dudie new year!!!

(don't know when i'll post again, so happy holidays people! to all my friends and family - i love you all very much!)

today is the last day of work for me until monday, january 3rd, 2005. woohoo!

the next several days will be spent snowboarding, snowshoeing (or some combination of the two), guitar-playing, and of course getting ready for our big road trip back to champaign late next week. we'll be visiting jenn's awesome grandma, and jenn will be getting all kinds of kick-ass knitting tips from her, because that woman can knit. she also has these little tags she sews onto everything she makes that say "handmade with love by grandma helen" or something like that. she's awesome.

in addition to spending time with jenn's grandma, we will get to see all the dudies for the annual dudie new year! sweeeeet! dudies in attendance include: timmy dudie (all the way from deutschland) and his german contingent, p-diddy dudie (but only for one night), liz dudie, willie dudie (me), jenn dudie, christine dudie, craig dudie, and robbie dudie (hopefully in his usual fine form). other dudies we hope to see, but remain questionable at this point: dres dudie, mista overman dudie, and the ever elusive, grand dudie founder himself: e-dudie. that is, of course, if he can tear himself away from his clubbing, record spinning, and history of house music manuscript. but i'm not bitter. i just miss the guy. after all, he did come up with the dudie motto, a brilliant stroke of ukrainian genius, applicable to men and women dudies alike:

"may our dicks be hard
let us have money"

words to live by, people. words to live by.

we are a part of the knitting nation

i love my wife.

it seems to me that as we get older, we get weirder. at a late lunch yesterday before we left denver to head back up into the hills, i was staring off into space and then said, out of the blue, "i'd like to see a ufo before i die." as if it's a choice, like deciding to backpack across europe or go on a cruise. now, that's strange enough for some, i guess, but what i think is funny is that jenn didn't even flinch. she just asked me why.

i drove on the way home so that jenn could knit (she's hustling to finish several projects before christmas). as it got darker, she put on my petzl headlamp and kept knitting away in the passenger seat; and as the miles rolled by she began singing "we are a part of the knitting nation" to the tune of the janet jackson song from the mid-eighties, off the album of the same name. maybe you had to be there, but i just about fell the f$%* out. i started laughing. hard.

the point is this, i guess: thank god she'll have me, because there's no one else out there who'll put up with me and make me laugh like she does.

marriage is all it's cracked up to be. and it cracks me up.

deep day

wow, folks. i mean, wow. this pic doesn't really do it justice, since i took it with my crappy camera phone, but this morning was all about big time powder. we're talking 16 inches at the summit. we're talking heavy, high moisture snow with a serious layer of windslab on top that gave you much more float than you'd normally get with heavy snow. we're talking sustained 50 mph winds at the top of storm peak. and we're talking the longest stretches of untracked, thigh high turns i maybe have ever had inbounds at a resort. sweeeeeeeet.

but, really, the main reason i'm putting this photo up here is to make rob overman jealous.

for tomorrow, we ride!

it is dumping, and is forecast to continue dumping through the night. i have swapped with one of my coworkers so that i can have tomorrow morning off.

powder day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

delinquent motherf#*$ers

i am the director of a small academic library that does not charge late fees.

let me restate that, in case someone read that too quickly - WE DO NOT CHARGE FINES!

and yet here it is, the end of the semester, and we are scrambling to call a ton of students in order to implore/cajole them into bringing their materials back before friday, december 10th. if they don't return them by then, they go on their record as being lost, and that's another mess entirely. you'd think not being charged late fees would be incentive enough for folks to bring their crap back, but nooooooo. instead, they remain...

delinquent motherf#$*ers. i am an angry librarian.

on another note, the illini are number one in the nation in both polls. and, perhaps more importantly, they avoided losing to chicago state last night. the two previous times they were ranked #1 (1952 and 1989, respectively), they lost the very first game after gaining that ranking. they avoided that last night, with solid play from everyone, and a few circus passes from dee brown.

which brings me to an interesting point, i think, about circus passes and recent illinois players. the point being that there is a fundamental difference between the ridiculous passing ability of dee brown and frank williams. while both wildly talented, dee brown makes these amazing passes because he can and because he's trying to get the ball to an open teammate. frank williams made those passes because he could and because he wanted to make himself look good. as fun as frank was to watch, he was frustrating as hell.

rather like the students here at this college. (don't ever say i can't bring two wild tangents full circle).

just a good old shellacing

yes, folks, that is how you spell shellacing. and that is exactly what illinois gave wake forest on wednesday night. in other words - wake forest got their asses handed to them. illinois led by 21 at halftime, they were up by 32 a couple times in the second half, and finally won it by 18. i didn't know a person could receive that much unadulterated joy just from a televised sporting event, but after jumping up and down in my family room for almost the entire game, i'm beginning to think it's possible. or am i secretly disturbed that i allow a basketball game to give me that much joy? either way, it was a damn fine win for my illini.

on another note, unless timmy puts up a new post some time soon, i'll be forced to give him a shellacing as well when i see him over the holidays. in fact, i hereby declare that i will no longer check timmy's blog until he emails me and tells me there's a new post up. it's been a damn month, poot!

have a great weekend all.

hail to the orange, hail to the blue...

hail alma mater
ever so true (so true)
we love no other so let our motto be
"victory... illinois... varsity!"

big, big, big, big early season game tonight, folks. my beloved illini take on the number one team in the nation - wake forest. illinois is no slouch either, being ranked fourth themselves.

i've tried to keep my fanaticism for illinois hoops out of this blog, but i can no longer hold back. this is such a big time game! if illinois were to win, they could possibly be ranked #1 in the nation for the first time since our beloved flying illini of 1989. that's 15 years folks! and in order to win, i believe our frontcourt is going to have to step it up big time and match the consistently brilliant play of our backcourt. speaking of our backcourt - it's the best in the whole friggin' nation! the smartest (williams), fastest (brown), and most athletic (head) three guys to play together in illinois history. i am so pumped.

okay, make sure you tune into espn at 7 eastern, 6 central, and 5 mountain to watch this contest. screw the whole acc/big ten challenge thing - this is the only game that matters anyway.

i will end this post with some of the eloquent poetry currently residing on the toilet stall walls in the bathroom outside of our library (it really adds to your enjoyment of these pieces if you can read them out loud in a faux british accent):

"i was here but now i'm not
i went somewhere to smoke some pot
but i left this here to make a point
that life's a bitch without a joint"

&

"at the table enjoying my food
when a twitch in my ass spoiled the mood
up like a cheetah i bolted and ran
but i still shit myself before i got to the can"