Saturday Re-Cap

After sleeping off my high octane coffee and waking up refreshed, Saturday was upon me. I was scheduled to make a PC repair run up to my parents house. Complaints of my mom's and brothers PC's running very slowly kept them calling and emailing me all week. I feared it would be the newest Sasser virus. So i came prepared. But what I found was much less serious. Malicious spy-ware was the cluprit. A quick run through with Spybot and Adaware and their systems were clean and running tip top again.

A forty minute drive home later, I was preparing for the real event of the day. A group consisting of Mike, Cheryl, EVP (Eric), Therese and myself were to head down to the Taste of Addison festival going on all weekend. Basically, each year the city of Addison Texas throws a huge outdoor festival where all of the restaraunts in the city can set up boothes for people to hop from one the other tasting the foods for only a couple bucks per stop. They also bring in a big name music act to finish off the evening. Our first stop was the booth of the Macceroni Grill, a tasty Italian eatery. I got a bowl of some type of bow-tie pasta. It was good! But barely put a dent in my starving belly. Next stop, The Magic Time Machine. This fairy tale themed restaraunt has the staff dressing up as various characters from child hood stories and poems. I think some roman gladiator served me my steak and veggie shish kabob. Like most everything, it was awesome. Cooked perfectly. (Sorry Eric) haha Getting a little full, we decided it was time to find dessert. What better than the boothe of the Marble Slab, ice cream shop. I ordered their chocolate ice cream sunday. Covered in chocolate topings and whip cream, it was the perfect dessert. After that, I was about to pop I was so full!

The group had gotten split up after a bit of cell phone tag, we met up again with Craig, Bex and Ken. We worked our way around the park to the main stage area where the music performance of the night was. On stage at the time was the group Blue October. I recognized one song they played but the rest I had no idea of. As it got dark and all the stage lights began to come on, they announced the main act of the night... the B-52's! I have always like the B-52's and have a couple of their CD's. By the time they came on stage, there were probably a few thousand people standing in the lawn seating area. It was a great time! They sounded exactly like they do on CD. Which was good because some groups suck when live. The event ended a little after 11pm and we walked to a near by coffee shop and had some drinks. Everyone headed home finally around 1am, exhausted. It was a really fun evening. I took some pic's with my phone cam, since I didnt have my real digi-cam with me. I'll try to post some of them soon!

Friday Re-Cap

With the end of the week here and an impromptu DC (Dinner Club) planned, the weekend was off to a good start. This time it was a smaller group consisting of only Therese, Craig, Becci, Ken and myself. The restaraunt was choosen by Mr. Craig and this time he reccomended "The Canary", in Addison. This was an interesting place. The sign out front says, "The Canary - Japanese by day, Medeteranian by Night". Odd combo I must say. The place was fairly small and dark, with candle lit tables spread thru the room. There was a 4 piece jazz band playing in the corner, which added a nice atmosphere. Looking at the menu, I noticed a wide variety of sea food and pasta type dishes. Everything sounded great. Prices ranged from $8 to $25, not bad all considering. We placed our orders and snacked on an appetizer while waiting. Thats when things got intersting, and almost disasterous! We had 2 candles burning at our table. But they weren't actually candles, they were small glass jars of, i guess, kerosene with a wick that soaks up the fuel and you light the end. Well Ken first says the one on his end of the table is making him nervous and he fears he will hit the flame with his arm. So he blows it out. No problem. Minutes later, he says his end of the table is too dark now. But rather than asking the guy who runs the place to relight it, he takes the small lantern and tries to tip it over on its side to use the other OPEN FLAME to relight it!!! I stare in disbelief as the fluid from one lantern spills out over the OPEN FLAME of the other one. Lucky for us, rather than a huge fireball like explosion, it just dowsed out the other flame leaving us with no candles. Whew! The owner rushed over and with a nervous smile on his face, told us to ask him to relight them next time. Ha! We agreed.... right Ken? :) A short time later, our food arrived. I can honestly say, this was some of the best restaraunt food I'd had in a long long time. I ordered salmon with some type of glaze and pasta, surrounded by grilled vegetables. Everything was delicious and perfect! I think the rest of the group enjoyed their food equally. After dinner, we ordered Turkish coffee. They brought it to us in a tall, thin, mug like glass. I added my normal amount of creme and sugar (a bunch) and took my first sip. Strong coffee! It reminded me almost of the Cuban coffee my grandpa used to make for my mom, which I used to steal sips from as a kid. I knew after a glass of this, I would be wired the rest of the night. I was. Overall it was a great Dinner Club, that will be remembered!

A Room With a View

I just got home and cleaned up from an awesome road trip to the beaches of Galveston Texas! Good friend Cheryl has been accepted to medical school and needed to find an apartment in the Texas coastal city, four of us (cheryl, mike, emily and myself) loaded up our bags and took the 5 hour drive to help her find a place to live come August. The drive down wasn't too bad at all. I was picked up at my apartment by Mike and Emily, then the three of us proceeded to into Dallas to pick up Cheryl at her work. From there it was onto highway 45 South, bound for Houston. After a couple stops for food and to refuel, we hit Houston around 11pm. The excitement begin to build, knowing Galveston was just under an hour away. Sure enough, just before midnight we rolled up to our hotel, the Victorian, located right across the street from the beach. It was a very cool feeling to step out of the car and smell the ocean and hear the waves crashing on the beach! We took our bags up to the room and got settled. The Victorian was the type of hotel room that has a full kitchen, so we decided we'd better get some food for the next couple days. Lucky for us, Walmart was right next door. So, even though we were tired, we headed out on a short walk to Walmart. Thirty minutes later, we're on our way back with good stuff in hand. Everyone crashed pretty quick once we were back in the room. Exahaustion was catching up! Saturday was going to be a big day. Falling asleep though, wasnt so easy for me. My assigned bedding would be the fold out couch in the hotel living room. Sometimes you get lucky and they are comfy. Not this one. My head and legs were facing downhill, and my back elevated up about 6 inches. I joked with the others saying I didnt actually fall asleep Friday night, I passed out because of the lack of blood flowing to my head. LOL I eventually got comfortable and fell asleep.

Saturday morning came and the sun woke me up as it shined in our sliding porch windows. As I got up I noticed Mike and Cheryl had not left yet to go apartment hunting. They were just too tired to get out of there by 8am. It was now 10am and we were all just getting going. I walk out on to the porch to see our room overlooks not only the pool and courtyard of the hotel, but a nice view of the ocean. We were on the 3rd floor, so I can see probably about 10 miles out to sea. I find myself mezmerized by the distant oil drilling platforms barely visible on the horizon. Are they starring back at land, wondering the same? Ha! Anyhow, we all eat breakfast (cereal from Walmart), then Cheryl and Mike head out to look at apartments. Emily and I now have a few hours to kill while they are out, so we decide to get cleaned up and head down to the beach. Now, for those who have never been to Galveston, the wind is a constant 30mph gust at all times it seems. Also being that it is still only May, the water was quite chilly. So we decided to go down in just shirt and shorts rather than swimsuits. When we got down to the beach, there actually were a lot of people swimming. Although, mostly kids... which will swim in the waters of the arctic circle if you let them. There were a lot of fishermen on the piers and others walking the beach just taking in the scenery. First thing I noticed was, unlike other beaches ive been to, the Galveston beaches have a lot of washed up seaweed. There were also a lot of Man-O-War jelly fish lying around. This is something Emily took an interest in. Each one we found, she would poke with a stick and step on until their big clear air sack, popped. Not so mean i suppose. They are already washed up and doomed, why not finish the little poison buggers off? LOL We walked the beach for about a mile. Then got a call from Mike and Cheryl saying they were on their way back. Turns out they had'nt had much luck apartment hunting. Or at least finding what they were looking for. From there we ventured down into the tourist distric of Galveston called "The Strand". Its full of open doored shops, horse carriage rides and things to do. It was a lot of fun!

