Decade: 2008

2008


Song: Reptilla – The Strokes – To be honest not sure what year this song came out, but I heard it on a guitar hero game and had it on my computer, it was on a playlist I played when I got back from working out at night and would be making a snack of pancakes to eat before I went to bed.



Video Game: Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess – for the Wii, great game in the Zelda series and to be honest was the first game in quite awhile that I really sat down and put a lot of time into. Wind Walker the last major console game was a bit of a disappointment in the Zelda series. (would have been considered a solid game had it not been associated with Zelda) Twilight Princess though, despite the lame name was a good game all around.




News Story: Housing Market Crisis – Yep so I find a job in the summer and then a few months later the bottom falls out of the housing market, banks are in trouble, the Car companies need to be bailed out, and everyone is in a panic. The stock market crashes, the government is pumping money into everything…. Yep pretty big news and the ripple effects are still being felt today, as evidence by November’s elections.

 

Personal Event: Graduated From Purdue – 4 years and a big moment, not because I ever doubted graduating, but because this threw me out into the “real world” and to be honest without a lot of a plan. What was I going to do with a history degree… to be honest I still don’t know, but it was a finish to an important chapter in my life.

Year in Review: Part 3

Year in Review




Note: This is the 3rd part 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 July, August, and September.



July – The Hike



At the start of this month Casey and I went with our Grandma to a family Reunion for my Grandpa on my Mom’s side of the family. Case and I didn’t really know that side of our family that well since we never met our Mom’s dad.



Mom wasn’t able to go to that family reunion because she was in Europe, visiting England, France and Italy. You can see some pictures of that trip featuring Howie by clicking to post from July of this year.



The 4-H fair came and went, still isn’t the same when you aren’t in 4-H but I went to it a couple nights and watched the Demolition Derby.



A big story this month was the return of Kong! He had went missing back in June and miraculously returning 5 weeks later. He was really skinny when he came back, but he was alive. I took him to the vet and everything checked out and he has been happily living inside with us again.







In pet news Pepper was still doing good, mom bought her a new soccer ball and she has gotten really good at playing ball.



Then of course the main event of the month was the Hike over Mount LeConte which I have reviewed in detail here: http://nomadwaystation.blogspot.com/2010/07/hike-or-that-time-i-walked-over.html



I had gotten pretty good at doing my walks here at home, regularly doing 10-11 mile walks in 90+ degree heat so I was pretty prepared but it was a tough trek for sure. The rest of vacation was good as well, Casey and I saw Ramsey Cascades, and we played putt putt golf and all of the rest of the great Gatlinburg things.





August – End of Summer



Well as we transitioned into August I began to walk less, I guess it was because the Hike was over, but I kind of wish I had kept up better with it.



Dad had his Power of the Past, he didn’t seem to enjoy it as much this year but it is a lot of work for him. I went a few days of the show but it was about the same as always. I hadn’t been the year before though since I was living in Indy.



Megan Brant had a party at her new place now that she had moved to Bloomington, it was a good time. I was going to take Bruce and Megan S. down but Bruce bailed on us so it was just me and Megan heading down to hang out with Megan, Emily and Amanda. We played board games, talked and just hung out that night.



D&D games were still going strong throughout August, but people’s schedules where changing so we could see the beginning of the end on that front. I also remember hanging out with Bruce and company one night at his wife Megan’s place that turned into a great night in which we ended up at Denny’s and someone took a syrup shot… lots of great quotes from that night.



Mom went back to work at school, and Dad was getting ready for the harvest. It had been super dry this summer so he was going to be starting right away. Really I don’t know if we had a real rain all August.



September – Farming



While my August wasn’t very eventful, September started off with me doing a lot of farming. Dad was hitting the fields and since I wasn’t doing anything I spent the biggest part of the first 3 weeks helping him by hauling wagons and emptying them. Grandpa hurt his back so Dad did really need me a little this year. Honestly not a lot to say about that, other than I listened to a lot of talk radio those weeks.



Here are a bunch of photos from farming: http://nomadwaystation.blogspot.com/2010/09/september-photographs.html



Also during September Mom, Casey, and I went to a Purdue game with our cousins since Derek had just started his freshman year at Purdue. Purdue won the game vs Ball State. We all had a good time. (Again a pic is in the above link) Dad had stayed home to fix some of the machinery we had broken while working in the fields. It was actually good for him to have a day to fix things since the weather had been so good, we hadn’t had any reason to stop since no major breakdowns had occurred.



Earlier in the month I had began putting books on half.com, books I had from school and wasn’t ever going to use again. I did pretty good selling them and made a little money.



I also bought a new laptop this month. Since moving home I had been having some trouble with my desktops hard drive. As well as the fact I don’t have wireless on my desktop I was back to using my old laptop, which was a middle of the line laptop from before I went to Purdue (2004). Needless to say it was very outdated. So…. After about three weeks of looking over computers and thinking about what I wanted. I pulled the trigger on the Dell laptop I’m using now.







