Best of 2014

Best Jcubed Video - The only video from 2014 with all 3 members. From the beginning of the year.

Best Vacation: Colorado Camping Trip with Friends. The start to our love for the great outdoors.

Best Movie: The Only movie Rachel and I saw in theaters, Gone Girl

Best Song: Colorado by Jmon & Melissa - A masterpiece crafted around the campfire in the middle of the Rocky Mountains.

Most Played Song on my Itunes: Shake it Off by Taylor Swift - Thanks Rach

Best Concert: Deer Tick at The Metro & Blue Bird Theater. A tie! Where Mange was played magnificently.

Best TV Show: Breaking Bad Series was incredible. A breakout year for TV watching in my life as I have been binge watching TV series.

Best Moment: Rachel and I got Engaged at the top of the John Hancock.

Now, back to the Blog...

Tuesday January 6th, 2015. A night of home made beef sandwiches. Thanks to Rachel for keeping the bed warm by putting on the flannel sheets. Watched Shutter Island that night

Wednesday January 7th I watched some American Horror Story Season 4. It was also a super cold day out. At my parents place I had some soup and Cognac. A new kind of alcohol discovered and indulged in that evening. Watched some Walking Dead that night.

On Thursday January 8th I finished the book Shutter Island and ended up snowed in in Naperville. Watched some more Walking Dead that night.

Friday January 9th started with some 30 for 30s, the ESPN special about Randy Moss and Rand University. To sum it up, Rand University is located outside a 711 in Rand, Virginia, the hometown of Randy Moss. Stay in school or you end up at Rand U! We went to a party at Sarah and Aly's apartment that evening and enjoyed friends company.

The weekend started with Saturday January 10th, where I watched Illinois State University blow the division 1-A National Championship for football on tv. That night, Rachel and I made one of my favorite meals, Beef Stew. We took my Mom's recipe and cooked for about 45 minutes in the oven, the beef stew is so tasty over some rice. We drove back to Naperville and went shopping that night. We then watched Guardians of the Galaxy with Beth in her room, but I fell asleep about 30 minutes in, an early morning ahead.

Sunday January 11th was Tryout day for my Fox Valley Team. After some quality tryouts and tough decisions, I should have a great team this year!, I picked up Rachel and we headed to St. Charles for the baptism of my nephew Nikolas. He was so quiet and good while being baptized and took the whole thing like a boss. Look at that baby's cute baptism hat. Awesome. The after party was at their new house and we had some Chipotle catering, mmm. When we got home that night, I shoveled the driveway at our apartment since they don't seem to do that at this place. Afterwards, Rachel and I started our new workout plan and got a solid workout in. Get big 2015!

On Monday January 12th, I finished Season 3 of The Walking Dead. And that was about it for this week!

Until Next Time.

Ya Boy Josh

Squid is Feeling TwentyTwo

Tuesday September 23, 2014 - We watch 4 episodes of Breaking Bad to finish the series. No spoilers here, just an amazing show. Wow. The second show I have ever watched from start to finish. The first being 30 Rock. Breaking Bad was an absolute incredible series that I highly recommend to all those who can read this blog. A bit graphic at times, but fantastically done.

Wednesday September 24, nothing happens in my life. Oh during the week I also purchased Tim EP from Deer Tick and John McCauley's side band Diamond Rugs CD. I rarely purchase music, like ever, so you know it's good. Deer Tick can't be beat friends. If you haven't listened yet. It is time to start. Best band. Ever.

Thursday the 25th of September, leave work early to work the garage sale, goodbye runt. Many a memory were made riding the runt around the block. Runt races will forever be remembered. One man rides the runt as fast as he can around the court while the other rides a bmx bike as many times as he can. Check the video!

Friday September 26th, Beth gets dropped off at work around 9p and I drive her home to Chicago for the weekend. We hangout at the apartment Friday night with Rachel, nothing crazy.

