Romey's Ramblings

Well as Sunday draws to a close it’s time to reflect on what turned out to be a pretty good weekend! 

First and foremost, I ended up getting 17 hours of sleep in two days!  Sweet!  After being really bad about getting to bed on time for the last week, then getting up early for work, it was nice to turn the alarm of and just sleep the day away.

On Saturday I got up then headed down to Loveland to have lunch with my mom and my sister, which was nice considering I haven’t seen them in a week (which compared to the rest of this summer has been quite some time).  I then made my way back up to FC and made a trip to the drum store.  I went into the drum store with no intention to buy anything grand, and pretty much left accomplishing that: a container of cymbal polish, a pair of Danny Carey signature sticks, and a replacement pair of "Lightning Rods" (my old pair is really splintering up).  It was kinda pathetic, I pretty much went to the drum store to make sure they didn’t think I died.  I haven’t been in there in months and I’ve really missed not upgrading my drum set.  Lately I unfortunately haven’t had much reason to – I’m not really playing in any active bands/projects (outside of church choir), and between Dave Matthews, Broncos Season tix, and a bunch of assorted stuff I throw my money away on – I really haven’t had the excess funds to throw at my drum set…  It was funny being in there because the two guys they had working at the weekend were relatively new, none of them knew who I was (and I’ve been a regular there for the better part of 10 years), and the guy who rang me up asked "Do you shop here regularly?" to see if I was in their database… Too funny.

I then went and played over at church.  It’s been like 6 weeks since I’ve been there and all of the guys gave me a hard time (mainly by introducing themselves to me).  It was a lot of fun being there again, but I had A LOT of rust to knock off.  I pretty much screwed up two of the newer songs we did during rehearsal, and luckily I locked them in during Mass.  It’s just funny because I’ve been practicing quite a bit, but it’s on the electric set, and it makes me realize just how playing on electronic rubber pads really numbs up your chops (then playing on the real things kills them again).  Hopefully this week I’ll be able to find somewhere to break out the real set and see if I can get my chops back.  I really want another music project right now.

After Mass I spent the evening hanging out with my friend Michael.  It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen him (since my birthday), but we had a blast.  We had dinner over at La Luz, then went and made a beer run and came back to my place and watched Be Cool.  First off, if you haven’t seen Be Cool and you’re looking for some laughs – I’d see it.  I remember seeing the previews in the theatre and really wanting to see that movie (after seeing all of the stars that were in at (namely Andre 3000!), but I never made time to go see it.  Then I guess it didn’t do well in theatres and came to DVD pretty fast.  My guess is that the movie wasn’t marketed well when it came out, because it really turned out to be a really great flick! (but then again a lot of things are great after a few beers)…

I’ve forgotten how much I enjoy hanging out with Michael, because we have the most random in-depth discussions on so many different topics, then we come out with these really interesting conclusions.  Just to give you a sampling of what we talked about:

• Web Browser Standards, and the most common ones that web designers ignore
• Microsoft (M$) and the fact that they have total disregard for any established standards (i.e. Microsoft FrontPage)
• What the world would be like if M$ made hardware – we wouldn’t be able to buy a computer for $300-400 now.  Everyone would be proprietary in their hardware and IBM would likely be at the top of the PC Market
• Weddings – How "cool" a wedding will be is not measured by who is getting married, but rather who you know will be attending the wedding.  Because you have no real interaction with the bride & groom during the wedding, it all depends on which friends you sit by.
• Engagement periods – The minimum engagement time should be 9-12 months.  Any engagements that are shorter than 9 months and still have an extravagant wedding causes you to wonder about how much marriage preparation has gone on.
• FOCUS – Of course…
• When it’s appropriate to re-design a web site (i.e. J23 UM)
• The difficulty of managing a student database over MS Excel
• Many things related to Be Cool.  We talked a lot about the Rock
• And most notably: The law of worthwhile travel – Which states: If the amount of time you’re going to spend at a destination is less than the total round-trip time it takes to get there – it’s not worth going.

So a lot of fun on a Saturday evening.  I also had two glasses of Pep-to Bismol-errr-Tequila Rose.

