Blog is a funny word...

I actually typo'd blog at the top of the page to "blgo" while I was writing the title. I thought that word looked funny also, so I figured you all should know.

OK... engaging blog launch sequence.

Once again, I haven't blogged in a while, and once again, I'm going to say how I should do it more and that I will. I probably won't blog any more often, but since I've been making that particular false promise in every single blog... I figure there is no reason to break tradition.

There are actually a lot of reasons why I haven't been blogging at all. That is kind of what I am here to tell you all about! I've been pretty busy with work, physical therapy and all that jazz. The knee is recovering very nicely. I can walk with no issues at all now. I can jog into a building from the rain, which is more of a blessing than you think, especially with the way the weather has been for the last few weeks in the lovely town of Springfield. Work is work. There's been a lot of things happening on that front recently as well. So that has kept me busy. I felt like I had a lot more going on in my life that were keeping me so busy, but apparently there isn't. Wow, this whole paragraph just lost a lot of steam... moving on!

I've been feeling pretty restless lately. I love Springfield and the people I see every day but I just keep thinking that I'm supposed to be doing something different. I don't have the slightest idea what it is though. It's strange. I feel like I should have had all this stuff figured out by this point in my life. I feel a lot like I'm about 21 again and am getting ready to embark on this big journey we call life and have no idea what on earth I'm supposed to do with it. I haven't had a ton of purpose lately. Typing that just reminded me of the song "Purpose" from Avenue Q. Great song, great show.

I could go ahead and just keep doing what I am doing probably forever. My life is pretty great overall, but I just feel like there's something more that is supposed to happen. It seems that I'm just doing what I need to in order to be relatively happy and then call it good. I think I might be getting tired of that. I don't really have any reason to do what I'm doing. I have tons of friends with kids, families, bills, houses, cars, etc. that give them reason to do what they are doing. I think having those types of reasons adds a lot of purpose to what they are doing. I'm not at all saying that I want kids or a family or anything like that right now, I'm really far from wanting that type of a situation. I just would like to have a reason for doing what I am doing in my life. Bleh, it might not make sense, but that's how I'm feeling right now.

This blog took a sharp turn into depressing, self-introspection town and I'm sorry for that. I've just had a lot of people asking what has been on my mind recently, and this forum seemed like the best way to put it out there. I really do enjoy writing, it helps me organize my thoughts. It is also like having a conversation with myself about what I'm thinking. Griffey has to "run out" all his energy that he has from sitting in the house all day and my writing is how I mentally "run out" all this stuff that is swirling in my head. I write a lot more often than I blog but most of it doesn't make it to the blog because it's not all that interesting. Sort of like whats written above!

I'll be back to my normal blogging self soon. I just figured that I wanted to write about all this stuff and why not post it up for people to talk about if they wanted to. Funny stuff will be coming soon. I promise!

TLDR: I said one more time that I'll blog more, but I probably won't. I need some purpose in my life. I write things down instead of talking to myself. I'll be more funny next time, I promise.

See you all tonight at the Halloween party! If you aren't there, then we are fighting.

Thanks for stopping by!

I'm baaaaaaaaack...

So it's been a while. There have been several reasons for that, but mainly it has to do with the fact that my computer was beside my bed during the first couple weeks of my recovery. This caused a problem with blogging because any second I could be out of that bed and away from the "death machine" I took it. This obviously cut into my blogging time as I had a major aversion to hanging out where my computer was located. I just moved it back to my desk however, so I can sit at my computer and then get in bed when I'm tired. I'm pretty excited.

So surgery went well. My knee bends now. I actually got up to 122 degrees today at therapy when I flex it. My extension is still at 2 degrees, which means I have a little work to do that way. My brace is unlocked and allows me to bend 90 degrees, so I'm going to start working on walking normally. It's pretty weird to bend it while I'm walking. I feel like I'm going to hurt myself all the time. I probably will, but that's beside the point.

I just got back from sunny Las Vegas. It is pretty much my favorite place on this wonderful planet. I went for a work conference that was a lot of fun actually. They got rid of a bunch of the boring stuff from the past years and made the conference all about the product that we will be selling and the direction the company is going. If everything goes the way corporate is saying it will, they are going to be a fantastic place to work. It seems like they are trying to make GameStop an actual retail career similar to Nieman-Marcus or any of the high end retail chains. We heard a lot about how we are considered the #1 retail workforce in America and that we are going to start being treated more like that. Its all theory and talk right now, but if it all actually happens it is going to pretty exciting.