September 27th, 2014. Happy 22nd Birthday Beth. While Rachel runs the Ditka dash, Beth and I get some Einstein bagels from down the road. Chocolate chip bagel for me. Then we hopped on the bus and headed to the Blackhawks store downtown. Everything was 75% off since they are moving locations! After waiting in a line about 30 minutes long to get inside, we spent another 30 minutes waiting in line to checkout. Great deals and a ton of stuff for $50. We then walked over to Millennium park to check out the giant heads and the area. Cool to see the park was a train station before. Rachel meets us at the park and then we walk to Chili's for lunch!

Beth gets that JT 901 tequila for a drank, finally. and I have some tasty soup and a turkey sandwich. Quite delectable.

Rachel's brother picked us up and drove us back to our place, but then it took over 20 minutes to find parking by us. Yikes. I played some Mario Kart and Super Smash with Rachel's brother while the girls got ready and everyone else started filing over.

Beth's friends arrive, and with Christine came John. What a surprise. Shout out to ya boy for showing up and bringing some house warming gifts. AKA old things I was selling, that he bought from my garage sale in Napes. Hilarious. 8 ball, monkey, sign, Pez holder with no Pez. He got some prime parking as well, right in front of our place, score!

We then walked over to Dukes, which supposedly has the best burgers around. A $100 burger called The Duke that has gold leaves on it. Brian meets us out there and we sit in a private VIP section. Rachel and I split a buffalo burger with waffles fries. Both John and Christine didn't look past the first 5 options of normal burgers, and somehow missed the other two pages of awesome burgers, so they got normal burgers. Fail. Squid loved her burger as you can see! Now enjoy these photos of our exclusive VIP party.

Afterwards we stopped at Molly's Cupcakes and the girls picked up some cakes, tasty. We came back to my apartment and watched Mizzou football beat SC, Happy Birthday to Beth!

We then played some loaded questions, finished up by watching SNL and playing Mario Kart afterwards. Some epic kart battles ensued. No one can be certain of who the overall winner was, but we all know it was me. Everyone took off around 1 am.

Sunday September 28th we drove back to Naperville, then to Marseilles for the Spartan Race. Rachel, her bro, his friend, and I battled through mud, barbed wire, and climbing over walls to complete the spartan race in just over 2 hours. Oh, we also threw a spear, slid down hills of mud, climbed up hills of mud, swam in pools of mud, and tried to climb things covered in mud. Mud anyone? We got cool medals and tees for finishing and Rachel carried me across the line.  A very fun, and dirty, race. Hopefully will get some photos from the race for next week, as they had photographers there.

Definitely worth the money and an exciting race where we pushed each other to exceed expectations. I won't forget the rather large fella that I failed to get over one of the first obstacles though. I had helped everyone in the group over a relatively high wall, and I was the last one left. I asked this guy if he wanted help and gave him one good boost, but he failed to get over. I then asked him if he wanted another shot and he said no, so I turned away and jumped over the wall. If I could do it over, I would have been a better influence and forced him to get over that wall. There was one person on the stat sheet with a time of nearly 8 hours in the race... I think it was that guy.

After showering up slightly with a hose at the race, we got our free beer (shocktop) and power bars. We then drove home. Once we cleaned up a bit back in Chicago, Rachel and I walked over and got some Potbelly for dinner and started watching House of Cards. We ended up watching the first 4 episodes! Our new favorite show, it's no Breaking Bad, but pretty solid.

Monday September 29th.

Work, then another 3 episodes of House of Cards at night! It is getting better. I never thought I would enjoy politics so much.

HappyBirfdayBeth.

Love Josh

Back to the Norm

I had my first "normal" week over the past 7 days. I wasn't traveling about, hiking mountains, or moving. It was nice to finally be able to somewhat relax after being on the go for about 4 weeks.

Tuesday September 9th, 2014 I had brats, chicken, and corn for dinner with Rachel. Kind of a throw together meal, but who doesn't love a little more corn stool? We watched the first 2 episodes of the last season of Breaking Bad. The show is getting really good and we are seeing quite the character transformations.

