This is just a tribute....

As I march forward in my life, I begin to realize that I am actually becoming an adult which is both good and bad depending on how you look at things. I am moving in with my soon to be wife next week to an apartment in plymouth and am pretty anxious to do so. I think it is another adventure to embark on and an important step in the life workings. We need to start gathering some things so that when we find a house, we will actually have some stuff to put in it. I also like the idea of maybe starting to actually make some dinners together and not have to drive all over the place all the time. That being said, I am ending what has been my favorite living situation so far.

The house of 3524 20th Ave S has been my home for the past 2 years and some odd months and I can say it has been awesome. Ju-Ju, Dus-Dus, B-pain, Ju-Jack, the dude hut. Below is a rundown of my favorite things about living in that house.

1. Memory Lanes Trivia Nights - As a household, we have managed to somehow get over $700 in free drinks/food from the bowling alley right down the road, all for knowing stupid amounts of music knowledge while eating popcorn and having some strongbows. Damn tablecloth lady runs around being as loud and stupid as possible as well.

2. Super Sunday Movie Club - After a long weekend of probably drinking too much, it was house tradition to take sunday night and pick out a movie. After the dumbest selection process possible (everyone votes for 2, we each elimate one and then give a 30 second speech about why we whould watch that movie), we would sit down and watch the selected film.

3. House Court - If there was ever an action by a room mate that was not the greatest or needed some form of dicipline handed out for it, you had to go through house court in which the house heard the case against you and you had a chance to defend yourself. Judgements handed out included things like having to hit on a guy at the bar.

4. Willard - Out little garden gnome friend that was assasinated by one Julius jackson. Julius would later move in as the 4th room mate replacing willard. We still believe there was some sort of conspiracy theory involved as Julius shows no remorse even to this day.

5. Team Unemployment - For awhile, Julius and I were both unemployed and spent our days at the house. A rundown of the type of day that would ensue during that time. Get up at 11, watch sportscenter, go work out, come back, watch Julius' stupid reality show channel, play nerf basketball, play nintendo or sega (aw man, my codes aint workin), take a nap. That was our average day, pretty awesome huh. We would occasionally have Team unemployment field trips to random places.

6. Fake Mustache Night - honestly, who draws marker mustaches on and then goes out in uptown

7. Ju-Ju/Dus-Dus late night jam fest/karoake - Sometimes, much to Sholes chagrin, Dusick and I would jam out to tunes till the wee hours of the morning, sometimes involving some comcast karoake and usually having more to drink even though we didnt need that at all.

8. The mediterranean Deli - Home of the greatest gyro's ever, went there drunk one night after the triple rock and kept going back. Better than falafel king Dus-Dus.

9. Subway 100 - Dusick and I love subway so much and since they put one a little over a block away from the house, we decided that we should have a contest, seeing who can have 100 subway sandwiches before the other person. The contest is ongoing.

Thanks for a great 2 and a half years, I dont think Andrea knows what she is in for yet.

This Weekend, MN vs WI

So this weekend is the king of all sporting events if you live in Wisconsin or Minnesota. First on Saturday is the battle for Paul Bunyan's Axe, the Badgers vs the Gophers. A sense of pride comes over me thinking about this precious trophy as Wisconsin has won it 13 of the past 15 years. So only twice since I have really started watching college football have I had to watch the stupid ground squirrels walk away with this trophy (FWI, a pretty kick ass idea to have a huge axe be the trophy for a college football rivalry game, the Iowa-Minnesota game is a fricken steel pig, WTF) . Lets face it Minnesota, when it comes to college football, Wisconsin is better than you in every way, shape or form the last two decades. Lets analyze for second on the 2 points of determining a good college football program.

1) Winning Tradition - Wisconsin 3 rose bowl victories, a 12 win season, a heisman trophy winner, ranked in the top 25 pretty consistently, three top 10 teams. Minnesota, I think they won the GMAC Chevy Truck uniroyal tire bowl one time and have shown they can blow games at any moment (see Wisconsin-Minnesota 2005)

2) Atmosphere - While Minnesota at least took a step forward in this department with TCF stadium instead of playing in the shit dome, nothing beats Madison on game day. The partying outside, the 5th quarter, the sea of red walking around. ESPN is there usually once a year to do gameday, when was the last time they were in Minnesota? Wisconsin has jump around at the end of the 3rd quarter, Minnesota spells out their state name?




Now the other game is where it gets interesting, the Packers vs Vikings (Brett Favre showdown) at recently renamed Mall of America Field (hahahahahahahaha). I will be the first to admit that I am a bitter Packer fan, not because I think Brett Favre is still really good an am jealous, but because I think this transition has shown that there is truly no loyalty left in sports. No players want to stay with one organization anymore and no organization will do anything to keep their legacy players on their team. It is neither sides fault completely (I blame Favre more, but that is just me) and it is a sad situation.

