Complete Surprise!

For the past month Craigs girlfriend, Becci had been planning a surprise party of his 30th Bday. Well it all came to a finale last night at Breadwinners in Dallas. Craig walked into the restaraunt, to what he thought was a dinner with his parents, Becci and her dad but instead found 20+ of his close friends waiting at a large table. To say the least, he was shocked. We all had a great time and the food was awesome! After the dinner, everyone met at his friend Ken's house for drinks and to hang out. It was one of the better surprise birthday parties ive ever been to. Very well organized. Good job Becci! Great job introducing Mr. Craig to the big three-zero. Ha! Although, we already know he's actually 45. :)

2 or 14?

This past Thursday I was invited to a birthday party. But not just any birthday party. It was a party for a dog turning 2 years old. Doesn't that mean she's really 14? Either way, my friend Cheryl felt the need to have a party and decided to use her small brown dogs birthday as a reason. It was only a small gathering of maybe 12 people. I brought small doggie bones as a gift for the guest of honor. We gave her one and she seemed to really like them. As she spent most the evening under the coffee table chewing on it. Anyhow it turned out to be a nice little party for a weeknight.

More the Merrier

Im sure all you avid Thorpeland Blog readers remember the Death of Krusty. It was a tragic and sadening event inwhich thousands attended the funeral. Well this past weekend, the Great Krusty's shoes were filled just a little bit with the arrival of 2 new Hermies! They've been named Moe and Barney and they seem to be bonding quickly with Sideshow Bob. The three of them are always in the same area of the crabitat, huddled together. I may even be getting them some more buddies soon. I really need to get some pics up of these guys. They are very interesting to watch.
On a completely different note, this past weekend was a blast. Friday night a group of us headed out to see the movie, "The Girl Next Door". I was really surprised as to how funny it ended up being. We all had a lot of fun.

But Saturday night is where things got interesting. It started out with about 6 of us hanging out at the Loop Hole, a local bar. The drinking began. (oh boy) Then we decided to go partake in what was called "Cosmic Bowl" at the local bowling alley. This is where they turn out the lights, turn on black lights and blast rock music while you bowl. This was seriously fun. I had not bowled in about 3 years at least! I have to EVP credit, even half drunk the guy can bowl the lights out (no pun intended). He beat me by just a few pins each game. DOH! Dont worry EVP.... I'll be back for revenge!!! Words to the rest of our gang; Cheryl remember, throw the bowling ball forwards not backwards! Therese... just give up bowling. Bryan, not bad dude you were right up there with me and EVP! Becca, I never thought you had the guns to throw a 15 pound ball all that way! hahahaha Emily, you had some mad bowling skills going on. I think you beat your team in each game. Good job! All in all it was a fun night to remember.

Into the Fast Lane!!

Today is a good day for all the nerds in the Thorpeland household. Ok, there's only one nerd... me. But its still a great day. I come home from work to find out my DSL internet connection speed has been DOUBLED! And to top it off at no additional charge to me. Cant beat that! I recent speed test done on dslreports.com shows my speed at 1.46mbps download and 333kbps upload speed. To non-techies, thats pretty good! And much faster than I had before. This is great news for my FTP server and online games. Yup, in the fast lane!

Victory!

My outdoor soccer team finally won a tough game last night, 3-1. To top it off, it was against the 1st place team in our division. It was the best I've seen our team play this season. Everyonee passing, attacking and defending as a team. I didn't score a goal, but came very close in the second half. With the goalie off his line, I lobbed a shot from about 30 yards that arced over the goalie and hit the crossbar of the goal! Doh! Overall I had a good game and had a role in each of our 3 goals.

An Educational Day

So today our big PC rollout moved into the Criminal Investigations Lab of the PD. Facinating stuff I tell ya. I noticed the lab tech working with finger prints on his computer screen. Just out of curiosity, I asked him how he gets them scanned into a digital format to examine on the PC. He leaves the room for a second and comes back with a baseball bat thats wrapped in duct tape. He says to follow him. We go back into a small room where he hands me a set of orange goggles. He turns out the lights in the room and turns on some type of super high intensity blue light. Then he holds the bat under this light. Suddenly, fingerprints appear on the bat! I asked him if its the light causing this? He says, first he lets super glue fumes coat the bat, the fumes stick to the finger prints and allow the light to see them. Thats just so cool!

Some Good News

Well after posting the sad news of Krusty's demise, I am pleased to say Sideshow Bob has come out of the sand from his molting period and is looking good. He's still a little grogy, but is eating and drinking. A good sign! My fingers are crossed he'll be just fine.
On a nerdy note of good news, today Ubisoft announced the release of Ghost Recon 2 for later this year! This is great news considering this is the game my friends and I play frequently. The original GR came out almost 3 years ago! It has been time for an update for quite a while. So im really looking forward to that!

A Very Sad Day

Its a sad day in Thorpeland. This morning as I got up to make breakfast, I did my normaly routine of checking on my two hermit crabs Krusty and Sideshow Bob. To my dismay, I see Krusty's large shell upside down..... and EMPTY! My eyes quickly darted around the crabitat, soon to find him at the other side. He was laying on his back, dead. :( His little blue abdomen, curled up. I dont understand quite why he died. He had just finished his molting period successfully. He was up about about this past week, feeding, drinking and being quite active. I was very proud of him for bouncing back from his traumatic exo-skeleton shedding. I had been meticulous with this care and feeding. I will have to do some research to see what may have gone wrong. His little buddy, Sideshow Bob is still under the sand molting. I hope he pulls through ok when he wakes up and realizes his big buddy is gone. Sad days in the crabitat. :(

Opa!!

Another episode of Dinner Club as come and gone. This was a fun one as we all headed into Dallas for a evening of delicious Greek food! In attendance were good bud's Therese (yes she made one!), Becca (no longer a DC virgin), Craig, Becki and myself. The evening started off quite interesting and could have been disasterous! While driving over to my place Therese and Becca almost hit a guy standing in the middle of the highway off ramp! He was just standing there, in the middle of the lane, starring straight forward. They hit the breaks, avoiding flattening him. Becca, being Becca... jumped out of the car to see what his problem was and why he refused to move. Meanwhile, in the safety of the car, Therese frantically dialed 911. The guy tells Becca he recently had a car accident and while in the hospital, no one came to see him and now he just wanted to die. So, this was his chosen way to go. Stand in the middle of the road and let a car do the job. A short time later, the cops showed up and cuffed & stuffed him. Therese and Becca arrived at my place safe but a bit rattled. At first I was afraid that was going to ruin the evening. But after they had a couple drinks at the bar, all was good again. haha Once in the restaraunt, called Opa!, things settled back to normal. The food was great. It seemed like it had been mellowed out a bit from its original Greek recipes, but still very tasty. We all left the place totally stuffed and met up at another Cafe Brazil in North Dallas to talk and have drinks. This is where I found a new favorite coffee; Tiramisu (spelling?) flavored. Awesome stuff! Tastes just like the Italian dessert. Somehow our conversation of the night turned to the Waco Texas Standoff which happened back in 1995 or somewhere around then. The debate seemed to center around who was at fault for the event ending fire and gunbattle, the government or the cult in their compound. On my left!! (in my best announcer voice) We have Becca, who blames the US Government for just about everything from the death of the cult members to the sky being blue. And on my right! Craig, who claims the ATF/FBI did things right and by the book and the deaths were not their fault. Despite overwhelming evidence against her, Becca stood by her guns. I'll give her credit for that, even when her defense looked weak. My interest in the arguement faded in and out. I needed more coffee. Overall, a great evening. You missed out E.V.P.!!