On Wednesday the 10th I forgot to bring a lunch to work, but we were blessed with a man who brought us free Jet's pizza. A Jet's is opening up just down the road from work, which is great news since their pizza is so tasty.

On September 11th, Thursday, there were memories of September 11th, it has already been 13 years which is crazy. Here is a touching video about a lacrosse player who saved lives on that day. Brings a tear to the eye, and gives me motivation to be a nicer, more caring person each and every day.

That evening I got home pretty late and Rachel was out at Yoga, so I walked around trying to find some dinner for us, eventually picking up Wing Stop again. This time getting some lemon pepper and Louisiana rub flavors. They were both delicious, but I couldn't get enough of that Louisiana rub. Succulent. We of course watched some BB while enjoying our meal.

Friday September 12th was the day that I began to backup my computer. Having almost 3 TB of data now has forced me to split my backup between 2 externals. The power of music, photos, and videos. Large large files. I also began creating another Jcubed logo this weekend. Here is a very little tease for what it will look like.

Unfortunately on Saturday the 13th I had to head to work. Taking 90 minutes to drive out, just to work 3 hours, and then to drive back home for an hour. Rachel and I quickly cooked up a Pasta Side for dinner and then walked a mile and a half over to Brian's to hang out with Chris and Phil. Zac Brown Band was playing at Wrigley and we could hear them sitting in his apartment and standing on his porch. Despite being country, it sounded like they were playing a pretty good show by playing some rock covers and ended their show with Chicken Fried of course. After that ended, we threw on some Deer Tick for the people to enjoy. We walked home after a few hours and hit the hay.

On Sunday September 14th Rachel and I walked a mile and a half over to Zella. A brunch place that is popular for their all you can eat and drink brunch from 10:30a - 3p. We met up with Tori, her bf, Aly, Mary, Chris, and Rach's bro Rob. It was a fun time and I was wearing my Titans jersey. Go Titans! I became super full after 3 plates of eggs, bacon, chicken tenders, diced potatoes, fruit, bread, & some other foods, as well as drinking far too many mimosas and filling up on that OJ. After brunch Rach and I walked the 1.5 miles back home, stopping at Mary and Jeff's on the way to pet their cat.

Once home I continued to back-up my computer and watched some football. For dinner, I picked us up some Angela's steak taco dinners. Pretty tasty. While I was waiting for my tacos to be made, a super drunk 49 year old guy, who claimed to still get the ladies, kept high-fiving me and another guy in the place, yelling "Go Bears!" He also told me how he was blazing earlier in the day and had to take the train back to Libertyville. This dude was pretty funny and just kept talking about how great the bears were, "Go Bears!" He then showed us a photo of him and Walter Peyton from when he was a kid. Walter Peyton just looking ripped and shirtless, pretty cool photo, super weird dude. "Go Bears!"

Rachel and I enjoyed our dinner as the Bears looked terrible during the first half. It was so bad I said let's watch an episode of Breaking Bad, so we did. After dinner and BB I put on the second half of the Bears game and couldn't have been happier (unless I really cared, then maybe I would have been). The Bears stormed back and got the W in SF. Woop Woop.

Monday September 15, I finished my first audio book in the car. Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card. This book is the second novel in the Ender's Game series. Rachel has already read the whole series, and since I don't have time dedicated to reading currently, I get to read by listening every day on my drive! The book was good and the plot was solid, it was just difficult to follow the sci-fi names at times, but I did the best I could while having to focus on the road at times as well. Xenocide is the next novel in the series. Can't wait. Picked up some Steak n Shake for lunch as well. Triple steak burger with fries for $4.40. I am amazed at how much faster I got my food when in the drive thru versus being in a steak n shake. Makes me question if they purposely are slow when you dine-in, or if they give your food away to the drive thru lane. 

Well, that is all, looks like another normal week ahead.

You Stay Classy Friends.

Josh