Managed to get a full 8 hours of sleep. Went to bed and was asleep at 10:30. That's so early for me. Managed to get stuck on the train getting into the Belmont stop because of that fire near the Brown line for 20 minutes or so last night. A little annoying. Finished up 12 Monkeys and started 36 Chambers while working on an SBR design for my cafepress shop. Looks like a busy weekend, Kaze Club night tonight, poker tourney tomorrow, Medieval Times on Sunday. Figured out the settings for my video diary with my iSight, using Quicktime Broadcaster, MPEG-4 compression on video and audio, 320x240, best quality for video. I think that roughly equates to 2 MB/sec. On second thought, maybe I'll tone down the quality a bit. I don't have that much space. And also with the music setup, I might start using Salling Clicker and use my phone to control iTunes on the desktop serving streaming music.

Had dinner last night with Akira at Sai. Good food, hadn't seen him in a while, got to catch up a bit. Dropped by and talked with Leah, since I was in the neighborhood. Thinking. Whipped out an SBR design this morning over breakfast. I need to get a lot of sleep, catch up on sleep soon. I'm running on empty right about now. Oh, got some nifty iSight stands from MacMice. In addition to the current written journals I keep, I might start keeping video diaries as well.

Laundry's finally done. I do however have a ton of ironing to do. Because I decided that dry cleaning dress shirts wasn't worth it and I have lots of free time on my hands to do things like iron shirts. Now talk about exciting. I think I'm addicted to caffeine. I was really tired and not feeling all too well while doing laundry, and then I had a Coke, and suddenly, it was much better. It's just so good when it touches your lips. I watched 10 Things I Hate About You, and started 12 Monkeys. I updated more stuff in the gallery, adding pictures to Leah and Me, adding a Kaze 2003 and a Kaze 2003 Nationals albums along with Paganello 2002 and more photos to Paganello 2003. Tonight I need to work on an SBR 'O4 design, maybe do some Spring League Draft App tweaking. Friday is a the return of Kaze Club Night, this time up at SmartBar.

Finally upgraded the gallery last night. Now up to 1.4.2. Sweet. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing. I did put up Rick and Sarah's wedding gallery up. Lost in poker last night. Somethings haven't changed. Papa John's is soooo good. Look for more galleries to go up soon, along with a slight reorganization, like sub-albums and so on. Oh, and I still really need to do laundry.

Friday night I had dinner with my parents. They brought in Fried Chicken from Chop Suey Hut, best fried chicken ever. Saturday went and saw Eurotrip. Very funny movie. Catchy song throughout the film. Lead character reminds me of a poor man's Freddie Prince, Jr. Dinner again with the parents after mass at the Cathedral. Drinking that night with Russell and gang at Charleston's. Also managed to see the Blanchet-Ruths' new Ping Pong/Table Tennis table. Sunday brunch with my parents at Orange and a lazy afternoon getting an upgraded Gallery up and running. Couldn't just do an upgrade in place because of all my modifications to the look and feel. So that'll be coming. And since I managed to keyword all my photos in iPhoto, more pictures should be going up in the gallery soon as well. Poker last night with they boys, poker tonight with the coworkers. Otherwise, try and continue to run and workout a bit this week.

Didn't do laundry last night. Just too tired. Watched 8 Mile instead. Got my new credit card, finally. Now I've got to memorize a brand new number. Parents coming in to town this weekend. Going to see Eurotrip tomorrow with the boys. Might try and get a run or two in this weekend. Otherwise, continue to work my way through the dvd collection.

Went running outside for the first time since probably last November. A good 3 months or so? Good though. Feels like I can't run slow anymore. If I try, I immediately switch to walking. It's either running or walking, no jogging. Odd. But that probably won't last long. I finished up Die Hard with a Vengeance, and I think I'm gonna try and work my way through my entire DVD collection in alphabetical order. Try is the operative word there. I also found a really cool solution to provide whole condo music: Nicecast, a pretty GUI on the icecast/Audio Hijack Pro setup. Basically, I get to use iTunes on my main desktop, which then streams this out, and any other machine or device on the network can listen to this stream. So, the iMac in the bedroom, the laptop out wherever, even the desktop that's doing the streaming, all playing the same music, controlled from a single location. It's really cool. I think I'll do some laundry tonight.

