We fired guns out there for a few hours and then went to a BJ's aftewards for dinner. Congrats to Johnathan! He'll be getting married in Tucson come November. As for me, it's off to San Diego this weekend for Kyle's bachelor party!
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Shooting Ranch!
For my friend Johnathan's bachelor party last Saturday, we went to a shooting ranch in Marana. I'd say it was more of a big area of dirt that goes down into the ground like a crater, a landfill if you will. Anyway, several of Johnathan's friends including himself own various types of pistols, rifles, and machine guns. You can't shoot certain firearms at most indoor shooting ranges, so we went out here since we know people that are members of the Gun Club.
I don't know much about guns nor do I plan to own one anytime soon, but it was fun to fire off a bunch of rifles, since I've only handled pistols before. It was really challenging trying to hit a target hundreds of feet away with the rifle, but it was a pretty cool feeling nonetheless. :)
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Brand New Desk (Lots of Assembly Required)!
I've had the same computer desk for over 10 years. It's one that my mom bought for me for college and while it was useful enough, it's actually pretty small. Here is a picture of what it looks like:
I've been wanting a new desk for a while now, something significantly bigger with nicer wood as well. (LOL, I didn't mean to make that sound dirty) I went to a couple furniture stores in town and eventually I found one at OfficeMax I really liked. What I ended up getting was a Bush Bennington Manager's Desk. It was a bit pricey at $400 including tax, but I'm always willing to pay more for higher quality goods. The desk arrived in a couple days and came in two packages:
The reviews online said that the assembly would be an arduous task. Some comments included "Counting wood, nails, misc. parts, this box contained about 500 parts." and "It took two of us approximately 6 hours to put together." They were not kidding! I have attached a few pictures of the various parts and pieces required for assembly:
I worked from home on Friday so that I could work on the desk all day long. I started around 12:30pm and it took me about 40 minutes to completely unpack the two boxes. Fortunately the instruction manual was very informative and the pieces were all well labeled and organized. I finished the shell of the desk around 5pm although I took an hour-long lunch break and was running benchmarks for work throughout the day. Although the manual advises not to use a power drill, I still did and it came up huge. 25 steps and about 7 hours later, I have a brand new desk that I really love! Hooray for upgrading the quality of life! :D
UPDATE: While writing this blog, I looked up the desk online to grab the link so that you may find it online as well. Turns out there is an instant savings today of $50 so I called OfficeMax just now and got credited back the difference! FYI, they'll refund you the difference if the price drops within 14 days of purchase. It's funny because if I didn't blog about this, I wouldn't have looked at the item online again and seen the savings!
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Labor Day Awesomeness...or Annoyances?
This blog's secondary topic: Things that Annoy!
Maybe it's just me, but I find it pretty annoying when people post complaints on Facebook or whine about the little problems in their life all the time. Yeah, I want to know if they're really hurt and need a friend, but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. What especially bugs me are when they make or post quotes that sound as if they've arrogantly figured everything out in life. I for one don't try to ever post about anything negative going on in my life, we all have issues...some bigger than others. I'm a pretty positive person for the most part, really the only thing I find myself complaining about is my failed lovelife, but usually only my best friends hear it 'cause I know they're probably the only ones who really care in that regard. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I just don't want to become sullen no matter how annoying life can get, and it got a little depressing over Labor Day Weekend. Unfortunately for you, I'm gonna have to share some of those annoying stories with the awesomeness. Also, if you aren't prepared to read an annoyingly long blog with no pictures in it, I'd suggest you close your browser window now. :D
