Thursday in Iowa City is traditionally called ‘Thirsty Thursday.’ The monaker was bestowed upon the weekday as to instill a sense of drinking necessity. But, I am not like most UI undergrads, so I am hardly out and about on the weekday nights. Recently though, I have found a nice little bar that has wonderful music and a fairly quiet atmosphere. The only other comparable bar in the downtown is Joe’s Place. The Iowa City Piano Lounge takes all of the best atmoshperic qualities of Joe’s Place and then classes it up. In the past three weeks I have been to the Piano Lounge twice, both times on Thursday night. Thursday nights have half-price wine and martinis and full-quality live piano music. Two weeks ago our pianist was Sean and he rocked the house until 1 am. He played a huge variety of songs and did ‘Happy Birthday’s for my age-turning friends. Last night showcased Eben or Evan or some name like that. Either way, the E-man was great and was better than Sean in that his playlist featured RADIOHEAD and Beck.

Before Piano Lounge this Thursday, the Scruple group had pizza at Pagliai’s. Boy was it tasty, but expensive and cash/check only. The conspiracy theorists, me included, believe there is a mob family running the business and selling drugs/’bad stuff’ on the side. Inside sources from a financial institution handling Pagliai’s money say that the daily cash deposits for this ‘pizza’ establishment are “sick.” I’m off to 3rd base for cheap burgers and fries and then it’s nappy nap. Sleepy sleep

In case you just crawled out a hole… it’s rivalry week! That means the suckas from Ames are coming to itown (not an apple trademark) for a whuppin’. Our star QB Drew Tate will be taking the field after sitting out week one with an abdominal strain. The Syracuse game was quite a scare with Jason Manson starting at quarterback, but all is back to normal and Iowa will win. There are a lot of staters coming into town this weekend and I’ll be showing a couple of them a good time downtown and elsewhere. The game is at 11 am, only 3 hours away so get ready everyone!

In other news, I don’t like reading. This is not in the literal sense, where I would be opposed to the sighting of words on print or screen and those words’ comprehension. No, I mean that I don’t like books. Books are passe(accent!) and reading them should be optional. In related news, I don’t like humanities courses. Moving on!

My business courses are going well. I especially enjoy my database management course with one Faiz Currim. Faiz is an excellent teacher and we’re just getting to the point where we’ve covered all of the material from the introductory database course. Soon, we will be entering new territory and my mind will be blown again by awesomeness and usefulness and creativeness involved in database work.

I am ready to watch some football people. So, in the words of GOB, “C’mon!”

Happy Friday all!

It’s been an exciting two weeks for school and work and play.  First, school has been going spicily.  Not too much individual homework, but the group work is just beginning.  I have semester long projects for two major courses and we’ve got milestones due for both this coming Monday.  My roman literature paper is also due on Monday and will require me to read another play by Plautus and write a summary and analyze the themes and characters compared to other Plautus stories, as well as contemporaries’ stories.

Work has been going swimmingly as well.  Me and my coworkers are about ready to roll-out a few re-designed websites.  Namely the University of Iowa’s Department of Anthropology and the German Department are extremely close to delivery.  As for the Scruple business, we may be adding a realtor as a client by designing a realtor profile and property listing page.  Also, another potential customer has visions of a CMS-based website for visitors to be a part of a social network that disseminates topic-specific information.  I will explain more as the site gets closer to implementation.  Until then it is classified *stamp*.

Fun things have been happening as well.  This Thursday marked two friends’ birthdays and a little celebration at the Iowa City piano lounge.  The pianist was Sean and he was quite good.  We enjoyed wine and martinis and good music and you could sing or clap along too.  Sean felt that our clapping for the Violent Femmes’s “Blister on the Sun” was the best he’d ever heard.  He and his band will be playing at Third Base tonight and the WTS folk will be stopping by to hear the ensemble performance and get some cheap ‘n’ tasty burgers.  When I’m not listening to good music, there’s always the US Open and college and pro football on TV.  Since Roger Federer took down James Blake last night, I’m down to rooting for R-Fed (not to be confused with K-Fed).  Saturday will feature your IA Hawks taking on Syracuse in the Big Apple. GO HAWKS!  The football fun continues into Sunday with the true start of NFL ball and super competitive fantasy sports in multiple leagues.  The fall should be pretty packed, but two tons of fun as well.

Jim Gaffigan ~ “Hottttttt Pocketttttt!  Diahhreaaaaaa Pockettttttt!  Now they’ve got the Breakfast Hot Pocket, so you can have a Hot Pocket for breakfast and lunch and be dead by dinner.”

D-rock