'Well thanks for waiting this long to show yourself...'

Well I just got back from a six day vacation in San Diego yesterday. Had an excellent time while I was there. Most of the time there we just relaxed by the pool, but we took a little time out to drive around a bit and took some pictures which you can see here. We stayed at Matt's uncle's house in Rancho Sante Fe, which is just north of San Diego, and is a really high-dollar area as far as mortgage rates go. Matt and Ketti were watching it for him for a few weeks while he was on vacation in Europe with his family.

Going to watch Wall-E this morning with Daniel and Alicia and their kids. After that, hang out at Dennis, and sleep. No plans for the weekend just yet, but I should find out today if I have a date this weekend or not. It was Mike's birthday yesterday, so we'll probably celebrate that this weekend as well. Have no clue what to get him... Tami's birthday was on Tuesday, and I'll give her her gifts tomorrow.

It's Sam's last day at work tonight. I'm going to miss her quite a bit. She's been an awesome friend the last year or so since I transferred to conversions, and helped me get through some really rough times. She's going to be an elementary teacher, and I wish her all the best in her new career.

"I hope you're as happy as you 're pretending..."

So here's a proper blog entry about what I've been up to lately. Well I went to see Metallica a few weeks back with DJ and Dennis. We drove all the way down to Tucson to see them. Got tickets for only $35 each thanks to Tami. While there some chick wanted to sit on my shoulders. I honestly was skeptical if I was even strong enough to lift her. Not that she looked heavy at all, I was just unsure of my strength. It was actually surprisingly easy though, and she was up there for a good 15-20 minutes before I had to put her back down. Apparently she was flashing people, but of course, her being on my shoulders, I couldn't see shit. Then while getting in line on our way out, some chick backed into me with her PT Cruiser. Just a tiny scratch though. Mike says it can probably be buffed out. Took us 2 hours just to get out of the parking lot. I'd planned to go to work that night, but I would've been late, and LaDonna said to just take the night off.

For memorial day I went quadding up at Saguaro Lake with Daniel, Alicia, and some other people from work. Flipped my quad in the first 10 minutes of riding and scraped up my elbow pretty bad. It didn't hurt much though, and I got right back on and continued riding. Unfortunately I was out in the sun for about 8 hours or so that day, and no sun block, so my arms and knees got burned real bad. Add to that the 4 hours or so of riding around on a quad, and I could barely walk the next day. Still had crazy amounts of fun though. I'll have to remember sun-block and gloves next time. It'll make the whole experience quite a bit more enjoyable I'm sure.

Saw Indiana Jones. I read that a lot of people didn't like it because of the whole 'alien' thing, but I liked it anyways... granted, aliens aren't exactly what I would ever picture in Indiana Jones, but the movie as a whole is definitely worth seeing I think. Also saw the new Chronicles of Narnia movie, and liked that quite a bit as well. Seems like they did a better job of acting this time around.

Just signed up to take Spanish 101 at GCC in July tonight. $260. Hopefully it ends up being worth it. Thankfully it's only a month long, 3 hours a day, 4 days a week. I figure I need to start getting back into the idea of school and shit. Would've signed up for photography, but they won't have any classes until next semester. Also went to the eye doctor, and the cardiologist. Contacts should be here any day now, and I go back to the cardiologist for more tests on Friday. I need to sign up for a dentist appointment now as well.

'I see your picture, I smell your skin, on the empty pillow next to mine...'

The last couple weekends have been excellent. The weekend before last I went out with some friends Saturday night to celebrate a co-workers (Shawn) birthday. He'd rented a limo to take everyone to the club and we were there until about midnight when we drove to Mill Ave., which is kind of the hotspot of downtown Tempe where the streets are lined with bars, restaurants, and shops. We were going to go to a place called The Cherry Lounge, but just as we were about to get in, Shawn, who'd had a little to drink that night, walked directly into a pole, and the bouncers wouldn't let us into the bar. After going to another bar we headed home. The next day my friend Ian flew in from California to watch the Seahawks/Cardinals game. I'd bought tickets for Ian, Dennis, and myself, and Ian brought an extra Seahawks jersey for me to wear. In the end the Cardinals won by a single field goal in the last 5 seconds of the game.

