I'm gonna post some pictures that I have from throughout the year in the next few posts. This one's from moving day as I had to pack up stuff I looked under everything so I didn't forget anything. Oddly enough, I forgot my shoes cause I was wearing flip flops and I left my shoes in the living room.

This is me after we beat Louisville to go to the NCAA championship. This is me chugging some orange windex at Jimmy John's

Crazyness at the quad after we beat Louisville to get to the NCAA championship.

More crazyness at the quad after we beat Louisville to get to the NCAA championship.

This is probably embarassing for Matt, so I figured that I should post it. This is Matt trying on the hoody he won for his girlfriend. No, it doesn't fit well.

From left to right: Me, Scotty (Arrogant Fuck), Wagner (Vagner), and Alan (His Hupeness). Person taking the picture: "Ok guys, make a cool pose." I guess I thought the person said 'a stupid pose' cause I look like an idiot (so it's a normal picture)

The beautiful tower of Rolling Rocks. This was built by engineers. What was even better than this was when the table got nudged and all the bottles fell on someone (can't remember who though)

Alan drunk off his ass, but I guess everyone wanted to see how much we could put on him.

Nico drunk off his ass. He said he stole some stuff and then bribed us by offering us all $10,000 as a bribe. He also tried to call Jack Bauer.

Sean passed out in his chair after it fell onto his bed, thanks to a little help from Jim Beam

School's Out For Summer

Picture of the Day 05-18-05
Well my sophomore year is finally over. Spring semester seemed to turn out much better than fall was. Everything was still a little crazy to start the fall. Eventually I got in the swing of things, but in some things it was a bit too late. Spring semester though, I felt a little more renewed. I had more fun, did more work, and overall felt better about a lot more aspects of my life (I just realized that this is going to be a real reflective post. This might be really boring, so as you run away, let the women and children go first). But before I get more reflective, I’ll let you know what’s happened over the last week of school.

Finals, Exams, Tests; Whatever you call them, mine were hard:
Want to know another reason why engineering is so hard, the finals. We do so much work during the semester and at least 1/3 of our grade is from the final. I had one class where the final was 45% of the grade. It’s crazy. Now that I’m done bitching a little, I’ll tell you what happen. I basically studied from last Thursday til right before my final on Wednesday night. I had a few breaks in there (in all honesty, I had a pretty long break on Saturday night, but come on it was Saturday night). There were also several distractions from other people who hung out cause they didn’t want to study, but it was cool to hang out cause I didn’t want to work either. I thought I got owned on the ECE final (found out I got a 62, avg was a 67). I ended up getting a B- in that class which is pretty big cause it’s a 4 hour class. I had my TAM 251 (the hard class with the horrible prof) final Monday morning. I was worried the test would be crazy hard, but it turned out that I might have actually known what I was doing. Then on Tuesday I did decent on the other TAM class’s final. After that I studied the hardest out of the whole week, trying to learn physics. That stuff is hard. I took the final and did great until the last few pages, I could have done well, or I could have done bad, probably somewhere in the middle. I think I did enough though. Hey it could have been worse, Dave said he guessed on most of the questions, hopefully he got lucky cause that would suck to take that class over again. I just checked on it and I passed the final and got a C- in Physics. Then after that final I had to quickly finish my cheat sheet for my GE final that was in a couple hours (don’t worry, we were allowed to use a cheat sheet). I actually finished the cheat sheet with time to spare and played poker in the lounge for ten minutes before I went to the final. By the way, the game was pretty big and I was a little mad that there was such a good poker game going during my only final that was at night. I did good enough on that final to get a C in the class and maybe even a B if I get lucky or the prof gives our grades a little bump.

You Ain’t Gotta Go Home But You Gotta Get the Heck Up Out of Here:
Packing up was interesting. Pretty much the whole time I packed, someone was hanging out with me. Me packing was more interesting than studying finals so it seemed like a lot of people stopped by. I cleaned all the chalk that was left on the walls off, with the help of Matt by the way. Most of the packing was easy but the stuff at the end seemed to take forever. I realized that I basically had all my winter and summer clothes up there. For most of the stuff I used our family’s cheap luggage, plastic trash bags. I didn’t think that I had that much stuff, but the car was packed to them brim. I mostly blame it on having so many clothes. Moving out was long and sucked cause I didn’t have a cart til the end. But at least Elleni helped with some of the stuff. After what seemed like forever, I had all the stuff out and went to say my goodbyes. My part of the room looked depressing, it was completely bare and the walls in the living room were void of all the chalk. It didn’t seem like my room anymore. Probably will be the last time I’m in there unless we make friends with the people who live there next semester. And knowing me and Matt, I think we’ll hang out a little up there, maybe even teach them kitchen ball.

