Spud’s Place

I will explain the title of this post in a minute, but first I want to tell you about the start of my evening.

I am in New Mexico this weekend attending the annual Erin Trujeque Memorial Golf Tournament and gala. I have been attending this event in some capacity for the past 12 years. It is a major contributor to the Children’s Cancer Fund of New Mexico. Now, if you are new to my blog, you may not know, but I am a childhood cancer survivor. I have benefited directly from these 2 organizations and am so happy that as a long term survivor, I can lend my support to them. Tonight was the gala event. It is held at one of the casino resorts here in Albuquerque. The evening started out very different this year than previous years. I got there and walked into the ballroom and for the first time, I didn’t recognize anyone. I was a little afraid that I wasn’t going to see some of my close friends, but as the event moved on I saw them. So I am wandering around the silent auction before dinner and I ran into several people I hadn’t seen since the event last year. It was very nice to see them and catch up. One of the main items that was being raffled off was a brand new Lexus. I am not sure of the model, champagne does that to me, but it was worth about $40k. Raffle tickets were $100 a piece, and they were only going to sell 1,000 of them. So I did my part and bought one. Standing next to the Lexus was my good friend Justin. I have known him for 16 years, and he is a survivor as well. As I was talking to him I found out that he is married and expecting. When I heard that he and his wife were expecting, my jaw dropped. Like me, he was given enough chemotherapy to destroy any chance of having kids, and the doctors told him that he was not going to be able to have them. The Lord works miracles, and he is going to be a dad. After congratulating him, I started talking to him about the car. He entered as well and we made a deal that if he won it, he would give it to me so I could drive back to Tucson. More on that later… So dinner goes well, salsbury steak with mashed potatoes and asparagus. Once the live auction started, with Diane’s ever popular cookies that went for $10k, I was free to roam around and find people. I found my friend Petra and her husband Jason, and talked to her for a while, just catching up. I talked to a few other people and the night was winding down, but there was still the car to give away. As they announced they were drawing for it, the room got eerily quiet. They drew a ticket and I am sitting there hoping its mine. They call out the first name…but pause on the second…they can’t make it out. Now, with the first name, which wasn’t “Scott”, I knew I was done for. But the name they called, “Justin”, peeked my anticipation. Diane walks over and screams into the microphone the last name of my good friend. I couldn’t believe it, my friend just won a car. He couldn’t believe it either, he had to be dragged up on stage to accept. After he came down I went and congratulated him and graciously let the deal we made previously slide on the technicality that we never really shook on it. It is such an amazing thing when you see someone who could really use a new car, who has survived cancer, and who’s birthday is today (ya go figure) win. I thanked God that he won it and that he is here to win it. I hope I can go to lunch or something with him before I have to leave.

Tonight was a really good night.

Oh, and we raised $467k for the Childrens Cancer Fund of New Mexico.

I was trolling through CNN.com today and saw that a comedic legend had died on Sunday, article is here. George Carlin has died. I am a fan of his comedy, it is gritty, straight forward, and no apologies offered after. He pushed the boundries of censorship on the radio with his famous “Seven Dirty Words” routine. He was a genious and his social commentary almost always hit the bullseye. While he was offensive to most, including me sometimes, he was always funny in hindsight. I will definitely miss his unique comedic style.

This week was a monumental week for me. On Monday, I celebrated being alive for 16 years. You might be wondering about that number, but my math isn’t wrong. On June 9, 1992 I was diagnosed with Leukemia.

Most people might not want to celebrate something as horrible as this, in fact some people might be thinking I am really morbid in my celebration, but I’m not crazy. 16 years ago this week my life was forever changed. I look back on it, and I remember thinking that nothing worse could have happened to me. But now I look at my life and realize that nothing better could have happened to me. Here is just a few reasons why I think this way:

• I have friends that I would have never had before
• I have a better understanding of the mortality of mankind
• I realized that death isn’t horrible for the deceased
• Life is too short
• I have a cause

I still find myself slipping back into worrying about the small stuff, but eventually I remember that this is my 3rd shot at life and I need to take advantage of that. I am living the life I feel I should be living. I am still scared, but really, what’s the worst that could happen? What could be more scary than facing death? I’ll tell you…women…just kidding…no really…

Yesterday was my birthday. Because it was on a Tuesday, it wasn’t the best time to go out and party, but I made a go at it anyways. We started the evening at Fio Rito’s Italian Restaurant for dinner. There were 7 of us total, so it was very nice and intimate. Billy & Rita were there, as well as Randy, Eric, Melissa, and Carrie. We were at dinner for a good hour and a half, which is just fine by me as I was having some really good conversation. I had the chicken parmigiana…mmmmm…it was really good. I also had a bottle of wine, but the name of it escapes me right now. After dinner a few of the group had to go work, and one individual who shall remain nameless had to leave to go play WoW. I knew that person was going to leave early, and they were missed the rest of the night. After dinner, we decided to go to Championship, which is really Sam Hughes Place. We were there until they started moving tables around to make room for a dance floor. There were a lot of college students coming in the later it got, and the hotter they all looked the more drinks I had.

