Not Much

Random updates.

Not alot has happened.  Went to school for a week, pulled an A on my MATL test, played some disc golf.  Went to a party last Thursday at Miles and Mike’s.  Then more school for a week, and a party at John and Frank’s.  Saturday we went to Bay City and saw my Mom and Dad, went to the Johnson’s Giant Pumpkins and the River of Time.  Had dinner at Famous Dave’s with Dad and Grandma then came home.

I got two new discs last week.  I actually do quite a bit better with them.  We were out discing one night and decided to play highland games with some logs, and ended up quite filthy from them.  Greg and I ended up tying though.  Neither of us could get the log to flip, just land and plop.

This weekend we are going up to East Jordan for Jenn’s Aunt’s wedding, and reception near Gaylord.

Uhm, think that is it.

More some other time.

nick

Birthday Week

The week following my Birthday.

Well, birthday went well.  Had Applebee’s a few days before, and went to Schubergs the night of.  Had some mini burgers and chili cheese tater tots, yum.  Went with Jenn, Greg, and Dane.

Classes for the week went fine, especially since I got to miss a day.

IMTS was very interesting.  Saw a lot of stuff that I had barely heard of, and more that I had no idea existed.  Some of the machines and robots were really impressive.

Apple introduced new iPod nano, iPod touch, and iPod classic on Tuesday, full details on their site.

Jenn and I went to a bridal show last night (Friday) in Grand Rapids at the museum.  Was a lot of women running around crazy excited of nothing, I was glad to get out of there.  We headed over to Beltline to Johnny Carrino’s which was decent, but not great.  They are trying to find a niche between Olive Garden and Carraba’s that I don’t think actually exists.  Since we were nearby, I persuaded Jenn to go to Woodland Mall and look at the new iPods which are very nice.  She made me promise I wouldn’t buy one before we went though, so I was good.

So, that was my week.  Only other thing I could add is that I have been disk golfing more.  Three times this week.  Would be more if not for the rain.

nick

Twenty Six!

Some short notes.

  1. It’s my birthday.
  2. School is good so far.
  3. Still one class I haven’t been to, will have it at 4 I think.
  4. Going to Chicago Thursday for IMTS.
  5. Updates resume and started thinking about jobs this past week.
  6. Put down deposit, Wedding is officially 10/10/09 at Garland Resort, Lewiston, MI.
  7. Began considering where we want to live in 9 months.
  8. Fitness/Medicine balls are fun.
  9. Going to have homework this semester, which is a change from Winter.
  10. Did I mention it’s my Birthday?

My Last Last Day Off

About 2 weeks of stuff.

Today was my last ever day of summer vacation, ever, for the rest of my life.  Tomorrow though, will be my last ever first day of school (in theory, though I will likely get a MS or MBA eventually).

Last weekend, we went to bay City, hung out for a while at my Mom’s, then to Hooligan’s for a while.  Good to see all the guys from the Library, and talked to Todd for a bit about his wedding to get some ideas for ours.

Sunday morning, Casey (Dad’s dog) got sprayed by a skunk, so he had to cancel going to Ren Fest with us to clean him up.  My brother was short on cash, so he was a no.  So, Jenn and I went off on our own.  My dad called us when we were about to Bridgeport to see if we had left yet, we offered to wait for him but weren’t up to going back.  He said no, so we kept going.

Ren fair was a lot bigger than Battle Creek’s, but kind of blah since we had just been to one a few weeks ago.  I was complemented three times on my kilt, and once on my “Pluto Replies” t-shirt.  We shot some archery, saw a 4 man joust, I got a t-shirt, and got a nice tan.

When we were finished there, we drove up to Garland to check them out.  We got half off as we were looking at a wedding there.  We had dinner, slept for the night, then met with the wedding coordinator in the morning.  It is a very beautiful place, and we are certainly interested.  Too many questions left though that we need to figure out on our own, and were not ready to commit to it.

Spent the week relaxing.  My biggest accomplishment was probably attaining Pro level at WiiSports Golf.

Yesterday Dane and Greg moved in so we went to El Burrito to catch up then went for a round of Disk Golf.  We made it through 14, played 15 – 17 as speed rounds, and called it too dark to do 18.

We gained 2 new family members Friday night.  Got a second Jack Dempsey and a snail, that are in a second aquarium.  As they are rather small, I don’t trust Jill not to pick on or outright eat them, so they are in my old 2.5 gallon.  It is way too old to keep them very long, but until I feel thay can go in the big one it will suffice.  When we move next year and are settled in, maybe I will get a 55 or 70 gallon for everyone to stay in.

I was right on my computer, it returned on Monday.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t here, so I didn’t get it until Tuesday.  It’s all fixed though so I am happy so long as it doesn’t reoccur.

OK, thats all for now.  Will let you all know how classes are Wednesday evening or so.

BTW, 1 week to my birthday!

nick

Service

My computer, a Visit, and a Trip.

