Year in Review
Note: This is a start of a four part series, the object being to give a quick review of my experiences in the year 2010. In this part I will cover the months of January, February, and March.
January - The beginning…
So I started out New Year’s this year partying up in Indy with Megan and Emily, ok well it wasn’t that crazy of a party but we had a good time, watched the ball drop and all of that jazz that goes along with the New Year.
After that start however, the main story was certainly me becoming unemployed. I knew it was happening; the management company I worked for lost their contract over the hotel I was working as the Operations Manager of on December 31st of 2009. I ended up being with them until January 15th… and then I journeyed into unemployment.
To be honest I wasn’t upset about this, it actually made me happy at the time, I had been working 6 days a week or 10+ hour days for the last 4 months or so. Things had been stressful because the hotel wasn’t doing that well and it was obvious changes had to be in the works. So I was fully relieved to be out of this and ready to get some rest and then find out what the next chapter in my life had in store.
Who knew that this would lead to a 10 month journey into unemployment? I didn’t at the time but it was a risk I was taking, and to be honest… I don’t regret it looking back.
The rest of January wasn’t that eventful, got some rest, and got to start catching up with Friends I hadn’t been able to see much since moving out of Decatur County and working as many hours as I was at the hotel. I started going and visiting with my parents a lot as well.
Oh the Colts played in the Super Bowl and lost…..
February – Being Free on Unemployment
I started getting unemployment this month and found I was making a decent amount of money, enough to cover rent, my car payment, and food / entertainment. Of course my crazy frugality helped out in this case… I was still well into my challenge of not heating my apartment all winter, in fact that was pretty much an easy success at this point as I had made it through most of the worst part of the year. Though I did find I was spending more money on food/entertainment since I wasn’t doing anything all day. I also succeeded in exercising again at the end of January/Start of February for all of about two weeks or so.
I remember one day this month I took my Grandma to the doctor to get stitches out of her hand that was an interesting day visiting her.
On Groundhogs day I celebrated it with Casey, Steve and some of their friends on Franklin College’s campus. It was a good time had by all, I love celebrating silly holidays! We ate Chinese at the Blue Turtle and then played some poker… of which I lost as usual.
Also in February my Grandma White had to come home early from Florida to attend a funeral, so Dad, Pam and I went up to get her from the airport, we made signs and everything to make her feel like a VIP. This was the first time she had flown alone since she flew out to meet my Grandpa in Alaska over 40 years ago.
Finally in February I went to a Sick Puppy / Chevelle Concert at the Murat with Bruce, his wife Megan, and once of his friends from work. It was a great concert, and the first one I saw at the Murat. I fully admit I went to see the Sick Puppies and they were awesome but Chevelle totally commanded the show and put on the best performance. Janus the opening band however, not impressed. I took Howie and he got his picture on the stage and with Emma the bass player with the Sick Puppies but sadly it came out blurry!
March – Adventures!
March was Spring Break for my parents and I ended up spending that week down at my parent’s house sitting / taking care of Pepper and Kong. I ate dinner with my grandparents most of that week. It was funny because the corn stove went out and neither I nor my Grandpa could get it restarted, but I didn’t care since it wasn’t that cold, I mean I was living without heat all winter, but he was really worried.
On March 6th Megan and I took Howie for a photo Op with a Giant Pink elephant holding a martini glass, I will hopefully get a picture up of this… because really the picture will do much better than a description.
Also In March, Bruce had really wanted to go Geo-Caching so we did. We found I believe 4 of the 7 things we were looking for; it was a fun afternoon driving around Decatur and Shelby counties looking for hidden caches. Now our GPS wasn’t the handled kind, only the in car kind so we didn’t have the best equipment but we both agreed we had a fun time and should do it again. (Howie even got some good photo ops in) However, we never really got around to doing it.
The next week Bruce, Steve, Casey and I packed up the Soul to take Howie to Daniel Boone’s grave. I had been there before with my Dad in 2007 when we went on the Bourbon Trail. Actually we had planned on going to some distilleries when we were down there, but poor time management failed us on that. But we did all have a good time, Saw Daniel Boone’s grave, found a geo-cache there, saw that Frankfort has a side of town that is 1/3 liquor stores, 1/3 auto repair and 1/3 bait shops. Just wish we could have went on a Bourbon tour.
Finally one last event for the Month would be Chantel’s 21st birthday party, which I may have had a little much to drink but it was another fun event this year.
