Blasts From the Past: Snippets of My Life (in e-mail form)

I save e-mails. Some are important and meaningful, while others are short snippets of insignificant blabber from the wrath of everyday life. Regardless of the importance level of these e-mails, all of them comprise into an abstract reflection of my life… sort of like a modern day journal. One day I would like to organize them all into somewhat of a coherent story. Not that anybody cares about my life, but it would be something cool to hand down to my future kids. From time to time, I will post some random e-mails that I have either received or sent…

Sadness…

(my grandma)

Sunday, November 4, 2001 10:29 AM
From: Mom
To: Jerry
Subject: Bad News

Love,
Mom
Xxooxx

That was the e-mail my mom sent letting me know my grandma had cancer. She died the following summer. It was the first time someone close to me died. Death, to me, is still one of the hardest things for to deal with and for my mind to comprehend.

Anticipation…

(my uncle al, grandpa, friend donna, and dad)

Monday, August 12, 2002 5:23 PM
From: Jeff
To: Roomates
Subject: Apt 311

jfly

That was an e-mail my friend Jeff sent out before junior year in college. It ended up being one of the best years in school for many reasons. Also, Soldier Field was being remodeled so the Chicago Bears played all their home games at our school. We have so many great stories because our families came down to all the games for some crazy times. Oh to relive that year…

A Beginning…

(one of the first nights we hung out)

Tuesday, April 8, 2003 4:53 PM
From: Katie
To: Jerry
Re: hi

Hey Jerry-
Thanks for the email- definitely a pleasant surprise! I
would love to go with you wed! If you wanna give me a call
with some details my room number is xxx-xxxx and my cell is
xxx-xxx-xxxx. Thanks again for the invite- it sounds like
fun!
-Katie

After briefly meeting Katie one night, I needed a date for an event and had a mutual friend get me her phone number and e-mail. Being the chicken I am, I opted to e-mail her to ask her out on our first date. [You can laugh and tease me here]. Anyways, this was her response back to me. Who would’ve known that 5 years later we would be engaged? It’s amazing how the events and circumstances of everything in our lives, as little as they may seem, can some times conspire into greatness.

Japanese Toilet Training

Any video that has…

1) Talking Toilets
2) Parents singing an awesome song about pee and poop
3) Laughing, smiling, and dancing pee and poop

… is a good video in my book. I can’t wait to have kids and sing them this song.

One Shiny Nail

Did I really just write a short story based on a shiny nail? Yes, I did. For as chill and as calm of a guy as most of you know that I am, for some reason I did not have as much patience as I usually do today…

I staggered into Woodfield Mall at 10:22 pm. I only had a little more than half an hour to make a quick sweep through the ginormous conglomerate of stores that are filled with overpriced, imported crap. I’m more of a ‘find-a-deal-on-ebay-kinda-guy’. However, time is of the essence at this time of year, with Christmas less than a week away.

I quickly walk by Forever 21, my arch nemesis, trying not to glance in it, in fear of being tainted with a headache. Yes, a glance in that store will instantly onset a headache. I cannot begin to count the hours I have aimlessly stood there while my girlfriend browsed through their clothes by going through the racks, piece by piece. If you’ve ever been there, you know how much clothing is jam packed into that chick dungeon. Anyways, I quickly walk by and escape its wrath.

“Free samples,” announces a mildy overweight girl with scabs of recently popped pimples that are chillin’ on her face. Her arm is extended with a small packet of face moisturizer.

I nonchalantly grab the sample and keep walking.

“Hey you, wait a second,” chirps the girl.

I turn around to see if she is talking to me. Yes, she is talking to me. She motions her finger to come back. I don’t know why, but I hesitate, and don’t continue to go on my way.

“I want to show you something,” she says. “Give me your hand.”

She grabs my hand without my permission. I think to myself, “This better not be that block that makes your nails all shi - ”

She pulls the block out before I can finish my thought, and starts scrubbing my index finger nail, while going through her sales pitch.

A few swear words go through my head.

I have had this product done on me a few times in the past and I absolutely hate it. One, it always makes my cuticles burn. Two, it makes your nail look like you just waxed it with an electric power waxer. Three, guys don’t make it a habit to walk around with super shiny nails, especially one super shiny nail.

“Guess how long this will stay shiny for?” she asks.

“A day?” I optimistically mumble.

“Nope, 2 months!” she exclaims.

Yet again, a few swear words go through my head.

She then proceeds to try and sell this devil of block to me for $60. I scoff at the price in my head, and say no as politely as I can. I start to walk away.

She grabs my arm.

