Wands

So, my good bud Ryan at work has made it a Tuesday tradition to make wooden wands using a lathe at his brother's house. he brings them in, and they're pretty freaking cool looking. He invited me to go with him a couple of times, and I've been eager to try it out. I finally was able to make it yesterday. Dude.. So fun... I've never been much of a handy-man, and never really worked with power tools, especially things like table saws and band saws, etc. It was really fun.
We stopped by Woodcraft Supply to try out some different types of wood. I ended up with a really dense heavy (wet) wood with a strange name that had the word negro in it. The other one was called purpleheart, which is a BRIGHT purple wood. It's pretty cool.

I made 2 wands and polished them up nicely. The two wands I made are shown. The Purpleish (bottom) one is the purpleheart wood, the brown one is cherry. I like the cherry one better, just because the design worked out better. The purpleheart is a MUCH harder wood, so it's hard to get rounded edges.

I'm stoked to go do this again. Makes me wonder why I've never tried anything like this before.

Mile Markers

So, another thing that I was just thinking about my trip to Philly that I found super strange is the exit reminder markers. In Utah, the markers will show 3 miles, or 3 1/2 miles, or 3/4 miles or 1/4 mile, etc. When driving around in Philly, I was surprised to see the markers showed things like... 4/10 mile. WTF?

Anyone have any clues why they do that?

Weird.

Go Phillies!

As I have proclaimed in the past, the first team that I was able to see at HOME for an MLB game, would be "my team," at least temporarily.  Because the first MLB game that I have seen in person was the Phillies, they are now "my team."  I really was thinking that I would see a game in Boston or San Francisco before seeing a game in Philly, but I have to tell you, I'm actually pretty stoked about it.  Not that I'm a huge baseball fan, or anything, but I like sports, and following another sport, even leisurely, will be fun. 

Coincidentally, the Phillies won the World Series last year.  This did not affect my decision to make them "My Team."  Had I visited the Twins in Minnesota, I would have (grudgingly) at least temporarily made them "my team."  (Thank heaven's I visited a COOL team! ;))

The game was awesome.  It rained really hard during the first couple innings.  I'm surprised it wasn't a rain delay.  There was even a little bit of lightning.  Not that it mattered because we were in box seats!

Freaking sweet.

In the end, the Phillies made a rally, but weren't able to pull it off.  They lost the game.  They played the Brewers (who they lost to the next day as well), but have won the following 5 games (with another game tonight).  The one thing I have to be impressed with baseball, is the sheer number of games played.  They play 5-6 games a week (even if the guys that are pitching are rotating).  Impressive.

Well.. Go Phillies!

The ONLY way to fly...

So, I had my first "First Class" experience while I was on my trip to Philly. Wow. What an incredible experience. It's one of the things that I've always wanted to do, but wasn't sure whether it would ever happen. Here's the highlights:

Real food. On the flight there, they had a really yummy chicken sandwich thing with fresh fruit.

On top of the real food, the snack choices were better, rather than pretzels and/or nuts, they have those, plus cookies, candy bars, fruit, etc. They bring the snack bin around several times throughout the flight as well.

I never thought that drinking out of a glass cup would be that nice, but to have someone refill your drink every 10 minutes and not having to try to stretch 1 can of coke for an entire flight was very nice.

Comfort: full reclining, tons of leg room, tons of side-to-side space. All of these things make first class classy.

The small things. Things like a tray cover during your meal, the infamous "hot towel," free headphones and free movies/games during the flight certainly make a long flight like that more tolerable.

It will be a real eye opener next time I have a flight, cuz I'm sure it will be a long while til I get first class again.

Start Spreadin' the News...

I'm in Philadelphia, baby.  I found out yesterday (Tuesday), that a friend at work had come down with vertigo and would be unable to visit a prospective client.  I was available, and I quickly jumped at the opportunity to take his place.  So, I booked my flight.  The flight was pretty expensive because it was last minute, and because of the high price, I decided to check out the price of the first class tickets.  For $100 more round trip, I was able to book my seat in first class.

FREAKING SWEET.

I've never flown first class before.  It is awesome.  It is the only way to fly!  I understand it's expensive, but it really is nice.  More to come on that.

I found out on Tuesday night that we were also invited to a Phillies MLB baseball game!  FREAKING SWEET!  I've never been to a MLB baseball game.  It was awesome.  Box seats are so nice.  More to come on that.

After the game, we went to Pat's King of Steaks for a Philly Cheesesteak sandwich from an original cheesesteak sandwich place.  It was very good.  Note to self, next time you get a cheesesteak, get it with cheese whiz, not provalone.  The provalone, wit-onions, pepper, mushroom cheesesteak was yummy.  Nextime, gunna get a "wit," whiz, pepper cheesesteak.  Mmm....