This last Saturday was my 26th birthday, and Stacy decided to invite a bunch of my friends to have dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Scottsdale called Benihana. The restaurant has you sit around a table which is also a giant skillet, where the chef cooks your food right in front of you, while also providing entertainment in the process through tricks, jokes, etc. There were 11 of us at a single table, and we barely fit. Most of the menu included seafood, which overall I'm not a fan of, but I still ended up eating some sushi and shrimp.

Daniel and Alicia ended up buying me one of the 'mugs' that were available for purchase. The mug is white, and in the shape of a crouching ninja (pic here). Your supposed to pour liquid in through a hole in his back, and drink through a straw placed in the sword scabbard hole at the top of his shoulder. Other gifts include tickets to see Static-X from DJ & Melissa, tickets to see Chevelle from Tami, cologne from Dennis & Nicole, some shirts and a gift card to F.Y.E. from Angi, and Stacy ended up paying for dinner for both myself and Niickiey, which was considerably generous of her, especially considering that the food at Benihana is by no means low priced, and the fact that she'd already given me DVDs of Resident Evil 1&2 the weekend before (which also contained a movie ticket to see #3).

Pictures from Benihana

Pictures from the Seahawks vs. Cardinals game

'And be a simple, kind of man. Be something, you love and understand...'

Well, I've finally reached my 100th blog entry. The first entry was nearly a year and a half ago, and my life has changed quite a bit since then. Not like "I'm a new man" kind of changed or anything, but it's certainly not the same, thanks to a new job, new friends, and all the things that come with them. I've actually been kind of slacking on the entries lately, due to a few reasons I won't discuss, otherwise I would've written blogs about them

Hopefully more things will change in the future. I plan on moving at the end of March. Not out of state or anything, just to a new apartment. It'll definitely be something bigger than my current 450sq ft box I live in at the moment, and hopefully with a garage, and laundry machines. I'm also seriously going to try and get rid of my debt this year. I've already been in Arizona for over six years, and the need to get back to school is really in my head lately, but I can't do it without getting rid of the debt I'm in, so I don't have to constantly work overtime to pay for school.

Anyways, this weekend was a good one, I can definitely say that much. Dennis' daughter had her 2nd birthday party on Saturday at Peter Piper Pizza. After that I went to dinner at Garcia's with Stacy, which included Fried Ice Cream, which is the shit. Not quite as good as Oaxaca's in Sedona, but good nonetheless. After dinner we hit up Harkins and saw "Children of Men", which was excellent. Definitely a unique theme for a movie.

Sunday I hung out with Dennis and his family as they went shopping at Wal-mart, and Arizona Mills. I'd originally signed up to work that night, but nobody ever told me that they would need me, which turned out great because Tami had free tickets to the Trapt/Shinedown concert at Westgate Center. Trapt wasn't very good at all, but I didn't really expect them to be. I enjoyed the stuff that I'd heard on the radio, but after downloading their CD, I wasn't impressed with the rest of it, and the concert wasn't any better. Shinedown, on the other hand, made up for Trapt's lacking performance, and then some. I'd probably pay to see Shinedown again.

This was actually my 2nd time seeing them, as they played the Godsmack show last September as well, but they made a much bigger impression on me this time around. Especially loved the songs "Shed Some Light", and "Simple Man", which is actually a Lynyrd Skynyrd cover, and where the title of this blog comes from. I've always had a soft spot for acoustic stuff though, especially when it's from bands that are normally accustomed to playing harder music, like Shinedown and Staind. It's a nice break in the albums from all the hate music

After the concert Tami, her cousins, friends, and myself, headed over to Six Shooters to get drinks and play some pool. Had a great time there, but they closed around 1, so we headed over to the Metro Sports bar to hang out a little while longer. Ended up getting home around 2:30 in the morning, and didn't feel like sleeping, so after browsing the net for a bit, I popped in "The Beach", which I've probably mentioned before is a great movie. Didn't quite get through all of it before going to sleep around 5 though.

Going over to Dennis' later today for a barbecue, and to watch Ohio State kick the shit out of Florida. Sometimes I wonder why I don't follow football... I love the sport. I guess I already have too many hobbies to try and keep track of another one, especially one that has so many people and stats to keep track of.

