Friday, October 31, 2003

Crash and Burn


The stage was set. My Thursday night soccer team had finished the regular season in 4th place and squeezed into the playoffs for a chance at the championship. The one team that stood in our way, the first place team. They had already beaten us once this season, but this time with our full team we felt victory was in our grasp! The game started out well enough, they scored two goals on us and we answered with one just before half-time. Down 2-1 wasn't bad at all. Second half starts. Im playing rights-side striker, the ball is played perfectly through their midfield and I get the ball to my feet with one defender left to beat for a shot on goal. He rushes towards me and my soccer instincts take over my feet. I start to do a normal wrong-footing move on him by stopping it fast and switching it from my left foot to my right, to leave him standing still. I plant my left foot on the turf and cut back to my right. At that second I feel a tremendous pain in my left heel. My foot rolls over and I almost collapse to the turf. I regain myself and still have control of the ball. All I can feel is an intense burning in my heel. I pass the ball off to a teamate and get off the field for a sub to come in. I managed to go back into the game and even score a goal on a free kick. They still ended up being too much for us, winning the game 5-2. Ouch. I came home and iced the foot/heel and went to bed. I woke up to try and go to work. I stepped out of the bed.... AAAAHHHHH!!!! No way. I cant even put an ounce of weight on it. The heel is now black and blue and swollen. Looks like a deep tissue bruise. To answer your next question, no... I didn't go to the doctor. I know enough about this type of injury to know what I would be told by a doctor. "Stay off it, put ice on it, take some asprin to help the pain and oh yeah... stay off it", is what they would tell me. I can do that without paying them say it. So, Im going out tonight with some friends. It's going to hurt, im going to be slow... but oh well. I'm tough, it'll heal. I hope.

Thursday, October 30, 2003

New Record!


With the help of the pumpkin carving contest, my site has hit a new one day high in visitations!! The former recored was holding steady at 26 visitors for the day of September 4th, 2001. Now, two years later the site hit the mark of 33 visitors and the day is not over yet! This one will be tough to beat.

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Woop!


Halloween pics from the party are up! Go to thorpeland.com and check them out!

Monday, October 27, 2003

Whew!


Everynow and then I get to have a wall to wall busy weekend. Well this was one of them. It started out Friday evening. Craig, Becki, Amanda K., Amanda Curly, Mandy, Brian and Valerie and I headed over to Ft. Worth to check out a haunted house we had heard about on the radio. It was called "Cutting Edge" Haunted house. I checked out their website and it seemed to be a pretty cool place. They claimed to have a lot of original things and that it was worth the money and trip. Well, we arrived at the location around 10pm and found our way to the ticket boothe. A regular ticket was $20. But you could get a VIP ticket for $25, which included one hour of free game play at Game Works and allowed you to skip the LONG line and go right in. We chose the latter. A few minutes later we were walking by the 100 or so people in a long snaking line and right into the haunted house. We were a little disapointed they charged tax on top of the ticket price, we figured it would have just been included in their final price. So our tickets cost $27.06. I thought, "this better be one good haunted house". The best way to describe the place is, the haunted house that never ends. Which in this case was a good thing. We entered the maze at just after 10pm and finally found our way out at 11:20pm. Over an hour of scares and thrill, which included a timed maze where we were given glow sticks and 5 minutes to find our way out of, numorous floors to navigate through and a foam filled ending. (hehe) So after it was all said and done, it turned out to be worth the amount to go through.
Saturday was Roger and Melissa's Halloween Party! I will soon have pictures up from this event. I had some techincal difficulties during my first upload tonight. They will be up soon. I wore a Landshark costume and was awarded the ribon for Most Creative Costume. Woo Whoo! There were a lot of great costumes though. And we all had a blast. Be sure to check back in the next couple days to see all the pictures I took.
Sunday, which is normally a slow relaxing day, turned out to be exciting also. It was time for another LAN Party. Me and several other fellow PC gamers met at an office building in Dallas to set up our battle network. After about an hour of getting everyone's PC's set up and syncronized it was time for war. The game of choice for the day was Unreal Tournament 2003. The competition was tough, but I managed to rack of a few wins in some of the rounds. A winner was decided when a competitor reached 25 Frags (kills). The LAN Party was a blast, litterally. Ha! I can't wait till our next one. Although hauling all my equipement to my car and back is a lot of work.
All in all it turned out to be a great weekend. I had been looking forward to this weekend for quite a while. Now that it's over, im not sure what to look forward to next. Thanksgiving? hhmm... Ok.

Thursday, October 23, 2003

Unexpected


Recently my department at work held a big meeting to talk about what we had accomplished, what we had planned and anything else our managers could think of. Turns out they had an awards section where they had decided to recognize the people who had done a good job during our recent PC Rollout this last summer. Based on the feedback from our users, I was given an award for my work during the rollout. I totally didnt expect it. But it was pretty cool to get something for all our hard work. Perhaps i'll put a picture of the award on my site somewhere. That was pretty much the highlight of my week. Other than that its been pretty dull. I cant think of anything else for now. More to come im sure.

