CHILDHOOD DREAMS REKINDLED, A-ROD STILL AN ASS...

Okay, so for the first time in years, I am completely consumed by a book. Faithful by Stephen King (yes, that Stephen King) and Stewart O'Nan is great. However, most people know the story of the Red Sox from the 2004 championship. Unless you like the team however, you probably wouldn't like the book. Since they are my favs, I've been laughing, crying, yelling, and screaming right along with them. What a fantastic book. I had to stop myself a bit ago, because I wanted to be selfish and read the entire playoffs in one sitting. Such a good book. The authors are probably the luckiest people on earth for going to so many games, getting so many free balls, and even having the chance to throw out the first pitch (Stephen King). I also love the way they handle the media, as well as the cities the teams are from. They think like I think, only much wittier than I could ever put it. All in all a great book...kinda odd that I know the ending already. It will always make me think..."where was I when the greatest sports comeback not just in past history...but ever...went down?"

I remember working at Walmart, in the middle of a power outage. I was facing groceries in one of the aisles and I actually stopped and prayed to God. What a selfish thing to do, even though I'm sure it has been done a million times by sports fans for their team. I prayed that the Red Sox would come back...come back and win it all. To my amazement and humility, they went on to win the last four against the Yankees and then swept the Cardinals for the first title in 86 years. What a great story. Now that's drama, that's excitement, that's what life is all about. :)

ps...my weight is offically starting much to my delight at 217...and I think that might have been with clothes on also! :)

pps-tonight i'm hopefully going with my pal Brooke to see "Hostel". I've heard some fantastic things about this movie, most of them bad, but we've been planning since November...so here goes!

RESOLUTIONS...BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.

Okay, so after doing some thinking, I decided to make some resolution anyway, even though they are pretty stupid, I guess the end-all to them is that you try to improve something about yourself, which is never stupid. So here we go, and to try to make things even tougher on myself, I'm going to try and keep not one or two but 10 of them! Holy wowsa! I might leave a few blank today, but will fill them in when I think of more appropriate ones. Here we go...
1. Try to eat an average of at least one fruit or veggie a day. I know you're supposed to eat like four of these daily, but truth is, I usually don't ever do this. Thus far I'm two days in a row! Whoo hooo, go me!
2. Everyday that I don't teach I will workout...a little. Even if it means that I have to get up a bit earlier to do it. I know this one sounds weak to most people, but try working 16 hour days most of the time. You don't have a lot of time left...period. Furthermore, I will rotate a cycle of Pushups, Jogging, Situps, and Dancing, so that I don't get sick of doing the same thing everyday. I don't wanna be super huge buff man (that would be nice), but I wouldn't mind losing a bit either. Which brings us to...
3. Lose three pounds a month until I hit 205. This will probably be the toughest one for me to achieve, as I'm notorious for attempting exercise, but am horrible with diet, so not much weight is lost. I will weight myself when I wake up in the morning, first thing, so that I can have consistant time frame.
4. My list of eating out...will go down...a lot. Until further notice...the following restaurants are banned by me, for me-McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, and Taco Bell. I don't eat at them very often with the exception of the Walmart McDonalds, I have to stop eating crap. Noticeably still allowed, Culvers, Border Grill, Red Lobster, Casa et.al.
5. Stop spending so much on crap I don't really need. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a huge collector of crap. In addition, I've made many big purchases over the last six months (e.g. new car, MP3 player, Nintendo DS, wall decorations, bathroom improvements) and I need to stop these and the numberous little purchases that I want. I will try to keep track on here of my wills and how good I do knocking them out.
6. Triple my effort to find a teaching job. Sadly, no I don't spend nearly as much effort as I should in finding a job. I will try harder, especialy now that I have the internet. I'm even almost motivated enough to leave Michigan. There's a shocker.
7. Get better at communication with old friends...and family. I suck as a long distance friend/relative, and I will do what I can to get better at this. Letters, e-mails or visits, I'll see what I can do.
8. Stop hoping for love. Well, not entirely, but I hope everyday that I will find the perfect person. I know I'm a great person for someone to be with, I just need to find who. This isn't to say I won't still be interested in girls, just not as much.
9. Go back to school...this summer. I have to anyway, I'll start saving up now...maybe take two classes this summer....or something like that. I'm excited at this one!
10. Read at least one novel/book a month. I used to read all the time...what happened. Where once I was light years ahead of other people in intelligence, mainly from reading, I now am just about average with my knowledge...time to get back in the habit. All starting with "Faithful"!