With the evening coming up on us and everyone getting hungry, we decided on a Mexican food place called Tortuga, located across the street from the beach. Good food! We left there stuffed and decided to find a bar, or somewhere to hang out. We stopped at a place, which i cant remember the name of. It was alright, but we were practically the only ones there. Slow night? We had some drinks and left. We decided to walk the beach sidewalk and look thru some of the stores still open. One we came across was very cool. They sold all kinds of coastal city type souveniers, like giant shells, hermit crabs, full shark jaws, etc. It was very intersting. We got back to the hotel close to 1am. We were beat from all the walking, and decided to crash and prepare for our last day.

Everyone got up really early on Sunday, I think it was at least 9am. We cleaned the room and gathered our stuff. Checkout was at 11am, so we couldnt be too lazy. We ate our cereal breakfast and headed down for checkout. Of course, on our last day there, it was perfectly sunny and warm. The wind was still whipping, but it was more bearable. As we headed out of town, we decided to make one more beach stop. We took more pictures and took in the sights, then it was time to start our long drive home.

Nothing too eventful during the drive. It was a slow 5.5 hours. I wish I had more time to spend in Galveston. There is more I would have liked to done. I will definatly go back when Mike and Cheryl move there in August. Hey, there's nothing better than having someone to stay with at a great vacation spot! Perhaps I'll just fly down next time though. Haha! Check my site soon for pictures!

Thru the Five Hole!!

Just got home from playing 2 hours of pick up in-line hockey. Wow, I had forgotten what a workout that is! It has been almost 4 years since I played roller hockey. What a blast! I was a little slow on my skates at first and my stick skills weren't as sharp as they once were. But with each shift I played, I got a little sharper. That is until an hour had past and my legs felt like wet noodles and I was flat out exhausted! What a great workout. I keep this up, combined with soccer... I should be in great shape in no time. The only down part about it is pick up hockey is from 10pm to midnight, on Thursdays. Could make for a tough Friday morning at work. Oh well, its worth it! Despite my slowness of getting back into the game, I did have one really nice shift where I scored 2 goals and got an assist! He shoots.... he scores!!!

Tunes

If you're into downloading MP3's and actually want to do it legally, I hav to recommend the Music Match Player and service. Like all the others, their songs are all .99 cents and they come in Windows Media Audio (WMA). This is fine for listening to them on your pc, but if you want to take them on the go-go you'll need to convert them to MP3 format. Easily done. Burn all your recently purchased songs to a cd. Then, in Music Match, click on "Rip From CD". Make sure you choose your default Rip format as MP3 and badda-boom, your songs are now MP3's.

Batter Up!

After not going for almost 2 years, I finally took in a Texas Rangers baseball game with a few good friends. The day started at around 3:30pm when Mike cheryl and Emily picked me up in the hooptie (mikes boat like car) and we all headed south to Arlington. We found out that the Rangers game from Friday night had been rained out and it would be a double header on Saturday night so our game would start later. We headed to Brian's parents house in Arlington, which was practically across the street from the Stadium. His parents were awesome and provided us with a full dinner of bar-B-Q, and side dishes with dessert. That was great stuff! We watched the first game on TV and just kicked back waiting till it was time to get our tickets. At the bottom of the 7th, we walked over to the stadium, got our tickets and found our seats, now accompanied by Brian and Mandy. I should have known we were in for a climb. Our tickets were only $2.50 each! Turns out, we were 4 rows from the top of the stadium!! Can we say nose bleed? haha But, we still could see everything very good. So we watched the 8th and 9th innings of the first game then our game started. There was only one home run by the rangers, but it was cool to get to see the fireworks go off when they hit it. The Rangers ended up winning the game 8-6! I took some pics, so i'll try to get them posted soon.

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.!!

Another N00b Down

Last night was the first game of my Mens A division season. Our first match was against a team who had just won the B division championship and has been promoted to A. Losing to them would be a bit humiliating so we had everything to play for. So far in the history of our team we were 2-0-1 against new teams coming into our league, playing in their first game. We didnt want to add our first loss to that record! At the starting whistle we were missing 3 of our better players, so we only had one sub and knew it would be a tough game. In the first half, the new team matched us goal for goal. Each time we put one in the net, they managed to find a way to score back. At half time it was 6-6, and although we were tired we could tell we were starting to wear them down. Sure enough, we began to score more freqently in the second half. As my team went on a 3 goal scoring streak, they failed to answer with a goal each time. One of those goals being my second of the night, off a right foot shot that was deflected by a defender into the corner and out of reach of their keeper. At the final whistle, the score was 11-6. We were happy with that score.

Rollin.... Again

Well just like we did almost a year ago, my place of work is rolling out more new PC's to another group of our users. So far its not going to bad. We burne thru the first building in one day. Not bad. We only have about 200 more PC's to go. Should be an interesting month.
Last week my friends and I gathered for another meeting of the Dinner Club. This time we chose a place a bit less extravegant. We met up at the Studio Movie Grill in Addison, Texas. Those that have never been, its a very cool place. It is a movie theater, where you sit at tables and order regular food while you watch the first run movies. We decided to see Starsky & Hutch. Man, what a funny movie! Dont worry, you dont have to remember the original show to enjoy the movie. We were all laughing our butts off. After the movie, half the group had to leave to make another event. Me, Therese, Eric, Craig and Becki headed out to Cafe Brazil for some good desserts and coffee. It was a great time had by all. We're now planning the next dinner club in April. Hopefully I'll be able to take pics at this one!

Gentlemen.... Let's Peel Some Skin!!

For those that know me, they know I have 2 pets. Well... not like the ones you'd think of. They dont bark, meow, swim or cuddle on my lap for petting. They are hermit crabs. And while you think they are just crabs, you would be wrong. Krusty and Sideshow Bob each have their own distinct personalities. Although currently, they are going thru a rather traumatic crab process called "molting". Basically, once every few months the crabs grow and need to shed their exo-skeleton and grow a new one. Well right now they are both in mid-skin-shed. They are either burried or half burried in the sand in their aquarium. Krusty has half his bodies exo-skeleton worked off of his torso. I cant see Sideshow. He's dug himself into a deep hole. This is the first time ive had them when they have molted. According to crab experts, after the molting it complete the crabs will eat their exo-skeleton. Kinda gross... yes. But it has important nutrients for them. This will be an interesting process to watch. I'll be posting some pics soon!

Worth It?

So my friend MD tells me a funny story the the other day. He tells me about "back in the day" when he and the band he was playing in, needed a cheap place to live and practice. They found an apartment in a rough area of dallas for only $400 a month that they could all live in. He says to me, "ah, yes that is where I heard my very first drive by shooting". Geeze... hit the dirt! He goes on to tell me about a time where they were all sitting in the living room, when their drummer leans forward and peeks thru the front drapes. Then he says, "you guys gotta see this!". They all look out the window to see a guy standing in the grass of their apartments, firing a gun at someone across the street! I think that is where I would say, time to pack the bags and get out! Is it really worth the rent? haha I like the idea of safety in the places i live. Call me crazy! Anyhow, I found that story to be pretty interesting. Thanks Big MD!

Not a Whole Lot

Well I have'nt blogged in about a week because nothing has happened! My indoor soccer team did lose our championship match. Oh well, there's always next season as the Cubs say. My hermitt crabs are both in full molting right now. Its kinda strange, Krusty looks like his body is falling off of him and out of the shell. What is actually happening is he's shedding his exo-skeleton and growing! Time to get him a bigger home I guess (bigger shell). Sideshow Bob is still burried under the sand, with his small airhole being the only view I have of him. I hope he's doing ok down there. Everynow and then I use the water bottle to spray some water down in on him.
This coming saturday, a bunch of us are playing paintball on a "speedball" course. Should be some fast and furious action! I'll try to take some good pictures, and even some video. Sunday, Brotha James comes down for a visit, trash talk and all. We'll see what he's got.
As for work, we've been in turbo mode getting ready for a second PC rollout. We also got approval to get our department renovated. So construction starts soon. Wooo Whoo.. new walls! haha Its going to be a crazy month or so ahead. To top it off, we've been told we are getting a 3% cost of living raise starting at the end of April. Not much, but hey i'll take it. So, not much this week going on but lots to write about in the coming weeks.