A few more swear words go through my head again.

She tells me she’s going do something that she hasn’t done for anyone else, as long as I make a promise to her. Yeah right.

“I like you. You seem like a good guy and I think that people listen to your opinion. If you tell your family, your friends, your friend’s friends, heck even your pets {insert obnoxious chuckle / snort here}, how great this product is, and tell them to come here to buy one for themselves, I will not only give you one of these for $60… but two!”

With my cuticle burning at my side, I give her the look of death. “No thank you,” I politely, but not as polite as before, say. I begin to walk away. She grabs my arm a little firmer.

A lot of swear words go through my head, and I start to twitch as I clench my teeth.

“I really like you, and I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I’m gonna give you three of these for $30.” She starts to ring up the register.

I karate kick her in my thoughts. “I…said…no…THANK YOU.”

“How can you pass a deal like this up?” she questions.

“Because I hate that stupid block. Always have. And now, because of you, I have to walk around for 2 months with this shiny nail. Oh, and by the way, thanks for sanding the skin around my nail off,” I quip.

“That’s more of a reason to get one so you can do the rest of your nails. I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you fou - ”

I stop her mid-sentence, “NO, just please…please let me go. I now only have 15 minutes left to do my Christmas shopping.”

“You can buy one of these for your mom, sis - ”

I start to walk away as fast as I can. She raises her voice still trying to sell me the block, “Five for $10!”

I disappear into the closest department store. I look down at my finger only to be blinded by the glare of my nail. My finger also feels like it was dipped in hydrochloric acid. I walk out of the mall empty handed.

I scrape my nail on the gritty pavement a few times, rub it on the frozen patch of mud sticking out of the corner of the curb, and wash it with some snow, to see if I can make my nail look normal again. Nope, it is still as shiny as a mirror that was just washed with windex.

I was defeated.

Dog Saves Dog

For those of you that know me, you know that I love animals… especially dogs. Anyways, this video of this dog saving another one that got hit by a car, is incredible.

Samsung Ads

I like this Samsung ad campaign…

A Million Hobbies

It is safe to say that I think it’s impossible for me to ever be bored. I have so many things that I want to do / learn / divulge into, that there is never enough time in the day for me to spend any qualitative time on them. It’s weird… after spending my whole life, up until graduating college, my mind was so exhausted from school, lectures, homework, papers, tests, etc, that I had no desire to learn anything new. It all became more of a job than anything. However, now that I’ve been out of school for a few years, I’ve had this extreme hunger for knowledge that I have never felt before. Why am I reading history books in my spare time? Why did I download Rosetta Stone with the mind set of learning not one, but multiple languages? Why am I watching hours upon hours of graphic design tutorials online? Why do I find myself listening to news radio on the way to work?

All I do know is that I’m glad I’m enriching my mind with this kind of stuff rather than the old me that would waste my days watching reality tv on MTV… well let me take that back, Laguna Beach was the bomb…and yes, I’m being serious.

TV on the Radio

TV On The Radio
Dear Science
Rating: 4.5 / 5

What perfect timing… I wanted to write a review on TV On The Radio’s album “Dear Science”, and let everyone know how supremely super-uber magnificent it is, but Rolling Stone magazine beat me to the punch and named it their #1 album of the year. There is nothing more than I would love to see the first track, Halfway Home, live in concert on a hot summer night.

Pure Genius

Wow, this is the best thing I have found all week… David Thorne didn’t have the $233.95 to pay an overdue account. So what did he do? What any other budding young genius would do, he submitted a picture of a spider he drew instead…

David, you are my new hero.

Playing for Change

One of the many questions I struggle with often is why was I placed on this Earth and given a relatively easy life to live? I live in a free country to do as I please, I have a roof over my head, food on the table, clothes on my back, heat in the winter, air conditioning in the summer, an education, and a job that gets me by… among many other things. Granted, I don’t have the best paying job, but even with the money that I make, I can provide for myself and my future family better than most people in other countries can ever dream of. There are millions of people that live their whole lives in fear, sickness, hunger, and pain every single day. It just boggles my mind that I get to sit here, behind the computer, in the comfort of my room, while others are out their struggling to live one more day.

With that said, I can do two things about that thought. One, simply be thankful for what I have and two, volunteer more to help make this world a better place for others to live in, as little as a footprint as that may be. I am ashamed to say that I have not done any volunteer work in the past couple years. In high school, I volunteered all the time. In college, I played a big role in organizing a charity event for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. However, since then I have been missing in action… and that needs to change.

