There are so many exciting things to talk about these days so I figured a blog post was due.  I think I could list double the items below since I have so much on my mind but this is a good summary.

• Missouri dominated Texas this week. It has been an insane run the past two months for the Cardinals and it all culminated with a come from behind win against Texas. Missouri took notice and did the same against Texas A&M.
• What to do with Pujols is a very interesting question.  It is hard to see him leave knowing he is one of the best players ever in the MLB and in the midst of his prime.  It is also hard to pay him a long term contract for $22 million plus a year knowing (1) that could get the Cards two good free agents (2) a 5 year plus contact seems scary after seeing a chink in Pujol’s armor this year after having an “off year” (3) Pujols seems to be a little more dinged up and his feet issues don’t seem to be going away. Imagine what it’s going to be like in 3 or 4 years.  There does seem to be a lot of good free agents this year too.
• I am extremely disappointing in the setup that the St Louis ball park bars put out on Friday. Did they not expect thousands to be there? In 2006, we watched the game at Al’s under the tent in horrible weather conditions but there was huge portable tvs and the game was blasted over the loud speakers. I was expecting more this year as they was more hype and better weather.  Instead, it was the same setup at PaddyO’s . They did not even have the game playing over the speakers so the majority of the crowd there could not hear or see the game. They really needed to step it up. By 7, they were also out of almost every food item. How do you run out of hot dogs???? Kilroy’s had a TV on top of their building but the bathroom and beer line was so long that it was not worth staying.  At least they stepped it up a little. I was expecting beer vendors and a good spread. I was disappointed. Luckily Joe Bucks was a little more prepared and we had a great time there.
• So pumped about our Honeymoon to Maui. The hotel looks awesome and glad we got upgraded airline seats for the total experience.
• Totally addicted to credit card perks right now. I feel like I have spent hours on the Points Guy’s website researching the best deals.  Also, I have never gotten more compliments over my Chase Sapphire Preferred card. The Cards is like a piece of metal and weights about 3 times more than a standard credit card. Everyone I hand it too says how cool it is.
• The housing market sucks! I would be happy selling just one place for a fair price.
• My fantasy team continues to find ways to win but I am not invincible as I once thought I was. My defense is weak but improving based on some of my pickups the past two weeks. My defensive draft was basically useless as I only have 1 or 2 players left I drafted. My wide receiver stable is not excelling like it was which is giving me my doubts. I am also not happy that a couple players that I drafted and held onto for several weeks like Demarco Murray (who I had the first 5 weeks) which are doing much better.  At least I will be 7 and 1 and walking away with the Hodge Podge division title.
• Should I be getting back into video games? The new COD and Battlefield both look pretty awesome.
• I am really excited about Black Friday this year. There are a lot of new gadgets and electronics that I am interested in if the price is right.

Where to even start? I have been a bad blog writer this year. A combination of an extremely busy work load, selling two places, traveling (work and pleasure), and general lack of a personal computer have all contributed to not keeping up. Thus I thought I would give a brief run down of whats going on.

• Daytona with the family was awesome. It was relaxing on the beach plus I did not get burnt which is always good. The biggest surprise of the trip was visiting St Augustine. I had never been and would recommend it. It is a very European town (which you would expect from the oldest city in the US).  I would recommend Pizzalley’s Chianti Room (one of the best meals we had all trip). I would not recommend San Sebastian winery. Florida is not and should not be known for their wine. I did not like it at all.
• Work is insane. We are super busy which is great but extremely overloaded. On top of that, I have a lot of travel. I am definitely looking forward to my Germany/UK trip next month.
• Selling of the two homes is progressing. Very little activity on the condo which is disappointing. The house is looking good. We finished the upstairs this weekend and have just one more project left before it can be listed.
• We registered (and de-registered at another place…lol) over the past week. It was a lot of fun. We also went cake testing and picked one that is going to be awesome.
• I am despising my car. My extended warranty ends in two weeks and not sure what I am going to do. The truck broke again. I am really disappointed in the quality of Infiniti. I will never buy again and has me seriously reconsidering buying a Nissan too.
• The Cards are a huge disappointment. The Rams are a surprise….let see if they can keep the momentum. They have a lot of good players. Not sure what to think of the Tigers. The game this weekend will be a good test.
• We made some awesome chicken parmigiana last night after our first attempt failed. I love making new foods with my fiancee.
• I am not a fan of the stock market right now. It has not been good to me.
• Went to Iron Barley with some friends for my late bday present. It was awesome. It is in such a weird location but so good. I had the Schnitzel & Spaetzle. I saw others with the Prime Rib special which looked amazing. The sausage platter was good too.

