Things I Like Thursday: September 29th Edition!!

To answer the question on everyone’s mind, yes, I am enjoying my vacation. But, that’s not what I like this Thursday. In a sense, I had to pay for my vacation: I worked several days of overtime and traded in the extra money for extra time off… so I kind of paid over $100 per day off…but it was worth it. However, this week I like the things I don’t have to pay for. This week I like

FREE STUFF!!

The first thing to talk about is the featured image. Not only do you get a great view of my chiseled-in-progress chest, but you can also see the most recent free thing I’ve been given. My roommate, James, gave me this sweater last night and told me it should be the thing I like this Thursday… I don’t think he actually believed it would be, but a different recent free thing made me consider doing it too. If I remember correctly, this sweater was either his brother’s or brother’s friend’s sweater that somehow got given to him. But James is a tiny bit taller than me, and this sweater was a tiny bit smaller than he.. so now it’s mine! Today is a cool, but not miserable day, so it’s been the perfect opportunity to test it out — and it’s great. Thanks!

On Sunday, I made a big decision. Before connection group, I had to go to McDonald’s for dinner. I started going to my normal one, but there wasn’t a lot of time to eat and make it in time to find out if Nedna was happening (Simpsons reference). There was a closer McDonald’s and finally I caved in, pulled a u-turn, and went to the logical, albeit not preferred McDonald’s. When I arrived they messed up “big time.” They made me pay for someone else’s meal by accident, but because it’s drive-thru (one of those double drive-thru’s actually) no one really pays attention to the receipt. Well, I ended being charged  $12 more than I should have been. To make up the favor, I swear I didn’t ask for it, the manager gave me my meal for free…. Score 1 for Mickey Dee’s.

Something I really enjoy, but somehow I missed yesterday, is free pie Wednesday’s at the village inn. I’ve gotten it several dozen times, and I promise you it’s for real… Want pie and icream? buy a scoop of ice cream and get your pie for free. Or you could get coffee with your pie…you’ve paid $1 for pie and ice cream. It’s AWESOME… not to mention the Village Inn is the greatest place on earth anyway.

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That line signifies where I took a break for lunch. Every Thursday a group of people who have known each other through different ministries get together for lunch at Burge. I had a feeling that if I didn’t publish this blog before lunch started I would get something for free and didn’t know how to rectify it… the line is such. At lunch, Fern gave me a sugar cookie with sprinkles that she baked and Jessica gave me a piece of gum after lunch. Aren’t they nice 🙂

All in all, I like free stuff.

Vacation — Day 1 and Day 2 morning

Most of my readers (at least the ones I’ve been able to identify over the last 9 months) know that I have been getting really sick over the last 4 months. I work overnight, and so when I get off work it magically becomes cheaper to go to the hospital…so on 3 occasions in these months, after work I’ve gone because of excruciating pain and many other symptoms that I’m sure you don’t really know about. The doctors cannot explain what is wrong me; the last one even said nothing is “medically” wrong me… I disagree. Doctors have ruled out several cancers, several bacterial infections, several diseases. They’ve done numerous tests and every one has come back normal, and yet this stuff continues. Well, this weekend the Salt Company is doing their annual fall retreat and I decided to just make a Sabbath of it and take an 8-day vacation to test out 1 of many theories for why I keep getting sick (WebMD and other online sources have become my best friends, giving me many ideas for what I can try and see if it makes me feel better)… so I’ve been trying them. So far none has been a huge help, though some have shown positive signs so I keep going with them.

I live with 4 other guys at the Pretzel Palace, so I don’t want to be the bum that doesn’t do anything for a week, so I’ve decided that during my vacation I’m going to work on some of the projects I’ve been thinking about doing since I’ve moved in.

Last week we had a situation that came up involving food that was trying to kill us. We believe it to be some chicken that has been sitting in our refrigerator that expired at the beginning of August. No one seems to know who it used to belong to, but once it released it’s toxic, decomposing fumes all over the place it became almost unbearable whenever someone would open the fridge. I drew the last straw 2 days ago when I pulled out my milk to drink right from the carton (yes, I know that can be considered impolite, but I’m the only one who touches it) and the plastic on the rim of the jug tasted like decomposing chicken. I realized that even the freezer reeked of rotten chicken. So, yesterday I took to the fridge. It took a scrubbing pad, full roll of toilet paper, 2 scented candles and a lot of gagging, but our fridge now smells wonderful and we magically have twice as much space in the fridge as we did before cleaning (I may have tossed a whole bunch of expired food that made it’s way to the back before being forgotten about.