I got in on Thursday night before Labor Day weekend so that I could have a full 4-day weekend in Scottsdale and Phoenix. A busy weekend was planned ahead, many friends to hang out with and see and they are all scattered around the city as usual. Mike and his girlfriend Keri had flown in the same night and they greeted me at their house with a Diablo Shrimp Burrito from Senor Taco. I was happy to be home and to see one of my best friends. Keri turned in early since she was a little jet-lagged coming from the east coast and had been up way early anyway, so Mike and I ended up just catching up and chatting on his back porch over a couple beers. Just like old times. :)
On Friday, Mike's mom had planned a surprise birthday party for Mike in the evening at his house. So Keri, Nate, and I took him out to lunch at Ajo Al's - we wanted philly cheesesteaks at Uncle Sam's but unfortunately the one at Shea & 101 closed. :( After lunch, we went to the casino with the goal of getting him away from the house while his mom set up the party and guests arrived. Mike played a round of blackjack using my betting patterns and ended up $35 on the day. Speaking of annoying, we sat down at a table and started chatting with the other players. When we sat down, one of them said "You can do whatever you want. You can't believe that anything someone else does will affect anything. If you do, you have issues." Something to note about Blackjack players: some people think Basic Strategy is the only way to play the game and if you do anything out of the ordinary, you're a fool. If they are making money, they don't care what you do, but if they fell like you lose them money, they flip out. So one hand comes out with the dealer showing a 4 and Mike has 13. Basic Strategy says you should stand and hope for a dealer bust, but Mike doesn't really like his 13 and wants to take a hit. He draws a 10 that forces him to bust. The two other players at the table flip out and are like, "What are you doing!?" So then the last player in the turn doubles on his 11. He draws a 7 and the dealer ends up getting a 20 and everyone loses. The two players continue to lose their cool and remember that guy who said "You can't believe that anything someone else does will affect anything. If you do, you have issues." Well he then said, "I can't play like this. If I'm gonna lose, it has to be on my own terms." Well, you got issues buddy. Fortunately I will say that Mike ended up winning about $70 when the two of them stopped playing and were just watching, so that definitely felt good! Lol, some people. :P Very annoying indeed.
After an afternoon of hanging out around town, we returned to Mike's house for the surprise party. The guests parked away from the house so when I pulled up to drop Mike and Keri off, nothing would look amiss. I wanted to walk in with Mike and witness the surprise with him, but he told me to drive back to my house and just meet me as his house after parking, so I couldn't really say no. I hear when he walked in and people surprised him, he wasn't as much surprised as he was just questioning what the heck was going on. His birthday is actually not until the end of September, so at first he thought it was a surprise party for his girlfriend Keri, who's birthday was just on Thursday. But all his friends were there. Turns out his mom just wanted to celebrate his 30th with him since she wouldn't be able to see him again until Thanksgiving, and that was really awesome of her. She even hired a couple of belly dancers as entertainment, a funny experience we can all remember for a while and make fun of Mike for! :)
Mike wanted to take Keri Salt River tubing while she was there, so the three of us plus Kevin went on Saturday. Does anyone else find it annoying when people say they'll go to something and then when that day comes they just don't flat out want to? I think FLAKY fits the description! Yes, flaky people are very annoying and it's a bummer when you're hoping to see and hang out with someone when they're in town and they tell you they're gonna go to the river but then when the time comes they really don't care to see you I guess. It was a great day for the river, there was slight overcast and it may have been 100 out, but the water was a cool 68. I made the mistake of not packing a bigger cooler for the 4 of us and we killed a 24-pack quickly. I should've known better. Everyone drank more than anticipated, it's just so easy to drink on the river. And the last time I was out I was hungover, which is why I didn't have as many and caused me to under-estimate how many I would actually want to drink this time. Oh well.
On Saturday night, I had originally planned to go to a BBQ party at Matt and Pamela's, but that was canceled. Fortunately, only the party was canceled and not Matt and Pamela! :) So I drove out to Chandler to have dinner and drinks with them at Teakwood's. Afterwards, I traveled back up to Scottsdale to meet up with Wes for drinks at OHSO and then I stopped by Sam's house where they were watching Girls and Mystery Science Theater 3000 before I made my way back home.