Had some fish yesterday. Got carryout with some co-workers from Koi, Chen's new Evanston sister restaurant. Good stuff. Happy to have a couple rolls with mango involved. Then Leah took me out to dinner at Sai. Good to see her again. Saw Marc and Julie also having dinner at Sai as well. So I didn't get to see my shows. That'll have to wait for Sunday. Still sore from my running on Monday. Thanks to all for the birthday greetings.

Running at SPAC wasn't very enjoyable last night. It was my first time back in ages, since college I believe, and it's completely different. Track is tiny, one of those stupid above the basketball court type of things. No fun to run on at all. So I don't think I'll be going back there. I'm gonna try my building fitness room tomorrow, and see if a treadmill is good enough until it gets warm enough out. Got dinner from Whole Foods. Decent meal for $7. Also got 3 different brands of Green Tea ice cream. I'm still searching for the store bought equivalent to Sai's. Watched a little Die Hard with a Vengeance. And an actual early bed time. Probably end up staying at work late, got a project that needs finishing, and then some Gilmore Girls and One Tree Hill and some exercises, and that'll be my 27th birthday. Next?

Not that exciting of a weekend. Got my contacts, so I'm wearing those again, but the lenses for my new glasses weren't rounded and polished, so those have to get redone and they'll be sent to me in the mail. Woodstock was good, as usual. My dad got a Tugsten T3, which is a very cool pda. Made me jealous. ePocrates though doesn't install at all on a Mac, which is just plain stupid. I guess after doing a little research that it hasn't been working since June or so last year. Ugh. Also had lots of software upgrades for the Cube, also upgraded the video card to a GeForce3 so it can now do the nifty cube transitions for Fast User Switching. Oh, and my dad also got a new HP 4120 Photosmart Multi Function Device. Go figure, changing the paper size when printing is done via the file:page setup menu, rather than anywhere in the print dialogs. Ugh. Alias was good last night though. Missed my usual viewing partner. Got myself an Alumni card today, and I'm heading up to SPAC to do some running on an indoor track. So starts the long road to inshapedness.

Dinner was good last night. It was AJ's birthday, so she got a bunch of people to go to Rose Angelina's for dinner. Good food, rather interesting company. Still spreading the news. I actually ended up walking home, instead of either taking a cab or a bus or the el. Good walk though. Ended up sleeping on the couch, and never made it to the bed last night. Woodstock this weekend, and trying to figure out how to get my Dad's new iPaq to work with their Cube and try and get ePocrates up and running. New Alias on Sunday. I got inversion boots yesterday. Means I get to do sit ups upside down, and other random stuff upside down. Exciting.

Caught up with Katie Kelly last night. Good place, Filter, out in Wicker Park, coffee place. Wireless access available. A good number of laptops in attendance. I had leftovers last night for dinner. I also made it back to the diner yesterday morning, and again this morning. Going back to a full breakfast after even just a short break like 3 days is a challenge. I wasn't hungry until 4pm after my denver omelette. AJ's birthday dinner tonight. Got another ticket for not having a city sticker on my car. Working on getting one now.

So I've been looking for a new bag for my laptop, a nice vertically styled man bag, messenger bag, briefcase, or something to that effect. I liked STM's Regular Alley, but that would have to be a special order since they only have one US reseller that doesn't normally carry that bag, and I also liked Crumpler's Wee Bee, but it's bigger than the Alley. So I wandered over to Uncle Dan's, a Crumpler dealer, to see if they had any, and instead came across an Eagle Creek Vagabond, basically a larger version of my existing man bag, which is an Eagle Creek Guide Bag. So I got it. Works well, just slightly larger than my powerbook, so now I'm looking at sleeves to use with it. Dinner at McClain was good as usual. Not that hard to get to from Evanston. Wine made sleeping easy last night.