All for now, I hope I can keep almost all of these up.

Laters,

Cody

OFFICIALS OFFICIALLY OFFICIATE JANUARY 15TH "NOT A GREAT DAY"

In what was a surprise to me...January 15th...fully sucked. I mean hardcore. I'm struggling to come up with a happy thought from today. If anything its a message I got from a certain someone...more on that later. It all started innocently enough, I woke up an hour and a half early for work, which is really early for me. So I decided to play on my computer for a while. Well I spilled my milk on my leg, the chair, the floor, etc. This sucked. But alone enough to ruin a day? No. No, the real fun began as I left my apartment. I backed out of the driveway, and much to my dismay, heard a slight grinding sound coming from the front passenger wheel. I drove to work and pretty much assumed I had a flat tire. I've never had one before, but since the car kept trying to buckle hard to the right, I knew. Upon getting to the store, and looking at my tire, I was amazing to see smoke billowing off of the tire, which had already lost most of its shape. A nice guy in the truck next to me, tried to use some fix-a-flat to help, but apparently the can was out. So I'm in a lovely mood already, and guess what...its going to get even better!

I head back and talk to the boys in automotive, only to find out that they probably don't carry my tire (a wider tread, narrow-sided racing street style tire), but I move the car back there anyway. Amazingly they find one for me up near the rafters in the back room in automotive. A sweet price of 102 dollars coupled with an oil change and slight winterization of my car and i'm 130 dollars more broke. Yay. But on no, that wasn't enough. I can't get anyone to actually comprehend how short handed I was at work today, but lets just say that everyone was pissy, cause we all carried damn near twice our weight. Fucking management...schedule more people. At one point I had 11 registers open with huge lines in them...of the 11, 4 were cashiers, 5 were floor associates that I dragged up and the last 2 were CSM Shane and myself. Ridiculous. I also slight popped my shoulder or some shit...cause it hurts to move it. What a shitty day.

HEART GROWS, MAN SWOONS, CONFUSION REIGNS

In other news...the refreshing part of my life goes to a girl I've been talking online with named Leah. I know, I know...why try to meet a girl online? Well, the fact of the matter is that I can talk to girls online, and would never be able to just go up and talk to someone in real life. She found me on myspace.com and we sent messages back and forth starting around early to mid december i'm guessing. She says the sweetest stuff to me, but I know that I'm not going to fall completely due to a few things...she leaves messages for several boys, not just myself, as of yet, we have never met in person, and she seems to be a bit hesitant with me. I am still giving her the benefit of the doubt as I have to believe there is a great match out there for me somewhere...and maybe, just maybe she's it. She's beautiful, sassy, smart, and above all has a great personality. We'll see if anything happens with her. We are hopefully planning a movie night soon... ;)

BAR, SOCIAL GATHERING FOR INTELLECTUALS...

