Good morning world

Morning blog! Just getting in a quickie before class... ha.

I'm writing this after downing a delicious breakfast made by yours truly. I've recently really got back into cooking and eating well - it almost makes me regret my decision to opt to play football in college over going to culinary school, but hindsight is 50-50.

More snow? Really? I'm sick of it to say the least. I also don't have a passenger side window which makes things slightly difficult... but i'll manage until Tuesday (and $500 later) when it gets fixed. That car is a money trap...

Uhh what else... Just set the date for myrtle beach for a weekend in April (by now you know i'm not good at remembering dates unless they're put into my phone) and I couldn't be more excited. We're also doing a tux fitting for the wedding party over spring break in Muscatine with Santi and Katy's families, then celebrating after that.

Quote of the day and song:

Pursuit without passion is trivial - Coach Ron Schipper, RIP

Fink - this is the thing

Time for class, TGIF. Later all

better late than never, but better late is better

Blog post numero dos. Go me. A lot has happened over the last few weeks, but it's 2 A.M. so i'll attempt to keep it short.

Laying here in bed reflecting on my week gives me a lot to talk about. First and foremost, big10weekend has been a huge time consumption. Seth came back from Chicago a few days and we did some promotional stuff and also he gave me a rundown of what my responsibilities would be as far as setting up trips and handling things with Kelsey from the Iowa City end. I'm definitely pumped to be involved in something with so much potential.

If you haven't heard it from me yet, go check out big10weekend.com. I'm pretty positive that no one reads/could find this anyways unless they googled me or something. Yes, I know I'm awesome enough to google, but really, waste your time on finding dumb youtube videos, it's guaranteed to be more entertaining than my ramblings. The basic idea behind the business is there, but if you're too lazy to click the link I'll lay it down for you. The premise is based upon doing student travel services. These would be basically weekend getaways where big10weekend would facilitate the hotels, transportation, (most) food costs, club experiences, and other events within the weekend all for a flat fee. It would be extremely cheaper than trying to do the trip on your own, and would also give you access to things like four star hotels and VIP club treatment just to name a few. A few of the ideas for the trips are things like Cub Game Weekend in Chicago, or weekend getaways to Okoboji or the Ozarks. Eventually, we'll be taking big10weekend travel services and putting the majority of our planning towards away football games. The idea is to take the awesomeness that is Iowa and Hawkeye tailgating on the road to all the away games next year.

Seth has always had the most ambition out of anyone I've ran across in my 2 1/2 years at Iowa. I'm lucky and grateful to have him as a friend. We actually went up to celebrate Alicia's birthday in Chicago which was amazing, but that's way too much to write about tonight.

Santi and Troy (two of the five best/childhood friends in my life) are having their bachelor party soon this spring. Santi gets married to Katy sometime in late May, (yeah, i'm bad with dates off the top of my head, much like names, so sue me) and Troy and Mary have yet to set a date. We've decided on carpooling 19 hours to Myrtle Beach to a timeshare, and spending a while down there. I'm pretty excited to say the least.

I've also had some pretty shitty days lately. On top of it being in the negatives about 2 weeks back, I happened to lose my wallet, get locked out of my car and house, be late to work, AND shatter my passenger side window of my car due to the cold all in the same day. Awesome, right? Luckily, the wallet was waiting for me at the U of I lost and found the next day with all 212 dollars still left in. Told you I was lucky. My manager also let me bail from work early to get my window fixed. I returned a wallet and a clutch-thingy (I'm pretty sure that's what girls call those mini-purses) over the past two years... What goes around comes around.

I'm also in the process of switching over to my own phone plan and car insurance thanks to the parental figures. I love growing up. I still have no idea what carrier or what phone I'd like, even after about two weeks of searching. I've come to the conclusion that picking out a new phone is a lot like picking out a girl to go on a date with: no matter how aesthetically pleasing the outside is, the brains don't always match, don't be in such a hurry to choose one just to say you have one - you might like the one you accidentally get introduced to by a friend, and to choose wisely if you want it to be worth sticking around for a while.

At the end of the day, I guess that's what we're all striving for. As long as someone is there to put up with your bullshit and knows that you'll put up with theirs, it can work. No one ever said relationships (friends or otherwise) were supposed to be pretty. People fuck up, people make mistakes, it's part of life. Live, love, learn, forgive and forget. Life is too short to hold grudges and argue semantics.

Goodnight world. We'll see what you have in store for me this week.

Ooh, almost forgot. The song for this blog is The Maine - Inside of you (acoustic version) Enjoy

A.M. thoughts

Shit. I've never been a huge fan of sleeping pills, but this is getting ridiculous. Tonight marks two weeks since I've laid down in my bed only to either stare haphazardly at the ceiling or check my phone every 10 minutes. It's not my roommate Jake playing video games next door, I usually just turn on my fan to give a little ambient noise to drown out the sounds, but lately even that hasn't helped. Asian Village (which is what I like to refer to my apartment complex to, but I'll talk about that another time) is relatively quiet - most foreign exchange students aren't much of the partying type. I've never been the type to drug myself up just to fall asleep either - I mean who wants to feel that groggy in the morning? I'd rather not have to start getting a size larger starbucks to wake up in the morning, I'm already addicted enough as is. This guy is definitely not a morning person.

I guess the whole reason I decided to start this whole blog experiment was two-fold. First, I need something to do to pass my time while I can't sleep. Maybe writing down all of the thoughts swirling around in my oh-so enlightened college head at night will be better than trying to sort them out in between worrying about if my alarm is set, or contemplating what time I'm going to get out of class to go start drinking for FAC this weekend. Secondly, I need something to occupy my time other than John Mayer/The Fray/Coldplay/random YouTube videos while I attempt to fall asleep.

So yeah. This whole sleep thing. It's kind of a pain in the ass trying to decipher whats been keeping me up the last two weeks. It's not like I've come to any life-changing, morals-altering epiphany that I need to mull over lately, life has been pretty bland. College is college. Go to class, be late for work, but not late enough to get yelled at, hit up the grocery store to shop a lot less than I should, because let's face it - easy mac and milios subs are just easier, and it's definitely not girls... maybe a lack thereof, but lately I've come to realize that banging my head against a brick wall gives about the same amount of headaches that being interested in a girl does. Waste of my time? Maybe so, but it's like my Dad told me once, "Girls are only a waste of your time until you find a good one worth keeping."

We'll see where this blog thing goes. I don't expect anyone to find this, let alone read it. I haven't really decided if I want to post the link on my facebook or not. I'm always up for trying something new as long as it doesn't involve something detrimental to my health or eating anything with peas in it. Thank you Grandma Pol for making me loathe them. That's it for now I guess. The jury is still out on whether I'm going to go grab some nyquil.

Oh, another thing I wanted to do with these. Being a huge music fan, I'm going to post the song that is playing on my itunes or whatever when I finish the blog post. Tonight it's Peter Bradley Adams - Los Angeles

Maybe I'll go make a PB and J instead of the Nyquil.

Goodnight world,

Derek