That’s all I got for now.

What a great weekend! The weekend seemed to last forever which is sort of funny since I has extended weekends for the last 3 weeks and this was the standard workweek.

On Friday we celebrated my birthday and had a last hurrah at the condo. We timed it with a free Bel Biv Devoe concert that was only blocks away. The party was pretty awesome. We had some great food and fun times with friends. I forgot how much I loved Rock Band (you will see a post on this later). The BBD concert was okay but I was not expecting much since they are in theory a one hit wonder (I know they have two songs that were “hits”). We unveiled our first run of cake pops along with a buffalo chicken dip that were both awesome.

We moved most of the essentials out of the condo on Saturday so I can officially say I am moved. Now I am in process of selling the unit. On Saturday night, we went to a friends new house and had dinner. It is a great house and we had a lot of fun hanging out with friends again.

Sunday was a jammed pack day as we unpacked, went to our new gym for the first time, did a lot of shopping, did some house work, etc. I also watched the World Cup game (or at least the 2nd half). It was very exciting but disappointing. A lot of blown chances and bad mistakes. On Sunday night, we grilled some bacon wrapped fillets and corn plus made some baked potatoes. It might have been one of the best meals we had ever ate. We are really starting to get good on the grill with cooking and seasoning.

• I really need to head out to the new bars by my house on Washington Ave. Rosalita’s and Jive and Wail all recently opened. I am really impressed that Jive and Wail is offering free cover to all downtown residents that can show a 63103 or 63101 zip code on their ID. I think that is a great idea and all the places downtown should follow. I think that would lead more “locals” to hit up these kinds of areas and increase the sense of community.
• I also need to hit up the Whiz Tech Cafe which is on my street and a block away.  I am a little surprised by the location and the concept but the menu sure looks good.
• I am extremely happy to see work begin on the Leather Trades building across the street from my condo. You can read more about the redevelopment in the Stl Business Journal. This place was in the process of being built when I bought my place and was part of the Pyramid collapse. It will be very nice to bring more action to my block. The end goal would be to fill up all the buildings from my block to Pepper Lounge. It is a work in progress as that area continues to add more business and redevelops.
• I love that Charter is finally catching up to their competitors in their HD line up. I have experienced my issues with Charter in the past but they are doing really well in Customer Service in my eyes now.  They added 11 new HD channels yesterday and I have been told that they will add another 14 in March. MTV is awesome for Jersey Shore, VS is good for hockey, Nick is good too. I can not wait for E to come out in the future. It will pretty much wrap up all my tv watching in HD.

11 New HD Channels:
Versus HD (Expanded Basic): 731FX HD (Expanded Basic): 732Big Ten Network HD (Expanded Basic): 733Speed HD (Expanded Basic): 734Hallmark Channel HD (Digital View): 742Cooking Channel HD (Digital View Plus): 743VH1 HD (Expanded Basic): 744MTV HD (Expanded Basic): 746Spike HD (Expanded Basic): 747ABC Family HD (Expanded Basic): 748Nickelodeon HD (Expanded Basic): 749

14 HD channels in March 2011 (No firm date released yet):
ESPNU HD (Digital View/Sports View): 737Lifetime Movie Network HD (Expanded Basic): 738CNBC HD (Expanded Basic): 739MSNBC HD (Expanded Basic): 740Travel Channel HD (Expanded Basic): 741Disney XD HD (Expanded Basic): 750Cartoon Network HD (Expanded Basic): 717ESPN News HD (Sports View): 718TruTV HD (Expanded Basic): 724E! HD (Expanded Basic): 723CMT HD (Expanded Basic): 722Oxygen HD (Digital View): 721HLN HD (Expanded Basic): 720BIO HD (Digital View): 719