Ladies, you can tune out these next few sentences. The other thing about conference that rocked is that there are so many damn good games coming out this Christmas its ridiculous. Every single thing that we saw was incredible. Rock Band was cooler than I ever thought it would be. Halo 3 is Halo 3: enough said. Guitar Hero 3 was awesome as well, Slash of Guns 'N Roses fame actually played on stage for us. Mass Effect will probably be game of the year. Super Mario Galaxy is the best Mario game since Super Mario 64. Littlebigplanet will be the game I buy a PS3 for. The list goes on and on. We saw so much cool stuff it's ridiculous. Hell, Turok was even good, and I've been making fun of that game ever since they announced they were going to make another one. I know we don't have a ton of gamers that read this yet, but if you have any questions about the games coming out, this is a good forum to talk about them. I'm a huge dork and my excitement just serves to prove that.

Enough about the work stuff in Vegas. We went to Rockstar Karaoke at the House of Blues and it was a pretty awesome show. We got to see most of our corporate HR department make fools of themselves, which was awesome. The DJ screwed up my song choice so I didn't get to sing. Which saved a lot of people from hearing what was destined to be a pretty awesome version of Sweet Child of Mine, or I would have completely butchered it. The latter is actually the more probable of those two options, but it would have been fun! We also went to Nine Fine Irishmen in New York, New York with everyone from the district and some of the St. Louis people. Good times. Good times.

The reason I actually started this blog was a quote from my friend Andy, but it's already so long. Bleh, I'll talk about it anyway.

Courage is doing the wrong thing, for all the right reasons.

This came out because I was talking about moving to Vegas and the reasons why it was the wrong thing to do. Reasons like: my job, my friends, my family (especially my niece, who is the smartest and cutest little girl on earth). You know, all the things that make you comfortable with where you are at. Then he decides to throw out that gem. I think that is probably the best definition of courage I've ever heard. It applies to just about anything. The things that make you a courageous person are generally so risky that they are the "wrong" thing to do, but the reasons you do them are what make it right. Running into a burning building to save someone is probably the "wrong" thing to do from a risk/reward or self-preservation standpoint, but courageous, heroic people do it every day because the reasons they do it make it the right thing to do.

Thanks Whood for giving me something to think about and talk about. You're pretty awesome.

Too Long Didn't Read Version: I'm recovering from surgery well. Vegas was fun. Video games are cool. My friend Andy is a genius.

I'll put TLDR versions of my long posts for people who don't like reading long blogs (yes, I'm talking to you Michelle).

Do me a favor...

I want everyone to look down at their left knee and repeat these words, "Thank you for bending."

Now I'm far from crippled and will definitely recover from all this, so I don't want to come across as a guy who thinks his life is ending. I think more than anything we all kind of take our bodies for granted. They do some pretty spectacular stuff. You realize how awesome something like your left knee bending is whenever it can't do it.

I went into the surgery thinking, "I've been on crutches before, it won't be all that bad." Let me give you an example of a couple things that bending your knee, even just a few degrees, makes easier. This will be significantly more fun for you if you like: 1) people doing things that look awkward, or 2) people falling down. Imagine me, you, your best friend, or pretty much anyone that you enjoy falling down or looking awkward and you might even laugh out loud.

Go get into your car with your left leg totally straight. Just try it. Oh, and don't take the easy way out and get into the driver's side or back seat, get right into the passenger's side. Now, while you struggle to push the seat all the way back and plop your behind onto the chair, do a crab-walk style push up with your arms to slowly rotate your foot into the floorboard. Make sure you bang your foot against something two or three times too. You will probably have to raise yourself onto your console and spin around on it. Thank goodness I'm short because that makes it a bit easier.

The one thing that I never thought would be hard is going to the bathroom. Go sit on your toilet with one leg straight. Sitting down isn't too tough, but getting everything positioned to where you are getting all your business where it needs to go is a challenge, and is actually really funny. My major complaint here is that, quite frankly, sitting in my bathroom and reading is a very important and relaxing part of my day. Now I just kind of spin around on the toilet seat trying to make sure that I don't leave myself a mess to clean up. Ok, that was kind of graphic, but I laugh about it every time I think about it.

I could go on and on about all the funny ways I have almost fallen down, or knocked various things over with my foot. Finding the comedy in this stuff is the best way to deal with it. I mean, it took me 25 minutes to eat a bowl of cereal today. I had to crutch into the kitchen and grab the closed box of cereal so if I dropped it wouldn't spill. Then I repeated that with the milk, Then I went back and grabbed the bowl and spoon (held in my mouth). Then I poured my cereal and ate my delicious Honey Bunches of Oats. Upon finishing my cereal I realized there was another 5 minute ordeal to put the stuff up. But hey, taking forever to get stuff done makes the day go by faster at least.