Life on Jupiter

Im currently sitting in a new internet coffee house here in town called Jupiter Cafe. Pretty cool. This is my first time taking my laptop out to an internet cafe and logging on. Other than that I just use it to check my mail from the couch when im too lazy to walk over to my real pc. So, its sunday night and im off work monday. My buddy James was supposed to drive down from wichita falls today but he called me last minute to tell me his dad had to go into the hospital. I hope he's ok. Well, I had already requested the day off work to spend with james so I thought why not go out tonight to Jupiter Cafe and chill with some live jazz music, a chai tea and my laptop. Fun times if you ask me!! Now, I knew it would be interesting to see how they have people connect to their WiFi network. They chick at the counter gives me my chai tea and then a user name and password. After about 15 minutes of wrestling with my laptop settings i finally figured out what i needed to do. I cant get my firewall to let me past their router so, i had to disable it. Yikes I know. Once I find their router IP and i can designate it as a trusted network and hopefully it will let me thru. The internet access here is really cheap. Its $2 for an hour or $5 for a day. Cant beat that eh? And the drinks are good too! Funny thing... when i first couldnt get online, I asked the waitress as she was walking by if she had seen people having this log on problem before. She looked at my screen and as I looked back at her, she either rolls her own cigerettes or had a huge doobe hanging from her lips. Hhmmm.... a new meaning to the phrase "smoke'em if you gott'em". haha So Im up and running now and the first thing I thought id do is blog. Yeah, im cool. About 10 feet in front of me is a guy playing solo on guitar. Is playing some slow jazz number where he mumbles a few words ever 30 seconds or so. Its ok, he's decent.
Outdoor soccer was rained out again today. Blah. So to make up for the lack of physical activity, I hit the gym with a vengance to punish me for my lazyness. haha Ok just kidding, i just wanted to do something active during this rainy day. I ran almost 2 miles on the tread mill, did my 6 sets of 15 crunches on the inclined bench while holding a 15lb dumbell to my chest and then got on the stationary bike for a 10 minute hilly ride. I was beat. So its kinda nice to relax in here for a while. Ah, the good life. haha

Deserved Beating?

Ya know some people just deserve a good a** kicking. Top of my list. Ryan Seacrest. Yes, gasp in disbelief. I was watching, I think its called Access Hollywood the other night. And they started to talk about the top "metro-sexuals" in Hollywood. First off, i hate that term and I'll rant about it a bit later. Anywho, they list Miss Seacrest as one of the top in the field. They went on to talk about his weekly grooming. He tans twice a week, gets his finger and toe-nails done, has his hair highlighted, has some type of mud body scrub done and something else i cant remember at this moment but sounded ridiculous. Ok, ANY man who does all this to look pretty just needs a good pummeling. There is no way I can have any respect for a guy who grooms himself like that. Its one thing to try to look sharp and look your best. But, c'mon!!! So, ive now concluded that the term "metro-sexual" simply means girly man to the highest degree. Let the butt kicking begin.

Losing Sunday

Well my outdoor soccer team falls 5-2 after a disasterous second half. Leading 2-0 at half time we had to go into the wind second half. They score 5 unanswered goals to kill us. Oh well. Later that evening my Ghost Recon team loses 2 close matches to teams we could have beat. They went down to the wire. Very exciting but still... a loss. On the up-note. Tonight (monday) we did bounce back by beating another team 5-1 in a best of 9 match. Perhaps my luck is turning up now?

Saturday In Deep Ellum

So far, Saturday has been pretty eventful. A morning call from my buddy Craig and he, I and his girl Becki were off to Deep Ellum and a restaraunt called Crescent City Cafe. There we met up with two of their friends, who's names escape me at the moment. The place is a French/Cajun type cafe, nice atmosphere. If you ever go you MUST try the sandwhich called a Muffalata. Its on some type of toasted bread they bake there, with from what I could tell... ham, egg and some other stuff. It was very DELISH. Be sure to chose the half or quarter order. A full sandwhich is larger than most normal humans could consume. So I got the quarter order with a side bowl of crawfish etouffee. Good stuff! I was so full after just that. Then, came dessert. We got something called Beignets. They look like little hot pockets except no meat in them. Just a sweet bread dough that you sprinkle powdered sugar and pour a bit of syrup over. OOOOH... good! From there we went over to Fair Park and to the Dallas Science Museum. They were having an exhibit on terrorism and the whole 9/11 thing. They had some parts and pieces from the twin tower ruins and lots of pictures. Then they had a huge storyboard along the wall that explained how the drug bussiness fuels terrorism. I was just impressed that they had a real AK-47 there to show what the baddies like to use. I took some pictures. Perhaps I'll post them. Weeeelll.. more to come, im sure.

Lots of Time

Because of recent changes in my social surroundings, I now have lots of free time. Gee, what do I do with it all. Well ive learned that with all this time i can actually keep a clean apartment, catch up on reading, finish up countless projects, catch up on TV shows, rearrange my furniture and even clean ALL the lent out of my belly button. Wait, ignore that last one. (eeww) Several fun things are on the horizon for the near future. Soon comes the LAN party, a possible camp out, a visit from Brotha James and a paintball tourny. Should be fun stuff to share with all.

The Big Four-Zero

Well Happy Birthday to my buddy Roger. He turns 40 this coming weekend but we had a surprise party for him this last weekend. The party was organized by his sister Melissa. It was a total surprise to him when he came in the back door and we all yelled Happy Birthday!! I thought for sure he was going to have a heart attack and fall over. The party was a blast, with about 20 people attending. The pictures are up on my site so all can view the celebration. I have to give a "shout out" to my bud's at the party that I had a blast with. Jimmy, Cliff, Brad, Jill, Katy and Melissa it was great to see you all again. I look forward to next time!

Blogging to Blog

Not really too much going on this week. The weather sucks. Its cold, cloudy, windy and rainy out today. Where I am, Seattle? Im hoping it dries up enough by Sunday so we have an outdoor soccer game. I hate playing in the cold and wind and the league wont let us play if the fields are slop. It tears them up too badly for the rest of the season.
Well, its looking like another huge LAN party is on the horizon. One of the guys from my gaming group has secured a large room and large tables. Perfect for setting up 15 or so computers and and packing nerds and pizza into a building for 6 hours. Oh the fun!!

Another Late Update

Wow, im really getting lazy about these updates! I was just sitting here at work, and I thought... uh-oh, I havent updated the Thorpeblog in a log time!! So here I am, trying to write in a few quick things before lunch. Lets see, whats been going on? Oh yeah, my buddy Dan flew into town from LA for a family get together. I didnt get to see him much, but while he was here me, Drew and him met up at one of our favorite restaurants, La Hacienda. For those that do not know what La Hacienda is... your missing out! Its a "Tex-Mex" place that makes fajitas that are unbelievable. Im getting hungery just typing about it. Im not sure how many there are around the USA, but there are at least 3 I know of in the Dallas area alone. Needless to say, we stuffed ourselves. Funny thing, Drew has a thing for their salsa dip. So we get our bowl of tortilla chips and he burns thru 4 bowls of the stuff! The waitress gives him a bowl sealed in a to-go bag. But after he finishes his meal and the 4 bowls of the salsa he already had... he opens the bag and digs into the to-go salsa. Crazy I tell ya. haha
Also, a Texas rarity, we got hit by a "snow storm" last saturday. It was kinda neat. Reminded me of my days in Chicagoland. Although we only got about 6 inches of the white stuff, the news and weather stations here were acting like it was practically the end of the world. Talking about how to drive safe, stay warm, care for you pets and plants, how to walk in it.... it was hilarious. Drew and I were joking about how up north the weather man would have said, "... and this morning we got a little snow, looks nice out... Now on to sports." But here our weather man devotes the entire day to "Snow Storm Coverage". Too funny. Well gotta run and do some work. More to come.

