Rules for Apartment Living

Since people are generally rude and disrespectful now a days, I thought I would post this list of rules for apartment living that I've learned from personal experience.

1. Music - Everybody loves to jam to their tunes, especially on a nice, summer day when you put the windows down and have housework to do. When you have a house, you can do that, because you're not sharing walls with other people. When you're in an apartment, the people on the other sides of your walls, may not want to hear your music, or in our case, feel the bass while we are sitting and enjoying our time home. This rule actually goes in a lot of public places. Don't play music on your phone while in a public place, that's why headphones were invented, so you don't have to disturb the people around you.
2. Parking (A) - There are lines in the parking lot for a reason, use them. Your neighbors have the same limited space that you do, so don't take up 2 spots just because you can't park or because you think your car is better than anyone elses. (B) - Handicap spots are for handicapped people. Just because it's in front of your apartment doesn't mean that it's reserved for you. (C) - Don't take spots that aren't spots. We had someone who thought it was ok to park in front of the mailboxes, even though there were all kinds of spots around.
3. Trash - Take your trash out before it starts to stink. When you share walls with people, you share vents with people. Just because your nose doesn't work, doesn't mean everybody else's does. It's also very white trash (no pun intended) to stack your garbage outside your front door instead of walking it to the dumpster.
4. Smoking Pot - This goes a long with #3. If you want to spoke pot, more power to you, but you better realize that everybody living around you can smell it as well. Pot does not smell good.
5. Kids - Teach your kids that the parking lot is like a road, you look both ways, you ride your bikes on the side and just pay attention. I almost hit 4 or 5 kids a year from them running out between cars and not paying any attention. Even 2 year olds with no parents around anywhere.
6. Dogs - If you want to own a dog, you must realize that you have to clean up after it. The other people around you shouldn't have to watch out for your dogs crap laying all over. If you can't take this responsibility on, then wait until you get a house before you get a dog.

To sum all of this up, it comes down to a couple of words. Respect those around you. You have to realize that, yes, even though this is your home, it is also other people's home and you need to respect them if you want to also be respected.

My Saturday in A2

Yesterday, we (my mom, brother, nephew and I) got together at 7am and headed out to start our day. The plan was to hit some Taco Bell for breakfast before we got on the toll road but for some reason, it wasn't open. So we went high class with some Arby's breakfast instead. Certainly not as good as Taco Bell, but you do what you have to do. After that, we hit the road for our 2 1/2 hour drive to Ann Arbor.

We made good time, as we usually do, with not a whole lot of traffic since we left so early. Once we got there, we pulled around the back of the stadium to find the handicap parking (my mom has a bum leg). Once we get out of the van, we grabbed an attendant and asked where Schembechler Hall was. Apparently, it was quite a ways away and my mom wasn't going to be able to walk it. The attendant was cool and told us to go ahead and drive over (he gave directions) and he would save us a spot at the stadium.

We drove down to the hall and got in line to go through. For those that don't know, Schembechler hall has a kind of museum to Michigan football in it. None of us had ever been and I had read that it was going to be open so we made it part of our day. It was pretty cool, especially seeing all the nostalgic stuff from way back when. There were all kinds of old tickets and programs, along with older jerseys and stuff like that. I was really hoping to see the championship trophies but they weren't there, I'm not sure where they keep those. I took a few photos.

Legends jerseys - #21 Desmond Howard, #87 Ron Kramer, #47 Bennie Oosterbaan, #48 Gerald Ford, #98 Tom Harmon and #11 Francis, Albert and Alvin Wistert.

Desmond Howard's Heisman Trophy and Anthony Carter's MVP Trophy.

A football for every game played. Each ball has the teams logos and the score of every game played in Michigan football history.

After going through Schembechler Hall, we headed back to the stadium.  We got there with a little more than an hour before the actual game. Most of the people there were sitting on the west side of the stadium in the sun, we came out on the east side and there were a lot less people so we went down a bit and took some seats in the shade. I think we ended up in the 39th row on the 40 yard line, pretty good seats. It was very chilly out, just above freezing.

Hour before the game from our seats.

We waited it out for about half an hour and then we were in the sun. It made a difference, although not a whole lot since it was so windy. Before the game started, they were showing pictures on the scoreboard of people who hashtagged #GoBlue on Instagram and Twitter so I posted a picture to my Instagram and 3 of my Twitter accounts to see if I could get it posted up there. It worked, my picture made the board. I'm not much of a selfie person, but I took one anyways.