Well, my box arrived today for the MacBook to go in for repairs.  That crack in the palmrest that happened in March is finally going to get fixed.  Hopefully it doesn’t happen again.  If it does, hopefully its in time to ship in over Christmas break.  Still, preferably, it hopefully doesn’t happen again.

Weekend with Jenn’s sister and family went well.  Sat around Friday night, went to GR Saturday, and they left Sunday morning.  We had some Red Robin which is always good, and tried to get my computer fixed at the Apple Store, but they wont ship so would require a trip back which sounded un-fun.

I got my PPG paycheck a week and a half early, always nice.  Will be useful when we got to Bay City this weekend, and to Ren Fest in Holly.

School is down to about a week and a half now, and my birthday 2 and a half.

Still haven’t gotten another crawfish.  Aquarium looks kind of empty.  At least need some plants.

OK, think that is all.  Will update hopefully Monday, if my computer is back.  Can always use Jenn’s though too.

nick

Freedom

End of internship, Costs, Wedding, School, Fish, Movie, Deals, and Birthday.

I am free!  Yesterday was my last day of work at PPG.  We tried to work out something for the fall but my school schedule just didn’t allow for much.  Despite feeling like the $10/hour peon sometimes, I did enjoy it.  It’s too bad it took so long for them to start giving me more engineering assignments though, as that was sort of what I was there for.  I did get a lot of quality management though.  I should be back for a visit with SME in October or so.

I just checked Nearly Free Speech and my bandwidth has finally exceeded 1GB, which now means I pay under $1 per GB of transfer ($0.991 currently).  It goes down in a log type formula as I use more bandwidth.  Sadly, this deal began February 1st, so it took me six months to get in that first GB.  It goes down constantly, so I keep paying slightly less to transfer every single page load though.  Once I reach 10GB of transfer, my cost will be down to $0.50 per GB, in about 5 more years.  Unfortunately, bandwidth (obviously) is not my primary cost but server space.  Still, I only use about $4 or $5 per year excluding domain name.

Jenn managed to plan about half of our wedding in the last week.  She gets a little obsessed sometimes.  Tentatively (very), it is scheduled for 10/10/09 at Garland Resort, but that could change overnight.

School is down to about 3 weeks away now.  August 2nd.  I am looking forward to it, nerd that I am.  It’s my last year of school, it is very sad.  🙁

Sunday morning I went to feed the fish, and we had lost another one.  Rosy, the remaining rosy barb had perished.  Not sure how, but somehow overnight.  She was oldest, now it is Kitty.  She was about 2 weeks over a year old.  Was much smaller than Jill or Sunny, and were kind of expecting her to go in the next couple months as Jill keeps growing.  We still haven’t replaced Bubba yet, but maybe in the next week or two I will go to the pet shop since I am off.

I watched MST3K: the Movie tonight.  I was never a fan of the show (not that I didn’t like, but just never watched) but that was funny as hell.  A lot of the comments are very so-so, but they just throw one after another after another, and suddenly you break out laughing at the stupidest one-liner.

Uhm…

Apple has refurbished iPod touch for $199.  I really want one, but my extravagant spending for the year was my kilt.  There are nanos for like $149 too.

On that note, my birthday is one month from yesterday.

That would be it I think.

nick

The Big News

A big day for us.

So you heard the story of last weekend, except I left out about half an hour…

While we were ay the mall, I disappeared on Jenn for about 20 minutes.  When she found me, she was rather pissed that I didn’t tell her where I went and all that.  Well, she really kicked herslef for that this weekend.

We will jump forward to this weekend.  We left for Bay City around 5, met her parents for dinner in Mt Pleasant, and then continued on.  Once in Bay City, I led her to Carrol Park, to go down the roller slide for ld times sake.  After we parked, as we were walking to the slide, she saw something in my pocket, and asked what it was.  I played it off.  I went down the slide, then her, then I again.  Unfortunately, it was quite busy, and I was getting more nervous and embarrassed.  We went over to a bench, and she sat down.  I stood behind her, and pulled out what was in my pocket, and gave her the ring.  She started giggling and laughing and was rather obviously ecstatic.

When we were first dating, we actually went to a different park that had a roller slide, on 3rd near her old apartment.  They ended up renovating the park and pulled out the slide, so we would go to Carrol Park sometimes, though far less.  So, I thought it was something special from our past.  I wanted to be at the bottom of the slide when she came down, but became far too self conscious with the 20+ people in the park that evening.

The rest of the weekend was seeing people and calling to tell everyone.  We stayed in Bay City until Saturday evening, and relaxed today.

Our first calls, just 20 minutes after I asked her, people started asking if we had a date.  NO, it’s been 20 minutes, give us a little bit!  We are kind of thinking next Fall, October of November of 2009.  That is rather tentative though, and we don’t know where yet.  Kind of thinking toward Alpena, since my family is split MI and PA and travel for them is less of a big deal.

So, that is that.

Off to bed, last week of work.

nick

EDIT:

Apparently, some people feel it may not be as obvious as I had thought, so… I asked Jenn to marry me, and though it took her 10 minutes to calm down enough to remember to respond, she said yes.