Edit: Well... the game didn't quite go the way we wanted it... That was a great first touchdown though Ohio! Way to stay #1

'Theres only one sure way to bring the giant down...'

Well, after a string of great weekends, this one tops them all. Starting with Saturday, I go to arguably the best concert I've been to yet, consisting of downright perfect performances by Shinedown, Rob Zombie, and Godsmack. Dennis, DJ, and Dennis' cousin came with me, and Tami came separately with friends and cousins. We all had pit tickets. There's no better way to go to a concert than to be in the pit. Before the concert itself, I wasn't real excited about Rob Zombie, but I've got to hand it to them, they played a kick ass show, even throwing in some 'old school' White Zombie shit that the crowd went crazy for. Before the show I'd even told Dennis that there was no way they were going to play anything from White Zombie. Guess I have to eat my words on that. During the song "More Human than Human" they brought out a giant 'robot' on stage that danced around on stage and tried to attack the band members as they played. That's got to be the coolest stage prop I've ever seen. After Rob Zombie came Godsmack who kept ripping out kick ass songs, one after the other, and nearing the end, Sully rode out on a 2nd drum set, complete with bongo drums, and he and drummer Tommy Stewart played a kick ass drum solo (duo?) while the remote controlled platforms would move around on the stage.

After the concert we were supposed to go to Macayos down the street to hang out with friends, some who went to the concert, and others who were going to show up. Sort of for my birthday I guess, but I just wanted to hang out, so I wouldn't have to go home. So we dropped off Dennis' cousin, and then went back to Dennis' place to pick up my car. Dennis said he wasn't going to go. I figured it was because he had work in the morning, and/or just because it would be a bunch of people from work, who he didn't really know. I'd originally planned on going home real quick to change clothes, but we were already running kind of late (it was already 11:30pm) and we still had to pick up Daniel and Alicia from their place. They were going to ride with us so they could drink, and not have to worry about driving home. Besides, the temperature at the concert had been really cool, so I wasn't really sweating at all. So me and DJ got in the car and headed over there. They actually only live a couple miles from my place. When we pulled up, Alicia said to park the car. I asked her how long we were going to be here and she says all night, and laughs. So I'm like, whatever, and park the car, get out, and follow her toward the house. Daniel's standing out in the front yard, along with Nicola and a couple people I didn't know (Daniel's Uncle and Aunt). I didn't know why Nicola was there, but figured she was just waiting there until we all headed down to Macayos, and would follow us.

So I walk in the house, and Angi's sitting there at the table with a friend, and Alicia turns and explains to me that they're throwing a party for me, which apparently was the plan all along. Nobody was waiting at Macayos. Angi had brought Taquitos, and there was chips and nacho stuff, soda, and their fridge was packed with alcohol. I was in a bit of a shock at first. I'd never have guessed this was going to happen. They'd kept it a very good secret. DJ said he thought I might have known, and was just playing around at first, but when I said I didn't even know we were supposed to "pick up" Daniel and Alicia, he knew I didn't have a clue. Tami and her friends took a while to get there. I guess they'd waited at the concert until everyone had pretty much cleared out of the parking lot, and then got lost on the way to Alicia's house. A few more people showed up, including Yvette, Shawn, and Lisa. I kind of wish I'd known about it, just so I could invite friends that weren't related to work, but then there'd be no surprise.

Everyone was talking for a long while, and then around 1:30 or so, I was sitting by myself, as I'd been on my feet for the last 6 hours, and Lisa came over and asked me if I wanted to join the party in the other room. I complained that the party kept moving, but she grabbed my arm and dragged me to the living room where most everyone was sitting and had me sit down in a chair against the wall. Then out of the corner of my eye, I see a bunch of people in the hallway, and I look over and theres a girl in a police uniform, and I realize what's going on. So she comes out and asks who's birthday it is, and everyone points at me. So she comes over and sits on my lap facing me, takes off the uniform, and the next hour is filled with an innumerable amount of lapdances and 'games', most of them for me, but she also gave other people dances as well. People kept giving me bills for more dances, Tami in particular, who was the one that ordered the dancer in the first place. She was damn good looking. No complaints from me at all. Apparently Tami had actually picked someone else, but for whatever reason they'd sent this girl. At one point Tami yelled "Just wait until you get married!", so if your reading this (and I know you will), I'm going to hold you to that! =P.