A Late Update

Yeah, yeah... so it's Thursday and im doing a last weekend recap. So sue me. haha Last saturday the Dinner Club met again. This time it was off to Addison for some Mongolian Barbeque. For those that have never been to Ghengis Grill, its quite an experience! First you go thru this buffett like area full of raw beef, chicken, pork and tofu. (blah!) Then you pile veggies, stir fry mixes, seasonings and tons of other stuff into your stainless steel bowl. From there you head over and get in line around what looks like a giant, round, steel table. Probably about 10 feet in diameter. Once there, they take your bowl from you, plop it upside down on this hot steel surface and begin to beat and mix it with a pair of sticks. When your meat or tofu (blah!) is fully cooked and your veggies are done, they use the sticks and scrape it back off into a new bowl. You then get to choose between steamed or fried rice and your back off to your table. To say this food is delicious would be the understatement of the year. Its all you can eat so if you finish your first bowl, its back up for more. And if your food sucks, its your own fault... you created it. Normally im good for about 4 bowls. But this time i was tapping out after 2 large bowls. Most everyone made it to at least their second bowl. Dinner Club members in attendance were Val, me, Mandy, Therese, Craig, Becki, Cheryl and Mike. We had a really good time. Funny thing. After we left Ghengis Grill we went next door to a store called Condom Sense. We thought it would be a good laugh. Oh, it was. As i walked in, I expected to see a store that mainly sold different types of condoms. Kinda boring if you ask me. But nooooooooo. Not this place! They had a small corner dedicated to condoms. The rest of the store had every type of sex device, aid, contraption, pump, crutch, tool, assistant.... whatever. There was even a life sized sex doll for like $800!! I really feel sorry for anyone who forks out money for something like that. hahaha We walked thru the isles laughing and making jokes at just about every device we saw. It was a hoot. Just like us, most people in there were doing the same thing. Not shopping, just there after eating and having a chuckle. Sad thing was, there was this guy walking around there. Probably mid 40's. He was in the corner and carrying something he had picked up to buy. He was asking the girl working there all these serioius questions about different stuff. It was actually kinda creepy. Geeze buddy, just get it off the internet. Well, after about 30 minutes of looking around we all left. I was so full I was useless the rest of the night. Went straight home and fell asleep.
Saturday was also the first practice for my outdoor soccer team. I arrive at the fields and it is COLD! With temps in the upper 30's, low 40's and wind gusts of 30 mph... i knew it was going to be a tough practice. We were scrimmaging another team that would be in our division. So this would be a good judge of where we stood in our league. Although none of us on our team knew eachother, we had never played together before and we played sloppy... we managed to beat the other team like 4 or 5 to 0. Good showing id say. They didnt even manage to get a good shot off on our goal. After the scrimmage, the entire frozen team all decided to meet up at the local Hooters restaraunt. Once there everyone got to start talking and getting to know eachother. I didnt eat because I knew we were going to Ghengis Grill that night. (yes i know these events are backwards) :) The team ordere a platter of 50 hotwings. Ive never seen chicken wings turn to a pile of bones so fast. Wow.
Sunday was another fun day as RSi (www.red-sector.com) was competing in Mission 4 of the Azzcup Ghost Recon tournament. I was originally in the reserve pool but as the insertion time neared I was called to duty. I was briefed on the mission intel, voice comms were configured, fire team load-outs were decided and then we waited for the go command. The only thing we knew so far was it was a night time insertion into a Georgian (Russian province) rebel controled area. We were to rescue a hostage from a castle compound and assasinate their leader, then get to the EZ. The tournament isnt over, so I cant talk about what happend or our final score... yet. I have to wait until all teams have finished the final round. But i will just say, things went surprisingly well. :) Check back for a detailed update soon. (If you care)

What a Battle!

Well my Thursday night soccer team finished the regular season in fourth place. This got us into the playoffs, barely. Our first round match was against the first place team. If we beat them, we are in the final against the winner of the 2nd and 3rd place game. We battle hard early in the first half. Later in the half, I get the ball on the left side. A quick shot fake, I cut it inside and fire off a right footed shot that slides right into the lower left corner of the net. Goal! Seconds ticking away in the half. One of our guys is down in the corner fighting for the ball on the offensive end. He blasts it into the corner and it comes out to me right at the top of the goalie box. I hit it with a one touch, left foot shot. Goal!! Again in the lower left corner. The buzzer goes off and we are all pumped up. We are beating the first place team. They are stunned and silent. Second half starts and they come out very aggressive. Before we know it, they go on a 4 goal scoring streak! We are down 4-2. But we arent done yet. Collin and another one of our guys (cant remember his name off-hand) score 2 goals. We are tied and back in it! Then we commit a foul near our goal just outside the goal box. We set up a poor defensive wall and they shoot one in. 5-4, them. We pound away at their defense getting so close each try. The clock is ticking down fast. With just seconds left... they score on another free kick. 6-4... final whistle blows. We are on to the consolation 3rd place game next thursday and they are in the final. Oh well, we gave the top seeded team a scare. They expected an easy match against the lowest ranked team in the playoffs and instead almost got beat.

Week In Review

Lets see where I left off. Ah, last friday night. That following saturday, I get a call from my buddy Craig. He says, "pack up your pc... LAN party!!" Turns out it as a Halo and Ghost Recon LAN party to be specific. And everyone else except for one other had Mac's. There were about 7 of us crammed into the living room of a small house. The floor was covered in wires, cables and hubs. We played for a couple hours then ordered pizza and drinks. Then, played on till about midnight. I was exhausted! Without missing a beat I was up the next morning at 8:30am for a Sunday paintball game down at the Corp of Engineers woodlands near the lake. Me and Courts get there and find we have 8 others already there! It turned out to be a great day of paintball. It was a little chilly but all the running and crawling thru the woods really helped keep everyone warm. I carried my camera with me for a couple rounds and took some pics. They are up on the site under Hobbies\Paintball. What i found funny was there are all these guys there with $200 plus guns and im getting just as many kills or more with my $20 paintball gun. Its gotta be the shoes? Or just my mad skills. haha We played till about 4:30 in the afternoon. A 20oz. tank of air and 1000 rounds of paintballs later I was home and beat. Spent the rest of the evening watching the NFL playoffs and vegging on the couch. It was nice. That night I went over to Val's and we decided to venture down to the new Jupiter Cafe coffee shop. We get there and even though its about midnight, the place is packed! Not an empty seat. So we got our coffee and Chai Tea and headed home. Monday we were off work for MLK day. I spent most of that chilling at the house cleaning the place up and working on a couple PC's. Nothing exciting. Tuesday comes and its back to work for the week. Whoopee! A pretty un-eventful week at work. We are preparing for the big ICMA conference we are hosting so we're working hard to show a clean house to our guests. Im not quite yet sure if I care. Thursday rolled around and it was time for my Dallas teams soccer game. We played a Mexican team who were very aggressive and almost violent in their style. I started the scoring off early with a back post header from a cross that looped over the defenders. At that point I thought we'd kill them. But they fought hard and scored a tying goal. It was deadlocked until late in the second half. They scored to make it 2-1. But in the end their rough play and fouls caught up with them. The whistle on the 6th foul meant a penalty shot for us! Our guy made the shot and it was tied 2-2. It ended that way and i was happy to get a point out of the game. Now, here we are back on a Friday. My mom leaves Sunday for Florida so I went up to their place to help her with some computer issues. I came back and jumped online for the traditional "freaky friday" on the RSi GR servers. We played till almost 2am! Man, what fun. Tomorrow I am suposed to have a first soccer practice with a new outdoor team ive joined. But it looks like it will be rained out. Which means I can make my GR training session at 1pm. Should be a good weekend. I'll update later on!

Mix'n Match

Thursday night is one of my two soccer nights. This teams game are all in Dallas, so its a bit of a drive for those late games. So this last Thursday I had a 10:30 pm game. I pack all my gear in my bag and head down to the indoor playing field. I get to the practice field, next to the game field, and sit down on the turf to begin stretching out and putting on my gear. I open my soccer back and find out I left my soccer shoes at home on the floor!! DOH! I ask my entire team if they have an extra pair of shoes I can borrow. Nothing. No one has anything extra. I wore Addidas sandals there, so I couldnt play in those! I then had an idea. I ran to the main building and went upstairs to the office. I asked the guy, "where's the lost and found". He points me to the room and I go to work. Its a huge pile of short, shirts, kids shoes, coolers, soccer balls and even a pair of underwear. (eww) Finally after digging for a bit, I find one size 10-1/2 New Balance cross trainer shoe. I set it aside. I keep digging. I then found a size 10 Addidas tennis shoe. So now i have a right and a left athletic shoe!! I throw them in my bad and hustle back the field. I put them on and my teammates hit the floor laughing. I look like a homeless guy that threw on whatever i found in the alley. HAHA! I played ok. The shoes really felt strange to play in. My touch was off and I had a hard time shooting in them. We did win the game 4-3 so i guess thats all that matters. Hopefully I'll never have to dig for free shoes again. Oh, and if you were wondering... I left the shoes on the bleachers so they would be returned to the lost and found.