My hotel room is nice too.  Nice view of the city on the top floor.  Sweet.

Well.. I better head.  I have a long day tomorrow.

10 things I learned on my Anniversary Weekend

The following is a summary of my Anniversary weekend.  We had a blast (for the most part)!

1.  The Anniversary Inn is pretty effing cool.  Our theme room was pretty awesome, although it wasn't exactly what we were expecting.  It was pictured with 2 awesome looking leather reclining theater seats.  Instead, there was a roundish type loveseat.  It was pretty cool though.  The picture also showed a soda fountain in the room, which was replaced by unlimited 20 oz. coke products.  All in all, pretty cool.

2.  The breakfast at Anniversary Inn is the best hotel breakfast I have ever had.  The first day, they provided a cream cheese/raspberry tart type thing.  Think of it as a REALLY high end pop tart.  It was pretty effing amazing, even though it was a bit rich.  The next morning, they gave us a choice for our meal which we opted for the ham and cheese croissant.  Even though I didn't eat it until that night, (to be explained later), it was freaking rockstar.

3.  It's satisfying when a movie you see surprises you.  I see a lot of movies, and I generally don't see a lot of movies that I would want to see more than once.  It's only a movie that pleasantly surprises me with a good story line and/or acting that really piques my interest.  One of those movies is State of Play.  I generally.. No.. I always dislike Ben Affleck.  I find him to be a horrible actor and self indulgent.  He has ruined more than 1 potentially good movie by attempting to act in them.  State of Play was the first movie that I completely believed his performance.  I was pleasantly surprised.  Not to mention that the story held some good and unexpected twists.  Very nice.

4.  Advertising that a hotel room has a huge HDTV does NO good unless said TV has some sort of HD content.  Yeah, big TVs are awesome, but they are no better than any other TV if the content shown is standard definition.  Our room had an HDTV in it and Comcast cable.  The Comcast box was even an HD converter box, but they wouldn't pay for the HD package, so the only HD channels available were the local channels, which you can get for free anyway.  Pfft.

5.  Carbs suck.  I occasionally abandon my low carb lifestyle for a weekend eating junk food.  I try to limit it to 2 days every month, and REALLY try to make it for a special occasion.  I figured that our Anniversary would be one of those occasions.  I always end up feeling disappointed at my 2 days off.  I think that I'm going to be able to eat all sorts of food that I shouldn't be, and everything will taste wonderful and be worth the binge.  I am never right.  Of all the things that I ate this weekend, only 2.5 of the things would I consider "worth it."  The croissant thingy (that I literally had 2 bites of because I was still nauseous when I ate it at 3 PM on Saturday) and the scones at Ye Lion's Den.  The .5 would have to go to the tart thingy that I had for breakfast the day before.

6.  Ye Lion's Den.   Hrmm... What an interesting idea.  KSL (specifically the Movie Show) really lauds Ye Lion's Den as one of the best restaurants in Ogden.  While the food was pretty good, it was really expensive too.  I don't mind paying a lot for prime rib, especially when it's yummy (and it was), but I really want to enjoy an environment that is reflective of the large sum of money paid for said food.  This is where the restaurant fails.  The food is yummy (and props to their ranch dressing, the best I've ever  had), but the restaurant is kind of a hole.  I really like the theme and all, but for how much they charge (40 bucks for a 16 ounce prime rib (which also included salad, drink, scones and dessert), you'd think that they wouldn't be in a strip mall.  I just think that they could really step it up a notch if they had their own building, or SOMETHING.  C'mon. 

7.  Logan is boring.  Unless you're a co-ed who wouldn't mind going to a dance club where everyone is sober (not to say that drunk people make dance clubs fun... Nothing makes dance clubs fun...) , or you're haning out with friends at their apartment... There is nothing fun to do in Logan.  Well.  Hiking and fishing and mountain biking and things like that excluded.

8.  When you're away from work without internet access, everything that could possibly go wrong at work will go wrong.  Ugh.

9.  Under no circumstances should you order a meal that contains eggs from a mexicanrestaurant in Logan.  I don't know what I was thinking.  I ended up with food poisoning.  We got back from the mexican place around 7 PM on Friday and started watching movies.  By the end of the first movie, I was really not feeling well.  I had a pounding headache and the nausea had just begun.  Trisha gave me one of her anti-nausea pills, which didn't help the nausea go away, it just helped me not puke, which, as everyone knows, when you're sick, the only way to make it really go away is to let it all out.  Finally, at around 2 in the morning, I puked my guts out.  The rest of the night was long and arduous.  I slept like crap, I was freezing cold and burning hot at the same time.  Finally the morning came and I still didn't feel any better.  I started getting everything packed up because I just wanted to go home to try and relax.  I puked again at around 10:30 and then I started feeling better.  I didn't really feel 100% better until about 9 PM that night, but the nausea went away.  Ugh.. What was I thinking?  Eggs at a mexican restaurant?  That's like ordering sushi at McDonalds.  Not a good idea.

