I'm Engaged

So it's official. Stephanie finally got me to propose to her. (Okay so I really wanted to do it, but we won't let on to that ;) I finally got a chance to blog after being home for a few days. I'm obviously not happy having dialup. I'm actually getting ready to watch Citizen Kain for the first time with my dad. We just finished up Cindarella Man which is quite possibly my 2nd favorite boxing movie behind Raging Bull. Anyway, I'm going to Steph's tomorrow for Christmas Day. I'll be up there until Tuesday morning. We have to have her ring resized as it was way to big for her hand. Hopefully there actually is a Kay Jewelers by her. Well I don't want to take up too much time of this movie. I just have to say that I'm exuberant about being engaged. It feels a little wierd, but I think it will come with time. The hardest part is saying "This is my fiance Stephanie," instead of "This is my girlfriend," when introducing her to people. I only slipped once last night at the bar with it though. Likely to say she was really excited and started crying, but eventually said "yes!" She only had to make about 100 phone calls afterwards, but the funny part was nearly everyone already knew.

So I hate dial up with a passion. This is the only photo I can get to load from the other night right now. If this damn internet will start working better here I'll add some more photos.

Good news though, the House has only approved the Patriot Act for another 5 weeks rather than 6 months. Unfortunately I don't think any of these politicians will ever get it through their thick skulls that this is America where we are founded upon the principles of freedom. Allowing government agencies to review and wiretap phone conversations without prior approval by some sort of a panel is Constitutionally wrong morally apprehensive. Thanks a lot GOP.

Pizza Hut+Cowboys=Blackmail

I'm home. After 3 hours in a car going in and out of thick fog I made it home around 1:15 a.m. Not bad considering it usually takes me 3.5 hours to get home. The fog was the worse part of it. Parts of the road I couldn't even see more than 10 feet in front of me. Thought a cop was going to pull me over twice. I came up on his stakeout spot doing about 80 mph, but he didn't even flinch. I listened to "The Long Road Home: The Ultimate John Fogerty-Creedence Collection" on my way home for the most part. The cd is amazing. Everything you'd expect from Fogert and Creedence. Thank god someone else owns Fantasy Records now allowing him to publish his material once again.

Anyway, I got to do a little camera tossing, but that's not the greatest picture I have. (Although I was very pleased with them.) Pizza Hut has been ran over by cowboys. My assistant manager Robert came into work with my manager Marvin sporting fake guns and cowboy hats in celebration The Paws weekly Country and Western night. Here's Robert trying to hold up Dennis at the cash register. Dennis must obviously know they're fake guns otherwise he would have pulled out a "Magic" card and summoned The Goblin Tinker to vanquish Robert and the other cowboys. I'll have to add a few more pictures at a later date because I'm on dial up. The camera tossing photos will be up later today so check back soon.

Lou loves the Hut

While delivering at Pizza Hut tonight I had the oppurtunity to deliver to Eastern Illinois President Lou Hencken. This is the third time in two weeks I have either delivered to Lou or seen him at the restaurant. I delivered to a party in honor President Hencken last week, I saw him in the store two days later, and then I delivered to him last night. Work was pretty slow again. I imagine it will be the same tonight. With barely any college students here I only take about 6 or 7 deliveries in a night compared to around 20. I have so much time to get all my stuff done and then sit and read. I've been reading this series in the Tribune for the past couple of days about a guy named Alexei Sultanov, a European pianist who suffered multiple strokes paralyzing most of his body. Even though he couldn't communicate he still taught himself to learn to play the piano again with his right hand while his wife Dace would accompany him. Quite an entertaining article. It was a three part series appearing Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

I'm almost finished with my book that Nora got me for graduation. It should have been finished about 2 weeks ago, but if you know me you know I'll start a book and now finish it for a month. I think I'm going to be doing a little camera tossing tonight at work. As soon as I'm done with work I'm heading home tonight. Trying to get back as soon as I can because I'm not going to have too many days to spend there. I'm really only going to be there tomorrow, Friday and Saturday and Sunday. Steph really wants to know what her X-mas present is, but I won't even give her a clue. It drives her nuts because I don't even ask questions about my present. You'd think after 3 previous Christmases (Is that grammatically correct?) together she'd figure out I won't even give her clues, but it's still fun to torment her I guess. I'll probably blog tonight once I get home. Should be about 1 or 2 in the morning.

I'm a tosser, but not in the British sense

So I'm officially a tosser. A camera tosser that is. I decided to go out directly after work and bust my tossing cherry by going to Old Main. For those of you who have no idea what the heck I'm talking about, camera tossing is when you set your camera to a long shutter, toss the camera in the air and try to get something cool like this photo. Haas turned me on to this because had apparently found a blog site dedicated to it. I'm glad I went out to try it even though it's most likely in the single digits tonight. I'll keep doing this and add them to my website under a seperate section as soon as I get around to it. Speaking of, I updated a little bit on the essay section today. I added the Slideshow Pro. Learning it really wasn't that bad, it just took me a little time. Of course I messed up the coding by not inserting one slash and Stephen had to come bail my ass out again. Him and I were supposed to do some camera tossing together tonight, but he has a X-mas party with Mal and I didn't want him to leave early just because I wanted to fling a couple thousand dollars worth of equipment in the air at 11 p.m. on a Monday night. These were quite possibly my two favorites of the night. I saw some on the blog site that looked really neat that I might try. One in particular was just throwing it in the air with it pointing at myself and twirling to make it look like a photoshop trick. The guy that did it on the blog was Vincent Pants. Strange guy I take it by his flickr photos, but every once in awhile he has something neat. Anyway, the only section I've updated so far on the essay section. I'm still tweaking the program a bit and getting the settings exactly how I want them. Eventually i'll add some audio to them as well. I'm in love with this program. It's quite easy once you get used to it. I'll add the other essays I did this semester either later tonight or tomorrow. I should be doing some major overhaul on my site soon. I really not happy with it right now. I'm not sure what will make me happy, but it's not as neat and clean as I would like it to be. I'll be heading home this Wednesday night after work. Steph will be down the next night for my sister's birthday party and then on Friday I'm taking her to Biaggi's. Should be a good time.