But on to the game, everyone thinks the Vikings are the greatest and have no weaknesses, Favre has made them complete, blah blah blah. Nice of the Vikings fans to fully hop on the bandwagon while the getting is good. What they arent thinking about is how the Vikings have not played a good team yet (spare me the San Fran talk, good D, very one dimensional O and they went 0 for 11 on 3rd down). They have beaten bad teams essentially with Adrian Peterson, checkdown throws and one decent Favre pass.

The Packers are not a good team yet, but are far more complete than any team the Vikings have faced. One thing the Viking fans also dont know about Brett Favre, he tends to get pretty hyper for big games and usually throws some early picks because of it. He also has karma working against him for making an awful lot of packer fans upset. I will take the Packers in a 27-17 victory in the dome (fyi Mike McCarthy while looking like a fat drunk college dropout, is 5-1 against the Vikings and would have been 6-0 if not for Mason Crosby's FG miss in the dome last year).

We will be seeing plenty of this....
HERE IS TO A WISCONSIN SWEEP!!!!

Updating Stufff

Life update: Let me tell you what, I am pretty sick of weddings right now. I have been to an insane number of weddings in the past 3 years. I think I am right on 18 weddings in the past 3 summers and I have 3 more still to go. It isnt all bad, free beer, free food, some dancing and stuff, but good god I just dont want to have to plan on going to a wedding anymore. Besides that, the DJ's play the same music at weddings no matter which one you are at. The Electric Slide, Celebration, Brown Eyed Girl, the same stuff over and over. Except for the last wedding I was at in which a great Osseo band by the name of SAGE played. In the words of Adam Dusick "SAGE is the greatest band ever" (they arent really, but Dusick likes to pretend they are). No wedding this weekend though, going to spend some time up in the cities.

Thought of the week: Mini-golf courses are basically fantasy lands come true. Think about it, they have giant rapids, dinosaurs, mountains, streams, dragons, pirates, and anything the else the course designer wants and it is all good. As a matter of fact, the more crazy shit, the better. I am thinking that most Mini-golf course designers actually thought of the craziest dream world they ever had and made a mini golf place out of it (obviously not to scale, if there was a minigolf course with an actual life size dragon or river, that would be insane, how big were dragons really though, you dont know, they arent real or anything). This mini-golf course in Blaine would actually be one of the crazier dreams ever, there is an owl with glasses on, a dragon, a giant vikings helmet (gay), a T-rex, some waterfalls, and a pirate ship.

Underrated Entertainment Thing of the Week: The Cars (the band) - Lots of hits you dont even realize, you dont believe me, just look up their stuff

Quote of the Week: John Daly on how he warms up before a PGA Tour Round "I usually get up, smoke half a pack of cigarettes, drink 6 or 7 Diet Cokes, and maybe hit a bucket of balls"

Starting it up

Life Update: As you may have noticed, my first blog post was awhile ago and I need to actually start this up. So here is my latest post. I started a new job at Zayo Enterprise Networks about 3 weeks ago. New gig, kinda the same stuff, little more techy (nerdy if you want to go ahead and label me), and so far, I like it. Not as easy as sittin there surfin the net as was at good ol Integra, but better in the long run (oh yeah, they pay me more too). So there is my Ben life update, now for the fun things that I think you might actually be entertained by that I will fill out on my blog:

Thought of the week: I am going to the Twins game on Wednesday this week against the White Sox, and nothing gets me more fired up about the stupid twins than talking about their mascot, TC the damn Bear. Not two Bears, just one, so tell me how he is associated with the Twins.? I want to be in that meeting room when they came up with that idea for a single bear to be their mascot. Here is a transcirpt of what would have went down had I been there:

Boss: So anyone got any good ideas for a mascot?
Idiot Co-worker: How about a Bear?
Ben: You mean two bears?
Idiot: No, just one, cause we only need one mascot and bears are popular animals (i really dont know if that was the reason, but that sounded good)
Ben: That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard, Bears are not involved with the twins whatsoever, and if we were, lets say the minnesota Bear Twins, there would still be two of them so how about we get actual human twins to be the mascot, cause that is the blatently obvious answer just by saying our team name.

Underrated (In my terms) Song/Movie/Album of the Week: Where you want to Be - Taking Back Sunday

Quote of the Week: I am staying at the Camry Inn - David Goose Owens when asked by Jimmy where he was staying that night, he drives a Toyota Camry