Month: March 2011

Indoor Football & CreamSlush Goodness

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A few weeks ago I decided we should do something different, so I purchased tickets on Goldstar to see the Chicago Slaughter, an indoor football team who plays at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates.

After a busy work week we were rather dreading that decision since we were both tired and didn’t know what to expect having never been to the arena before. I’m glad we didn’t stay home, though, because we had a great time.

Parking was reasonable at $10 (it varies depending on the event). Our spot wasn’t a far walk from the arena, but we arrived an hour before the event so I’m sure that was a contributing factor besides the fact that the arena ended up only being about 1/5th full. It was a breeze getting out of the lot because we took off during the 4th quarter right before they finally caught up and ended up winning by one point.

We picked up our tickets at Will Call which was easy to find. I like that the Box Office is inside the arena so you don’t freeze your butt off unlike Allstate Arena where it’s across the street. All the staff we encountered were friendly too.

The food was overpriced, as is all food at events like these, which is why we had dinner at the nearby Panera beforehand. We’re just too cheap to drop $4 for a hot dog.

Chicago Slaughter at Sears Centre Arena

Our seats (Section 118, Row 7) were pretty damn good for the price. The seats themselves are cushioned for maximum booty comfort. The view is even better at a higher level which we learned as we were leaving. In fact, I think I’d rather sit a little further back the next time because it offers a better vantage point.

It was a little cold inside, but not unbearable; I just kept my jacket on. You should have seen the family sitting in front of us. Talk about a stereo-typical Italian family – the dad had the slicked back hair and the mom had the teased hair and reeked of perfume. They were nice people, but it would have been better if I wasn’t breathing in the woman’s nasty perfume all night. It wasn’t at all pleasant.

The game was interesting, but I’m not a football fan, and in fact this is the first time I’ve ever seen a football game live. I found the entertainment between plays much more alluring. They really do make a lot of effort for everyone to have a good time and I appreciate that. I’d even go see another game, that’s how much I enjoyed it.

After we left we stopped at Sonic for a hot dog and what they call a CreamSlush. I tried the lemon-berry flavor and fell in love. I actually made Joe drive us back there the next day to get another one. Lord help us if they ever build one closer to home.

Awesome iPhone Apps

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One of the many things I love about the iPhone is all the apps that speak to my obsessive need to keep track of the stuff I do, would like to do, am doing, or own. Below are some of my recent discoveries:

Home Library – It’s not just for books, and in fact I use it for everything except books since I don’t own enough to care tracking them. It’s pretty good at scanning items in; much more so than other apps I’ve tried that do the same thing. The interface is simple, and you can log into the website and download your media collection to Excel or PDF. It’s also great because it estimates the value of your media collection if you ever lose it. I spent about two days obsessively scanning all my DVDs, games, and CDs into the app and it turns out right now I own 388 CDs, 190 DVDs, and 82 games estimated to be worth about $10,000. It seems like a lot, but when I look around, it doesn’t look like much because everything is confined to a relatively small area. POther features of the app include being able to search your collection, keeping track of loans, maintaining a wish-list, and tracking what you’ve borrowed from others. Things I’d like to see added to the app – better sorting capabilities as well as a field to define the gaming platform for the games, otherwise you don’t know unless you are looking at the cover art which is not part of the downloaded PDF or Excel file and is only shown in the app or on the website.

Time Flies – There are tons of apps that remind you to do things in the future, but this simple little app lets you track the last time you did something and a history of how many times you’ve done it (provided you remember to log it). It’s very handy for tracking the last time I changed my contact lenses or got my hair cut, or even took my vitamin D. I would like to have it remind me to do these things at preset intervals and hopefully that will be an enhancement to the app in the future.

Goodreads – I just discovered this one yesterday right before I was going to opt to buy a subscription to LibraryThing. I thought I should see what other book tracking services were available and found the website where I learned there was a free iPhone app to compliment it. Score! It took about an hour messing around with the export file from LibraryThing to get GoodReads to recognize certain fields correctly. Goodreads claims the export file from LibraryThing is automatically supported but I found that it really only used the ISBN number and discarded most of the other information including the date I read the book and my rating – only THE two most important pieces of data, IMHO. They show a sample import file, though, so I manipulated the file I exported from LibraryThing a few times to match the column headings and data formatting and after a few tries was able to successfully port all my information over to the new system. Now I can track the books I’ve read on my iPhone easily which is great because I’ve read 14 books since getting my Kindle which is way more than I was reading last year. I prefer Goodreads’ interface to LibraryThing as well. The app is a bit buggy when it comes to sorting the books by date read, but it’s tolerable and still a heck of a lot better than going to LibraryThing’s non-mobile supported site to add new books.