Since school had started I had put in an application to substitute teach and this month I had my first class. A half day for my old Biology teacher in high school, it was easy… had them watch TV and that was about it. It was nice to do some I guess real work that I got paid for, even if it wasn’t much, and would lead to me having to fax like four papers to the unemployment office telling them that this wasn’t a full time job.




I was also searching a lot more for jobs this month, going to the truck stop at least once a week just to upload applications. I knew my unemployment would be out in November so I needed to get something by then.



On the entertainment side of things, a cousin of Bruce’s came home for Labor Day weekend and ran a one shot D&D game, but this was pretty much the end of the summer of D&D for my group of friends. All of our schedules had begun to change and getting together late at night wasn’t going to work anymore.



I did also start his blog in September, and began the tedious efforts to import all of my old MySpace blogs over here, since Myspace and Blogger don’t work well with each other, this is a time consuming process. But I’m glad I started when I did now that Myspace’s Blogs are set up differently. (I don’t know if I will ever be able to see my oldest myspace blogs so they may never get over here)

Decade: 2007

2007


Song: Paralyzer – Finger 11 this was a cool catchy song, really I don’t know how you can not like it. I’m humming it in my head now. I also thought about putting Harvey Danger’s flag pole sitter as this one, because it was on my playlist when I’d go for walks as this was the year I started losing weight by going on 3 mile walks every day.



Video Game: Guitar Hero II – I honestly wasn’t playing a lot of video games this year, I was still addicted to Hobowars, but console wise things where pretty much dead until next year when I got my Wii. However my roommate at Guitar Hero II and we would play that from time to time, as well as Bruce having is Guitar Hero II release party at the end of 2006, so that carried on some momentum into this year.



News Story: Writers Guild Strike – If you watched TV shows you noticed this, all of the writers went on a strike due to debates on revenue sharing of online sales as well as a few other things and this lead to lots of reruns being played and new reality TV shows (no writers needed) popping up. Many point to this event as the thing that “killed” their favorite series, as many shows such as the hit Heroes never bounced back after the strike.

Personal Event: Family Vacation Arkansas – This summer our family was all home and we figured this might be our last chance for a full family vacation (see 2005 and 2010) so we packed up the car and went on what was probably our most random and one of the most memorable trips we ever took together. The main destination was Carter of Diamonds National Park in Akansas, which is an actual diamond mine where anyone can come and mine and keep whatever they find. Now several business men throughout the years had tried to turn a profit on this land (including Henry Ford) but there just weren’t enough quantity to be mined so it ended up in government hands, and is now a park for everyone. We mined two days, however we found nothing…

But the diamond mine wasn’t our only stops, I picked James K. Polk’s house as my choice on the trip, Casey picked Graceland, and Mom picked Historic Washington, Arkansas as well as the Gateway Arc in St. Louis and Grant’s farm. So we had a lot of fun stops along the way! I video taped the vacation and I have to say this was my favorite vacation of all time. Also before I wrap this up I feel compelled to mention Lambert’s Café home of the Thrown Roll (awesome food) and

Winter Pictures and Putting up the Christmas Tree 2010

Winter

Pepper




Howie





Putting up the Tree 12-5-10

Casey



Mom and Casey



Howie



My Hippo Ornament

Some Winter Pictures 2010

Winter Pictures

Pepper



Howie






Putting up the Christmas Tree 12-5-10

Casey

Decade: 2006

2006


Song: - Lips of an Angel – Hinder… this was one of those songs, I liked it the first maybe 10 times I heard it, then for the rest of the year it just wore you down until you couldn’t stand it. This was Hinder’s huge hit, then they pretty much fell off the map, at least as far as I know.



Video Game: KingoftheBling – this was an online game, and not a popular one at that… I think maybe 100 serious players tops. It was an offshoot of Hobowars.com that I mention previously. Some former players of that kicked this off, and it was pretty much the same idea. It was fun while it lasted and I was one of the top players in the game. A great group of players and we became a nice little community but as I said it never took off or got popular enough to keep itself running. Once the owner of the site got addicted to WoW that was the end.

News Event: Saddam Hussein Executed – The man whose threats and doings were blamed for provoking the Iraq War was executed after being tried in Iraq. However, in the grand scheme this didn’t mean a lot to the war effort as people here in the U.S. still remained heavily divided and the rebuilding efforts would go on for years.



Personal Event: Gecom – My first real job. This summer break from school I got my first “real” job. Working at a factory making trunk door latches for Honda Civics…. Yep not exciting, I remember a “game” I used to play with myself would be to try and go as long as possible without looking at the clock. It didn’t pay great and it wasn’t fun waking up at 5:30 every morning to go to work, but I learned a lot from the experience and am glad I did it.

Howie In Lexington

Howie and I went down to Lexington this week for some training with my job. Meet some great people and had a great time. Here are some pictures of Howie.

Hotel Room


Red Star Chilli


BD's Mongolian Grill


Hotel Lobby


Hotel Conference Room


Carrabbas




Start of Snow


Creepy Dolls


Gatti's