Where's My Roommate?

Christi and I came back to the 436 the other night from a long hard day at the new cabin (which looks amazing) to see Ben's room looking like this.

I thought, why is Ben choosing to sleep on his floor when he has that really nice bed. Then it hit me .... Ben wasn't sleeping on the floor, he was moving out. Needless to say, it's going to be a sad week recovering from a lost roommate here. I'm sure that people like Ben's family will miss him a little more, but everyone here in Lincoln will sure miss that kid.

He left us a nice going away note on the fridge with the promise that he'll be back sometime later this week. I'm sure when that happens, we'll all have to be here to send him off to Charlotte in style.

In Other News:
Ben didn't take fondly to the DaVinci Code (and neither did I). I'll have that up on my front page along with how much I hated X-3. I mean, come on Marvel, I was a huge comic fan growing up, and you couldn't even make the movie good for me.

Some guy named Barry broke the Babe's record .... with one of the best signs behind him in the outfield.

Hornish Jr. has one of the best finishes in Indy 500 history.

And the Braves hit 8 home runs against the Cubs .... and almost lost. Take that Urban.

The Tour Is Coming To Town

It looks like it's time for Husker football already.

FSN has agreed to begin hyping the 2006 football season for the Big XII. They are doing this by airing 30 minute shows about each program as far as what to expect/look forward to next season. In addition, huskers.com has agreed to do a free airing on their site as well. The first Husker preview is set for Saturday, May 20^th at 1 p.m. with multiple reruns to follow in the next few weeks.

To tell you the truth, I'm quite shocked to find out that FSN actually has programming times available for anything besides the World Poker Tour, Best Damn Sports Show (period) and Royals games.

Shakin' Things Up

It's time for a change. I've been wanting to update my site for a while, and it seems like now is the best time to do it during the summer. I've been playing around with some ideas in my head for a while now, but it's actually time to get v4.0 up and going.

I start my new job on Monday, so before I get overwhelmed with that, I figure that I can get all of the personal stuff done as well.

I posted this to see if there's somethin' from everyone who reads this, that they want to see changed (come on, this is the people pleasin' business). I know I've already had a couple of people tell me some navigational stuff that they'd like to see different.

So if you have any input on the subject, drop me a line. Who knows, you might be able to tell your friends that you helped with the layout of someone's web site.

A Final Farewell - Day 4

Every trip has to come to an end sometime. Ours happened to be on Thursday. After a long nights sleep from all of the walking around the day before, we decided to take a couple of cab trips for the rest of our vacation.

We didn't have time to do much on our last day, so we did what we could. We drove up to Central Park to see the Guggenheim and the Met. As we got to the Guggenheim, we saw that they were doing mass renovations on the outside, and that the one day out of the week that it was closed, is when we were there.

Not to worry, we went down a couple of more blocks and decided to see the Met. This place is huge. If you have visit new york, and have about five days where you don't have anything to do, go visit the Met. We were only in there for a couple of hours and were lost and didn't even begin to scratch the surface on all of the items and artifacts that are in there.


After looking at the museum, we then went back through central park. Thank goodness that Bruce Willis and Sam Jackson diffused bombs there, or we wouldn't have felt so safe.

We hit up some more pizza, and then headed off to La Guardia again. A 5 hour layover in Chicago later, and we were back home.

The Long Day Of Walking - Day 3

This was a day that Christi didn't see coming. It started with my obsession to see the Flatiron building. With it being nice out, I told Christi that we could just walk the 20 blocks south to see it. Even though it was a nice day, it was a long walk. We finally got to the Flatiron, and it was amazing to see up close.


This led to me saying, "We're only 10 blocks from Union Square, we can just walk down there." And with that, we did. Once we reached Union Square, we stopped again, and rested. After being in that city for so long, it is really nice to see some green and some trees while walking through new york.

From here, there was a t-shirt place that I wanted to visit and said once again, "It's only 15 blocks from here, we can just walk down there." With Christi being the trooper that she was, she kept following me along, we found the place, and I got a shirt. We took another stop down here as we found a place to eat a late lunch.

Now that we were into the south side of Manhattan far enough, I said, "Let's just keep going, and we'll eventually be at Ground Zero and Battery Park." Sure enough, we kept right along and made our way down to these two locations.


Our day wasn't close to being over, and just felt like it was beginning. We met up with my boss Troy and headed over to his friends house to relax before we jumped on the trains to Yankee stadium. His friend lived on 63 Wall Street (yes, that wall street). Just blocks from the New York Stock Exchange.

He had a very nice apartment, and let us go out on the terrace so we could see some more of the city. He told us that Inside Man was taped in the building right below his window and they even asked to do a shot from his apartment. After some pictures and stories about movies being produced and seeing where Tara Reid's nipple slip was at P Diddy's party. Oh wow ... the things that you can learn from talking to someone from new york.