• Here is a great analysis on Blaine Gabbert. Finally, someone has watched all the tapes and realizes that this guy needs a lot of work. He might be the prototypical build for a NFL QB but he sure does need some work on pocket presence. I can really see him bombing if he is drafted as a franchise QB and thrown into a starting role in the 1st year or two.
• The Colorado upset of Missouri doesn’t seem to be that much of an upset anymore after Colorado beat K State in Manhattan last night. The Big 12 is just really strong and every road game is going to be tough.

That’s all I got. I was going to break up these posts based on Matt’s comments but I am too lazy so you will have to deal with it.

One of the things I love about Christmas is the extended time off for work. My work gives us two days each for Christmas and New Years and most of our supplier take the week off between Christmas and NY so its a big week to also take off. I normally take off the week before Christmas to have a huge break but was limited in vacation days due to the Australia trip. Thus, I only had 12 days off.

I may have wrote and said that Becki and I were going to tackle some big home improvement projects like painting base boards and refinishing her hard wood floors on her second floor but none of that happened.  Instead we relaxed and went to a lot of holiday parties with family and friends. Below is a summary of a little bit of everything.

Kinect

We got a Kinect for Christmas. We bought Kinect Sports and Kinect Dance Central in addition to getting Kinect Adventures with the device.  First off, you will find that most people do not know what a Kinect is so Microsoft is not doing something right. I know they are running a bunch of adds but they seem to not be sticking. Maybe it is the weird name. The Kinect is pretty awesome and everyone that has played it with us thinks the same. Dance Central is hard for Becki and I so we do not play it but others find it easier and fun. We love Kinect Adventures. The rafting and the 3 other adventure games are pretty fun but I can see the game getting old. The sports game is a lot of fun. It really mimics the actual sport in many ways. My favorite is volleyball and track and field. I am pretty sure you could play a game on this for an hour a day and would be a great work out. We were sore the whole first week we played. You always work up a good sweat when playing.

Sporting Events

The MU – Il basketball game was very entertaining. I do think that the IL foul was intentional but it was a tough call at the end of a close  game. The IL player should have never fouled in the first place anyway. If he wouldn’t have fouled they would have been down 3 with the ball and a lot of time.

The MU – Iowa game was very disappointing. I was expecting a slaughter knowing that Iowa did not finish good and was missing several star players. Maybe MU thought the same and did not bring their A game. Maybe MU does not get pumped up for bad bowl games when they deserve much better (the same thing happened last season). I blame a lot of it on Gabbert. He threw two costly interceptions. I find it lubricious that he is projected to be the #2 QB in the NFL draft and a possible top 5 or 10 pick. He might have the build and skills of a prototypical NFL QB but he has shown all season that he can not make it as a star even in college. I wanted him benched earlier in the season.  This must be a horrible draft year for QBs after the great year last year. I would hate to be the team that drafts Gabbert wanting to build a franchise around him.

The Rams are depressing….that is all I can say. You could say that they did much better than last year but I am not going to give them that cop out. They were in the position to win the division and choked. They had a weak schedule and could easily only win a couple games next year due to a harder schedule. I think three things need to happen. Get rid of the Offensive Coordinator. He is not getting it done in my eyes. He calls all the wrong plays at the wrong time. The second is to draft a WR in the first round. The third is to sign a big name WR. We can not wait for a rookie to pan out while Bradford is at the top of his game. Get in done Kronke!

Becki and I were fortunate to get front row tickets to a Blues game. It was awesome being on the ice but definitely not worth the $250 face value of the tickets. The tickets were all inclusive so that included food and drinks two hours before the game until 30 minutes after the game. There was only one place to get the drinks and food but fortunately it was in our section. I also caught two pucks but gave them both to kids sitting around me.