So I went to visit Katie this past weekend, and we went shopping for damn near 12 hours. To my surprise...the coolest store wasn't Toys'R'Us, or a predominantly electronics store...it was a huge place called "Barnes and Noble". I'm sure you've never heard of it before, but apparently its this huge store with books, you know, those things with pages in them? They also have a small section of music and movies. Well I started off by just checking for bargain books, but eventually had to go the bathroom, which was located towards the back of the store, and decided to meander through the other sections of the store. Wow. This place is frickin' amazing. There are like little culture clubs all over the store, meeting, discussing, and sharing info and insight on whatever section they were in. Some talked fantasy, others history. I got caught up in a section on baseball books, and eventually Katie found me. The best title I saw for a book was "Reasons Why the Yankees Suck", or something like that. I decided upon the book "Faithful", which is the chronicling (sp?) of the year my beloved Red Sox won the world series. The season is told from Stephen King (yes, that one) and Steward O'Nan's little diddy's they wrote the whole season. Should be a good read. More impressive to me though was the music/movie section. While MUCH smaller than other places we had visited that day (i.e. FYE, Circuit City, Best Buy, Media Play et. al.), they had a great selection there, probably the best of the day. I picked up a CD by Muse called "Absolution", it is awesome! The movies section was unbelievable, with "Metropolis" seasons of the X-Files and a HUGE collectors edition set of Alfred Hitchcock's movies (of which Katie and I are on a huge kick of currently). But the most impressive thing I saw in the entire store (besides the million intellectually and physically attractive women) was a DVD of "Un Chien Andalou" or translated as "The Andalusian Dog". It was 20 dollars for a 17 minute film, but amazing that they had it. I watched it in a film class one time. It has one of the most amazing scenes ever put on video. Read up on it if you are curious. Also of excitement was a Italian movie called "The Bicycle Thief" which I also watched in my class.

Final goods for the shopping trip--
CDS
Kasabian-Kasabian (this rocks...get it)
Muse-Absolution (very haunting...very rocking...very fucking intense)
Natalie Imbruglia-Left of the Middle (this was on sale for 1.50!)
Movies
Freaks (very excited to finally see this...it was banned for a long time, now considered a classic)
Book
Faithful (description above)

NUPTIAL HAPPENINGS...

Well, in what has become the month that was cliche to announce your engagements, I have heard of about five or so, a few really big ones to mention. First off, Lindsay, who was my ex-girlfriend has accepted engagement from her new fiance, Andrew. Since I am forbidden to talk with her, as per his orders, I was unable to congratulate her on her facebook account. Hence, I will do it on here, and hope that in some way she sees it. Lindsay, I know we had some great times, and some rough times, I wouldn't take my time with you away for anything. I hope you can believe me when I say that I am very happy for you! If Andrew is what you are looking for, and it seems that he is, may you go as far as your imagination can guide you. I wish you both the best of luck in your marriage endeavor.

The other big announcement close to home was Nate and Karen's engagement and subsequent wedding plans. This one is going to be a short engagement, so that they can live together...I believe. Either way, I cannot say how happy I am for both of them. They helped me so much this past year, just by being there and helping me get through several rough times. Congratulations to both of you. I hope this is a special moment in both of your lives. And to top it all off, I got a phone call from Nate last night asking if I would be the best man at his wedding. An honor. I havnen't talked to him yet, hoping to do that in person soon, but of course I will say yes. Two of my best friends...how could I pass that up? I better start thinking of speeches, hey? Nah, actually I have it half done already, thought about it on my drive home, lol.

HOLIDAYS CELEBRATED, PRESENTS RECEIVED, FRIENDS MADE...

In summary of my weeks without an update, let me just say Christmas rocked! I got all kinda of sweet movies and gifts. Time with my family was awesome. New Years was fun, even if I did only go down to the ball drop with Matt. I have made a ton of new friends this holiday season, mostly I'm sure cause Dave and Katie are gone for good, and Nate and Karen were gone for the holidays. And sure some of it has to do with me trying to find a nice girl for myself. I figure I have hung out with more people in the last month, than I ever have in my life. So that's cool. I even got to go to Flint and see Marco and Kristy for a few days over break. Thanks so much for everyone who is in my life in any way shape or form. I love you guys to death, and may 2006 be even better than 2005 was. Keep rocking, YOOOOOOOO JOE!