2005-08-05

Having already worked 40 hours this week [all thanks to flex time], today I had a day off from work. The plan was to be up early to go with Jeff and Val up to Philly to do some running around, but it sounded like they weren't going to get in until very late last night. I still get up early [for a day off] and spend some time cleaning the apartment [in case Jeff and Val stay here]. I also take some time to bag and board the previous month's haul of comics, which is actually a pretty time consuming [and annoying] activity if you let it go for too long [which I tend to do]. I also try to organize some of the paper mess that's on my desk, and I begin to sort through 150+ old e-mails that I haven’t gotten around to reading over the past few months. The bulk of the e-mails are things I send myself from work to check out at home. A few links from these e-mails are interesting enough to warrant inclusion on my links page. My links page can be found at beastard.com, and basically serves as my home page for surfing the web. I end up fixing a few older links and adding some new ones.

While I'm focused on doing computer related nonsense, I also remember that it's about time to start soliciting people to join up for the annual NFL suicide pool. So I go through my e-mail addresses and compile a list of people to send invitations out to and then set up a league on Yahoo. The basic idea behind the pool is that every week during the NFL season, you pick one team that you think is going to win their game for that week. If you pick right, you advance, if not, you're out. What makes it progressively more difficult is that you can only pick a team to win once during the entire season, so things can get tricky as you use up the better teams.

I eventually hear from Jeff around noon time, and he, Val and James pick me up and we head up to Philly shortly thereafter. We stop at the Federal Street bakery for some fresh pretzels, and then go over to Termini Brothers for some fresh cannoli and Italian cookies. After that it's off to Jim's on South Street for a cheese steak lunch, then across town to West Philly and the New Deck Tavern, where we knock back a few pitchers of Yuengling. We make one final stop at Drinker's in center city to meet up with Jeff's sister, Jen before getting ready to head home. Before we do, I realize that I have lost my apartment keys, so we call around to see if anyone has turned them in at any of our stops this afternoon, but no one has seen them. I was pretty bummed out because they are on a neat little Bills key fabe, but everything turns out to be O.K., as we end up finding them in the trunk of the car once we get back to my apartment.

Back home, we meet up with Shannon and ponder where we want to go out to dinner. We decide on Stanley's tavern [a local sports bar] and we end up heading over about an hour later to meet up with Charles. We eat, drink, and act merry for a bit, and the gang eventually decides to move the festivities down to Newark. Before going down, we stop back at the apartment so Jeff and James can pick up their cannoli from the fridge, and I decide that I'm too tired/too broke to go out and drink tonight [there is another expensive drinking night planned for tomorrow up in Philly anyway] so Shannon and I call it a night.