SOMETHING TO KEEP YOU OCCUPIED

I've been pretty busy looking for houses and all, so until I have time to post something real again, here is a fun maze game I found on the interweb for you all to try. It's pretty hard. I can't get past the 4th level of it, but maybe you can. Try to stay between the blue area. Hold down the mouse button and don't let go until you reach the red square at the end or you'll have to start from the beginning again. It's best with the sound on. Have fun, and let me know how you do.

MAZE GAME <<< Click on this link to play.

DOWN WITH THE COUCH BURNERS!

It turns out the guy next door to our apartment is a die-hard West Virginia University fan. Both of his license plates are WVU related, and I just saw his doormat has the WVU emblem on it. Now it's official. We're going to have to get a USF doormat, just so he'll have to walk by it everyday and sulk.

For those of you that don't know, USF beat WVU last year, knocking them out of contention for a national championship run, while at the same time, boosting USF to the #2 spot in the nation! It was definitely one of the best, if not THE best games I've ever been to live. The atmosphere was so full of energy and the place was SOOO loud, ending with the fans storming the field. Just thinking of it makes me miss not being in Tampa to go to all the games this year.

BUT, we are planning on attending the WVU - USF game in Morgantown, WV this year! It looks like a few friends are going to come up for the big game. I'm so excited. A good time will be had by all, except all the WVU fans, of course. Those couch-burning idiots can wallow in their misery at home after the game. But don't feel too bad for them. I'm sure their sisters will be there to give them plenty of comfort, if you know what I mean.

(Oh, and the WVU guy got a ticket on his car for parking in a handicapped spot last night. Haha)

GO BULLS!!!!!

A LITTLE BIRDIE TOLD ME...

A little birdie told me that he "might like to come into our apartment" this morning, as I heard him tapping his tiny beak on the glass on our second floor porch. I informed him that "no, he probably wouldn't, as there are 4 very hungry cats that would like nothing more than to have a bright green snack." (Luckily they were sleeping in the other room at the time). He promptly flew away.

WE MADE IT!

Hello everyone! We finally made it. The 14 hour trek from Tampa D.C. was long, and tiresome, but we're here. I've gotta tell you, I was really worried about driving the distance with the four cats in the back, but they turned out to be unbelievably good!! A couple of them meowed a little bit for the first half hour or so, but after that, they were so quiet, we were actually worried about them. Every time we stopped for gas, food, etc., we would check on them and find them just chilling out in their carriers. WOW! What a relief.

So we're all getting settled in to our new apartment. The cats are busy exploring the new environment. Roscoe immediately found his new spot in a basket that Grandma Price bought for him. And Iddle and Mouse are equally happy no matter what spot they're in. But I was really worried about George, because he has never been good with moves. Usually when we move he spends the first 2-3 months hiding in a bathroom, or under a cabinet somewhere, or in the case of our last apartment, up in the loft for a year and a half. But I'm thrilled to say that I haven't found him hiding once yet!! (Here he is hanging out above the fireplace). I think it has something to do with our vet's recommendation that we get an air plug-in that has a chemical called Feliway in it. It contains a pheromone that soothes cats' anxiety. I gotta tell you, it's a miracle product. We sprayed some in their cat carriers before we left, and I attribute that to their behavior in the car too.

I've spent the past 3 days unpacking and looking for work. It's been a chore, but I'm almost done. Luckily for us, we are planning on moving into a house or townhouse in the next 6 months, so about half of the stuff is being left in boxes in the spare bedroom, which we're using as a storage unit. That's not to say if anyone of you wants to come visit, you won't have a place to stay. We bought an air mattress for the move, and it's about the most comfortable one I've ever seen. We were taking it down because the movers set up our bed, and Lori remarks, "I kinda wanted to sleep on the air mattress again. It was fun." So don't be afraid to come visit, please.

When I was unpacking one of the bathrooms, everything in the mover's boxes was individually wrapped in packing paper. To save time as I unwrapped each item, instead of putting each piece of paper in a trashbag I would throw them into the bathtub. Well let me tell you, the cats thought they had found heaven as they dove head first into the crinkly paper. They looked like little kids playing in the plastic balls as Burger King. I started laughing and had to take a second from unpacking to run get the camera.

Anyways, just wanted to take a moment and let you all know we made it safely. By the way, I like it here already. We just have to get Lori to have at least an open mind about Virginia enough to enjoy it. So far, she hasn't taken to it all that well, but I'm sure she'll come around.