Did laundry last night. First time in a long time just doing 2 loads only. Managed to find some missing sheets and socks that Leah and I left up in the laundry room the last time we did laundry together. Ugh, that's sad. Anyway, being a sucker for punishment, finished up watching the Wedding Singer. I found this sweet plug in for iPhoto, Keyword Assistant. It makes keyword assignment easy, and best of all, it can alphabetize the keyword listing. Dinner with friends for the rest of the week. Possible run out to Woodstock next weekend. I still can't get to bed at a decent hour. I've also missed the diner the past 3 business days. Seriously slacking there.

I'm somehow decided to start using punctuation in my titles. Weird. Friday night, instead of Perfect Score, Russell and Bryan indulged me and watched You Got Served. I thoroughly enjoyed the film. Great dancing. Just funny all around, but probably for the wrong reasons. Saturday getting my eyes checked out. Dropped a notch in my left eye. Getting new glasses, contacts and disposables. Expensive trip. Dinner at Chen's with my parents, where I found out that Koi's, the new chinese/sushi place in Evanston, is a sister restaurant. I think there was a movie in there, or two. Lazy sunday, some piano playing, go figure, the start of a living room furniture rearrangement, possibly the return of stadium seating, more TV, and a short break for a poker game. Not sure yet how extensive the rearrangement might be, it might increase to a full on redecoration. Think paint and wall hangings.

Finally wrote myself a journal entry reader as a shell script. I'm in the middle of the Die Hard trilogy, just have the third one left. Got an eye appointment tomorrow, finally. Have to get new contacts, since I keep losing mine down the drain. Also think it's time for new glasses. In that vein, I think I want to grow the hair out, at least enough, so whenever the next Art+Science hair model show is I can get in on it.

I forgot to mention, last week at work I upgrade to a three headed beast. I'm packing 3 monitors, 1 19incher flanked by 2 17inchers. It's amazing and extremely productive. I'd actually want more, and a concept setup like Swordfish might actually be possible, but with CRTs instead of flat panels. Besides that, sort of sold my first shop product. Got Sally a lunchbox to even out finances from last November's Nationals trip. By the way, all the stuff in the shop is only available online. I put up a Kaze mousepad the other day. I'm probably going to switch my home server to use Postfix and Cyrus IMAP simply because that's what Mac OS X Server uses. I figure familiarity would be good.

I figure I actually should say something. Because not saying anything felt like lying, which it was, because what happened, and the current state of my life is different, and not to say that, well, to me, that's lying. Anyway, Leah and I are no longer together as a couple. Explains my 5000% increase in movie and TV watching. It's hard, and I miss her, but it was a great 1 1/2 years. So now that it's out in the open, there actually might be an increase in my updates, as I try to reconfigure myself to being a bachelor again, and reestablish the fortress of solitude.

Updates will come not so often. Or maybe they will. I'm still struggling with how much of my life to put up here. Go figure, after all these years, that I still don't have an answer for that. Anyway, I finished up the Core Monday night, and got in Groundhog Day because it was, and then WB's Tuesday night, which will probably become regular viewing, of Gilmore Girls and One Tree Hill, at least until those become a little too much. Got some cleaning to do, still. Started listening to NPR in the mornings, which isn't a very long time at all, maybe 10-15 minutes. Perfect Score and dinner on Friday with the boys. Parents in town over the weekend.

Watched a bunch of movies this weekend. Finally got Indiana Jones Trilogy wrapped up with Last Crusade, finally watched American History X, a very good but very intense film, watched Keeping the Faith for the second time, and still very funny, and Starship Troopers and started the Core. I realized that the hero from The Core is also in The Company of Men, which was showing on IFC, which made me want to watch the Core again. Anyway, flipped though the Super Bowl a bit, not really watching, but updating Lunchboxes in the store. Good to see that You Got Served won the box office this weekend. That's pretty cool. No plans for the week, just day to day.