Blog archives

A collection of all the nonsense I've posted to the internet over the past 24 years of my blog life

  • Maine posted

    Over the 4th of July, my wife's extended family from Boston hosted a family reunion at their cabin in Maine... Kari'd never been to the state, and I hadn't been since I was a kid, so ... duh ... we went! I'd forgotten just how beautiful and untouched a lot of Maine is... read more

  • Mayakoba posted

    For years, Kari has been hoping that one of our friends would have a destination wedding. I mean, she loves weddings and she loves tropical/resort vacations... so an excuse to combine the two was obviously something she was interested in. This year, it finally happened. Our friend Mindy invited us to her wedding at a place in Mexico called Mayakoba... read more

  • Becoming Middle Aged posted - 1 comment

    So, my friend Carol has this theory that you truly begin your middle aged life once you become thirty three and a third. She's based this on the idea that if we live to be ~100 years old (yea right), the first third of your life is from 0 to 33.3 years old, the second (middle) third is until you're 66.6 years old, and so on... She totally buys into this thing too. Like she'll even make you a 33.3, middle aged narwhal birthday cake if you're lucky like my buddy, Nick. So anyway, with that said, Carol tells me that today marks my 33.3 year old birthday... read more

  • Lollapalooza 2014 posted

    So when Kari was diagnosed with MS last fall, no joke, one of the first things she asked me (nearly in tears) from her hospital bed was, "what are we going to do about lollapalooza?" Not even lying, she wanted to know that if she wasn't able to walk anymore, I'd be able to get her to the front like the guy we saw at Kendrick Lamar last year. It sounds totally cheesy, but live music is just something we do and it's been a huge part of our relationship. Well, fast forward 10 crazy months and aside from needing an arm through some rough terrain, Lollapalooza was absolutely no thang for Kari. No handicapped pass was needed, we had a blast, saw some amazing shows, walked ~60,000 steps, and hung out with some good friends. As far as music goes, 2014 was loaded with hip hop and great, danceable music... read more

  • Experiences posted

    Anyone who's visited my personal website probably knows that it's pretty much just about telling my life story (filled with a ton of TMI, of course). Every thought I've had for the past 13 years is on here. Nearly every photo I've ever taken is here. Shit, if you want to know how much I slept, walked, or even what I weighed yesterday, it's all here. But over the past couple years, I've been thinking a lot about experiences and contextual stories... read more

  • Walk this way! posted

    Friends! Many of you know that I started a team to walk, grill, and hang out in support of that amazing chick, Kari Brooks on May 17. So we're almost a month out and I just want to make sure you know that we really do want as many of you to join us as possible. All of you! Walk A lot of you have expressed interest in walking with us but haven't registered yet... read more

  • The Dominican Republic posted

    At the risk of forfeiting any future travel with my amazing in-laws, I really need to get this story down in a blog. Last year, Kari, her family, and I started planning a vacation to the caribbean. We'd narrowed it down to a few non-U.S. islands. So needless to say, we all had to make sure our passports were in check... read more

  • Some things that I learned in 2013 posted

    2013 was a roller coaster of a year for me. A roller coaster with some serious business highs, lows, and hardly anything in between. A few of the key happenings were... went to a presidential inauguration and some inaugural balls! ... read more

  • Checking out. Back to the Boundary Waters posted

    One day last year, amidst the shitstorm of a job and life I was living in the city of Chicago, I IM'd my buddy, Josh and told him that I needed another trip to the Boundary Waters. I wanted to check out from technology, humans, the city, insanity, everything. A trip to the Boundary Waters, a complete wilderness area absent of all civilization, modern conveniences, and man made structure seemed like exactly what I needed. This is a place where canoes and feet are the only modes of transportation, paper topographic maps are the only way to navigate, and you only take what you can carry. There are no cell phone towers, electricity, roads, running water, man made structure, and minimal human contact... read more

  • Lollapalooza 2013 posted

    Didn't have the best lineup ever, but it was definitely better than 2012… Add in not having a crazy job to pull me back to the office, a free place to stay, the beautiful weather, and the amount of butts hanging out of daisy duke mom jorts, this turned out to be one of the best lollapalooza experiences so far. Here's how it went... Friday Crystal Castles - This was my 3rd time seeing them. Their producer, Ethan is amazing and Alice is batshit crazy on stage… smoking, drinking jameson out of the bottle, and just putting on a great show. They sounded awesome... read more