Phoenix is a pretty annoyingly big city when you think about it and having friends scattered all over racks up a lot of miles on the car. I went through almost a tank while I was in town, so that's about 320 miles to give you an idea. On Sunday I grabbed dim sum at Phoenix Place in Chandler with Wes and his friends. I really like Phoenix Palace for dim sum and it's where my parents and I like to go often. There's usually plenty of seating and the food is great! In the afternoon, I drove over to the Biltmore area to help fix my friend's iPhone 4. This was my first time fixing a Verizon iPhone 4 (I had only done AT&'T), so it took me an extra 30 minutes to get the job done. After that I stopped by Wes's friend Charlie's house for some Bezzerwizzer and hanging out before I was scheduled to go to a Beer and Diaper Party at Buffalo Wild Wings in Happy Valley. Yes, it's a baby shower for the father, lol. It was for my good friend Hudson and it was awesome to see him, I haven't in maybe a year. I also went back to his house after dinner to play Golf, the card game, which I found pretty entertaining! After hanging out and on the way home that night, I stopped by the Zipps on Frank Lloyd Wright to meet up with Mike, Keri, Nate, Elizabeth, Kyle, Kevin, and Eric. I also broke one of my own high scores in the Buck Hunter game, lol. Oh, and one very annoying thing that happened this night while I was driving all over town that has to do with my car, but more on that later.
Then came Labor Day, which was the epitome of annoyance in my weekend. My parents had been out of town all weekend on a cruise to Russia and northern Europe. They were scheduled to get into Phoenix at 2pm and I was planning on going back to Tucson around 7...I also carpooled with Wes up here, so I would need to pick him up and give him a ride back as well. Unfortunately, my parents missed their flight in Chicago because apparently there was a family of about 20 who were holding up the flight out of Frankfurt. Had to do something with two kids not getting seats next to the rest of the family or something? Anyway, my parents were ultimately delayed 45 minutes out of Frankfurt and then when they arrived in Chicago, they had to go through a long line at customs and hence they missed their flight by 10 minutes. The next flight was scheduled to leave Chicago 5 hours later. Annoying for my parents indeed. So then I was presented with the dilemma of do I wait for my parents to get into town before I leave and get back to Tucson fairly late? Do I ask Wes to wait around for me with nothing to do? At this point I cracked a little and just wanted to shoot myself. I was pretty depressed from a culmination of annoying events that had taken place throughout the weekend. When it rains I can handle it, but it was pouring and I got pretty upset. At first I was going to just go home as originally planned and my parents were going to take a shuttle home. But then I started to think about everything more. Honestly, I go out of my way a lot when I'm in Phoenix visiting other people. But really, how many people would go out of their way to visit me in Tucson for example? To be honest, I really wanted to see my parents and go out of my way for them for a change, not just my friends. So I told Wes my plans and he unfortunately had to cancel his dinner, but he was able to find a ride back down to Tucson. I burnt time at Mike's house hanging out in their pool and playing croquet, which really cooled me off (literally and figuratively). I then picked my parents up at the airport at 7, we went to dinner afterwards and I was happy to see them, I took them home and then I packed up my things and Duncan and got back home in Tucson at midnight. And thus ended a weekend full of awesomeness and annoyances.
So yeah, sorry to dump the bad with the good on you, but shit does happen to all of us and it's good to vent sometimes. The key is how you go about your venting I think. I'm posting this on my blog and I know the only people who will read this are the ones who care to read it, so I'm okay with that. And at the end of the day I'm in still in a pretty good mood! Thanks for being the great fans you are and I hope to bring you more good stories to come!
Okay, so on a final note, back to my car. It was Sunday night and I was driving down I-17 from Happy Valley. It was late and dark outside, and a loose tire came rolling into my lane. I tried to swerve out of the way but could not in time and it hit my front bumper before rolling into the lanes to the left. It wasn't even a flat tire either, it was literally rolling on it's side against traffic and into cars. :( So yeah, here's the one picture you get to look at on this blog entry. Repairs are on the way, but it's annoying to say the least.