Paradise Ends

Well my vacation flew by! My 11 days total of time away from my work place has already come and gone. But it was a busy week! I got lots done, although i didnt get to update Thorpeland. But thats in my plans soon. We are playing another round of paintball this weekend, and I WILL post pics from that. I took my video camera to the last one, but my brother isnt the battlefield camera man he thinks he is. Most of the video is way too shaky and un-usable. So im going with still pictures this weekend. Toward the end of the week, my girlfriend Val moved into a bigger apartment. So we had a "moving party". We had Mike, Cheryl, Craig, Becki, Mandy, Val and myself all carrying stuff from the apartment to the trucks and up to the new apartment. The new apartment was on the 3rd floor. UGG! It wasnt easy getting the washer, dryer and couches up there. And the entertainment center was just as tough. Surprisingly, I wasnt too beat up at the end of the day to go out and have a little fun that night. Me, Val and Craig headed over to the Jupiter Cafe on the square in downtown Denton. Its a new coffee house thats open 24/7. Its about time we got one here, and its a pretty cool one. The only thing they are missing is Wi/Fi connectivity! Im about to head over to Val's place tonight to continue the excavation known as unpacking. But im excited to get her new place all set up. Its a really nice apartment. Its a 2 bedroom, 1-1/2 bath, that is 950 sq. ft! Ok, im off to go help her. Later Thorpeland Fans!

WOOO WHOOO!!

Im on vacation offically today. For the next 7 days I get to just chill and work on projects that ive been putting off because of lack of time or energy. Now im faced with such questions as, will my apartment get cleaned? Will Thorpeland.com get an update? How late will I get to sleep in? haha Those questions and more will soon be answered.

Just Too Funny

About 8 months ago I broke up with the girl I was dating at the time cause things just were'nt right. She didn't get it but I knew I was doing the right thing. So, all these months have passed and I thought id go to her personal web page to read her "whats going on now" page to see how she's doing and how her holidays were. I was surprised to see one immature posting after another immature posting... as resent as this week, making bashes directly pointed at me. And that... is just too funny! Most normal people are able to look back months later on an ended relationship and say to themselves, "yeah, it was for the best it ended". But not her. She continues to make it a point to live in the past and vent her still fuming anger at me, in each of her posts. Well Jenna, if you visit the page and read this post. I only have one thing to say directly to you. GET OVER IT. MOVE ON. There, its out of my system. :)

Fun Times

Well I survived New Years Eve and the day after. Val and I met up with Criag and Becki at her house. There was supposed to be a party there but for some reason or another, everyone canceled. So we all loaded up in her car and headed out to another group having a party. I didnt know them but they were a group of Craig's ex-coworkers from his World Comm days. There were about 6 couples and TON'S of food. I was starving so I introduced myself to the room and hit the buffet with a vengance. haha Later, they decided to play DVD Trivial Pursuit. This is the new version of this old game where your piece lands on a color and you have to watch a short video clip off a DVD as your clue. It was fun. My team won the game on a very ironically funny question. To make a long story short, the answer to the winning question we were faced with was a very bad movie which I recieved for christmas and couldnt stand to watch. (Sorry Steve, its a bad movie. It just is.) The movie being "The Adventures of Ford Fairlane with Andrew Dice Clay". Wow, what a stinker. So after the party we are driving back to Becki's house and I start to get really car sick. And I had not even had anything to drink! I was on the edge of throwing up. But I made it back to her house alive. It was past 3am by that point and they suggested we just stay over. We did and I was out cold asleep within 5 minutes of hitting the pillow. In the morning we all got up and Craig and Becki whipped up a GREAT breakfast! We had waffles, fruit, scrambled eggs and juice. I came home and spent the rest of the day just being a bum, doing small projects around the house. I go back to work tomorrow for one day. Shortest week ever I guess. Im on vacation all next week so I am just wanting Friday to be over with. At 5pm, my vacation begins! I plan on updating my site since I'll have time. I have a lot I want to do but havent had time to. BE SURE TO CHECK BACK!!

PARTY TIME!!

Happy New Years All! Im about to head out the door with Val to Craig and Becki's NYE party. Should be a lot of fun. Im taking my camera with me to get a few pics. Hopefully i can post them on the site. Last night we had a really great Dinner Club outting. We went to a place called Thai Tango. WOW. Simply some of the best Asian food Ive ever had! Great atmosphere, great food and great friends. Overall, a great time! One of our friends flaked out and bailed on us just before dinner. Oh well, her loss. There were 6 of us, including CURLY, (ha!) and we all had a really good evening together. Well im out of here. I will update the site with party info and pics from tonight!

Another One Bites the Dust

Well another Christmas has come and gone. It was a good one this year. Everybody together with lots of great gifts, given and gotten. It started out Christmas eve. I went with Valerie to her parents house. They do their big feast and present exchange on the 24th. They had so much good food I could barely walk when I left there for the drive to my parents house, two hours later. I got one of the coolest gifts from my girlfriend Valerie. Long ago I had talked about getting a hermit-crab. She rememberd and got me a very large hermit-crab with a 10 gallon tank, sand, food/water bowls and play things for him. The next day I went down to the pet store and bought another hermie and another fake driftwood thing with plants growning on it so they have something to climb. I named the large hermie, Krusty... and the newest one I bought, Sideshow Bob. Soon I hope to get my web cam up so I (or anyone else) can watch them during the day. Most the time they are pretty still. But sometimes they get very adventurous and roam and climb around in their tank. As for giving presents, I got Val a few things she had been wanting and needing. One of those things being the movie Finding Nemo. We watched it. Pretty funny for kids or grown ups. I also got my brother a starter paintball gun. We plan on playing again on Jan. 4th and now he has a gun to shoot back with. I plan on taking quiet a few action shots and even some video I can share on the main site.
On another note, the Ghost Recon club I play often with, Red-Sector Inc., accepted me in as a full member! Read all about it at www.red-sector.com .

Chillin on Saturday

Im just hanging out at the pad right now, waiting for Val to give me a call up. We're supposed to go out and do some final Christmas shopping. I still have to get my Mom, Dad and sisters presents. Its all under control. I might go see The Last Samuri tonight with Craig. Looks like an excellent movie. The weather is really nice outside right now. Its close to 68F out and sunny. Sometimes I do miss the snow of Chicago, but i cant complain when i can just wear a long sleeved shirt and jeans and be comfortable. Well Im off to get things done.

The Un-Dead

Today I read one of the most interesting news articles that ive seen in a long time. It was a story from London, England. It seems that the CCTV (security) camera's at Hampton Court Palace, home of King Henry VIII, captured a ghostly figure. Some security guards noticed on their monitor that the double doors of a fire escape were open. They walked out to inspect for intruders and to shut the doors. When they got there, the doors were shut. So they go back to their office to review the video tape. To their disblief, they see a figure in a long thick robe, step out of the darkness of the doorway and close the doors! The freeze frame picture of the figure is incredibly creepy. The palace museum swears it was not a hoax or a prank. They have no explanation for it. From the picture, Id have to say if it was a joke, they did a VERY good job. Its one of the best ghost pictures Ive seen in quite a while. You really just have to see it for yourself. Have a look!!! Go to www.thorpeland.com/ghost.htm

Man Down!

This past Sunday we played another game of paintball. Man, what fun! This time we only had 5 guys, so we played games of 3 vs 2.... hunter/seeker. The 2 man team would go out into the woods and hide. The 3 man team would proceed to slowly hunt them through the woods. Once the teams found eachother, a fierce firefight would break out. Paintballs were flying everywhere, splattering through the trees and branches. With everyone using semi-auto paintball markers, you can shoot as fast as you can pull the trigger. In a single firefight, I would easily burn through 200 rounds of paint. I actually had a pretty good day. Only hit twice all day long. While on the other hand, I was able to land game ending shots on Paul, Courts, Adam and Ken. I even fired a few extra rounds into Courts after he was "dead". He said he yelled "Hit!" but I told him I thought he yelled "Not yet!". Hahaha It was a fun day for everyone. We all went home with humorous war stories to think about until the next time we play. Which should be in a couple weeks. Probably after christmas. I took some pictures with my camera phone, and I may post them if I get the chance.