I have a spectacular group of friends that have made everything as easy as possible during this. Bringing me video games, doing my laundry, bringing me cake, just listening to me babble while I'm on pain meds, you name it and these people have done it. I also know that there are a ton of people who have kept me in their thoughts and prayers and I appreciate that a lot. This hasn't quite been the easy operation I expected. It's very common but I guess it is a pretty major surgery and I wasn't really prepared for it. It's a good thing all the people in my life were. Thanks again.

I started therapy yesterday and that should be just a barrel of fun... I'll blog more about that some other time. I will have time to as well, considering I go 3 times a week for the next 16 weeks. I didn't realize how long that was until the scheduler lady asked me when I could come in the day after Thanksgiving.

Anyway, I just wanted to give everyone an update on how things were going. Just make sure you think about how awesome it is when everything is working properly. Jamie and I had a pretty good conversation about how impressive the human body actually is, which led to talking about creation and God, and all kinds of good stuff. That seriously was a great hour we spent talking. I just want to thank all of you and God for helping me through this. I'll be back in a couple of days!

Minard out. (Yeah, I just used Ryan Seacrest's sign off)

Surgery!

So usually I don't post things that could be construed as sympathy deals. I try to keep certain things private, but there are people that check this that I'm just too lazy to call (I was on the phone all day yesterday setting this thing up).

My knee surgery got bumped up to today! So thats a good thing overall due to the fact that I will have an extra couple weeks to recover before Las Vegas, and really, who wants to go to Vegas on a bum wheel. It makes it significantly harder to chase wild women, and I'm all about the wild women.

So next week while I'm laid up I will probably blog a bit. I'll definitely be bored. If you all are lucky, I'll try to blog in the next couple days when I'm hopped up on a bunch of pain meds. That could actually get really entertaining.


See you all soon.

Title

Had some pretty interesting stuff happen in the last few days.

First of all, the wager was made to not touch the flowing locks that are growing out my head. We still haven't worked out what the loser has to do. But I can tell you right now the loser won't miss the fact that his head will be a bazillion times cooler. Its just so hot outside. I've always wanted long hair, just to say at some point I had it. I always thought it was cool to see old pictures of my family with ridiculously bad hair. I haven't ever really taken too much of a chance with mine during my "adult" life. I did, however, have a totally sweet rat tail in 3rd grade that went down to my butt (oh how the ladies loved me). I figure that I can at least do some fun stuff with it once its long when I decide to cut it. I fully plan on having a mullet for a day or so.

Fake prom is this Thursday at Dennis.' I'm pretty stoked about my pink shirt with my tux. Theme nights are a blast.

Played some pretty awesome new games that are coming out for 360. I won't go into details about them, but they both really blew my mind at how much fun they were. Now I just have to come up with the bucks to buy them.

I was introduced to combing my beard. Yeah it's weird. It does feel good and is very relaxing. It seems that the guys who include a beard comb in with every single cheap beard trimmer you buy are actually on to something.

I don't really have any major life-changing things to talk about. Just a bunch of random stuff.

Thanks for stopping by.

It starts...

Well... here we are. I was brought to this particular blog hosting service mainly because two of my good friends use it and it seems to be pretty easy to work with, as well as easy to make look cool. I'm all about easy because, quite frankly, I'm pretty lazy.

This thing could really go anywhere. I run a video game store so I'm a big fan of those and may actually write a bit about what I think about the state of the gaming industry, subculture, etc every so often. I also just really like funny stuff, so there may be some of that posted here. Music is a pretty big deal to me, so I may write a little bit about that. This thing can really go anywhere. Ahhh... the freedom of the internets.

Generally I will probably spend my time just trying to find and accentuate the emotions that every day life brings out. I don't think most of us realize how just about every single day something that truly effects us happens. It might be a small thing like finding a few bucks in your jeans. Or it might be a big thing, like having an accident of some type or meeting someone who just absolutely made an impact on you. Big or small, negative or positive, something happens every day or so that really makes you think about your life and where it's going or has been. I think thats pretty cool stuff. I also think that it's a good idea to share those kinds of things.

I've done the blog thing before and I really enjoy it. I just need to keep the habit going. So a lot of these posts will be just random ramblings. Hope they are entertaining to the 3 people that are going to read it, and if more come along through the course of me doing this, then I hope they enjoy it as well.

Keep any comments respectful and play nice kids. This could be a really good time.