Would love to hear from you all. Even those of you who I've never met, and who just read this site for fun. I'll post more as things arise. Take care.

- Matt

IT'S A SIGN :(

Is it an omen when two days before you move out of your apartment, there is a giant man-eating moth hanging out right above your door? Seriously, this is the biggest one I've ever seen! Or maybe it's a locust. I don't know, I've never actually seen one. Either way, he's been there for the past 2 days, and it's starting to get kinda creepy! If any of you have ever studied ancient prophesy/omens please let me know. In the meantime, I'll try to fend him off with a broom and and a can of paint.

IT'S FINALLY HITTING ME

The movers are here packing all of our stuff up as I sit here typing this. By the way, it's very awkward to sit here and type while someone is packing all your shiznit into cardboard boxes. Yeah, it's finally hitting me like a two-ton heavy thing, that this is for real. After living in Florida for over 23 years now, we're actually moving to Virginia, which now seems so far away. Really? We're actually doing this? What, are we crazy or something? No, I keep telling myself it's a good thing, right? It's exciting and scary and sad all at the same time.

I realized the other day that I've never lived more than 45 minutes away from my parents. It's been just far away enough that I knew if I ever needed anything, I could just drive a short distance and things would be ok. I love them dearly, and I'm going to miss them terribly. Since moving out of the house right after high school, we have grown very close. I can never repay them for all that they've done for me over the years. They are the best. It's going to be very difficult to say goodbye.

My brother Adam and I used to fight ALL the time in high school, but ever since he left for college, he and I have been best of friends. Since moving to St. Pete a couple of years ago, we live literally 3 or 4 miles apart now. We hang out every weekend with friends, and I can't imagine life without going to Courtside Grille for Friday happy hour, and then dinner afterwards. This has been a great bonding time for us. I'm so lucky to have a big brother like him in my life. He is truly a blessing, and I will miss him more than I can say.

A part of me doesn't want to leave. Not the part that's been bitching about wanting to move out of Florida for God knows how long now. Not the part that wants to see the changes of the seasons. Not the part that wants to experience new adventures and a change of pace. Not even the crazy part of me that wants to live in snow again. No, it's the part where my heart is.

It's funny that I've always considered Minnesota to be my home. After all, it's where I was born and raised until I was 12. But looking back on it, I guess Florida is really my home. I've been here about 2/3 of my life. It's where I did all my "growing up", made lifelong friends, and most importantly, met my wife. If it weren't for her going up to Virginia with me, I don't know if I could do it. But she is my rock, and I know together we'll be fine. Yeah, my heart is in Florida. I can admit it. But they say that "Virginia is for Lovers" Rnnt Rreww!! (Kinda looking forward to seeing if that's true).

So, even though I know we'll be happy and everything will work out fine, it is with a heavy heart that I say goodbye to Florida and hello to my new life in VA. No, I take that back. Lets not say goodbye, lets just say "till we meet again". Love you all.

SERIOUSLY?!?

What is going on here? If I have to save one more cat that's caught behind a dresser today, I'm gonna scream. Yeah, you heard me. Let me explain.

Salvation Army is coming tomorrow morning to pick up our old furniture and one of the pieces is a tall stand-up dresser positioned in the corner of the bedroom which we have a huge television on top of. Well, in my process of cleaning the dresser out for the move, I took the television off of it. The critter crew apparently saw this as their chance to take advantage of a new place to climb.

It all started when I heard a pretty loud thud coming from the bedroom. Well, being as I had several boxes stacked up in the bedroom, along with the fact that they knock stuff over all the time, I wasn't real concerned with it. I'll get to it later, I thought. Well later came around and when I went in there, I couldn't find anything out of place. I thought, well that's strange. This is when I heard a faint "meww" coming from under the dresser. I looked behind it and saw a large grey tail peeking out. Somehow the 19 lb. Mouse had managed to crawl underneath the dresser and had gotten himself stuck! I tilted it forward so he could crawl out and then moved it sideways as he ran from the back of it. Now mind you, this whole time, his brother Iddle is watching off to the side.

Not an hour later, I walk into the bedroom to another "meww". I immediately peek over the dresser to find Iddle looking up at me like "oops". After a short talk about "didn't you learn anything from your brother's mistake?" I let him out as well. Now you'd think this would be the end of it, but no. As I'm walking in to the bedroom even later I come to see how they are managing to get stuck behind the dresser. I turn the corner into the bedroom just in time to see Roscoe take a leap onto the dresser, slide across the top, hit the wall, and go straight down. I almost peed my pants laughing. That was some funny shnatt! Earlier that day, I had polished the wood on the dressers because they were pretty dusty. My bad!