Family

I think I went to 5 different Christmas parties with both mine and Becki’s families. All were fun and I ate a ton of food. Its always nice catching up with family. It is weird because I think I get the majority of my family time visits in over a 40 day period between Thanksgiving and New Years.

New Year Eve

We went to Mango for a group dinner for NYE.  On a sort of different subject, Mango’s website was just blocked by my work’s internet filter because it said it was porn…pretty weird. We had 5 other couples. Overall, I would say the group was disappointed. The person that made the reservation specifically asked if there would be a special menu for NYE in which she was told no. Of course there was when we got there.  Thus everyone spent a little more than they wanted to but that wasn’t my problem. My problem was that the place was not full but it still took like 3 hours to get through our dinner. I thought that is why restaurants have special menus to avoid this. I enjoyed my food although I thought the portions sucked. Most of the people I talked to were not impressed or didn’t like it at all.  Thus after a bad group experience in Vegas and two years in a row of quasi service for NYE, Becki and I decided we are going to avoid group dinners and NYE dinners. It’s as simple as that! The party that Becki and I hosted was pretty awesome. We had a small gathering and basically just played Kinect all night. I was impressed as some of my friends stayed up till 3:30 in the morning and with their impressive jumping skills.

This was a pretty jammed pack weekend. We braved the mall on Friday evening to do some Christmas shopping. It was dead so that was a plus. We also watched Get Him to the Greek. It was a funny movie. The P Diddy scenes were the best.

We had a trivia night on Saturday for a family at my girlfriends work. It was a fun time and we did relatively well (16 out of 40). The funny thing was that we bombed on the sports category (2 of 8 ) but did well on all the others (avg 6 of 8 on the other rounds). I have realized that I am pretty good at useless trivia. We finished out the night at The Famous Bar. I am going to go and elect that bar to be the smokiest bar in St Louis….an award previously held by Rue 13. You could smell the smoke as you approached the door. My car still smelled smokey the next day. I can’t wait for January 1 to get here so St Louis and the county are smokefree.

Sunday was a big day for home work at Becki’s. We put up the Christmas tree and decorations. The blurry picture above does not do the place justice. Her house really looks great. I also installed a new front porch light above Becki’s front door. It sounds like an easy task but not on an old house. First, I had to drill out the screws of the existing one since they used flathead recessed screws that were as soft as butter. Secondly, I now didn’t not have screw holes to install the mounting plate for the new one so used some self tapping larger screws to mount it permanently. Besides that and the fact that it was 20 degrees, it went pretty smoothly and the light looks awesome.

In TV news, Becki and I both started watching The Event. That show is sort of additicting. It is my new favorite out of the new but old season (it is actually the only new show I watch besides Boardwalk Empire).

This was what I would call a pretty lazy weekend. It was the first weekend that my girlfriend and I were both in town for a while so we did a lot of lounging. We ran errands on Friday and did a little housework. I tried to be a plumber which I thought would be easy. I guess I needed to consider the facts that (1) my girlfriends plumber friend has repeatedly worked on the tub (2) the house is older and has older fixtures. Needless to say, I took out the stem and recognized that there were several seals broken and missing. The whole issue with the tub was that it was leaking at the stem but I could also tell that it probably wasn’t sealing between the lower bath head and the shower head because the seal was totally gone. We went to Home Depot to find seals which we couldn’t so we just bought a complete replacement kit. Unfortunately, the kit had the wrong size stem. I am guess there is a standard now but not back when this bathroom was designed. We went to Ace and it really is the place because it had all kind of stem kits and seals but the person working there wasn’t very helpful and we couldn’t find anything that looked close. I ended up reusing a seal (that probably was not a good idea) and buying an oring where I needed a washer gasket. I did get it to seal and it works pretty good except the fact that the water pressure is only 75% of what it was before. I’m assuming because of the seal I reused in a different place. That a weekday goal to fix.