Sunday rolled around with me sleeping in until 12:30pm (NICE!), then having lunch and visiting Sam.  We had a lot of fun!  I tried my best to spread the good news of Star Trek to her, and pulled out the big guns – the best Star Trek movie of all time.  That’s right, I’m talking about Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country .  Unfortunately we only made it about 20 minutes into the film before Sam took me up on my offer to "Change it if it sucked".  So we watched Spider-man 2 (remember, my #1 super hero movie of all time) and I learned how to play Rummikub. It was a fun game and it turned out to be great Sunday afternoon!  I then spent the evening at my family’s, had some dinner and then came back home!

Time to get ready for another Monday   And only two more weeks left until school starts (NOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo!)

Song: "Three Little Birds" – Don’t Worry About a Thing, ’cause every little thing, is gonna be alright…  How true…

You know the phrase "Today is the first day of the rest of your life"?  I feel like that today.  Not so much in the sense that I need a renewed look upon life, but more-so that I need to stop dwelling on my shortcomings and do what I need to do to fix the things that are causing stress in my life.

Of course, all of this is self-inflicted and it’s all due to the fact that I’m the biggest procrastinator in the world.  There’s a saying on a calendar I have at work: "Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now."  Unfortunately I live by that all too well, so much so that it gets me into trouble.

This week I’m committed to resolving all of those things that I’ve been putting off all summer long, and a pretty sizable list has piled up.  Ugh…

First and foremost – my crowning disappointment – the NCSC Western Retreat…  You might be asking "What NCSC Western Retreat?" – exactly..  I’ve done some work here and there about it, but nowhere to the point where it should be…  Which has lead me to write the following email to my regional team:

 I am sad to say that due to my inability to manage my time effectively throughout this summer, as will as my ineptitude in delegating tasks that I have only accomplished some minor logistical tasks in preparing for the retreat.  Additionally due to my inabilities I was not able to effectively market & outreach this retreat to our target audience with any realistic notice. I am deeply sorry for letting this fall by the waste-side.  I realize that many of you have gone out of your way to make yourselves available throughout this summer to assist in any way, and I apologize for not taking advantage of your gifts and enthusiasm.  I realize that I have let many of you down, and at this point would ask for your forgiveness as we look towards the fall semester in serving our region and the rest of the NCSC.

It sucks, and it’s pretty much all my fault…  All is not lost, because I was such a bum about this no advertising has been done, so there’s not really anything that has to be canceled in any official capacity – so we’re still able to take the same concepts and ideas and hopefully apply them towards something later on in the semester.  I’m just frustrated because I knew this was looming over me, I kept putting it off and let myself get busy with other things.  Then the next thing I know too much time has passed – it’s too late and now I’m writing apology messages.

Right now I’m working on creating an opportunity for our regional team together at the end of the summer, have some fun together and do some more visioning and planning.  I hope that this opportunity will come to fruition and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that it happens.  I am blessed with an awesome regional team and I need to use their gifts effectively.  At this point I definitely need a lot of prayer in this area…

So that’s the 800-pound gorilla that is still on my back, but here are some more bits of straw that’s breaking me:

• Pay Off My Broncos Tickets – While I am *officially" on the season ticket waiting list, I effectively have Season Tickets through some former co-workers of mine that have been selling them to me at the beginning of each year.  This will be the 4th year I’ve done this, but first I have to PAY them.  It’s not because I don’t have the money, it’s because I’ve been such a bum to work it into my budget to pay them.  Now our first home pre-season game is August 20th and I need to get all of the money to them.  – Today I emailed them…  I’m hoping to hear from them this week and get the ball rolling.
• Start the Fantasy Football Ball Rolling – Did that last night…  This isn’t so important, except for the fact that if I don’t get going this early people will find other leagues to join and we’ll be up the creek on this one – Emailed a bunch of people yesterday – already received 7 responses!
• Fix the Family Football Pool – I *still* haven’t awarded any of the prizes for the pool, nor have I taken anyone’s dues for the pool.  This is something I need to do before the week ends!  Luckily I will no longer be the football pool commish – I’m turning it over to someone who has the time and capability to do this!
• Tie up the other 50 loose ends I have…

So a bunch of little things – pretty minor in their own but combined have become heavy burdens in themselves…  But hopefully by the end of this week I’ll be able to say that I have all of these taken care of!  Wish me luck!