All in all it was an awesome evening. I spent it with good friends, had good food, had good drinks, and most important had good conversation.

I saw this and spurt hot coffee out of my nose.

Eric and I have talked for a while now about home brewing some of our own brew. Both of us enjoy beer, and have progressed rather well into our World Beer Tours. Yesterday we finally met at the home brew store and bought ourselves the Delux kit and the ingredients for a Heff. Because we were so into opening all the packages, we didn’t end up having enough time to actually brew the wort, so he came over this morning and we did it. It actually is not that hard, and doesn’t smell bad at all, which I am thankful for. It was a good time and we enjoyed some store brew while watching the wort boil. Here are a few pics of the event. Just FYI, Eric wasn’t the only one doing anything, he just didn’t operate my camera when I was stirring. Plus he had to go get a new hydrometer half way through the operation.

I am not sure where our society as a whole would be if not for the crack journalism at Fox News. Their latest article is one of those gems that will change the course of human society. It is entitled “Eight Sex Myths You Should Not Believe” and it has Pulitzer written all over it.

Really, I felt part of my brain die when I read it.

Last week was an absolute nightmare. I was tasked at work with getting 3 pieces of hardware up and running. Unfortunately they needed to be updated to code that is still currently in development. the engineers that read this will appreciate that I must have pissed someone off to get this assignment. I started Tuesday, hit a couple of bumps…then Wednesday rolled around and the shit hit the proverbial fan at an alarming rate. I hit wall after wall, some of them were brick, some concrete, some even had spikes on them. I spent all day Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday talking to every developer, tester, team lead, pet code monkey that I could find to try to get at least one system up and running. Friday afternoon came around and I was preparing myself for the worst, to work the weekend. At about 5:30 on Friday, all 3 machines updated successfully. I was amazed, but still wasn’t going to start breathing quite yet. I wanted to give them a day to settle. I was almost sure they would bomb out and then I would have to skip church on Saturday to go in and fix them again. But they seemed to be stable enough and so I called it good. Then Sunday came and I helped Josh and Katie move into their new house. A lot of people showed up to help and it was good because Josh’s minivan started acting up. Don was able to scrounge up some bolts to bolt something back on. Not sure what it was, but it’s fixed now. Here is a great pic of the moment.

I then stuck around and helped them unpack and get settled in their new place. It was a really long day but it was well worth it to see Josh and Katie and their kids in their new house. Even if it is all the way out past BFE.

I had a really kick ass weekend this weekend. It started Saturday night when I went out with a friend. I haven’t hung out with her in a long time, and it was really good to catch up and just “shoot the shit” as it were. We met for dinner after church at Outback, and we sat on the patio. It was a chilly night, but they had space heaters once the sun went down. We had a great meal, served by a great server (Eric) and we had great conversation. We had a leisurely dinner and then we moved into the bar so Eric could get off. We then hung out with him as he ate dinner. After that Eric and the Outbacker’s were going to go down to 4th Ave and I planned on going with them. But unfortunately I went home and laid down and promptly fell asleep. I woke up just in time to not make it anywhere. Sunday was uneventful, played WoW most of the day. Then last night, when everyone celebrated St. Patrick’s day (yes I said celebrated cause it was actually on Saturday see here for more) I actually made it out! We ended up going to several places I have never been, which was even more fun than the old standbys. We started at the Auld Dubliner for some Harp, then we walked down to 4th Ave to O’Malleys. We hung out there and then went to get pizza at Brooklyn Pizza. I have to say, that was some really good pizza. Then we went back to O’Malleys and then eventually to Plush. All in all it was a really good time.

I have to start this post off with an admission. I didn’t want to go to church today. I am not sure why, but all day I was thinking how nice it would be not to have to go, and I had to stop myself from thinking of ways so that I wouldn’t have to go. But in the end, I went. It was an interesting sermon having to do with personal “sweet spots” in church and profession, life in general. As Josh was sermoning (I am aware this is not a word so just deal) I thought to myself what my sweet spot was. The answer I came up with is really not what I expected. I feel that I have fallen into the trap of doing things because there is no one else to do them, even if I am not the greatest at them. I see a need, a desire for something to happen, and I want to see that fulfilled. What would happen if I just kept to my sweet spot? Would people be disappointed?