After she'd left, Tami was telling me how nobody was sure if I'd be cool with getting a stripper for my birthday. They thought I might walk out or something. I told them I'm not sure why. I'd been to a strip club before, it just wasn't my thing because you drop tons of money just to see naked chicks tease the shit out of you. It just doesn't seem like a worthwhile way to spend my money. Every once in a while is fine, but some people go f'ing crazy, going to strip clubs every other weekend or more. They also thought I might be uncomfortable with it, since it was around a bunch of people I knew, but I was actually much more comfortable in that situation than at a strip club.

DJ had to be home by 3am, and most everyone else left by 4. I went home and tried to sleep, but since I'd slept right before the concert, I wasn't very tired, and ended up waking up around 7 or 8 in the morning. Daniel and Alicia had invited me over to watch football at their place, so I headed over there around 11am. I had softball at 4, so Alicia and I left her place and picked up DJ on the way. We lost both games this time =( . I still ended up scoring a run, although I was running for someone else. After the game, I went home and took a shower before Stacy came and picked me up to go to dinner for my birthday. We went to The Cheesecake Factory and had a great time talking about various stuff. I told her about the party, and about my brother, who's thinking of moving to Hawaii next year. After that, she wanted to go play pool, so we decided to go to Six Shooters. She called her boyfriend; who, until that moment, I wasn't even aware of; to see if he could come, but he was about to go to sleep. So we started driving to Six Shooters, which was some ways away, but on the way there, she decided she just wanted to go home. She said she was feeling kind of sick, but for whatever reason I didn't really believe her, but I didn't say anything about it.

So I took her back to my place, which is where her car was at. We'd taken my car because her tags were expired. I opened her gift, which was a Blockbuster movie pass, microwave popcorn, sprite, and candy, which was pretty cool, cause I love movies. I have a monthly rental subscription pass at Blockbuster, but I told her I could still use it to buy some movies. I also not too fond of popcorn, because it's pretty much all I ate the first six months after moving to Arizona (that and ramen noodles), but I didn't mention anything about it, cause it's hardly a big deal. So then she left. It was around 10:00. The weekend supervisor had called me the night before about working this weekend, but obviously I wasn't going to work Saturday night, and I didn't really feel like going in Sunday night, as I'd been up since 7am already. I might start working again next weekend though. I could really use the money, especially with Christmas right around the corner, the IRS breathing down my back, and the PS3 / Wii launch in November. GameStop is starting to take pre-orders for the PS3 the first week of October as well, so I need to get in on that ASAP.

So, that ends this weekend. Most of the pics from the party are NSFW, so I can't post them here, but there were a couple that I could, including this one below. The quality's pretty shitty, as it came from a photo sharing site (I wasn't able to take many pictures with my own camera). I'm hoping to get the higher quality originals later though. I didn't take any pictures at the concert either. I did get some video with my phone though, and may upload that in the near future if it's half decent looking.

Edit: Pics have been removed, as I seem to have deleted them from the server at some point...

John's car get's an unwanted paint job...

So, this isn't exactly what I wanted to blog about, but as it just happened, and I'm still a bit annoyed by it, I will. Got off work early tonight to come home to cracking sounds right outside my car as I'm driving up to my apartment complex. At first I thought some idiot threw fireworks in the road and/or at my car, but once I was parked, and went to look if any damage had been done, I was unfortunately, or fortunately, wrong. Turns out some idiots thought it'd be funny to shoot paintballs at passing cars in the alley behind the complex. They're idiots because it would've been quite a bit smarter to do it where you don't live, or even better, do it at random spots where your continually moving, and thus, harder to find. After getting a bucket of water, a couple wash clothes, and a towel, I went down to quickly wash off the yellow paint that was splattered all over the passenger side of my car. I'd only been directly hit twice, and I'm pretty sure at least one hit the street in front of my car, as there was paint splattered all over my front bumper as well. The paint came off surprisingly easy, which leads me to think that the companies that manufacture paint balls thought ahead and made it more of a thick colored water rather than actual paint. Either that, or after a number of incidences similar to mine, they changed it from standard paint. Anyways, I probably looked like an absolute idiot, washing my car at 2:30 in the morning. Took about 30 minutes to get all (hopefully) of the paint off. Right before I'd finished, the complex security officer rode by on his bike, and I waved him down and let him know about what happened. He went and checked it out, but didn't see anyone, but let me know the cops had been called.