My selfie made it on the Big House board.

The game wasn't too bad, about what I expected. Very little offense, great defense. After the game when we went to leave, we realized our mistake. You always learn from your first trip (this was our first Spring Game). By parking in the handicap area on the backside of the stadium, it took forever to get out. For one, we needed to get to the other side of the stadium (which is where we normally park for games) and that took 45 minutes. Once we got there and we thought it would be smooth sailing, we figured out why it wasn't. When you go to games, they shut down the north side of traffic on the road that leads to the Interstate so all 5 lanes flow south and it clears out the stadium quickly. Apparently they don't do that for this game. That could be because last years Spring game had a total attendance of 15,000. Well, I guess they didn't think that since it was Jim Harbaugh's first year and the fact that it was an actual game and not a practice, they weren't expecting the 60,000+ people that showed up.

Another tradition of going to Ann Arbor is hitting Joe's Crab Shack because we don't have one near us. We figured, 3:00 in the afternoon, should be in and out. Wrong. It was packed, we had to wait 25 minutes to get a seat and then because it was so busy, everything was slow getting to the table. Food was great, as always and we weren't in a hurry so it was no big deal, just surprising.

With all the delays, I had to push back the time I was picking up the kids from theEx since I wasn't getting into town until the time we were meeting and I have to drive so far to get them again. I got home, went inside to pee and grab my music phone and headed back out to go grab the kids. I finally made it home to my recliner just before 9. It made for a long day but it was enjoyable. It's always good times when my mom, brother and I get together.

Randomness

I've been MIA for a long time now, I haven't really done a whole lot worth talking about but I'm going to try to do some regular updates every so often. Try being the key word there.

Not much going on this Good Friday. The kids went to theEx's last night. I told her she could have them today and tomorrow but they come back tomorrow evening so I can have them for Easter. Then they start spring break next week as well. I don't think I've mentioned that she moved again, she now lives an hour and a half away so I have a 45 minute drive, one way, to meet her on her weekends now. They moved (supposedly) closer to his family and further from hers, which is I'm sure what the JackAss wanted. I imagine, the weekends she takes the kids will get less and less as we go on.

Back to today though. Not a whole lot planned, we need to get some shopping done but Cheri is napping right now because she hasn't been able to sleep worth a crap in awhile. She'll sleep a couple of hours, wake up for awhile, sleep for a couple more. Even the sleep she gets is restless so I don't know if you can count it so sometimes, she has to take a good nap in the afternoons which is what she's doing now. Which gives me time to catch up on some of my recorded sports. Watching the White Sox game from yesterday right now and plan on watching some (depends on how long she sleeps) Bulls games afterwards.

I've been working where I'm at now for over 6 months so the job is going fine. I don't mind the job so I don't hate what I do, I just hate that I have to work, like millions of other people. I would prefer to be rich and lazy instead of broke and lazy.

I have been reading still and have finished some books, I just don't ever take the time to post a review, which is pathetic on my part because it's not like I write out huge reviews. One of these days, I may even update my books page on this blog, maybe.

I haven't only slacked on this blog throughout the last few months, I've let most of my tumblr's go as well so don't be too offended. I have, however, been working on my baseball card blogs. My Sports Obsession has been pretty steady, a few posts a week. My Sports Obsession-Index is a little more sporadic because I've been posting on the next 2 more often. My Personal Collections, where I post pictures of all my cards, tagged with which collection it belongs 2. The goal is to eventually have all my cards posted, I'm still going through My Sports Obsession blog and adding what I've already added there before I can even start posting the newer cards. Last but not least, My Baseball Card Obsession, which is really my newest obsession. Right now, I'm doing the same thing as My PC Collections blog where I'm going through My Sports Obsession and copying stuff over here. The only difference is, on this blog, I'm posting any single card I can find. The majority of the blog right now is cards from My Sports Obsession, but it also has cards from other people's blogs. So eventually, when I get caught up, It'll be a database of a crap load of cards. You can search by player, team, or even the set of the card. When I collected back in the day, I wanted every card that I didn't have, this blog is my way of collecting that way without having to physically purchase every card. You can see why it's my latest obsession.