We watched the MU game on Saturday which really pumped me up. So much that I bought tickets for the game this weekend. How can you pass up tickets for Homecoming weekend, the first visit by ESPN’s College Gameday crew, and the #1 team in the nation? I sure couldn’t. We went to a friends wedding rehearsal that night and went to the MAC for the dinner portion. It was a good time and the place was packed.

Not much happened on Sunday either. I watched the amazing upset by the Rams. I am super excited about Denario Alexander’s excellent first game. Becki and I watched some shows on the DVR that night and were very successful on our first attempt of making lasagna. It was amazing. Here are some more pictures of the process.

Update: I fixed the water pressure issue with the shower head in like 2 minutes. The o-ring I bought ( that wasn’t the right fit and needed to be a washer gasket) was compressing into the chamber under pressure and causing restrictions. I just cut it out and going without it. It is only used to seal between the shower head and the bottom outlet which must make a good metal to metal seal since it does not leak.

Fun

I had a pretty entertaining weekend. I went to Double D’s to celebrate a friend’s engagement. Another group of people that I knew were also there. It was a fun time. I still am surprised of the crowd and the atmosphere of the new location.

On Saturday, I got some shopping in. I bought a couple fake trees for my place. The coolest one is a 7ft bamboo tree that I put in my bedroom. It was expensive but it fits the room perfectly. The base even matches my bedroom furniture. I hung out at a friend’s that night for his 30^th b-day party. It was a great night and was the first time in a long time that we all hung out. We fit in a little dancing at Big Daddy’s and then made a quick run to Pops to round out the night.

Sports

Pretty big weekend for sports. The biggest event on my mind was the MU – K State game. It turned out to be a great game and helped to ease a lot of the anxiety of the team after some tough road losses to some bad teams. MU now has a 30 game home winning steak which is extremely impressive. It was a good start to Big 12 play and hopefully it continues. I watched bits and pieces of all the playoff games. Thought I would watch more of the Dallas – Philly game but did not. The Blues won their first game under the new head coach too.

TV

Sunday night premiered two of my favorite shows. The first being Chuck which almost did not record because it lost a DVR matchup with Big Love and the Simpson’s 400^th episode special. I moved Big Love to 10:15 and it was all resolved. Chuck showed two new episodes back to back. There is another one tonight. I still do not know why more people do love Chuck. Here is a good synopsis from my favorite Lost writer on the show. All I can say is that it has drama, comedy, romance mixed with hot girls, fighting, and tons of trendy electronic callouts and references. As for the new season, it did seem that they were cutting cost since the show was basically cancelled and brought back to life by their strong fan base. It seemed like some of the CGI explosions looked a little cheesy to me. Overall, the two episodes were good and Chuck 2.0 seems like he will have some new moves. The Accord commercials with the characters were sort of weird. I didn’t know if I was watching the show or a commercial at first. I guess that’s good Marketing.

More importantly was the premier of Big Love. It has been so long that I forgot some of the major plotlines. I totally forgot that Joey killed Roman. It also looks like for now that he will get away with it. It was a very entertaining first episode and through out some very interesting twist to setup the season.

All I can about Jersey Shore is Gym, Tan, and Laundry. Everyone has to have a little GTL in their life.

Another weekend, another 3+ day off extended edition. I really did not do much this past weekend. I went to the baseball game Friday night which is my extent of going out into the public for the 3 days. I did finish painting and cleaned up my place so it looked super nice. Probably watched more football than I needed to. I think that is all I did Saturday and Sunday. Watching MU almost loose was very nerve wrecking and I couldn’t even bare to watch past the 1^st quarter of the Rams game.

In fantasy sports news, I have started my run to the crown in baseball after a 1^st week bye and a very strong start for the first couple days by my pitchers. I am winning by a big margin but my opponents pitching staff is hanging in there. I also dominated in fantasy football. I scored the most points on both defense and offense to win by like 80 points…blowing all the other teams out of the water. What is weird is that I had little production out of my two wide receivers and one running back positions (along with my flex positions) so I thought I was in trouble but I had several players put up huge numbers plus had the most TDs in the league. My bench was even impressive. I remember having a discussion with the boys when watching the MU game about drafting Bess for Miami. They acted like they didn’t even know who he was. Well he had the most catches for Miami (like I believe he did last year). Michael Bush also seemed to get a lot of looks with McFadden and the Raiders which made me happy even though McFadden looked a lot better in the game. I guess the 1^st pick in the drafts make all the difference since I got it in both football and baseball. It would be nice to have a dual crown this year.