Maybe it's just me, but I find it pretty annoying when people post complaints on Facebook or whine about the little problems in their life all the time. Yeah, I want to know if they're really hurt and need a friend, but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. What especially bugs me are when they make or post quotes that sound as if they've arrogantly figured everything out in life. I for one don't try to ever post about anything negative going on in my life, we all have issues...some bigger than others. I'm a pretty positive person for the most part, really the only thing I find myself complaining about is my failed lovelife, but usually only my best friends hear it 'cause I know they're probably the only ones who really care in that regard. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I just don't want to become sullen no matter how annoying life can get, and it got a little depressing over Labor Day Weekend. Unfortunately for you, I'm gonna have to share some of those annoying stories with the awesomeness. Also, if you aren't prepared to read an annoyingly long blog with no pictures in it, I'd suggest you close your browser window now. :D
I got in on Thursday night before Labor Day weekend so that I could have a full 4-day weekend in Scottsdale and Phoenix. A busy weekend was planned ahead, many friends to hang out with and see and they are all scattered around the city as usual. Mike and his girlfriend Keri had flown in the same night and they greeted me at their house with a Diablo Shrimp Burrito from Senor Taco. I was happy to be home and to see one of my best friends. Keri turned in early since she was a little jet-lagged coming from the east coast and had been up way early anyway, so Mike and I ended up just catching up and chatting on his back porch over a couple beers. Just like old times. :)
On Friday, Mike's mom had planned a surprise birthday party for Mike in the evening at his house. So Keri, Nate, and I took him out to lunch at Ajo Al's - we wanted philly cheesesteaks at Uncle Sam's but unfortunately the one at Shea & 101 closed. :( After lunch, we went to the casino with the goal of getting him away from the house while his mom set up the party and guests arrived. Mike played a round of blackjack using my betting patterns and ended up $35 on the day. Speaking of annoying, we sat down at a table and started chatting with the other players. When we sat down, one of them said "You can do whatever you want. You can't believe that anything someone else does will affect anything. If you do, you have issues." Something to note about Blackjack players: some people think Basic Strategy is the only way to play the game and if you do anything out of the ordinary, you're a fool. If they are making money, they don't care what you do, but if they fell like you lose them money, they flip out. So one hand comes out with the dealer showing a 4 and Mike has 13. Basic Strategy says you should stand and hope for a dealer bust, but Mike doesn't really like his 13 and wants to take a hit. He draws a 10 that forces him to bust. The two other players at the table flip out and are like, "What are you doing!?" So then the last player in the turn doubles on his 11. He draws a 7 and the dealer ends up getting a 20 and everyone loses. The two players continue to lose their cool and remember that guy who said "You can't believe that anything someone else does will affect anything. If you do, you have issues." Well he then said, "I can't play like this. If I'm gonna lose, it has to be on my own terms." Well, you got issues buddy. Fortunately I will say that Mike ended up winning about $70 when the two of them stopped playing and were just watching, so that definitely felt good! Lol, some people. :P Very annoying indeed.