Saturday, October 18, 2003

Friday


Friday started out with lunch at Subway, yum. From there I took Valerie sightseeing to show her all my college day haunts and hangouts. We started out with a tour of the MSU campus. There she got to see the dorms I lived in, the place I ate lunch and dinner at, the places I studied at.... and the places I tried to study at but fell asleep. After the campus tour her, James and myself, drove out to "The Falls", that are Wichita Falls. Soon I'll have the pictures up on my site on the Adventures page. Basically, its a man-made waterfall that greats people as they drive into town on the highway. Friday evening, we grabbed dinner at On The Border. We all left the place over stuffed. From there we headed over to my friend Tie's (spelling?) to watch a movie on his new 64 inch wide sceen tv, complete with surround sound. Very cool. Now I'm about to crash and decided to do a bit of blogging on my Sidekick before I sleep. James doesn't own a computer, so this has been my only internet and email access for the weekend. What a lifesaver. Haha ok, I'm sleepy. Goodnight and more blogging to come.

Friday, October 17, 2003

Live from Wichita Falls Texas!


Well its Friday morning, so I'll give a review of Thursday night. We arrived in Wichita Falls around 6:30pm and picked up brother James for some dinner at Hunan's chinese restaraunt. Good stuff, buffet! From there it was back to his place to get cleaned up and relax for a bit. Then it was off to the MSU campus for the torch march and bonfire. The fire this year was quite wimpy compared to when I was there for school. From there it was off to play pool. A couple of hours later it was off to crash for the night, by 1:30am. More to come.

Thursday, October 16, 2003

Road Trip!!


It's 3:20pm and at 4pm im hitting the road for Wichita Falls Texas. My girlfriend Valerie and I are headed up to my alma-mater, MSU (Midwestern State University), to partake in some of this weekends homecoming events. Should be a lot of fun. I plan on taking a ton of pictures, which im sure will warrent its own page on Thorpeland.com. Things kick off tonight with the torch march and bonfire, followed by open house at the president of the universities home. Friday night is the cookout/fish fry at the Sikes Lake. I get to stay with Brotha James and whip him at our normal putt-putt and pool competitions. haha Then Saturday is the MSU football game. Should be a great 3 day weekend! Im excited to get it started. Work is just dragging by today.

Monday, October 13, 2003

Ouch


Yup, Rams are sticking it to the Falcons. It's in the 3rd quarter and it's 19-0. Rams just scored a safety before going to commercial. Ouch. You hear that Craig.... OUCH!! I swear, its like your still holding your controller.

MNF!!


Its Monday night and that means one thing..... Are you ready for some football!!? Yup, Monday Night Football on ABC. So here I am sitting on my couch with a bag of chips watching the Atlanta Falcons versus the St. Louis Rams. I guess if I haev to pick a team to cheer for, I'd choose the Falcons. Too bad Michael Vick is out injured. I think the Rams are going to win. Earlier tonight my buddy Craig stops in and we re-created tonights matchup in Madden 2004 (football video game). If our "predictions" are correct, the Rams will win 24-10 tonight. Well, we'll see about that.

Sunday, October 12, 2003

A Night at the Movies


Saturday night me and my friend Doug headed to the theater to see the movie The Run Down. It got good reviews, but that means nothing. Normally I'm not a big fan of "the Rock", but he seemed pretty funny in this one. It turned out to be a very entertaining movie. Lots of action and lots of laugh's. I'll give it a 7 out of a 10, which is pretty good considering most these types of movies are too cheezy to enjoy.

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

Say Cheesy!


My camera attatchement came in today for my T-Mobile Sidekick. Its pretty cool. Pictures are small and nowhere as clear as my Sony digital camera. But handy for things like pic's of friends and interesring things while out and about. I'll post any really good ones i take. On a side note, yesterday was my friend Jenna's birthday! Happy Birthday! She lives in Oklahoma and is a lawyer.

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

Showdown


What a Monday Night Football game! The Colts come back from 21 points down to win in overtime 38-35. The Colts remain undefeated. Its late, im sleepy.. games over. Im out.

Sunday, October 05, 2003

Victory!


Just got in from my soccer game. At half time we were down 2-1. In the second half, we come came back to win 4-2! I had 2 goals, the 2nd goal was a header that slipped between the keeper and a defender a split second before they crashed into me. I guess I took one for the team. Our record is now 3 wins, 1 loss.

Saturday, October 04, 2003

Un-Boo


Wow. And not wow in a good way. The haunted house in Krum Texas is beyond a joke. It advertised a 2000 ft tunnel of terror. Umm...yeeeaah. What we found was a long tunnel, with a 13 yr old kids standing along the wall every 100 feet trying to be scary. Not. I've worked at and helped run a haunted house a few years ago. With a little creativity and hard work, we created a truly scary and fun haunted house. The Krum haunted house had potential, but just fell flat. I hope they figure that out and improve it as halloween nears. It just wasn't worth the $15 they charged to walk through it. Afterwards, me, Valerie and the group went to Beth Maries ice cream shop. Mmmmmmmm... Good stuff.

Friday, October 03, 2003

Boo!


Im sitting around waiting on my friends to get here. We are headed out to the local haunted houses tonight! Fun! This one is a 2000 foot long "tunnel" you walk thru. Should be interesting. More details to come!

Thursday, October 02, 2003

Mobile Man!


I got a sidekick!! In fact I'm blogging from it right now. There's just something cool about writing from my couch with this tiny device. COOL! If you don't know what a Sidekick is, go to www.t-mobile.com, and checkout the sidekick demo.