Bad luck didn't stop there, however. I went back to my apartment to find the door locked. It's been broken for months, and I was just in my apartment 30 minutes earlier, but now all of a sudden the lock is working, and of course, I don't have my house key. So I call up the office, which is just voice mail at this time of night, and left a message that I'd been locked out, and then I waited for someone to get a spare key to unlock it for me. As the guy shows up about 10 minutes later, the security officer comes by and tells me another car just got hit right in front of the police, but of course, they didn't see it happen, or who did it. Even so, as I waited to get my key, I saw two cop cars driving around the parking lot, and all of a sudden about 5 or 6 shots could be heard. The cops stopped and got out, and it looked like they were looking around, but I didn't bother to go and see if they'd caught the people or not, for fear of retaliation if the idiots found out I'd reported them, and who I was; particularly since I'm pretty sure they live here.

Anyways, here are the pics of the damage, which was a lot worse than you can see here, as there was paint all over the side, and front of my car. You can only see where the balls actually hit in these pics though, as they were taken with my phone's camera, which lacks flash, and obviously isn't going to be the greatest at taking pics in low light. It completely skipped my mind to grab my DSLR... oh well, next time, LOL.



So, on with the rest of what's happened since my last blog entry...

My vacation's been approved, and after spending somewhere around $1,100 on repairs for my car, it should be ready for the trip. My bumper "still" has not been repaired, and I'm extremely annoyed that it's taken this long to get fixed. I'm going to call the body shop this week and try and find out what the hell is going on, but at this point, I'll probably have to wait until after I get back from vacation to get it fixed. My brother will arrive on Thursday, and we'll leave Friday, though I'm not sure what time yet. At first I thought it'd be best to leave at night, so we wouldn't have to deal with the Los Angeles traffic, but my dad said that since we won't really be driving "through" LA, I shouldn't have a problem at any time of the day. Night might still be a good choice, as we'd be going through the hottest part of the country without the sun beating down on us. Anyways, I imagine we'll figure it out by the time my brother gets here.

Lots of birthdays this month. Stacy's was the 8th, Dennis' was the 15th, Angi's was the 10th (I think?), Tami's was today, and Mike's is on the 26th. With all the birthdays, car repairs, and a very long road trip ahead of me, not to mention I haven't worked overtime for months until tonight, my bank account's looking a little thin, and my credit cards are maxed. Not a good position to be in. Sure, the trip is unnecessary, but I got the car all fixed up because of this trip, and I'm really looking forward to it, so I don't have any plans on backing out unless something serious happens in the next 6 days.

I've been sort of avoiding the girl from work a bit since deciding not to date her. We still talk when we see each other at work, and we've gone to a couple Arizona Diamondbacks games together, but haven't gone to dinner or anything like that. Stacy says I'm being a bit of a dick by not telling her that I don't want to date her, but in my opinion, as the idea of dating was never discussed in the first place, I don't really feel like I'm obligated to say anything. That'd be like having to tell every girl I started hanging out with that I didn't plan on dating them, which is ridiculous.

Been playing a bit of Battlefield 2 lately, and doing quite well at it. Playing on an unranked server, I was able to get the 2nd to top spot, and the game after hit the top almost immediately, and stayed there for the rest of the game. Because of it, I've decided to play on ranked servers in order to improve even further, as I'm sure those are more challenging.

On another note, I was recently able to get a hold of Stefanie. I'd text messaged her one day when it was raining a few weeks back, about how I loved rain, and she replied with "me too". We texted each other a few more times, and I found out that she was actually moving that day into a new place, so the rain wasn't really helping. She said she'd have to invite me over once she was moved in, but I took that part with a grain of salt. Still, I was thrilled to finally hear from her after 8 months or so. Hopefully I can salvage this friendship after all.