Good lord!! You're not going to believe this, but as I was typing this, Iddle managed to do it again! Seriously?!? Really? Unbelievable. Here we go again. Catman to the rescue!!

HAPPY AS A PIG IN DOOKIE

This is me. This is me with my new MacBook Pro laptop. This is me with my new MacBook Pro laptop grinning ear to ear.

Yes it has finally arrived from California after waiting a long week. I wasn't excited at all yesterday when the FedEx truck arrived. In reality, I was so excited that I think I scared the delivery lady when she knocked and the door immediately swung open. She jumped a little. I said, "Oh a package for me? I forgot all about it." I had been tracking that thing every day for the last week on the FedEx website wondering what was taking so long.

But alas, it is here and I am very happy! I have to thank my mom and dad for buying it for me. They said they wanted to buy it as my birthday and christmas presents. I said yeah, for the next 10 or 12 years! I am truly grateful to them for the awesome present. Lord knows I'll use it, and won't want to exchange it for something else.

So now, I'll probably be adding posts more often since I don't have to run upstairs to use the computer.

Happy boy.
Happy boy.
Happy boy.

CAT-ASTROPHE

These are our cats. They hate me right now. Well, ok maybe they don't hate me, but every time I go into the spare bedroom where we keep the cat carriers, they are a little leery of me. In the last two weeks, they have been poked, prodded, jabbed, assaulted, humiliated and tortured. This is according to them. According to me, they all just had to go to get their shots and Iddle needed a teeth cleaning. I felt bad, because I had to take them one by one in to the vet, and I'm sure they were wondering as I carried each one away if they would ever see their buddy again. But it was a necessary evil to keep them healthy and happy and with us for a long time.

George, "the orange one", is adjusting to his home again after having a three week vacation with Grandma and Grandpa while I was out of town. He was so spoiled there with a porch, "wet" food, and not being chased around the house by the 19 lb. beast known as Mouse. Mouse is really just a gentle giant, but he can't resist a good chase. In his defense, if George wouldn't run, Mouse probably wouldn't chase him, but alas, George takes off and the chase ensues.

Iddle probably had the worst week of all of them. He not only had to go to the vet to get his shots, he had to go back 3 days later to get his teeth cleaned. They had to give him anesthesia, so when I went to pick him up, he was still VERY groggy. The vet told me to keep him in his carrier for another 3 hours or so, but when I got home I felt bad, so I closed the bathroom door and let him walk around. Well I guess walk around wouldn't be the correct term. It was more like stumble, fall over, bang head on door, lose footing and fall over again, try to crawl on belly, then roll over. Poor guy, he looked like a drunken sailor. I felt bad that I'd let him out, so I put him back in his carrier and came back an hour and a half later. He had peed himself and it was all over his back legs, underside, and tail. I got some soapy water and washed him off, but he was miserable still.

The next day, I started to worry about him because he was still so out of it and hadn't eaten in 2 days. Usually chipper and loving with his tail straight up, he moped around looking completely depressed with his tail dragging on the ground. I worried that he wouldn't come out of it, and that I'd killed Lori's cat. That would be a great start to a new marriage, wouldn't it?

Luckily, he started eating the next morning, and now I'm happy to say he's back to his normal self, as are the rest of the critter crew. Little do they know, the real torture is yet to begin, as we take a 14 hour road trip with all 4 cats to Virginia next week. I don't know who will be tortured more by it, them or us, but wish us luck. We'll all probably need it.

PLEASE HELP, I HAVE A PROBLEM!!

Last night, I realized something. I might possibly be addicted to reality television. I really didn't think it was that bad until I was talking to Lori the other night, and she had mentioned in passing that I watch a lot of reality television. I said, "Well, I like some shows, but I really don't watch that much." Later that night, I went to watch something I recorded on TiVO, and I noticed that about 75% of all I had recorded was... yep you guessed it, Reality Television! And not just the ones I really consider worth watching.