My thumb is doing really well too.

I decided to finally paint my place after almost a year and a half of living in white space. The funny thing is that I came extremely close to having it painted before I moved in since I had the place a couple weeks before I moved. The last straw came when I bought all new natural light bulbs which looked awesome but made the place look very white.

Choosing the right paint

The one thing everyone told me and what I heard was that a good paint makes all the difference. I had been looking at various Lowe’s paint offerings for the past couple weeks. I had settled on some Valspar colors but then at the last minute I chose to go with Eddie Bauer because I was told that the paint was a little better. I then heard about a Labor Day paint sale at Home Depot plus I was recommended to try Behr’s new paint because it had the paint and primer all in one. Supposedly all the Home TV shows use this new Behr paint. Do you want to know why I ended up going with it? You could say because it was cheaper. You could say because it had the primer built in so possibly less coats. You may also think that it was because a good friend kept telling me the Ralph Lauren paint at Home Depot was the best and I had two different Home Depot employees tell me the new Behr paint was better. All good reasons but the reason I went with it was because it had NANOGUARD® technology. Don’t know how this nano technology helped but both the Engineer and Marketing person in me loved the buzz word so I went with it.

Choosing the right color

Luckily I have some friends that understand the “color wheel” and choosing complementing colors. I obviously have no clue about colors. I tried adjusting colors online and kept getting totally different colors that I desired. I wanted bright colors since I have a contemporary open space. I ended up going with a combination of blues and grays (almost green).

Mistakes

1. Taping – I didn’t tape some of the bathroom after I though I could use the edger but it didn’t work out. Also, I did not realize that there are 3 different grades of tapes. I bought medium stickiness. I did pull off pieces of the dry wall/paint so probably not the best choice for non wood or concrete applications.
2. Ladder – I had only a 7ft ladder which worked fine in the hallway but was impossible around the kitchen since I could not put it against the wall. The corner above the refrigerator was impossible, I am lucky I didn’t kill myself after I was standing on about on anything I could.
3. Not having a shorter extension. I borrowed an extension from a friend. It was probably 4ft long and extended to another 4ft. In open spaces, it made it super easy to paint wall to ceiling since I have 12ft ceilings. In the hallways and kitchens it was impossible. I later bought a 2ft one that extended to 4 ft. It made a huge difference.
4. Throwing away some of the paint cans before I got the UPC for the rebate. The funny thing is that I Googled paint sales last week to find the Labor Day sales and actually read someone’s comment about making sure to save the paint cans.

Good Calls

1. I read at the last minute that someone said one of the 5 key things to painting is owning a canvas drop cloth. I borrow some plastic from a friend but ended up buying a runner drop cloth at the last minute. This was key because I could put it along my entire wall, it absorbed paint so you did not track it around, and it stayed in place while laying flat.
2. Buying the good paint

What I learned

1. Good brushes really made a difference
2. That I do not understand how to paint with a roller
3. That you can spend a huge amount of time taping and it still doesn’t look right when your done.
4. That I suck at painting overall and I should hire a professional next time!

What do I think?

Overall, I like the colors. The kitchen is my favorite. My customer vases would work perfect in there if I ever did it. The one major problem I have is a spot in the hallway. It is the area where I went from one can to another. There was a super bright streak. I painted a second coat over it and you can still see it. You cant notice it if you look at it straight on but easily is noticed when looking at if while walking down the hallway. The other issue is the white trim I have around my whole place. The paint looks a little rough around it. I need someone with a stead hand to paint the top lip with a small brush.

The Final Product

Click here to see picture of my progress and the end results.