Bring on Spring with Music

It is officially February 8th and I still have not had McDonald's this year! A pretty big accomplishment from the McChicken spokesman, however, I have a feeling this may change very soon with lax season right around the corner.

January is officially over and so is my no alcohol streak. Although it unofficially ended in the middle of January, only ever had a couple glasses of wine on that one night for 30 days. 1 day of drinking out of 30 ain't bad! On to the next challenge for February, no candy... This may be a tougher beast to handle. Bring it!

Song of the Week: Every Planet We Reach is Dead by the Gorillaz off their amazing 2005 Album Demon Days. If you haven't lately, go ahead and listen to that album cover to cover. Pretty amazing. Also I discovered that the Gorillaz is only 2 guys. One guy who does all the music and one guy who does all the animation. Snap!

I have recently started an account on both soundcloud (yaboysjcubed) and bandcamp (yaboysjcubed) and have been enjoying both music streaming sites. I have also found myself buying more music for smaller bands that I enjoy that I cannot attain at the library (hence the bandcamp account). Gotta love supporting the artists you enjoy.

Hey! It's black history month AND the ground hog didn't see his shadow the other day. That means spring is here and so is this adorable? photo of me as a young Punxsutawney Phil with a young Squidl! Speaking of Squid, check out her latest blog post about the joys of being an Aunt!

On Thursday Feb 4th, Rachel and I hit up Dukes for buy one get one free Apps and 3 dollar Great Lakes Beers. Some delicious burger bites, wings, and waffle fries. Told you the non-drinking streak was over!

Continued my dining experiences at Hooters the next day for lunch. I feel like I have been to one before, but this may have been my first time ever at Hooters? I failed to get the wings though, so I guess I will have to return...

Saturday February 6th 2016 was met with a morning lax practice for FV and then followed up with some Yoga Sculpt with our fav class/instructor. It kicked my booty again, but I had a great time. Still feeling sore today from it. Rachel and I enjoyed the evening with friends at Headquarters, the beercade, where we set some records and posted up playing Q*Bert all night long. While Rachel went to use the bathroom, I had just finished a game up and someone behind me asked to jump on. I said sure no worries. 30 minutes later, the dude had absolutely obliterated my scores and set a record on the machine for the night. When I told him it was pretty impressive, he responded with, "I didn't date very much in high school." Q*Bert Legend.

Check the scoreboard above! Rachel accidentally put her name in as ARM, I am JWM, the legend is DAV..

Super Bowl Sunday was enjoyable, the big SuperBowl 50, first time using numbers instead of roman numerals. Rachel and I walked over to Brian's to hang and watch the game with him and Megan in Wrigley. Rachel made a couple of tasty apps, bacon wrapped potatoes and what I am going to call a loaf of bread that was sliced into little bites, while Brian provided the left of beverages from New Years still. I partook in too many drinks and was feeling it this morning. The Super Bowl was pretty fabulous. Peyton Manning can now exit on top (let's hope he retires) and Cam Newton can try again next year. A super defensive game that some may say was a bit boring, but I thought both defenses were exciting to watch and it is always better in good company! The commercials this year were meh, alright. Highlighting the top ones, golden retriever dad driving a golden retriever pup around, obviously the bizarre puppymonkeybaby one, Heinz and the weiner dogs running, and then the dogs who sneak into the grocery store to get their doritos. Go Titans!

Video of the Week: Meant to post this crazy music video last week, but forget. A pretty solid song, but a really really really strange video. Check it.

Bonus video for this week! Video shot with an iphone and some fishing string. Maybe I should upgrade to the 6 and I can make videos like this!

TV show of the Week: Rachel and I started Game of Thrones! So far we are 4 episodes in and are loving it! Winter is coming!

Gas is still on the decline, as I picked some up for $1.399 a gallon. Let's see where it is next week. Until then.

Yaboy Josh

Happy One (New) Year of Blogs

Tuesday December 30th, after a day of work, I went shopping and then picked up Beth. We then drove to my place in the city where Rachel made us some spaghetti for dinner. We relaxed the rest of the night.

Wednesday December 31st, New Year's Eve! Cam came to visit and we were fortunate to find him a parking spot with the help of Grant. After hanging out for a bit, we all got ready and then had a few people over to our place: Brian, Sarah, Colin, Matt, & Caitlin joined us for snacks and games. We played cards against humanity, as well as friends and enemies. Around 10pm we headed over to Kim's place for a party and we were not liked by many, as we (I) kept counting down well before midnight arrived. Finally midnight came and we all cheered and celebrated. We then got our coats and left around 12:30am. 2015 was here!

January 1st, 2015 was spent with a morning of mimosas and a lot of football being watched. Michigan State put on an amazing comeback and won their bowl game. We then got some dinner at Duke's which was delicious and we got an awesome Thursday deal. I had 4 burger bites and got a free 12 wings since it was buy one item, get one free! Duke's is always an enjoyable time and probably my favorite place in the area.

After Duke's we walked over to Lincoln Park Zoo and enjoyed the Zoo Lights. Check out some pics from the night where we saw handfuls of sad monkeys, ice sculptors, lighted animals, & pretty lights. Also learned that ice sculptors use a special machine to keep the water flowing so the ice appears to be clear, just like a frozen river bed. This will be the new way I make ice cubes. No more cloudy ice for me!

Beware of the Rainbow Tunnel! This tunnel was a tricky part to the Zoo since it was outside the zoo and we ended up in this tunnel when they closed the zoo doors on us, so we had to walk around the outside with no lights, how sad.

On Friday January 2nd, I headed to work for the first half of the day, then once home I made some rigatoni pasta for Cam, Rachel, and I for dinner. We then met up with friends and walked over to Mary & Jeff's for some Edward 40 Hands. With a lack of 40s in the 5 liquor stores we stopped at, our little group ended up just have 25oz cans, which worked out just fine.

After the party ended, Rachel, Cam, Colin, Sarah, and I hit up a bar across the street for one last drink before they had last call and picked up some Fat Sandwich on the way home. Cam, Rachel & I split the fat milf. Tastyyy. It also snowed on the way home, first snow of the year!

Saturday January 3rd started with me clearing snow off my car, then a bit of work. I picked up gas for an all-time low price of $1.79. Will prices continue to drop!? It rained on the way home and Rachel and I watched a bunch of Mad Men. We made a delicious pork dinner and then had some wine & gummies to go along with our lovely 4 hours of chatting to end the night.

On Sunday January 4th, Rachel and I spent most of the day watching TV shows. We finished season 3 of Mad Men, and season 2 of The Walking Dead. Both shows are solid. We went out to get some groceries and saw where the Best Buy close to us got robbed earlier that morning. Crime scene! Had a couple of buffalo ranch McChickens for lunch and after watching TV for a few hour we made succulent beef sandwiches in the crock pot for dinner. Sooo good.

After a work lunch at Lou Malnati's and a day of work, I spent my evening watching a few episodes of The Walking Dead Season 3 and then shoveled my driveway and sidewalks at my parents place around midnight!

Great end to 2014 and great start to 2015. Looking forward to the year. Maybe next week I'll post a review with bests of 2014 and some goals for 2015.

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