Wal-Blog

I'm sitting in the checkout line in walmart blogging on my Sidekick. Kinda funny. Man this line is slow. Oh, good news. I found out today that I've been taken in as a "candidate" with a Ghost Recon gaming club (clan), called RSi. Check them out, www.red-sector.com. They are a great group of guys from all over the world. Not to mention they are pretty decent gamers. Geeze, why can't parents control their kids?! The kid in front of me in line is on the floor smashing all the candy in the in line display. The mom just keeps looking down at her and smiling. Will mommy do somthing about this kid or do I need to drop kick it out of the line? Harsh? Maybe.

Surprise, Surprise... Surprise!

My friend Jarod is graduating from college this semester and his girlfriend contacted me and our group of friends to say she's organizing a suprise birthday dinner for him tonight. Should be fun. It's at a Thia food restaraunt. Ive never had Thia food, but I like most other asian cuisines so I'll give this a good try. We are meeting tonght at 7pm and Jarod thinks its only he and his girlfriend, Andrea, having the dinner.
On another note I heard a funny story today. My friend Brandon, Valerie's brother works for a local video rental store. He tells me yesterday he gets a call from a guy who says, "my movie is due tonight but Im not going to be able to bring it in. How can we take care of this over the phone." HA! Brandon politely tells the guy he cant. He has to bring the movie back... thats just the way it works. The nerve of some people... thinking they can talk their way out of being charged when clearly they are at fault.
Tomorrow is another Paintball War day. We are meeting at our wooded location at 9:30am and will battle it out for a few hours. This should be a ton of fun. We are expecting about 10 guys. I'll try to take some pictures.

Woo-Whoo!! ... DOH!

Well this weekend in the NFL it was a weekend of good followed by not so good. First off, the dallas cowgirls lost BIG TIME to the Philidelphia Eagles. That was awesome! With McNabb back and healthy, the Eagles easily picked apart dallas' weak secondary and handled all of the dallas blitz packeges like champs. On one of them, McNabb scrambled out of the pocket away from the dallas players for a 30 yard gain down to the 4 yard line. They scored a couple plays later. On the not so good side of things, my Chicago Bears were leading the Greenbay Packers 14-0 but later blew it to lose 32-21. Oh well, still a good weekend.
As far as activities this past weekend it was pretty low key. Me, Val, Craig and Becki went over to Dave & Busters Friday night for dinner and games. That was a whole lotta fun. We did learn one thing. Of the four of us, Valerie is the best shot with a basket ball. On the time B-ball shooting game where you have 24 seconds to make as many baskets as possible, I shot 21, Craig shot 8, Becki shot 4 and Valerie shoots out the lights with 32!! Great fun.
Also, I started playing FIFA 2004 online after playing enough one player games to be proficient with the controls. My first match up was against a guy from the U.K., using Real Madrid. I knew this would be a tough game so I went with my favorite team A.C. Milan. It turned out to be a very well balanced game. Both sides getting plenty of scoring chances. Late in the second half I had my shot bounce of the goal post, almost a game winner for sure! Moments later, he gets a break away with David Beckham into my penalty box. In a last second desparation tackle, I bring him down and are called for a penalty shot. Well my instincts were correct. I guessed to dive right and made the penalty save! Then, with less than 30 seconds left, he fires one from the top of my penalty box which deflects off my defenders leg and into the upper right corner of my net. He runs out the clock and takes the 1-0 win. Oh well, it was a fun game. Im sure I will win more in games to come!

Blown Chances

Well its the morning after my game which i mentioned in my last posting. What should have been a sure victory, ended in an embarassing 8-8 tie. Lots of mistakes and sloppy defense gave our lesser opponent plenty of chances to get shots on our goal. And they did. By mid second half, we were leading 7-2. Normally this would be enough to secure a win if we just play smart and run down the clock. But no, we didnt. They pulled it to 6-8 with :44 seconds left on the clock. They score and then one of our guys takes his time returning the ball to the center after the goal, so the ref calls a delay of game penalty on him giving him a 2 minute penalty in the box. So now we're down a man. They throw everything they have at us the last :40 seconds, scoring the tieing goal with 6 seconds left. I grab the ball run back to the center circle and look up to see their goalie still high-fiving his team. The ref blows the whistle to start play and with 3 seconds left I chip the ball deep towards their goal hoping to catch him unaware. Their keeper dives back towards the goal line to make the save and tips it just over the open net. Saving the spoiler for them. We had our chances, we should have won. We have to get better.

Untested Opponent

Im preparing for my 9pm soccer game tonight. We're playing a team that is new to our division. So we really arent sure what to expect. But, we have a good squad this season so I think the odd's are strong we'll get a win tonight. But you never know. I'll update soon after the game. After last weeks huge 18-4 slaughter we dished out, team morale is at full throttle. I doubt will score that many again. I hope we do though.

Precious Cargo is in the Nest

Got the pleasure of driving down to DFW International Airport tonight to pick up my mom flying back in from Florida where she was attending my grandfathers funeral. Not too bad of a drive, only about 20 minutes for me. I was afraid traffic was going to spoil my 7pm pickup. Not to fear, I zipped thru traffic in the Saturn 5 Turbo and had her, 2 dogs and 5 suitcases loaded up and headed north before we new it. On the way home my mom confessed a rather chilling story. She said around 1:30am on the morning my grandfather passed away, she woke up suddenly after having an extremely vivid dream of my grandfather standing in the doorway of the room she was sleeping in. He was gesturing and trying to tell her something, then he turned and walked away into the room next door. This woke her up and she couldnt go back to sleep. At 8am, the doctor called the house to tell her my grandfather had passed away earlier that morning. Yeah, strange to say the least. Was it a coincidence, just a dream created from the stress of the situation... or was it really a message being given to her as he passed away? We'll never know for sure but it is awful interesting. Well grandpa... if your somewhere else now and your reading blogs on the internet and you come across mine, we got your message. Goodbye. :(

Bad Santa

Valerie, me, Becca and Dan went and saw the movie Bad Santa on Sunday. As far as comedy's go it would be considered a "dark comedy". But it was still a funny movie. If you are offended by lots of drinking, sex and the "F" word, dont go. Billy Bob Thornton plays his normal slob, perv character very well in this one. But for Christmas movies for this season my favorite still stands with Will Farrels, "Elf". I'll give Bad Santa a 6 out of 10. Entertaining but nothing to go home and wait for the DVD release over.
Oh I almost forgot to mention how great this weekend was simply for the fact that the dallas cowgirls lost BAD to the Miami Dolphins and my good old Chicago Bears whipped up on the Cardinals late Sunday. I love it when a plan comes together. haha

Big D visits Big D

This past Tuesday night my old buddy and former roomate, Dan flew in to DFW for the holidays. Its always a blast when he's in town. Because everyone wants to see him while he's here, we have lots of gatherings with all our old friends. Ive been out with him pretty much each night since Tuesday. Its been a very fun 4 day weekend over the holidays. Last night we all met up at Dave & Busters in Frisco. Dan and I were there to meet up with 3 of his old buddies from high school. One of them insisted on drinking non-stop. Beers, shots, liqour... anything. Sure enough, an hour later he was in the Dave & Busters bathroom, sitting on the floor of a stall with his face laying on a toilet seat, puking his guts out. Gross, yes.... funny? Definatly! ha! It was just after that happened that a surprise guest showed up. Big man, Dustin. He also had a laugh at Dan's sickly friend on the restroom floor. We stayed till the place closed then headed back from distant Frisco. Getting back at almost 3am, I was beat. Contacts out, face first into my bed. Flatline.
On a different note, well a nerdy note, I set up whats called a Team Speak server yesterday. What this does is allows players in tactical type shooter games to put on a headset and communicate using voice during the game. Its very cool and Im excited to get a chance for me and my buds to put it to use in Ghost Recon on our next gaming night! Oh also while Dan was here I talked him into finally retiring his ancient and outdated PC at home. So we went online PC shopping for him, because I know where to get some great deals. When it was all said and done, we got him a rockin system. (Nerds pay attention, everyone else just move along.) When it comes in, his new box will have a ASUS 500mhz FSB MoBo with a 8X AGP slot, equiped with a 2.8 GHZ Athlon XP CPU. It has 512 MB of high speed DDR memory to help it fly thru most anything and a 128MB GeForce vid card to make gaming an unbelievable experience. All this with an 80GB hard drive strapped to it for storage space to spare running Windows XP Pro and for a total of $640. I think mikey likes. hehe

Saturday Gunbattle

Well not quite a "gunbattle" but more of a paintball gunbattle. A few friends and I headed out to the wooded Corp of Engineers land near the lake to play some paintball. As usual, tons O fun. Although we had a small turn out, the paint was still flying. My team was unable to achieve a victory for the day but came close on a couple rounds. Unlike the last paintball match which was played on whats called a speedball field, this was thick woods. Which means long periods of quiet stalking and hunting your enemy, with sudden fire-fights and ambushes. Im looking forward to playing again very soon.