We finally hopped on the 5 train and transferred to the 4 so that we could get to Yankee Stadium. It really isn't much to look at from the outside, but it is sure awesome once you step through the gates.

I can finally check off seeing a Yankees/Red Sox game from my to-do list. While we were sitting there, I told Christi that I could care less about who won, but that I was just more excited to see the best rivalry in baseball history. I also told her that since I didn't care who won, I just wanted to see a couple of home runs. Besides seeing Schilling and Mussina, we saw bombs from Big Papi, Lowell, Giambi, Posada and A Rod.

Producing Good Times - Day 2

On our second day, we set out to see some of the sights in midtown. We started off by going to Central Station and followed that up by going to the New York Public Library (no, we did not see Jake Gyllenhaal burning books to stay warm).


We headed a little further south and hit up Forver 21 for Christi and then went to Macy's. I mean when you're in nyc, it's tough to pass up the biggest store in the world. Don't worry, no money was spent here, just some window shopping.

It was then lunch and a quick nap (which was more than needed) before charging up to go to dinner and a show. We picked Bar Americain for dinner. It is an Italian restaurant that is owned by Food Network star Bobby Flay. They say that Flay is in there cooking about half of the week, but we were cam on an unfortunate night, and did not see him. Although he wasn't there, he made sure his chefs knew how to cook because our dinner was amazing. Once we were full of food, we made our way to the St. James Theatre to see Mel Brook's play The Producers.

If you ever have a chance to see a broadway play sometime in your life, do it. It was amazing how quick the scene changes are, and how great all of the actors perform. I'm glad we went to the show that we did as well because it was quite hilarious, and probably one of best that I would've enjoyed seeing.

I (Heart) NY - Day 1

Christi and I landed in La Guardia Monday afternoon. We took a taxi to the hotel and unpacked our stuff. This being my first time in nyc, it was quite the shock when you enter the city. It's everything that it appears to be on tv, and much, much more.

We grabbed lunch at a 2 story pizza place and then headed over to Madame Tussauds to see some amazing wax sculptures.

After we were done taking pictures with the celebrities, we walked a couple of blocks back to the hotel to ponder what to do next. This pondering led Christi to turn on the tv to realize that David Blaine would be doing his Drowned Alive stunt at the Lincoln Center. After a couple of phone calls and the quickest cab ride ever (22 blocks in 2 minutes) we were set up to see the man himself try to hold his breath for over 9 minutes.


For those that didn't watch. He was only (yeah, only like it was a bad thing) able to make it 7'08". Not too bad. Christi was a trouper here as the time for the stunt increased, she was able to see less and less as people were crowding around us. She fought it out for me since she knew that I love Blaine, and I thank her dearly for that.

Once we left the Lincoln Center, we decided to go see all of the light atop the Empire State building.


Once we were done admiring the lights, he headed into Jack Dempsey's bar, grabbed some late night food, and rested up for day 2.

NYC

Christi and I will be in the big apple until Thursday.

Peace.

Shoutout To My Babe

Christi was the first of all of us to grab her diploma in the Bob. A big congrats because she was able to accomplish the feat in exactly 4 years.

Although it'd be nice to be done with school, I'm content with stickin' around for another football season in the fall ....

Easiest Final Ever?

It's 10:37 when I'm writing this. My final started at 10:07 after we got our papers to fill out. I left the RVB building at 10:27. 20 minutes to complete a collegiate final. That just doesn't sound right.

It was Theatre 112G. If you have an art requirement to fill at the University, I strongly suggest that you take this class. I had a 110% for my grade going into the final, only needing to answer 20 of 100 questions correctly to get an A.

If there is an easier class to take at the University, I would really like to know what it is. I would just be shocked to know that something might be more simple than intro to theatre.

To Those Taking Finals

Well, it's that time of year. Everyone is stressing out because they have to juggle time to study for finals and move from where they live. This is a post to help people with taking their finals:

Take it from me. Try not to show up for your final 45 minutes late. On the day of your final check to make sure that it is at 3:30 instead of 5:30.

But if somehow this happens to you (like it just happened to me), don't freak out, you'll be just fine.

If you realize that you are already 45 minutes late, try the following:

1) Drive down your side streets at least twice as fast as the posted speed limit (65 on Adams).

2) Try not to hit anyone on the way and be on the lookout for trains 10 blocks in advance.

3) Pull into a parking lot and take the closest spot that you can see by the building.

4) Run on in and pray that your professor hands you a final.

5) Try not to do it on one of the biggest finals of your life (EE 498).

All of these things combined got me to my final, and I was able to take it and complete it. The nice part is that I'm a senior and my GPA shouldn't sway too far at this stage in the game over one final on a class.

Here's to hoping it came out ok, and a nice warning that yes, it sure can happen to you!

The Clique

Ben VanKat
Troy Bell
Chris VanKat

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