So… yeah… been awhile…

Well, it’s been awhile since my last post… I’m going to keep this summary pretty short.

New Years
Rocked! It’s awesome to have a couple of people like Matt and Sarah to hang out with. Tasha and I had a great time, and I hope we have many more outings like that in the future. I really think we deeply offended Sarah’s friends, but I really only care on the level that Sarah now has friends that must ask if that nerd with no tact is going to be there when she asks them to go do something. We toasted at midnight with grape cider in LOTR Collectable Mugs from Burger King (I had Strider, w00t!), and we stayed the night and had food the next day.

Karate
Is killing me. I thought my back was well until I tried to have a normal workout on Tuesday, and by the end I almost wished my spine would just break and paralyze me. Needless to say, I wasn’t heartbroken when we were pushing getting back into town for the Thursday workout. I ran to my bottle of prescription painkiller and relaxed. I’m going to have to take it easier with the jumping stuff, because I think it is to blame. Aside from that, I felt decent working out and it’s great to get back with the club again.

Wedding(s)
Are starting to shape up. We met with the priest, set up an appointment with the florist, registered for gifts (Target and Bergners), and picked out tuxes on Thursday. This made for a long day, but it was pretty fun. We got to take this ridiculous compatability test with the priest, where we were split up and had to fill in a 156 question ScanTron test that determined how compatable we are. We have to meet with the priest again in two weeks to discuss areas where our answers differed, which will be a blogworthy event I am sure.

My sister’s fiance asked me to be a groomsman in his wedding, which was very nice of him. My sister asked Tasha to be a bridesmaid for her, which was (uncharacteristically) very nice of her. I’m really looking forward to having her fiance as a brother, mostly because the guy is one of the few people around that can still surprise me with their brazen sense of humor.

Funeral (kinda)
… my cousin got married last month, and today announced that she and her new husband are four months pregnant. Simple math bears out the fact that if the baby comes out on schedule, we’ll have the first bastard in our bloodline in a long time.

In society, this is semi-OK. In my family, she’s lucky the hail of stones from my grandparents didn’t render her infertile. They *seemed* OK about this, but having the first bastard in the family isn’t the best way to get on their good side. Personally, I don’t much give a shit, aside from the fact that I have the right at any moment to taunt her about this fact. I won’t, but I have that option.

Job Hunt
Blows. I mentioned to Erbe-san that I was still unemployed as I walked across the floor to leave, and Sensei Brewer said: “You’re the smartest unemployed guy that I know.” Either he was complementing me, or I was burned. With him, it’s hard to tell.

I got a surprise chance at a job at WIU doing network administration. I got my materials in right in the nick of time to be considered, I have yet to hear from them. I got word that my resume is still being processed at State Farm, as my contact guy emailed me asking for another digital copy of my resume so he could have it on-hand. This is a Good Thing. Caterpillar is still processing theirs too, they said they’d send me a letter one way or another so I’m still holding out some hope. The place in Morton is still giving me the bimonthly brush off of “Nothing yet, keep in touch.” So I do.

I get my last University Paycheck this week for work that’s done and I have the prospect of one more small side project. Aside from that, we’re into Drain my Bank Account mode, which is a bad mode to be in.

Hard Drive
Is back in action. Dell sent me a replacement 80 gig hard drive, which is part of the reason my blog hasn’t been updated in so long. Everything is operational again. The new hard drive eliminated some of the problem, but I think I have another squeaky power supply fan. I’ve been lazy about going to the store for WD-40… no big deal.