Back for now

In an attempt to save some money, I have temporarily ended my subscription to Squarespace. I’ll be making all future updates here until further notice.

Freemanxtreme.com is live!

You can now find my blog at freemanxtreme.com All future updates will be found there.

Moving to Squarespace!

I am moving to Squarespace. It’s nothing against WordPress, but for me, Squarespace is easier to use and I think it’s the right place for me. I registered my site at godaddy so you will be able to find me at www.freemanxtreme.com eventually… I just need to get it set up.

Blogging from my iPod

I just downloaded the WordPress app for my iPod Touch. Now we’ll see if that gets me to post more often! How exciting!

Follow me on Twitter!

Just wanted to write a quick note. I know I haven’t been updating this blog much. I’ve been doing a lot of twittering though, so if you’d like to follow me, my name is FreemanXtreme on there as well. Thanks!

It’s Christmas Eve…

So, it’s Christmas Eve. It’s also been a while since I wrote anything on here. This is partially due to my laziness and partially due to me not being in the mood to write anything. A few things have happened since the last time I wrote anything. I’m not going to cover them all but I’ll give you the highlights.

Thanksgiving was good. Angie and I went to my parents house for a long weekend. We ate and watched football… nothing out of the ordinary there. We got a Moravian star tree topper for our Christmas tree. This is our first Christmas together in our own place. We got a fake tree from Wal-Mart but it still cost more than you’d think a fake tree would cost. It better last us at least 4 more years. For the most part, I let Angie decorate the tree. I helped her a little but she did most of the work. The end result is nice and I’d post a picture but I don’t have one on my computer at the moment.

It’s quite cold here now. I usually am hot more often than not so when I think it’s cold, it’s probably below freezing. About a week or so before Thanksgiving (sorry to backtrack), I was on my way to work and as I was coming down a small hill that I need to turn off of to enter the industrial park where my work is, I lost my traction. There was a thin layer of slippery snow on the ground and that combined with my summer tires that aren’t meant for slippery snow covered hills, resulted in me spinning about 130 degrees and coming to a stop in a small ditch on the left side of the road. It damaged my bumper and my passenger side fog light among a few other things and I just took it in to get repaired on Monday. So now I have a rental car… a Chevy Cobalt… I don’t like Chevy. Hopefully my car will be done either today or Friday at the latest.

My car isn’t the only thing that needed repaired. The Saturday night after Thanksgiving (yes, we are backtracking again), I was playing Xbox 360 and it was late so I was done for the night. I turned it off using the guide button on the controller and I got the Red Ring of Death… again. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I thought it would be okay once I got back home and set it up. No luck. So I had to ship it to Texas again and find something else to do with my time at night when I usually play Xbox. I watched one of my Netflix movies which I’ve had sitting around for a month or two. Planet Horror, the first movie in the Grindhouse double feature thing that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez did. It was amusing. I liked it. I also played the Wii more than I have since I first got it. I bought World of Goo. I never heard of the game until it was nominated and won the video game award for best indie game. Its pretty fun. I like puzzle games like that if you could call it a puzzle game, which I think you could. So I should have my Xbox 360 tomorrow later today. They tried to deliver it yesterday but they need a signature. I get off work at 2pm and Angie is off so hopefully one of us will be here to sign for it.

We leave on Saturday to go to my parents house for about a week. I originally wanted to go on Friday but Angie wants to go shopping with her mom which is fine because I can play with whatever I get for Christmas while she is out shopping. I asked her for Gears of War 2 but I think she didn’t get it for me. She got it for her brother who is getting an Xbox 360 for Christmas so I guess she didn’t wanna go buy it again. That’s fine, I’ll get it myself. She may have gotten me Wii Fit. She went to a store at 6am one Saturday a week or two back to get something for me. Wii Fit seems like the kind of thing you’d need to do that for.

Well, it’s about 1:30 and I need to get up at 7:00 so I’m going to wrap it up now. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all. I have a thing about odd and even numbers. I usually don’t like odd years but since I’m getting married in 2009, maybe it won’t be so bad after all.

A little about my vacation

So, I’ve been back from my vacation for a month now. I started writing this a few weeks ago but never finished it until now. Sorry for the delay… I know you were on the edge of your seat, obsessively refreshing the page hoping this post would show up.

We left on Friday, July 4th and surprisingly the airport wasn’t as crowded as I thought it would be. We flew to Orlando from Pittsburgh and upon arrival took the Disney bus to Disneyland. We stayed at the All-Star Music resort. On Saturday we went to Epcot for the day. Had a lot of fun even though it was really hot with the Florida sun beating down on us. Later in the day we made our way over to the world showcase. I enjoyed a beer from England and also bought a Great Britain soccer shirt. I’m half British so I like to buy stuff that says England or Great Britain whenever I get the chance.

We made our way around the countries and stopped for a little treat in France. I got a slice of cheesecake that was very good. Next was Germany for dinner. We went to the Biergarten and I had a liter of beer bringing my total to 52 oz. of Beer. After dinner, we finished making our way around the countries and then eventually left Epcot to go back to our resort.