Sad News

I learned sad news this afteroon. My grandpa's heart finally gave out this morning around 8am and he passed away. He was 82 years old and my mom said he held up his good humor until the end. I'll miss grandpa. He came from Siclli, Italy when he was a young boy. He ran an Italian resaurant many years outside Orlando Florida. He drove everywhere because he was scared to fly and never left home without his little dog Nikki. He will be missed.

And Another Must See

Ok Friday night me, Val, Craig and Becki went to see Master and Commander, The new Russel Crowe movie. I had heard good reviews about it but I never put too much into those. Turns out it was a pretty good movie. I was very impressed by the quality of the war ships in the movie. Im afraid to know how much they spent on recreating these exact replica's of 18th century navy vessels. It was incredible to watch the battle scenes. As the ships pull near eachother and fire off all their cannon's you can only think how badly damaged the ship and crew must have been after it was over.
On another note, I picked up a new video card for my pc today. Its a nice Radeon 9200, with 128MB of memory on board. Its not the top of the line but its a nice fast card. Top of the line runs close to $500, but I caught this dandy on sale for $80. Can't beat that for upgrading your gaming pleasure!

Must See!

Whatever you do this holiday season, youi have to go see the new movie Elf! What a funny movie. Sure its one of those happy ending christmas movies, but Will Farrell makes it a truly hilarious flick.

Sooooooo Lucky

Well the dallas cowgirls managed to win today in the NFL. And to top it off, the Chicago Bears lost. Ugg, to the detroit lions for that matter. This league must be rigged I tell ya!

Update!

Be sure to check out my site, if you didn't get here through there anyhow. Ive updated the Party page with pics from Samia's Halloween party last saturday. It was a blast!
Tonight should be interesting. My friend Cheryl is participating in a belly dancing show. So of course in support, me and all my friends will be there in force to cheer her on! Yes, I'll have my camera ready. :)

Ho-Hum

Im at work right now. Bored. Im tied to my desk and the day is just crawwwwwwllling. Could this day go any slower? Anywho, its Friday finally! I have no idea what the weekend holds in store. I'll definatly update the site this week. So check back!

Shame On Me

Here it is Friday morning and I have not made a blog entry since Monday! Shame, shame, shame. It's been a pretty good week. I have'nt had time to post the latest pictures from last weekends party. But I still plan to. Wednesday, for those of you who didn't know or didn't care, the new movie "Matrix Revolutions" came out in theaters. If you haven't seen it, DO SO! It was awesome! The movie takes some very interesting twists and turns. The action is incredible and Agent Smith is just as humorous as ever. My favorite line of his... when he standing in the street facing off with Neo, he gestures to the thousands of copies of himself standing around them in the city streets and says to Neo, "Like what I've done with the place?" Ha, classic! Overall, great movie. Very entertaining. And if you don't try to get too caught up in all the philosophy and hidden religious and ethical messages, its even a better movie. Things are getting busy here at work. Gotta run, but I'll blog some more later today.

November Halloween

Saturday night may have been November 1st, but that didn't prevent my friend Samia from throwing a belated Halloween party at her house. In attendance were, Valerie and myself along with THE AMANDA'S, Mandy with her sister and Sylvia with Ted. What a great group and a great time! I took lots of pics and should have them up VERY soon. Including one pic of me in full mullet/nascar mode. For those of you who are big time nascar fans and are possibly offended that I have made a joke about mullets and nascar... too bad. It's true.

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.

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.

Woop!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

:(

A bad day in Thorpeland. :(

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Bummer

What a bummer of a night. Tonights Monday Night Football matchup was my Chicago Bears vs. the Green Bay Packers (cheese heads). The Packers won 38-23. It was the Bears first home game in the newly renovated Soldiers Stadium. I had hoped that would motivate them to beat the Packers. It wasnt to be. The Bears weak offensive line had their quarterback running from Packer defenders on every snap of the ball. Well I guess they can only get better. I hope.

Bday Part Two

With my mother back in town from visiting my grandfather in Florida, she wanted me to come by for a belated birthday cake and family gathering. This meant my favorite Boston Creme Pie! Two layers of white cake with vanilla pudding in the middle and creamy chocolate icing on top. OOOHH! My sister also showed up since her bday was on Sept. 11th and we were celebrating them together. My brother Courts also stopped in for the gathering. Valerie was with me and was able to "experience" Pioneer Days in Collinsville Texas. Oh boy. Now, my parents don't live in Collinsville but that is where my dad's store is. The town has maybe 1500 people and they all flock to the town square for music, food and to watch a recreation of old western gunfighters shoot it out. We only stayed there briefly, then became annoyed by all the kids running around screaming and shooting marshmellows at eachother out of homade guns crafted from 1 inch PVC piping that apparently some guy was selling at a boothe that day. So Valerie and I left there and headed to over to my brother Steves'. He showed me the work he's done on his classic Corvette lately. Installing a huge sound system, putting glowing lights inside the door pannels and redoing the interior. One sharp looking car. This car not only can fly but looks good doing it. He mentions to me his next project is installing nitrousoxide for that killer boost. I wonder if they make that for my Saturn? hehe
I now rewind a bit to Friday night. Valerie and I met up with my buddy Craig and his girlfriend Becky to go watch the new movie Underworld. This is the movie about vampires vs. werwolfes in some dark goth-like city... somewhere. I'll have to say it was pretty good. Entertaining at least. Lots of shooting, blood and general action with some plot twists. The werwolves were a pretty scary bunch. The ending of the movie definatly screamed SEQUAL!! As it left the door open to what was going to happen next.
So now here I am on Sunday. Not much going on. Just doing laundry and watching some football. Man I hope the Jets pound the dallas cowgirls.

Misleading Movies

So Friday night Valerie and I got to see the movie, "Cold Creek Manor". In the preview they show a family moving into a really old house and then creepy stuff starts happening. Oh yeah, and there's an previous owner who wants them out. I knew this going into the movie, but the movie trailers and preview clearly try to make this movie out to be a Halloween season scary movie. Don't buy it! They are being misleading. Over all it was a decent movie. It moved really slow thru parts and is a full 2 hours long. It could have easily been cut by 30 minutes and many parts were predictable. After about 4,000 run-in's with the ex-owner, they finally get into the big fight at the end of the movie. Good guy wins, bad guy dies... blah, blah, blah. Oh im sorry, did I ruin it? Well If you couldn't figure out that ending within the first 20 minutes of the movie, then you deserve to hear it from me first. I give the movie an overall rating of a "C-". Dragging scenes and predictable story line dropped this movies grade faster than a right hook from Tyson.

