a new sandwich called the Baconator!  I mean, there was no way I could not get it once I saw the name.  It wasn’t quite as good as it sounded though.  Bacon at a fast food restaurant isn’t quite as good as real bacon.

So last weekend we went to Wisconsin for Baby Shower #2.  My mom planned a lot of games.  I skipped out and played Frisbee golf with my uncle and cousin.  That was a blast!  I haven’t played in years, in fact I haven’t even thrown a Frisbee in at least 2 years.  I lost, but it was a close game.  It was a nice course too, although not as good as Ravines though.  I got back to the shower in time to open presents.  I didn’t want to sit up there in front of everybody, but I made myself because I knew Sara had been sitting there in front of everybody for a couple of hours already!  There were a lot of people and I was particularly glad to see some of my dad’s side of the family because I haven’t seen them for a long time.  I think everybody had a good time, my Aunt Lois said it was the best shower she’d ever been to.  I know my mom had a good time planning it.  Also we got a lot of presents! 🙂

Yesterday was Sara and I’s 3 year anniversary.  We didn’t do anything special, just take out from Noodles, etc.  I love that place, I could eat there every day.

We didn’t do anything for the 4th either.  My big plan for today was to hang the ceiling fan we bought for our bedroom.  Wow, was I not prepared for the amount of effort that was!  I’m starting to think I’m just not very handy. 🙂  It took about 4 hours.  Really, it was all pretty easy, except the instructions were very vague when it came to where exactly the receiver for the remote control was supposed to go.  Getting that worked out accounted for about 2 hours.  And I was so good about reading the directions this time!!  The problem was that it was sooo ridiculously heavy and I didn’t bother moving the bed before hand, so I’m holding 25 lbs. in one fully outstretched arm while trying to turn some screw or something with my other arm.  After 4 hours of this I kind of felt like I had ran a marathon!  I was covered in sweat, my arms were shaking and I was starving.  Sara tried to get me to quit at about the 2 hour mark saying we could live without the remote, but I knew it had to fit in there somehow!  So finally persistence paid off and everything is up and working. 

So why do I have the sneaking suspicion that I’ve just set in motion my own doom in spinning blade form?

In unrelated awesomeness news, did you know they made an “Evil Dead” the musical?  Who could resist such great songs such as “Ode to an Accidental Stabbing” and “Blew That B!tch Away.” Looks like it’s only playing until Aug. 4th though, so you better get  move on if you want to see it.  I would love to make the trip up there, but I don’t think I’m going to make it. 😦

(Short) Long Weekend

/ Shane / 1 Comment

So there was a mini reunion for Sara’s family over the weekend and we had quite a full house!  There were about 14 of us, although only 6 staying at our place.  We did Chicago up right, hitting up the Shedd, Museum of Science and Industry, Brookfield Zoo, and Navy Pier.  Hopefully everybody had a good time.  I thought the best part about the weekend was all the good food!

So leading up to that weekend I had been cracking the whip pretty hard to try and get everything done on the condo before everybody got here.  I think Sara was getting pretty annoyed with me!  I don’t know if she would agree, but I thought it was all worthwhile.  I was really proud of the condo and I really enjoy showing it off.  It was a lot of work leading up to it, but now that is all done so we can just sit back and relax! (Not really though because I still have to hang a ceiling fan and a hanging light in the dining room.)

This coming weekend is baby shower #2 in Wisconsin.  We should have registered for a dog powered scooter!

Remember that story I had the other day about battle dancing?  Well this just goes to show you how dangerous it can be!

I think that’s it for now, my show is over.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that video above was courtesy of Dabu!

Robin Sparkles

/ Shane / Leave a comment

This will only be funny if you watch How I Met Your Mother, but if you don’t watch it you’re a loser anyway and I don’t want to talk to you.

Funny Story

/ Shane / 1 Comment

So yesterday I left work early to go to baby CPR class.  I left myself a decent amount of time, but it was raining, so of course everybody has to drive super slow.  So I was kind of trying to hurry because I could see I was going to be cutting it close, but I was still doing okay.  So I’m sort of speeding down the highway when all of a sudden my windshield wiper comes free!  I could see it was sort of hanging on a little bit so I wanted to turn off the windshield wipers so I didn’t lose it on the side of the highway, but I also knew that when you turn them off they go one more time!  So I turned them off and it did go one more time, but the wiper didn’t fall off.  I had changed the windshield wipers recently and apparently I hadn’t secured it properly.  So now I was sort of faced with a conundrum…do I pull over and fix it (in the rain) and probably be late, or do I just go without my windshield wipers?  Well it was really only sprinkling and I discovered that if I drove really fast the rain sort of beaded up and blew off the windshield…no problem after all!  So then, once I got on Lake Shore Drive, the sky started to get really dark and ominous.  And I was thinking, “Please don’t rain, please don’t rain, please don’t rain” but of course all hell breaks loose.  I still don’t want to turn on my wipers because if I lose the wiper then I still won’t be able to see and I’ll have no way of fixing it.  So I get off at the exit but it is raining so hard that I literally can’t tell if I’m in my lane or not!!  I called Sara to tell her I was going to be late during all of this but that was dumb because I could not spare one iota of attention if I was going to live.  I was hoping I could find some sort of overhang to fix the wiper and not get completely soaked but I didn’t see anything.  I didn’t even know where I was!  And then I died and I’m writing this post from some sort of spooky Internet afterlife.  No, just kidding, the rain slowed down enough for me to complete my trip sans wipers and I even made it the the class (barely) on time.  I don’t know if this story did the situation justice, but believe me if you could have been a fly on the wall in the car listening to me yell to Sara on the phone that I was dying, you’d be laughing right now.