  • Biking in Iowa is awesome... and confusing! posted

    I've been trying to take a lot of random bike adventures around central Iowa this summer… and the more I bike, the more I'm coming to realize that biking in Iowa is both amazing and confusing as shit. Where should I be? One of my biggest concerns about biking here is that there isn't a clear definition of where bikers are supposed to be. If you ride your bike in any urban setting, you know (or learn fast) that bicycles belong on the street. Bicyclists "Share the road" or "GTFO the sidewalk" (depending on whether you're learning from a sign or a pissed off pedestrian)... read more

  • My first attempt at using Des Moines Public Transit posted - 11 comments

    It's no secret that I fell in love with public transit while I spent those 15 months in Chicago. So last night, when Iowa Senator Janet Petersen scheduled a meeting with me in downtown Des Moines, I decided to leave my truck in the garage and finally try out our public transit system. Here's how it went. Step 1, get directions I looked up transit directions to my meeting via google maps (like ya do) and was instantly shut down. "Public transit coverage may not be available in this area." Step 1, get directions (take 2) I visited ridedart.com hoping for a place to put in some addresses or plan a route map, but I couldn't find one... read more

  • Two Thousand and Twelve posted

    The year that I… brought in at Chicago house parties with Kari, Drea, and friends. mostly spent living in Chicago, apart from visiting my wife and working my ass off. learned to scratch records (sort of). watched my uncle get inducted into the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. met the President of the United States... read more

  • What I was actually doing for those 15 months in Chicago... posted - 7 comments

    I moved to Chicago for 466 days, where I lived in 3 different neighborhoods and visited 375 different places — 239 of which were restaurants or bars. I walked around 10,087 steps (or 7.67 miles) per day, slept roughly 7.19 hours per night, and gained 1 pound before returning to Iowa. I was actually in the city on 400 of those days and ventured out of Chicago on 117 of them. 68 of those (spread across 17 different trips) were spent in my actual home, with my wife in Iowa. I was also fortunate enough to get out to Washington DC, San Francisco, Arizona, and Napa Valley... read more

  • Going Gluten Free posted - 2 comments

    A few weeks ago … err actually I guess it was more like 2 months ago (the concept of time has completely broken since I've taken on this crazy job of mine), I decided to try a little experiment in gluten free eating. First let me start off with the gross backstory… For years, I've been prescribed with various medications to make this random rash on my ankles go away. Doctors have told me it's eczema, a fungus, and several other random types of dermatitis. Some of the treatments have helped, but nothing has really made it go away. So I've pretty much just lived with it - as annoying as it may be... read more

  • Lollapalooza 2012 posted - 1 comment

    I'll start off by saying that the weirdest part about lollapalooza this year was the line-up. I wasn't really stoked about ANY of the headliners and kinda "meh" about most of the other shows. This has never really happened to me on any other year. However, I'm living in Chicago right now and couldn't pass up the ease of going to the festival. Here's how things went... read more

  • The 30 Year Old DJ posted

    I'm 30 years old, love music, and am about to become the sickest DJ my bedroom has ever seen. But first, let me give you a a bit of a backstory... In the late 90s (high school, for me) I found house music. I had mostly been listening to terrible metal and rap at the time… but once I heard those crazy electro sounds, I started to become super interested. I even started going to some under-18 dance clubs in the Quad Cities... read more

  • A Visit From The President posted

    Once I got to work, things were fairly normal - well aside from most everyone else being dressed to the nines… especially the ladies. But then around lunch time, about 30 giant secret service dudes started showing up along with cops, dogs, etc. We had a mandatory office leave while they swept the entire place. (Remember, this is Obama's campaign headquarters. These are the people who love the president and are hired to re-elect him... read more

  • Preparing to Meet the President posted

    After my shower this morning I thought to myself, "What should I wear to make myself presentable to the President of the United States?" I don't really like dressing up and I wasn't about to start… but I felt like I should at least make an attempt. My normal attire consists of a hat, a pair of skate shoes, an unwashed pair of jeans, and an inappropriate/inappropriately priced screenprinted tee. To me, the only real variables of this outfit were my hat and shirt. So I glanced at my 2 stacks of t-shirts and thought, "I probably shouldn't wear a screen printed shirt... Maybe I should throw on one of my 'fancy' flannel button ups." After looking through those for a bit I remembered that I worked in a 76 degree office and that everyone in the workplace would be packed as close to the president as possible... read more

  • 2011 Retrospective posted - 1 comment

    Ah, 2011. A year that was brought in while wearing tie dye tighty whities at a house party in Des Moines, and finished at a freshly painted warehouse party in Chicago. It was quite a roller coaster year with my new job, huge culture shifts, and a long distance relationship with that amazing wife of mine. There's sooo much to talk about, but I'm gonna try to keep this short and list style. So, other than my new job and the move to Chicago... read more