Few random thoughts:

• Peter Foresburg is no longer an Av – NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo!!!
• Freakin Comcast randomly changes their channel line-up!  Thanks for breaking my Tivo!  I’m glad I recorded an hour’s worth of the TV Guide Channel!  That’s quality viewing there!
• Only 6 more days until I suffer against the addictions of Madden 2006…. 
• At this moment I’m waiting for a call so that the Explorer can become the drunk bus!  I guess I’m picking up 8 people – should be interesting!  If you ever have too much to drink and need a ride home, call me 24 hours a day at 1-800-AAAAARRRRRRHHHHHHH.

A recap on the places that I’ve been…

First off I ended up working for the first half of the weekend.  I’ve been one of the technical resources on a project we’ve been working on for the last four months, and last weekend was finally the end of the project, where we deployed everything out.  So I had to "come in" on the off-hours to work on the installation & upgrade.  I ended up working on Friday from 9am-1pm, spending time with the fam, then going back in from 4pm-12am.  Then I woke up early Saturday morning and worked from 8am-12pm again, then I spent a good part of the weekend monitoring.  The good news is that outside of a few hiccups here and there, the upgrade went without a hitch.  We didn’t have any major issues and now I am ready to move into my next fun project here at work   Hopefully things will begin to calm down, but we’ll see… 

So when I finally got my work done on Saturday I had lunch with my mom and my uncle (who was visiting in town all this week – there’s where I’ve spent a lot of time this last week), ran some errands with them and then went home to get ready for my big date with Bethany to celebrate her birthday

On Friday I surprised her by having flowers delivered to her at work, and in the flowers was a card that finally revealed what I’ve been planning (she has been in suspense all month): Saturday evening at the Boulder Dinner Theatre to see the Wizard of Oz   So that’s where we went on Saturday.

We had a blast!  I hadn’t been to a dinner theatre in like 6 years, and I’ve forgotten just how much fun they are!  The dinner was pretty good, but it’s obvious you go for the entertainment.  We had seats at the highest level in there, in the middle, towards the left.  The play was a blast!  There was tons of singing and dancing, and I loved the acting!  My favorite characters were the Cowardly Lion & the Tin Man.  The Tin Man’s costume was really cool, except he had this silver thong thing over his spandex (ummmm.. yeah).  I’m not the biggest theatre buff out there, but I was very impressed.  I enjoyed the way they did some of the "effects" from the movie: the tornado, the "no place like home" sequence, along with the flying monkeys and the jitter-bug scenes.  The sets were really cool, especially the Wizard (with the exception that they could have put some black fabric inside his mouth so we didn’t have to see the guy moving it.

Bethany and I had a blast.  In the beginning though, I did something really stupid.  Right as the play started I thought to myself "It’s so quiet in here, it would really suck if someone spilt their drink." and sure enough, freakin’ me moved my arm and knocked my coke over, getting it all over the table.  Luckily the table-cloth absorbed a lot of it, then I was able to quietly clean it up with the napkins, but I felt like a total dumbass.  Argggh… 

Seeing all of those songs again was awesome.  It’s been a good 10 years since I’ve seen the movie, and I never actually saw the live production before.  It was awesome re-living those songs again.  One in particular cracks me up.  It’s the one when they first get into the Emerald City and sing the "Merry Old Land of Oz".  In case you don’t remember, some of the words are:

"Ha – ha – ha, Ho – ho – ho – And a couple of tra – la – las
That’s how we laugh the day away, In the Merry Old Land of Oz!
Bzz – bzz – bzz, Chirp – chirp – chirp – And a couple of La – di – das
That’s how the crickets crick all day, In the Merry Old Land of Oz!
We get up at twelve and start to work at one.
Take an hour for lunch and then at two we’re done.
Jolly good fun!"

Well to show you how much I’ve been shaped by comedy, all I could think of was the "Family Guy" version of this song when Lois talks about how she doesn’t want Chris to go to prison because "(she) know what goes on there.  We’ve all seen ‘Oz’ " then cuts to these guys in the shower singing:

"Scrub scrub here! Scrub scrub there! Whether you’re white or bronze!
A man can wash another man in the merry old land of Oz!"

lol, too funny…

So that’s how my weekend went.  Today was spent doing some work, cleaning up my place and taking a break after a busy few weeks.  Tomorrow I get to go back to the grind and work – beginning another busy week.  Tomorrow night is a Pastoral Council meeting, so I’ll bet I’ll have some thoughts on that tomorrow (never too much drama).

More to come tomorrow