The Weekend OR How Not to Catch Up On Sleep

As much as I enjoy sleeping, I seem to be the worst person when it comes to keeping a normal sleep cycle.

Friday Night: I guess you can say this is where the problem started. I met up with some folks from church for a double-birthday party. Apparently, these are all the rage with the yuppies, as I seem to rarely attend a party for just one person nowadays. After witnessing a good ol' fashioned shoving match between 2 drunk guys at Churchill's (made me miss high school), I managed to get home around 2. Really, it wasn't that late, except for the fact that...

Saturday Morning: It's moving day for Goose's girlfriend. Goose (aka Nathan) is one of those guys you become friends with because he's friends with a friend, and you always seem to hang out. A great guy who saved me when I needed to move, and my dad ( of all people) bailed on me at the last moment. Obviously, I have no problem helping him because of that...other than my sleepiness. The sausage biscuit he gave me from Hardee's brings a tear to my eye as I devoured it whole.

This is the 5th time in the last 9 months I've helped someone move, or moved myself, so I'm pretty used to it. Even so, I always feel like I'm not doing enough. I really don't try to avoid heavy lifting...but I just have the odd impression that I somehow missed out on most of it. Does anyone else ever feel this way?

Oddly, getting Jen out of her 2nd floor apartment was not the problem...it was getting her into her 1st floor Canton loft. Unfortunately, her new place was a good 100+ yards from where we could park the van. That led to alot of long, funny, walks - because there are just certain things you can't move without looking like a penguin, chimp, character from a Farrelly Bros. movie, etc.

Entertainment, though, was provided by Greg's daughter, Codie (yes, boys name, I know). She, of course, wanted to do her part because it was somehow fun for her. You can't help but laugh hearing a 6-year old girl say "Get 'er done", or watching a kid that age run. Little kids always look like they are on some sort of very important mission when in a dead sprint, which is the only speed they seem to know. We finally finish up thanks to the excessive number of hand-trucks (Goose brought four), and I manage to slink back to my place around 5:30. This gives me about 2 hours to relax, and get ready for...

Saturday Night: The much bally-hooed 99x Swingles party. I was risking the chance of rolling solo to this thing, until I convinced a guy from my church to come along. I've only met him twice, but after Friday I discerned he wouldn't think me a sinner if I had a few drinks, and chatted with a few ladies. I learned on the way there that he has a free parking spot at his Midtown office...score!!

This party is kind of the nexus of my new Blogging/Myspace obsession, so I'm glad it's here. It turned out, however, to pretty much be just like any night out. You know - you, a buddy, and a bunch of people you don't know. I did have a pretty good time, though, even though a drunk Fred Toucher basically blurbed to me that The Morning X might be going the way of the Dodo very soon. There are actually rumors swirling that the station itself might get a format change under new ownership.

Finally split from there around 1:30, which didn't bode well for my energy level for my big day on Sunday...

Sunday Morning: Finally joining my church as a member, so I was doing my best to get there early after about 5 hours of sleep. I actually had to be baptized, which was an interesting thing for me. I was raised in a church that didn't believe in the symbolic ceremony, so the whole idea is still a little weird. I will say one thing, though, nothing makes you feel better after a Saturday night out in Atlanta than being able to repent of any sins you may have committed. I don't think I had any major violations, but any minor ones were hopefully taken care of.

I was actually the only person to join that day, so I got to take center stage...always great for the ego. My church is pretty huge, so I always seem to be adding to my list of minor celebrities and local sports heroes that attend there. I got to put Roger Kaiser on the list yesterday. Just to show you the sports nerd I am, I instantly knew who he was.

After a typically overly-long lunch at Loco's (they aren't ever in a rush there, it seems), I finally got home around 2:30, and almost immediately passed out on my couch for 3 hours. I wasn't too pleased about that, because I was hoping to burn off some of my weekend beer calories with a run. I woke up just in time to catch the end of The U.S.'s 5-0 throttling of Norway in Men's Soccer. Norway isn't exactly Brazil, but it's always nice to see the boys whip up on a Euro nation people have heard of. I wouldn't have been as excited if it was Moldova.

This, of course, meant I couldn't get to sleep until late Sunday. I then got a call from my friend, Greg at 3 in the morning. Only it wasn't him, it was his phone, which sounded like it was either in a dryer, or in the pocket of someone walking really fast. I still have to figure this one out.

The Best of...