After an afternoon of hanging out around town, we returned to Mike's house for the surprise party. The guests parked away from the house so when I pulled up to drop Mike and Keri off, nothing would look amiss. I wanted to walk in with Mike and witness the surprise with him, but he told me to drive back to my house and just meet me as his house after parking, so I couldn't really say no. I hear when he walked in and people surprised him, he wasn't as much surprised as he was just questioning what the heck was going on. His birthday is actually not until the end of September, so at first he thought it was a surprise party for his girlfriend Keri, who's birthday was just on Thursday. But all his friends were there. Turns out his mom just wanted to celebrate his 30th with him since she wouldn't be able to see him again until Thanksgiving, and that was really awesome of her. She even hired a couple of belly dancers as entertainment, a funny experience we can all remember for a while and make fun of Mike for! :)
Mike wanted to take Keri Salt River tubing while she was there, so the three of us plus Kevin went on Saturday. Does anyone else find it annoying when people say they'll go to something and then when that day comes they just don't flat out want to? I think FLAKY fits the description! Yes, flaky people are very annoying and it's a bummer when you're hoping to see and hang out with someone when they're in town and they tell you they're gonna go to the river but then when the time comes they really don't care to see you I guess. It was a great day for the river, there was slight overcast and it may have been 100 out, but the water was a cool 68. I made the mistake of not packing a bigger cooler for the 4 of us and we killed a 24-pack quickly. I should've known better. Everyone drank more than anticipated, it's just so easy to drink on the river. And the last time I was out I was hungover, which is why I didn't have as many and caused me to under-estimate how many I would actually want to drink this time. Oh well.
On Saturday night, I had originally planned to go to a BBQ party at Matt and Pamela's, but that was canceled. Fortunately, only the party was canceled and not Matt and Pamela! :) So I drove out to Chandler to have dinner and drinks with them at Teakwood's. Afterwards, I traveled back up to Scottsdale to meet up with Wes for drinks at OHSO and then I stopped by Sam's house where they were watching Girls and Mystery Science Theater 3000 before I made my way back home.
Phoenix is a pretty annoyingly big city when you think about it and having friends scattered all over racks up a lot of miles on the car. I went through almost a tank while I was in town, so that's about 320 miles to give you an idea. On Sunday I grabbed dim sum at Phoenix Place in Chandler with Wes and his friends. I really like Phoenix Palace for dim sum and it's where my parents and I like to go often. There's usually plenty of seating and the food is great! In the afternoon, I drove over to the Biltmore area to help fix my friend's iPhone 4. This was my first time fixing a Verizon iPhone 4 (I had only done AT&'T), so it took me an extra 30 minutes to get the job done. After that I stopped by Wes's friend Charlie's house for some Bezzerwizzer and hanging out before I was scheduled to go to a Beer and Diaper Party at Buffalo Wild Wings in Happy Valley. Yes, it's a baby shower for the father, lol. It was for my good friend Hudson and it was awesome to see him, I haven't in maybe a year. I also went back to his house after dinner to play Golf, the card game, which I found pretty entertaining! After hanging out and on the way home that night, I stopped by the Zipps on Frank Lloyd Wright to meet up with Mike, Keri, Nate, Elizabeth, Kyle, Kevin, and Eric. I also broke one of my own high scores in the Buck Hunter game, lol. Oh, and one very annoying thing that happened this night while I was driving all over town that has to do with my car, but more on that later.
Then came Labor Day, which was the epitome of annoyance in my weekend. My parents had been out of town all weekend on a cruise to Russia and northern Europe. They were scheduled to get into Phoenix at 2pm and I was planning on going back to Tucson around 7...I also carpooled with Wes up here, so I would need to pick him up and give him a ride back as well. Unfortunately, my parents missed their flight in Chicago because apparently there was a family of about 20 who were holding up the flight out of Frankfurt. Had to do something with two kids not getting seats next to the rest of the family or something? Anyway, my parents were ultimately delayed 45 minutes out of Frankfurt and then when they arrived in Chicago, they had to go through a long line at customs and hence they missed their flight by 10 minutes. The next flight was scheduled to leave Chicago 5 hours later. Annoying for my parents indeed. So then I was presented with the dilemma of do I wait for my parents to get into town before I leave and get back to Tucson fairly late? Do I ask Wes to wait around for me with nothing to do? At this point I cracked a little and just wanted to shoot myself. I was pretty depressed from a culmination of annoying events that had taken place throughout the weekend. When it rains I can handle it, but it was pouring and I got pretty upset. At first I was going to just go home as originally planned and my parents were going to take a shuttle home. But then I started to think about everything more. Honestly, I go out of my way a lot when I'm in Phoenix visiting other people. But really, how many people would go out of their way to visit me in Tucson for example? To be honest, I really wanted to see my parents and go out of my way for them for a change, not just my friends. So I told Wes my plans and he unfortunately had to cancel his dinner, but he was able to find a ride back down to Tucson. I burnt time at Mike's house hanging out in their pool and playing croquet, which really cooled me off (literally and figuratively). I then picked my parents up at the airport at 7, we went to dinner afterwards and I was happy to see them, I took them home and then I packed up my things and Duncan and got back home in Tucson at midnight. And thus ended a weekend full of awesomeness and annoyances.