10.  Trisha is the love of my life.  Even though Trisha was pretty sick with being pregnant, an in a lot of pain from her Fibromyalgia, she still takes care of me when I'm sick.  And I love that about her.  She's the love of my life, and life wouldn't be the same without her.  She is the jam in my pb&j sandwich and the cheese in my mac and cheese (inside joke).  I love her with everything in me.

It's a BOY!

That's right... We're having a little baby boy! We picked out a name, although it's not set in stone. We're going with Ryan Nicholas Fielding. I know, vein, right? ;)

We're so excited. I'll scan the ultrasound as soon as I get a minute.

Ugh..

So, Trisha and I have worked our butts off to get out house ready to show. And it was a resounding success thanks to the help of some friends and family to help us out while we were both in bad shape. I feel as though I have been beat up with a baseball bat. I want to lay down and take a nap.
Hopefully all of this work will pay off and the couple that looked at our condo last night will make us a huge offer!

Well, crap...

So, Trisha and I have been trying to do some spring cleaning and de-junking. We never really got our 2nd bedroom set up how we want and stuff kept piling up in there. It's really been a struggle trying to organize that room, especially since Trisha has been sick a lot, and pregnant. Not to mention that I've been lazy.. ;) Well, lazy and really exhausted lately. Hrmm.. We'll get to that...
I decided to take some initiative and clean where I could. I feel as though I'm finally getting into some good habits of cleaning. As a part of this spring cleaning, we decided to move our bedroom furniture around. I was getting ready to move the bed after I vacuumed part of the bedroom floor where we wanted to move the bed. I walked around the edge of the bed and started to lean over. I felt a twinge in my lower back, and I collapsed onto the bed. I felt as though I had been stabbed in my lower back. A few minutes later I worked my way back to my feet, but I knew that something was wrong. I had tweaked my back pretty bad. I continued to move the bed by pushing it into place with my legs.
After I was done with that, I had to lay down for most of the rest of the day because my back hurt so much. I was laid out all day Sunday and Monday as well. Sitting up, standing, walking, or rolling over while laying down was killer. No fun. Trisha, thankfully, has a prescription for Lortab. I took a couple of those to tide me over until I got to the doctor. I was unable to sleep well any of those nights because I move a lot in my sleep and whenever I move, my back screamed at me, and it woke me up. On Monday night, I had a bowl of low carb ice cream shortly after taking my sleeping medicine and another dose of Lortab. I was so tired and drained from the lack of sleep and the narcotics that I fell asleep sitting up on the couch with my hand laying in my unfinished bowl of ice cream. Lovely.
On Tuesday (after another missed day of work), I went to the Doctor to see what could be done about my back. He thinks that I just strained my back, which is not uncommon. I told him that the past few weeks I've been pretty drained before my back problem even came up. I told him that I had a bit of a sore throat as well and was concerned that I had mono. They took a blood test which just came back today (Thursday).
That's right. I have effing mono.
Boo!

That is all for now.

Nix Watchman review

So I went and saw Watchmen last night (midnight showing). I'm giving it a solid 4 stars. It's a great movie that makes you think, which is always a good sign in my book.

The cinematography was AMAZING (as to be expected).

The character development was good, even though it was a bit rushed because there was so many important characters to develop.

It didn't seem like a 3 hour movie. The pace was good and I thought I'd be overwhelmed with the story, but I think they put it together well. I definitely want to see it again to see what I missed, because I'm sure I missed some stuff.

The acting was great, especially by Rarschach and the Nite Owl II. I was even impressed with Silk Spectre (I was not expecting much from her based on some of her previous roles).

It was completely different than I expected, and I went in with completely different expectations than what I feel they were trying to set in the trailers.

I am definitely going to go see it again (with Trisha).

Other notes:
The sex scene was a bit much. The gore/violence was spot on. :D
There wasn't too much language in it (which doesn't bother me anyway).
There was a lot of blue wang that I could have done without, but on the flip side, it wasn't out of control or pornographic. It was just there.

After the movie, I took Trisha home (got home around 3:45 or so) and then drove straight into work.

I'm huggin' tired.

That is all.