Home, James:
Well, I’ve been home for a few days. It’s been pretty boring. So far, I’ve seen no one. I haven’t seen any friends or family outside of my mom and uncle (for like a second). I don’t really know who’s even in town out of my friends. Guess I should find out what’s goin on, but I’m just chillin for now. I already tossed away some cash on DVDs. I did finally get my phone fixed. I now get voicemails, so make sure you leave me one (618-420-3636). Just make it funny and I’ll be sure to return the favor. I’ve had a good amount of time to play poker on ub though. It’s been nice. I’m playing pretty good. I won a $40 tourney the other day and made about $1500. That’s about it, not much else goin on.

Chi Town, What’s Goin On:
So first off, Kimmy’s goin down to Florida for awhile with her parents. She can’t get out of it and it sucks. It’s sounding more and more like we won’t be seeing much of each other this summer, if at all. What sucks is that we both want to be together but can’t find a way for it to happen. So I’m not sure if I’m gonna visit Chicago at all this summer. It’s not the same trip now. Elleni really wants me to visit but I’m just not sure if I really want to now. I’ve talked to a few people from Chicago and everything seems to be cool with everyone. We’ll wait and see what happens with me visiting though.

Quote of the Day: Janitor: "Scooter!" JD: "Huh?" Janitor: "Your nickname will be scooter." JD: "I don't get it." Janitor: "Like Scooter Pies. I HATE Scooter Pies!" JD: "Oh... now I get it." - from Scrubs dvd that I just got
Song of the Day: "School's Out for Summer" by Alice Cooper. Guess why this is the song of the day.

This is the Farthest North I've ever been

Picture of the Day 05-06-05
So last weekend I went to the White Sox game with Lenny and Alan. The trip up was pretty fast. I had never seen offensive driving until I saw it in Chicago. It was little crazy for me, I think I would of hit someone by now if I drove like that in Chicago. We got to the game and of course I decided to leave my hoody in the car since Lenny went in short sleeves and Alan had on basically what I had. It was so cold all night. We froze pretty much the whole time. Before the game we met up with the U of I WhiteSox nation for a pregame bbq. They made a sign for the game that said to put us on tv and it had some of the sox anouncer's catch phrases on there. They actually put us on tv. If I can figure out how to do it, I'll put a picture up of us on tv. The renovated Comisky looked really nice. We had seats in the right field bleachers. Great seats for the price. It was a different brand of baseball then I was used to. There weren't that many people there and it was a Friday night game when the Sox have the best record in baseball. Nothing like how many people show up for a Cards game at Busch. Lets just say that at least 30,000 fans at Comisky that night were dressed up as empty seats. The game was pretty good though. Close tight game all the way til the end. Another thing that got to me though was the DH. Watching the game just made me despise the DH even more. I mean the DH is like half a man, he can hit but is such a hinderence in the field that they made a special position just for him. Anyways, the game. The Sox came back in the ninth to tie it up but couldn't hit in the go ahead run and ended up losing in extra innings.

My dork or Lover in the Hotub (in Will Ferrell voice):
I really missed talking to Kimmy cause last weekend she was gone and I never got ahold of her to have a converastion. She actually said she might not go to Europe this summer just so she can spend time with me. That would be so great but I'm not sure she'll stay here because she doesn't want to regret missing this trip. Whatever happens I hope she makes the right choice. I got to talk to her a lot this week and it was great, I can't wait to see her this summer.

Aren't I Boring News:
Most of what happened this week that I might put in here was boring or I forgot. Sorry bout that.

Rolled Up Aces Over Kings News:
No news on my bankroll it's stayed in place for the most part. But I've been playing a lot here at IT this week. Been having a blast and winning a little cash too. Yesterday we tried playing a H.O.R.S.E. tourney. The way we did it was play a tournament of each of the following games: Hold em, Omaha, Razz, Seven card stud, and Eight and below omaha. We had decent sized tournaments for Hold em and Omaha. The Razz and Stud tournaments were only 4 people and for a dollar though. And the Eight and below tournament was just me and Matt. I had fun though and enjoyed the games, just not some of the guys bad play that beat me a few times.

Finally, it's almost over:
All my classes are done and now all I have left is finals. Some are gonna be tough but my grades should be much better this semester. I still need to work a lot this week, but I'm going to do it.

Quote of the Day: "Monroe, Monroe, where's MAGG-LIO" - this was one of the chants shouted throughout the night. WE were shouting this at the right fielder Monroe who was replacing the former Sox player Magglio Ordonez
Song of the Day: "Let It Be" by the Beatles. I'm listening to it now and it is such an amazing song.