The next day we went through the process of getting to the Disney Wonder, our home for the next four nights. We got on the boat around 3:00 PM or so and the ship left at 4:00 PM. We had a good time on the boat, even though I felt a little ill a few hours into the cruise. I wouldn’t think it was the slight rocking of the ship because I have been on many smaller boats and never had a problem but this was my first cruise so I couldn’t rule it out. More likely, I thought it was the 52 oz. of beer in my intestines. I don’t normally drink that much beer… in fact I don’t know if I’ve ever drank 52 oz. of beer in a period of a few hours. (Yes, I drank in college a little, but I wasn’t a fan of beer back then… I preferred rum & coke and twisted tea.) Digestive problems aside, I was determined to enjoy this vacation and wasn’t about to let my body put a damper on things.

We spent Monday at Disney’s private island Castaway Cay… I don’t know why tropical islands have to use Cay instead of Key… I guess it’s their way of being exotic. It was a hot day… and I got sunburn, like always. The water was clear and quite warm. I have never seen clear water in person before. I have only swam in the northern Atlantic… New Jersey, Delaware, Cap Cod… oh, I did swim in Oak Island, North Carolina which is just north of Myrtle Beach but that water isn’t much better than the Jersey shore.

Tuesday was Angie’s favorite day. We were in Nassau and were on the hunt for an engagement ring. The first store we went to was Columbian Emeralds. Within 5 minutes she found a ring that she really liked. The lady that was helping her even told her to take it outside to see how it sparkled in the sunlight. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be able to do that in the US. So, she told them to put it aside since we didn’t want to get it without seeing what other stores had to offer. We went to two other stores, the first didn’t really have anything she liked and the lady at the second store was kinda rude to us when we told her our budget. So we left and went next door to another Columbian Emeralds. They had the same ring we saw at the other location and I went ahead and got it after the approval of the cruise ship’s diamond expert.

It was between 10 and 10:30 when I proposed to Angie. We were on the top deck, deck 10, and we were just taking a walk around the ship. We got to a spot on the left side of the ship that felt like a good spot for me to pop the question. There was some light jazz music playing and the moon was out, it’s reflection dancing on the waves. I put my hand in my pocket to get the ring… “Hey guys, what are you up to?” It was her brother and his girlfriend. Really? Out of all the times you could show up, it had to be now. Ok, fine, I guess this wasn’t the right time. So we talk with them for a little and they ask if we want to come with them to a bar. I mentioned that I wanted to see Wall-E and it was starting in a little bit (I didn’t really plan on seeing that night, I saw it the next day) Angie needed some water so we got her some and went back up to deck 10. This time we were on the other side of the ship. We were sitting and just talking and after a little bit we got up and I told her to come over to the rail and look at the waves. It was pretty dark out but the moon provided just enough light that you could still make out the waves. I felt this was a good time to give it another shot. A pop remix of “Kiss the Girl” from The Little Mermaid was playing now and I thought that was fitting for the occasion. I reached into my pocket to get the ring and as I am doing so, Angie says “Can I have my ring now?” My first reaction was to laugh, and then I thought to myself, I guess I wasn’t meant to have a romantic proposal. I took out the ring and asked her the question that she had been waiting for me to ask her. She said yes and I put the ring on her finger. We kissed. Awwwww.

Next, we went down to the main lobby floor and saw they were taking pictures with a nice night time background. So we got our pictures taken. We ended up using that picture for our engagement announcements which we had them make for us. They came out real nice.

Wednessday we were back in Castaway Cay. We went with my future brother-in-law Josh and his girlfriend Erica to the adult only beach on the far side of the island. We were lucky to be the first ones there and had the whole place to ourselves for about 30 to 45 minutes before anyone else showed up. We had some drinks and just relaxed and things were going good until my body decided it was done being exposed to sunlight. I started to feel not so great and we made our way back to the pavilion where lunch was being served. After being in the shade for a while and getting myself hydrated I began to feel a little better. I was able to eat two hot dogs and after lunch we went back to the ship. We spent the rest of the day just relaxing and enjoying our last day of vacation.

Thursday was sad. We made our way back into the real world and it made me sad that in the real world, waitresses don’t put your napkin in your lap for you or care if everything is just the way you like it. We were at the Orlando airport for about 7 hours before our flight took us back to Pittsburgh. It wasn’t very exciting so that’s all I have to say about that.

So that’s about it. The pictures are on Flickr, feel free to check them out. Angie and I are doing pretty good with the wedding planning so far. She already has her dress, the bridesmaids’ dresses, the reception venue, and flowers, and I haven’t really done anything. We’re right on track.

LOLCAT OF THE DAY!

Today’s lolcat is in honor of the kitten I accidentally killed on the way to work on Monday. The poor little guy was on a bridge I was crossing, running and jumping in between two lanes of traffic. Cars were trying to stop for it and when it got to my car, I hit my brakes but it ran under my car, maybe thinking it’d be safe there and my back tire went over it. I then looked in my rear view mirror to see it twitching violently on the road. I feel really bad about it. I’m the person who lets spiders and other small bugs outside when I find them in the house. So, with that in mind, Rest In Peace little gray kitten.

more cat pictures

Check out my vacation photos

I uploaded my photos from vacation to Flickr so feel free to take a look.  You can either click on them to the right side of the main page or you can go here

Back From Vacation and Engaged!

The title pretty much says it all.  I got back from my vacation to Epcot and Disney Cruise Thursday night and I’m engaged to my girlfriend of 3 years, Angie.  It’s a little late for me to type about the whole vacation but It was a great time, so much so that we booked another Disney cruise for our honeymoon.  I’ll tell you about it later, just wanted to announce the great news!