Okay, this one is hot off the presses and it really cracks me up.  Basically there was a raffle for a Porsche and they picked the winner and someone in the crowd yelled “Do over!” and the idiot picking the ticket actually tossed the winner in and picked again!  Just because he heard someone in the crowd say “do over!”  I’m going to try that from now on, whenever I’m in a situation like that I’m yelling “Do over!”  It’s worth a shot apparently.

Okay, this is sort of interesting.  It is a map of the U.S. but the states have been renamed to a country with a similar GDP as that state.

It is interesting to see a tiny state like New Jersey has the same GDP as a huge country like Russia and then on the other hand a huge state like Alaska has the same GDP as Belarus.  You can read more about it (and see a bigger picture of the map) here.

As long as we’re on the topic of interesting things, check out this photo essay on what the world eats.  It basically shows families in different countries and how much they would spend on groceries in a week.  That might not sound all that interesting, but I promise it’s worth a look.  When have I ever let you down before?

Frustration update

/ Shane / 2 Comments

So maybe my luck is starting to change a little bit, but there have still been some hiccups.

I called State Farm on Friday which was 3 weeks since the accident.  They said they still hadn’t gotten a hold of the guy.  I asked if there was a time limit after which they would have to decide it was his fault and then I could get my car fixed.  The lady wasn’t sure so she put me through to some higher up guy.  He was pretty much a jerk.  So he kept saying that State Farm very rarely pays for 100% of the damages and in this case he figured they’d pay for 60%.  I asked him why that was and he basically said that in an accident it was never one person’s fault 100% of the time and that I had a “failure to reduce speed” and also that I should have been “driving defensively” so as to not hit they guy who blew his stop sign to try to make it across the intersection.  It wasn’t my job to watch and make sure he wasn’t going to do anything crazy!  That’s like saying my parents are each 10% at fault for the accident because I was born.  Or like if someone shot me, everyone in the U.S. bears 1 three hundred millionth of the fault because they didn’t vote for tougher gun laws.  I was very frustrated.  And the worst part was the guy’s attitude which was very sarcastic.  He was like, “I don’t know why you didn’t just do this through your insurance” and I was like, “According to their investigation your insured was at fault, so they encouraged me to go through you.” and he scoffed, “Oh come on.  I know they all sound like they’re from Georgia, but they know the laws in Illinois.  I don’t know why they would have told you that.”  He even told me I was lucky because 20 years ago he could have proven that I was at least 1% at fault and that would have been all he needed to not have to pay me anything.  Customer service sure has gone the way of the dodo. 😦

So a few hours later I get a call from State Farm.  They said they (finally) got in touch with their insured and they were accepting full responsibility!!!  I was like, “I talked to someone earlier and they said something about only accepting a percentage…” and the guy was like, “Well that happens sometimes, but not in this case.”  His attitude was like “why would we not pay for 100%?”  So what the heck was that other guy talking about???  I was very relieved to hear this, but why did I have to worry about it for a couple of hours?  Ugh, very frustrating!

But I took my car in today and hopefully it will all be resolved soon!

Okay, so that turned out good, so obviously something bad has to happen.  We had our alarm system installed but we were messing around with it and testing it out and we couldn’t get one of the motion detector’s to go off.  We called the company and I could tell that they didn’t really believe me, but they agreed to send someone out.  So the guy spent a few hours trying to get it working and he just couldn’t.  He tried 3 different motion detectors and even tried the one from the basement that for sure was working and it just wouldn’t work upstairs.  Well, it works sometimes, but it is spotty.  We tried everything we could think of and for some reason any motion detector anywhere in the upstairs hallway don’t work when the alarm is on.  They do work when it is in test mode though!!  So weird.  So finally the technician gave up and didn’t do anything and we have to call back for ANOTHER appointment some other time.  And now they are talking about having to mount it somewhere else, even though it is in the optimal position as it is. 😦

But hey, it could be worse.  I could have died while ‘battle dancing’ with someone.  That’s right, battle dancing.  Let’s just say he got totally served.

Or, worst of all, I could have been attacked by a vicious aquatic tiger!

(See more underwater tiger pictures here)