After being inspired by one of my new MySpace "friends", who probably is currently freaked out by my overly-friendly nature, I am starting this blog. She has her own blog, too, so you can thank her for me. Amazingly, when she started her blog, I am pretty sure I wouldn't have known what one was.

I figured to avoid losing my wonderful musings from my MySpace blog, I would transcribe (okay, CTRL + C) some of them over here for anyone who wants to read. I think alot about music, sports, politics, etc. So hopefully you will enjoy my pop-culture musings, along with a bit of my life, I guess. So here goes, enjoy!

Originally from 1/23/06:

So we found out that the Seattle Seahawks and the Pittsburgh Steelers will play in Super Bowl "XL", which I've noticed no one is calling Super Bowl 40. The fact that the Roman numerals are also a clothing size is just too damned amusing to most people. Being the nerd I am, I figured this double entendre out about 10 years ago, so the joy is sadly lost on me. I do wonder, though, if we'll experience this phenomenon again in 10 years...or in 960 years for that matter. I'll give you a minute to think about that or research...

As for the game: Being a lifelong Falcons fan, I am used to the annual decision regarding which Super Bowl participant I should pull for. Only once have I had the joy of rooting for my home team in the game of games. It's been relatively easy many years, because there always seems to be a team I despise, or am annoyed by, playing. The Seahawks and Steelers really don't get my blood boiling, though.

A group of people are coloring my decision, as they always seems to -bandwagon fans. No doubt, Pittsburgh has alot of them. I don't mind native Pennsylvanians, or someone from a border town in Ohio or W. Virginia pulling for the Steelers, but you would swear that person doesn't exist. I've met Steelers fans from Illinois, N. Carolina, even New York...but not Pittsburgh. Kinda weird considering their stadium is always full.

I know why, of course, because the Steelers were the team back in the day, they won 4 Super Bowls before anyone else, and had that blue-collar swagger that appealed to many. And it definitely appealed to fans who can't get up the cajones to pull for a losing team. Growing up in Atlanta...that's all I knew how to do.

I work part-time with one of these creatures. A guy from NYC, where they have not one, but two, teams in the city (and 3 in the state). For some reason, he's a Steeler fan, and even nauseatingly refers to them as "we". I talked to a client today, a native Chicagoan, who's a Steelers fan. I really had to bite my tongue.

Bandwagon fans in general make me want to karate chop them in the throat. Generally, though, I just end up hating the teams they like. In the NFL, it's Dallas, Oakland, Pittsburgh, and Miami. In baseball - of course, it's the Yankees. I know the Braves have alot of bandwagon jumpers, but they escape my rule by virtue of being from Atlanta. If I lived in Iowa, though, the sound of Skip Caray's voice would make me want to projectile vomit. Let's not forget college...Duke, N. Carolina, any big school from Florida, etc. I could go on, but it would just be masochistic.

Oddly, I don't mind the Steelers as a team. I like their coach, and alot of their players. I even like their unis...I just can't sit in a sports bar near any of their fans.

So you can guess, I'm probably going to pull for Seattle. I have my reservations, though. The Seahawks didn't exist until 1977, the Falcons showed up in 1966. The Seahawks winning would once again remind me of how hapless the Dirty Birds have been. On top of that, until the playoffs it was really hard to believe that Seattle had those run-of-the-mill crazy football fans.

You figured everyone there was too busy drinking coffee, debating environmental issues, developing delicious new microbrews, or wondering why Mudhoney and The Screaming Trees never made it big to actually care about football. Wrong I was. Judging by the pandemonium at Qwest Field yesterday, this is the most talked about thing in The Emerald City since Stephen slapped Irene on The Real World. It's a pretty isolated city in terms of US geography, too. I think it could swap places with Vancouver tomorrow, and we wouldn't notice until Microsoft started labelling everything in French.

The thing they have going for them, though, is me telling people 3 games into the season that they were my dark horse team to make it out of the NFC. I was laughed at a few times, so it's nice to know I was right. They had an easy schedule, and forced all these East Coast playoff teams to fly all the way out there to play in their surprisingly loud stadium. The reason me being right is significant, is that I never am. I love sports, but I couldn't predict who will win the coin toss in the upcoming Super Bowl, and that's 50/50 odds.

Either way, it should be a good game. A good game, of course, that is dragged out incessantly by commercials that try too hard, a half-time show with an over the hill rock band, and plenty of instant replay reviews. So find a party, and if you live in Georgia, make sure to get your beer on Saturday!