So yeah, sorry to dump the bad with the good on you, but shit does happen to all of us and it's good to vent sometimes. The key is how you go about your venting I think. I'm posting this on my blog and I know the only people who will read this are the ones who care to read it, so I'm okay with that. And at the end of the day I'm in still in a pretty good mood! Thanks for being the great fans you are and I hope to bring you more good stories to come!
Okay, so on a final note, back to my car. It was Sunday night and I was driving down I-17 from Happy Valley. It was late and dark outside, and a loose tire came rolling into my lane. I tried to swerve out of the way but could not in time and it hit my front bumper before rolling into the lanes to the left. It wasn't even a flat tire either, it was literally rolling on it's side against traffic and into cars. :( So yeah, here's the one picture you get to look at on this blog entry. Repairs are on the way, but it's annoying to say the least.
P.S. Did it get annoying when I kept putting the word annoy in bold and italic font? ;)
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
2-Mile Run for Oil
Today I worked from home so that I could change the oil on my car. I went through the normal process: drained the oil, changed the oil filter, etc. And when I got to the final step, which is to pour in new oil, I realized that I didn't have any oil to put in there! :/
I had only a quart and a half of oil handy, so I called O'Reilly Autoparts to see if driving a mile to their store on a quart of motor oil is safe. The clerk advised strongly against that, saying it would damage my engine if I were to try. I also considered my friend Matt's suggestion of pouring the old oil back in there, but then I would have to lift the car and drain the oil again, which is a big hassle.
So I decided to run. A mile is really not that far away, so I put on a backpack and put a cold gatorade, my keys and wallet and ran to the store. It was pretty hot out, easily over 100 degrees and I chugged that gatorade the second I got to the store. I put 6 quarts of oil in my bag and made the trek back, jogging slower this time around since I was carrying around extra weight. The total trip only took about 30 minutes, which is about the same amount of time it would've taken me to drive to the closest Walmart anyway and I got a good workout too!
That was the first time I've run more than a mile in long while (I'll run a mile max at the gym), so I won't be joining any marathons anytime soon. Hopefully next time I'll double-check that I have oil ready so that I don't have to embark on spontaneous afternoon workouts!
I had only a quart and a half of oil handy, so I called O'Reilly Autoparts to see if driving a mile to their store on a quart of motor oil is safe. The clerk advised strongly against that, saying it would damage my engine if I were to try. I also considered my friend Matt's suggestion of pouring the old oil back in there, but then I would have to lift the car and drain the oil again, which is a big hassle.
So I decided to run. A mile is really not that far away, so I put on a backpack and put a cold gatorade, my keys and wallet and ran to the store. It was pretty hot out, easily over 100 degrees and I chugged that gatorade the second I got to the store. I put 6 quarts of oil in my bag and made the trek back, jogging slower this time around since I was carrying around extra weight. The total trip only took about 30 minutes, which is about the same amount of time it would've taken me to drive to the closest Walmart anyway and I got a good workout too!
That was the first time I've run more than a mile in long while (I'll run a mile max at the gym), so I won't be joining any marathons anytime soon. Hopefully next time I'll double-check that I have oil ready so that I don't have to embark on spontaneous afternoon workouts!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)