I’ve become quite spoiled since buying my iPhone – I expect most websites to support it. In addition, any site that claims to offer functionality that will make my life better best have an app in the appstore or I’m not interested. Maybe I’m becoming one of those dreadful Apple fangirls or something, I don’t know.

Other iPhone apps I highly recommend, and use on a daily basis:

Dropbox – To the cloud!
Evernote – To your other cloud!
FeeddlerRSS – Best free Google RSS reader I could find
Firefox Home – Your bookmarks everywhere you go
Momento – Simple diary app for those non-blog-worthy thoughts/feelings
ToDo – Get it done!

ROFLMAO

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I’ve been hooked on comedy albums as of late, particularly the genius work of Louis C.K., my new favorite stand-up comedian of all time. I think I have a non-sexual crush on him; no one makes me laugh as much as he does. It doesn’t matter how wicked or vulgar he gets, it’s all gold in my eyes. One of the things I most admire about him is how often his material changes instead of using the same old stuff over and over for decades. It’s a testament to just how funny he is.

Also? Dane Cook totally stole his material! It’s so obvious now. Fuck Dane Cook anyway. I haven’t liked him or Carlos Mencia for awhile now and I take back what I said in this entry because Louis DOES do the material better, *I* just didn’t know any better back then. You have to check out his old HBO series, Lucky Louie, and be sure to tune into his current series, Louie when it returns to FX later this year.

If I had to put together a list of my other favorite comedians right now, they would be:

The late, but great Mitch Hedberg. There won’t be another like this guy. Until Louis came into my life I’d listen to Mitch’s work often. I’m still sad that he died.

Nick Swardson – his half hour show on Comedy Central, Nick Swardson’s Pretend Time, is bizarre but great (who doesn’t love a wheelchair-bound cat addicted to drugs?), and he was so funny on Reno 911 as Terry (the gay guy on rollerskates). I absolutely loved him in Grandma’s Boy which he co-wrote and happens to be one of my favorite movies. He also wrote another favorite of mine – Malibu’s Most Wanted. No wonder Adam Sandler took him under his wing. The guy is hilarious!

Aziz Ansari – Ever since I saw him on the last season of Scrubs (albeit briefly), I was hooked. He’s highly entertaining on Parks & Recreation and his stand-up is engaging.

Russell Peters – His racial comedy never stops me laughing. I love when he does he’s accents, particularly the Indian one. “Someone gonna get a hurt real bad!”

Dave Chapelle – His stand-up can be hit or miss, but I always found the Chappelle Show funny and enjoyed him in Half Baked. It’s too bad he’s dropped off the face of the earth.

Strangely enough, the only one I’ve seen live so far is Aziz but I hope to change that once the other guys make their next circuit.

Interesting how the list only includes male comedians. I think it has to do with the material. Women just can’t pull off talking about diarrhea or how much their kids are assholes and I like that sort of thing. If I had to pick one female I do find amusing, though, it would be without a doubt Wanda Sykes, and she’s a lesbian, so it’s clear I only like comics who like women. ;)

Looking Glass Girl

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There’s nothing better than having something to look forward to, and we’ve got some fun things planned for the next two months, including two sporting events and a roadtrip South to Atlanta, Georgia. Just having a whole week off work is going to be awesome, so traveling to someplace new is an added bonus. I really need to start looking into accommodations and putting together an itinerary. Sometimes planning the vacation is just as fun as taking it!

I’m looking forward to warmer weather and being more active – biking, roller-blading, playing frisbee, swimming, and going for walks after work. I’m actually anticipating all the shows I watch going on hiatus so I can do better things with my time. I’m a TV addict – I watch over 30 shows on a regular basis. It’s sad how I spend my free time, but when it’s cold outside I just don’t care. I want to eat, sit on the couch, and lay in bed. No wonder I’ve put on a few pounds!