Hells Kitchen (Gordon Ramsey is my hero) and the Mole (not as good as when Anderson Cooper hosted it, but I still like it) are the current ones that I really actually like, but I just can't stop there for some reason. In the past week, I've watched so many horrible ones that I have no business watching. Here are some of them and reasons I shouldn't be contributing to the downfall of society, but somehow I can't stop:



1. America's Got Talent - Here's a show that is American as you'll get. By that I don't mean patriotic, I mean who else but Americans with absolutely no talent would go on a national tv show (with "talent" in the title, mind you), to make an ass of themselves and get booed off stage. Sing it with me now: "My country tis of thee, sweet land of irony. Of thee I sing." Oh and it's got David Hasselhoff as one of the judges, who insists on calling himself "The Hoff" now. That fact alone should get me to stop watching, but I found that if you fast forward through his comments, it's not as bad. This show should've been called: "America's Got Talent, But You Won't See it on This Show, and Sorry About The Hoff - We Didn't Realize he was Completely Insane and Repulsively Annoying When We Signed Him to a Two Year Contract". They actually tried that name, but the test audience thought it was too long of a title.

I'M A BIG LOSER FOR WATCHING THIS FACTOR: 9/10

2. Moment of Truth - What can I say about this one? A show where self-absorbed egomaniacal contestants take a lie detector test, then try to remember their yes or no answers later to see if they were telling the truth in front of their friends and family (and all of America)? This show is like watching a train wreck. It brings out the contestants' worst qualities and deepest hidden secrets on live television. That sounds like my worst nightmare. Why would you sign up for that? Oh yeah, these desparate people are promised $500,000 if they can answer all the questions truthfully. I actually saw an episode where a girl admitted that she not only cheated on her husband (who was there in front of her), but she also said that he wasn't the person she wanted to marry in the first place (unbeknownst to him, apparently). Not only that, she also admitted that she should've married her old boyfriend who actually came out to ask her the question in person!! Ah... Moment of Truth: Shattering spirits and breaking up marriages one soul-crushing episode at a time. Congrats, you've officially earned your place in the fifth circle of hell!

I'M A BIG LOSER FOR WATCHING THIS FACTOR: 8/10




3. Nashville Star - What the hell? I don't even like country music!?! What in God's name am I watching this for? Oh yeah, there was nothing else on, and I was bored out of my skull. I know, that excuse doesn't even sound good to me. This show is like a really bad version of American Idol for country singers. Sound bad? Yeah it gets worse when you add that Billy Ray Cyrus is the host, and Jewel is one of the judges. Oh, my reality addiction is really getting bad. Please Help!

I'M A BIG LOSER FOR WATCHING THIS FACTOR: 10/10

4. Wife Swap - The title makes it sound depraved, but unlike the new CBS show "Swingtown", it's not actually about trading sexual partners. They take two completely opposite families with totally opposite views and make the wives go live with the other's family for 2 weeks. What ends up happening is mildly entertaining, but not enough to justify me watching it. All the shows pretty much end the same way. With the husbands refusing to do anything that the swapped wife tells them to, and then getting in a huge fight about it. I guess the only redeeming factor is the people learn to appreciate their own spouses a little more. Oh God help me! I can't believe I just admitted watching this.

I'M A BIG LOSER FOR WATCHING THIS FACTOR: 8/10




5. Celebrity Circus - More like "B-List Celebrity Circus". This show is as goofy as it gets. It takes "stars" like the guy who played Peter Brady on the Brady Bunch (Christopher Knight), some Olympic medal swimmer (Janet Evans), and some singer I've never heard of (Blu Cantrell) among others and makes them do circus acts. I remember seeing commercials advertising it before it came out and I also remember thinking that I would refuse to watch it. One, because it just sounded retarded, and two, I didn't want to encourage them to make more of these shows. But like a dumbass, I was flipping channels and got caught up watching it when I saw Stacey Dash (pictured here) floating on satin sheets in the air. She is not hard to look at, as you can tell, so I stayed on that channel. Now, like a sucka, I have to watch every week to find out which b-list celebrity will be kicked off. Now do you see how bad my addiction has become? Oh and Joey Fat-One, I mean Fatone, from NSYNC is the host which is all the more reason I need rehab. By the way, Stacey is still on it, so I still have that excuse.

I'M A BIG LOSER FOR WATCHING THIS FACTOR: 9/10



Well that's not all of them, but it's enough to give you an idea of what my life has become since I got laid off. Thank God that Dancing With the Stars, American Idol, and the Apprentice are over now, or I'd have to talk about them too. Geez, I've really gotta get a job soon!!


Does anyone know of any reality show treatment centers? 'Cause I'll totally go. I can admit I have a problem and apparently that's the first step.


My name is Matt. "HI, MATT!" And I am a realiholic.