Birthday Weekend Recap

Well its been a busy week so I have to apologize for the delay in posting the pictures from my birthday bash last weekend. I should be actually posting those tonight after work. As I said in my last post, we headed out Friday night to downtown Dallas, to the West End area. The evening started out a bit frusterating as our trip down I-35 was slowed by a wreck causing a 5 mile backup. We finally made it to Joe's Crab Shack and the fun began! Attending my party were, my sister Macey, Valerie, Samia and her husband Kamron and of course Mr. Craig. We ate our dinners then enjoyed a chocolate cake that Valerie had brought. YUM! From there is was a short walk down to Gators Piano Bar. We took a table just to the right of the piano stage, which made us a prime target for the entertainment to pick on us. It wasnt long before he found out it was a birthday table, and his full attention was focused on us. Not only was it my birthday (Sept. 12), but my sisters (Sept 11) and Samia's (Sept. 14)! Before I knew it, he had me, Samia and Macey standing up on stage, ON top of the piano doing the "chicken dance" as he played faster and faster. Im sure we gave the crowd a good laugh. Yes, pictures were taken and I will post them along with the rest. It was a lot of fun and its something I will remember for a long long time. HA! Funny thing was, my sister Macey being a kindergarten teacher, could do the chicken dance as fast as the guy could play the song on the piano. While me on the other hand, could barely keep up! Well, it was a hilarious evening and there will be pictures soon to show it. Stay tuned!!

Time to Paaaarrrr- Tay!

Its party time! Today is my birthday! Yup, the big three- two. Eeeek! It seem like just yesterday I was turning 23. I must have been having a lot of fun over the past 9 years because time sure did fly. Today a bunch of my friends/co-workers are taking me out to a good italian restaraunt in town for lunch. Then tonight, a bunch of friends are going with me and Valerie to the West End in downtown Dallas. We'll be dinning at Joe's Crab Shack, (YUM!) then heading over to a piano bar for a good time. I'll try to post some pictures for all to see.

Serving it up!

As a side learning project and partly as a computing convenience, ive set up a public FTP server. I will explain to all those unfamiliar with that term. It stands for File Transfer Protocal. Basically, I set up this FTP server and load it with files of any type. Ive chosen files that were difficult to come across on the internet, things sent to me that were funny and files I know certain friends would be interested in getting their digital hands on. The only hang up before was the files are too big to email. Some are as large as 250MB. But now, all they have to do is download an FTP client for free. One such as WS_FTP_LE is an excellent one. Once the client is started up, just enter "thorpeland.selfhost.com" as the address, put in a username and password (supplied by me) and any file is there for the choosing! Also on the same note, if you have a hilarious video or such that you've recieved thru an email, contact me and I will give you a different username and password to upload your file to my server for all to view. If you didn't know, my email is thorpe@thorpeland.com. Try it out!!

Trouble in Paradise

Late Saturday morning Valerie, myself and Jimmy headed out to the lake for a day of jetskiiing. I park and get on my jetski while its still on the trailer and begin the normal engine warm up procedure. I am greeted with only, "click, click... click click." Noooooooo!! The battery is dead. Luckily Jimmy has a batter charger. But it needs a wall outlet, and cannot use a car lighter socket. So we end up having to remove the battery and walking back up to the little building where you pay to get into the park. Luckily it wasnt very hot outside and there was shade to sit in while we waited the 45 minutes for the battery to reach a strong enough charge level. We walk back to the jetski's and begin to install the batter again. Only to find out, on of the nuts that secures the battery posts had fallen off somewhere! Without this nut, we would be unable to re-attache the positive battery cable. Leave it to Jimmy. He digs thru his tool box and brings out 2 plastic zip ties. We loop them through the batter post holes and zipped them as tight as we could get them. The cable held solid and the jetski fired right up! We were then able to have a great day of riding out on the lake.
Now let me rewind a bit and talk about Friday night's activities. It was time again for another gathering of the "Dinner Club". This is where a group of friends and myself gather every month or so and meet for dinner at an unusual restaraunt. This month it was Ethiopian food. I had never had this type of food and was interested in finding out what it was like. The six of us met up at the restaraunt about 7pm in Dallas. We were seated at our table and began to look at the menu. Everything seemed normal. Dishes of chicken, lamb and vegtables made dinner sound better and better. We were already starving! It comes time to order and I decided to go with the seasoned chicken with some type of vegetable/meat sauce. After what seemed like an hour wait, the food arrived. Whoa... not what i expected. First off, I had forgotten that with Ethiopian food you do not use silverware. You eat with your hands using a type of bread that resembles a giant pancake. Secondly, what I had ordered was nothing I could recognize. But oh well, I was starving and I wanted to try it. I tear off a piece of pancake like bread and dip it in the sauce thats on the chicken. Take a bite.... OUCH!! SPICY HOT!! It seems in Ethiopia, curry is a popular seasoning. Three glasses of water and 45 minutes later I had just about finished off my chicken dish. I can honestly say, im glad I got to try Ethiopian food, but if I never have it again....I'll live.
Now, jumping ahead to Sunday. ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL!!? Its the first weekend of the NFL and my Chicago Bears are up against one of my other favorites, the San Francisco 49'ers. Oh dear, by games end the score was 49-14... San Fran. I sure hope the Bears get a lot better by next week. On a good note though, the Dallas Cowboys lost also to the Atlanta Falcons. Which means at least I dont get a phone call from my friend James, talking trash about how "his" Cowboys are going to the Super Bowl. Lucky me.

Weekend in Review

So im back at work, thinking about my past 3 days of weekend and vacation. I really did'nt do that much, just relaxed. So i'll just hit the highlights. I had originally planned to hit the lake on the jetski, but rain storms blew in from the Gulf so that kinda killed that idea. Saturday, Valerie and I went to a cook out at her parents house. Bugers..... mmmmmmmm. That night we decided to rent the movie "Jeepers Creepers" in preperation to go see the second one which was just released in theaters. Well finding the movie to rent turned out to be a task. An hour and 5 video stores later, we were back at my place with what must have been the last copy of the movie available in the city! After watching it, id have to say thats one of the scarier movies ive seen in a while! Im looking forward to part 2 in theaters now! Sunday night, i had a soccer game. We won! But... you always win when the other team is a no show. So we actually had a practice since everyone from my team was there. After the game, it was home to clean up and out to meet up with my buddy Craig. We had planned to meet at the Star Bucks on lower Greenville. But by the time we got there it was closed, so we instead met up at Cafe Brazil. It had been a while since i had been to Cafe Brazil and I had forgotten what an interesting group of people you can see in there. For example: It was Sunday, by which I was quickly reminded that meant it was "The Church - Goth night" at the Lizard Lounge, a local club. So there is one thing I often wonder about "goth people". That is, they may feel cool and stylish when in the dark clubs with the haze of smoke in the air and the pounding beat from the speakers in the ears. But once out of the club and sitting in a very bright, crowded restaraunt.... do they feel rediculous? I only ask this because of the guy at the table next to us. I will describe him the best i can. He's wearing tight black pants, a fish net shirt, with dog collar around his neck. The only real problem was, one should not wear a fish net shirt if your gut hangs out from it and over your belt line on all sides! Sorry lonely goth child and vampire boy of the night.... you just look hilarious, not mysterious. Anywho, on with the weekend. Monday finally comes along and its a holiday off work. So its up to my parents house with Valerie for another cookout. Burgers.... mmmmmmmm. haha My brother Courts brings the movie "House of a 1000 Corpses" by Rob Zombie to watch. We only got about half way thru it before I had to leave. But it looked pretty good, so I may have to rent it to watch the rest. After I returned from "the boro", I decided to fire up Madden 2004 and give their online Match Up service a try. When you buy the game they include a card for a free trial period of online gaming. So I go thru the setup process and 15 minutes later im linked up with a guy from who knows where. He's using the Philidelphia Eagles and of course Im using my Chicago Bears, but instead I choose to run the 46 Defense play book. (Those who do not remember, the 46 Defense was the 8 man front, pressure defense used by the World Champion 1986 Chicago Bears.) So, halfway thru the games its working like a charm. The game play is smooth, the interface easy to use, there is no lag and Im up 7-0 after 3 intereceptions and a touchdown pass. Then on my own 35 yard line, I throw and interception and he returns it for a touch down. Dang it! We battle it out and in the last minutes its still tied 7-7. I have the ball and im driving down the field. Then, I go to call a time out and after i call it the game stops, disconnects from the EA server and tells me there was a syncronization error. WHAT??!! Oh well, note to self... use caution when calling time outs. But overall it was a lot of fun and Im sure i'll be playing more online with this game!