For those of you who have had the privilege to stay at the Pretzel Palace overnight, or the creepy ones who have snuck in to take showers without us knowing, you know that we have a TERRIBLE bathtub. Since I’ve moved in I’ve had to take showers that ended with water up to my ankles. It’s seriously gross. Not anymore. Since I’ve moved in, I knew I was going to fix it, but our bathtub has a weird tub stop… Normally you would expect to see a screw on top of the drain or a cap that pops off to reveal one, but ours was like 1 piece that you can rotate forever and never get any looser and there wasn’t a screw to be found. Well, over the last week I’ve been examining the mechanics of our tub (the little dial that makes it so you can take a bath doesn’t work, so i knew something was fishy with it’s makeup). Finally I decided to make a go of it, and figured out how to remove our drain… I’m pretty sure I pulled out quite a bit of hair from someone who didn’t live here… and I finally know who at the Pretzel Palace is secretly balding… poor guy. I just finished taking my shower to clean up after morning’s work, and I can say there is no cloggage in my tub!

When I cleaned off the tools I used to get this job off I found that the bathroom sink was finally completely clogged too, but there was no visible debris under the stopper. I have to say, I was kind of worried about even attempting this one, because I looked at the pipes and they are metal in both bathrooms and plastic in the kitchen… so the bathroom pipes are probably 30+ years old and at some point the kitchen ones caused problems prompting them to be changed to PVC. So although I was 95% sure where the clog was (in the trap under the sink) I couldn’t take apart the pipe to get at it for fear of breaking the seals or the whole clamp from damage over the years…which I didn’t want to pay for a pipe. Long story short — a run to Lowe’s for a new “Sink and tub ONLY” plunger and some duct tape and now I have no more clogged pipes anywhere in the house… I was hoping I wouldn’t need to get a snake, and I guess I got lucky… It’s amazing what you can do with duct tape 😀

I still have a few more things I’d like to do in the next day or 2, but for now, it’s time to scratch “write a blog” from my list and keep listening to Spotify / find something to do

Things I Like Thursday: September 22nd Edition!!

I’ve got to be honest with you, I ran out of things to write about on Thursdays pretty quickly. I have a few ideas pondering, but the whole point of Things I Like Thursdays was to be something that really caught my attention that week. This week, a new piece of software really did catch my attention, and it really is one of the coolest new things in the future of web media. That’s why this Thursday I like:

SPOTIFY!!!

Spotify has “most” of the cool features that you like from Apple iTunes, except with one major difference… on spotify it’s FREE! Actually, if you use iTunes for anything other than music, there’s actually several things different, but I don’t so Spotify has become an awesome change of pace.

Spotify is a music software program you can download from their website (www.spotify.com) that gives you free access to pretty much every song ever recorded. So far I haven’t found anything not on their (granted I’m not a big music buff). Even my church band’s album is on it! You might remember Napster from several years ago, and you remember that what they did was totally illegal. Spotify is different…. It’s completely legal! They make it free by putting commercials after every few songs and have licensing agreements with all the major producers.

I’m using the free version of Spotify, but for $10 a month (yeah, it’s a bit too much for me…) you get rid of the advertisements, and get 1 more big benefit. You can download all your music so it can go on your phone (if you’re more tech savvy than me) or other mp3 devices. You also get better sound quality… but it’s pretty good even on the free. And since you download the songs, you can play them without internet connection.

Spotify is basically the hulu of the music world. It’s got all the music like iTunes. It’s gives you good suggestions based on the music you have like Pandora. It gives you the ability to listen for free like Grooveshark. It gives you the ability to see what your friends have been listening to like Ping.

So here’s what you got to do to get it… Essentially you have to be invited. If you go to their website and connect with your facebook account and send 1 invitation yourself (I sent to my roommate who already had Spotify) and they’ll send you an instant invitation. Or you can give them your email address and after a day or two they will send you an invitation — if you’re cool… like my roommate did. When you get your invitation, they will let you download it. It only takes a minute to download and then it will let you transfer all your local music, and music from your iPod or Android to it’s library so it has a starting place for music selections… or you can always still listen to your old music if that’s what you REALLY want to do…

As an example, I am currently listening to the new Grungor CD, Ghosts Upon the Earth, on Spotify. I’ve heard of them and have heard one or two of their songs, but never owned any of their music. BUT, several of my friends have either bought the CD or they’ve already listened to it on Spotify, so I got the recommendation to listen to it too. It’s actually pretty good… so I’ll recommend it to my listeners. I know the name makes them sound like they are a hardcore or metal type of band, but they are actually pretty listenable. It’s actually REALLY soft music.

So, I am really interested to see how the music industry will function in the near future. First, buying movies started going out of style with the advent of Netflix (let’s ignore their current issues). Next Hulu took it a step farther and started the beginning of the end for cable/satellite tv by creating instantly available, tv shows on demand for free (or a MUCH bigger selection for just $10 a month). Newspapers have long since been replaced with news website…. iTunes destroyed the concept of buying an album— now you just buy the songs you like. So, does free, legal music mean the end of buying media all together? So much of it is free and instantly available that I don’t see a large market for any sort of hardware attached to music in the next 5 years (except of course there will always be some nostalgic people who insist on the hardware…but they’re dumb). It will be interesting to see how all this turns out.