I saw a segment on PBS the other night about an organization called “Playing For Change“. Basically, they are a group that builds schools, connects students, and inspires communities in need through music. They have a DVD coming out, of their award winning documentary, that features songs that they recorded with musicians from around the world. They spliced all these musicians together to form the songs. This song, Ben E King’s “Stand By Me”, is one of the greatest videos that I have seen in a very long time…

The power of music, and what it can do, will never cease to amaze me.

On another, and completely unrelated note… Rod Blagojevich, you are horse poop.

Role Models

Mission accomplished: We found our church for the wedding. We looked at a few bigger churches in Peoria, but ultimately decided on Katie’s church in Pekin, that she grew up in. I’m glad that we now have that checked off our list of things to do.

Saturday night we went to see Role Models, starring Seann William Scott, Paul Rudd, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. It started off a little slow, but ended up being a great movie. I would definitely recommend it. The characters and story-line made the movie.

On my drive home last night, I took this video of this place that I always pass on I-55, near Joliet. I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s always lit up and there is always a lot of smoke. It’s not a city, but it looks like one. Anyone know what it is? If I had to guess, I would bet that batman lives there…

Placement Pictures

Everyone who goes to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa, does the obligatory “holding up the tower” picture. I found some not-so-cliche placement pictures that I thought were interesting / funny / cowabungishly radical, that I thought I’d share…

I’m totally doing a picture like one of these this weekend…

Thank You Video Outtakes

Since I’m on the subject, after I won the proposal contest, Youtube (one of the sponsors) contacted me and said they would pay us $500 if we made a video in response to my proposal video that was on the front page of Youtube that day. In the video they wanted us to thank all the sponsors. Of course we said yes. You would think it would be the easiest $500 ever made. Well, like I said earlier, I was still pretty sick and couldn’t get through my lines for the life of me. This 45 second video, which by the way was very embarrassing / corny, took us (or I should say me for that matter) over an hour to get right. Here are just a few of the many, many outtakes… oh and if you’re wondering, yes, even though it turned into a pretty frustrating production, it still was the easiest money we have ever made. Holla!

Galenapalooza

Last year I organized a ski trip to Galena and ended up in the hospital because I couldn’t stop throwing up and sharting my pants. I lost almost 20 pounds in a few days and it was the sickest I have ever been in my life. The problem was that I found out, a few days before the trip, that I won the 1-800 Flowers Will You Marry Me Contest and would be propsing to Katie on Inside Edition after the weekend was over. With that said, I was super nervous, got very little sleep, wasn’t able to eat, and wore my immune system down to the point that I caught a very NASTY bug. I thought for sure I was going to end up on VH1’s Best Week Ever as the dude that puked and pooped in his pants on national tv proposing. Luckily that didn’t happen! However, I did look quite sickly and had some sweet chest hair that made an appearance…

Anyways, I’m putting together another Galena trip this year. So far over 35 people have committed, but I’m hoping for a few more so we can rent out this mansion that can easily fit 35+ people comfortably. It’s pretty expensive and I’d like to try to keep the cost below $100 per person. With that said, anyone that is interested please get in contact with me. It’s a pretty random group of people so don’t worry if you think you won’t know anyone because that will already be the case for a lot of people. If anything, it will be a great time and place to meet some new friends.

Some specs of the house…
- 12,000 square feet
- 8 themed bedrooms with 16 king beds
- TV, Stereo, DVD, CD, IPod station in each bedroom
- 8 full and 3 half baths
- Jacuzzi bathtubs
- 2 fireplaces
- 27′ bar with TV
- Poker and Pool Tables
- Foosball Table
- Air Hockey Table
- Reception/Entertainment Room with 55″ TV
- 12 acre wooded lot with walking path
- Hot Springs Grande hot tub/gazebo
- 115′ main level deck
- 70′ lower patio with granite fire pit

Dental Lab Remodel

Alright, well the reason I didn’t post much last week was because I spent my 4 day weekend cleaning and repainting the dental lab I work at. The place was a craphole filled with mold, dust, stains, etc. If it wasn’t for Kate helping me out, I would have never gotten the job done. We started at noon on Friday and worked all through the night until 9:30 AM on Saturday. We slept until 2 PM and then worked again until 7 AM Sunday. I then went in for 7 more hours on Sunday. To say the least, we were exhausted. Granted, the place is still a craphole, and still needs quite a bit of work done (especially new carpeting), but at least it’s now a clean craphole…

MIA

Sorry that I have been missing in action. I was super busy the past few days and had very little sleep. I will update more tomorrow. Until then, here is an interesting vid…