Nil

So, I played spades last night with my parents and my friend/coworker Snehal. To start the night, we had to dig through a mountain of cards in the basement that were either

a) missing cards
b) been destroyed by playing Rats at swim meets
c) pinochle cards (sp?) or
d) ugly - (I vetoed the best deck because they were ugly brown flowers, I refused to look at them all night.....)

This took about half an hour. Then we had to argue about the table because it kept sliding apart. With three degreed engineers there, 2 of us played Rats and made the problem worse while Dad kept pushing it back together every 20 seconds.

I don't think I've ever not had fun playing spades, but this was one of the best games ever! My mom and I went nil and got it 4 times, but unfortunately we missed our bid 4 times, so we wound up losing. Dad and Snehal got their bid every time and never went nil (boring). It came down to the last hand though - good times!

Ah well, pretty good weekend over all :)

When forced vacation goes bad

OK - I promised myself I wouldn't talk about work in case someone from work stumbled across this, but I can't not mention yesterday's events.

Most of my work group (about 40 people) went to Chicago to watch the Cubs/Brewers game....we took a bus. Great amounts of alcohol were consumed. By the bus trip home mass chaos had broken loose. Here are just a few examples: we had to stop twice on the way back so people could go to the bathroom - the first time I walked in on two of my male coworkers in the women's restroom (just one toilet), one of my coworkers had passed out in the arms of one of the supervisors (yes, both men), the Korean guy who was with us could barely stay in his seat they had gotten him so drunk, one of my coworkers kept cussing at our boss - and it goes on and on. The director of the group (3 levels above me) was there too. And this group is the "future of the company". I wouldn't be buying stock now....

Funniest line of 2006

"I thought you said Bolombus"

OK - so maybe this is one of those "you had to be there" things, but I am still laughing about this one. We are playing Taboo and someone (who happens to be my sibling) is trying to get their team to guess "Columbus". One of the teammates correctly guessed the card, but the card holder kept trying to get them to guess. At the end of the round - it was revealed that she thought her teammate said "Bolumbus". No one is quite sure who Bolumbus is or when he sailed across the ocean, but that is what was heard. Oh goodness, well, I needed something to laugh at today while sitting in my cube trying not to fall asleep.

I've been bad about working out since I decided I was just going to do a sprint distance tri in July instead of a really long race.

Nothing too exciting to report on from the last week or so...today is Kelly's birthday, the big quarter century :) Oh, and I got to see my friend that has more stories about me than anyone that I'm not related to will ever have - which was super awesome.

And of course in other news I have another fun and exciting trip to Missouri planned next week - I won't spare you any details on that one!

Katherine - thanks for the invite to festivities next weekend, I can't tell you how tempting that is....
Do any of you in Knoxville have plans for Memorial day? Would anyone be up for hiking if I came down?
Hope everyone has a great week!

I found a time machine

Well, 2 months after the move, I'm still here, but REALLY missing Knoxville, and all the people there of course. As far as getting adjusted up here, I've met some people, but I definitely haven't found a core group... not that I expected to :)
In the mean time, I've had a great time seeing some friends that I haven't seen in a LONG time.

- Last weekend I ran into a friend of mine that I swam with in HS at a bar in Chicago - very random!

- Last week, 3 of my really good friends from HS came up for my first mini party at the new place



- I went to Madison for the weekend and last night I went out to dinner with my sister and another friend that I swam with since I was 8 and hadn't seen in 9 years. We also went to a bar with a tree in it. UWM won some hockey game, so there were a lot of happy drunk people running around town, good times.



- Oh, it was awesome meeting a friend of Kelly's in Madison who went to UT and she was involved in RUF, so we knew some of the same people, very fun.

So yeah, I'm having a rough time dealing with not seeing my Kville friends and community group and going to Redeemer, etc., but it is fun seeing old faces in new settings up here. Thats all for today.