- Desperate Housewives
- Comic Books
- Cosmo and Glamour
- Doritos smothered in shredded cheddar
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Speeding
- Fatboy Slim
- Dr. Dre
- Procrastinating
- Sleep

(Some of) My Guilty Pleasures. Yours?

It's amazing! My American Literature was my most feared class at the beginning of the semester, but now it's my favorite! Well, Brass Ensemble is pretty easy so maybe that's my favorite as far as workload and homework are concerned. But as far as actual coursework, I'm digging the Am.Lit material.

Particularly Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Frederick Douglass. I was particularly moved by Douglass' "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave", which is defdinitely the most powerful account of the times and life of a slave I've ever read. It kept me up until 2am last night, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

So yeah. I like reading 19th century American Literature. Huh.

10 years ago I was: Skipping class and getting into way too much trouble as a sophomore in high school. My rebel years

5 years ago I was: Making yet another attempt at college and starting my first stint at the Toy House (one of my best jobs ever) My confused years

1 year ago I was: Beginning college yet AGAIN, on the right track this time. Meeting the love of my life, Shannon. My reformation year

Yesterday: Went to class, paid some bills, hung out with Shan, played some volleyball (we won 5 of 6), and pretended to do homework. My typical Monday

5 snacks I enjoy: cereal, chips, ice cream, fruit, and thanks to Shan, candy

5 songs I know all the words to: "Round Here" by Counting Crows, "Give Me Novacaine" by Green Day, "What's My Name" by Snoop Dogg, "That's Amore" by Dean Martin, "Night and Day" by Frank Sinatra

5 things I would do with 100 million dollars: pay off bills, make sure family and friends are set, give to worthy causes, make life comfortable, start a business

5 places I would run away to: wherever Shannon goes, somewhere tropical, Europe, Colorado, Alaska

5 things I would never wear: necklaces, NASCAR anything, hmm, that's pretty much it

5 favorite TV shows: Desperate Housewives, King of Queens, Will and Grace, Sportscenter, JTV's Home for Dinner with Adrian Sharp!

5 bad habits: procrastinating, not picking up my clothes, not being organized, being insecure, not being open to other perspectives

5 biggest joys: spending time with Shannon, chillaxin with my peeps, nights on the town, sleeping, buying junk

5 favorite toys: My computer, my camera, my Jeep, my Gamecube, my sex swing (just kidding...or am I?)

5 fictional characters I would date: Grace from Will & Grace, Monica from Friends, Elaine from Seinfeld, Teri Hatcher from Desperate Housewives, Stacy Keibler from WWE

3 people I tag to do this: Uhh, I don't know 3 people

I wasn't too impressed with this movie, especially after heearing all the hype from almost everyone I talked to saying it's the most hilarious thing they've ever seen. It was funny in parts, very un-funny in other parts, and was an overall mediocre show. It was entertaining, I'll give it that. But it definitely wasn't worth seeing again, I won't give it that.

Some highlights included a hilarious chest-waxing scene, various guys going crazy because of women, and a few bicycle accidents that it seemed only Shannon and I thought were hilarious.

Lowlights included way, way too much derogatory conversation about women and gay men, and just an overall sense of trying to hard to cross the line. I think the whole "That's funny because they went to far with it" is dead now, and thus I didn't laugh too much throughout this movie at what I supposed to laugh at. The coughing, wheezing guy in back of us sure did though, and he drew a few looks from me just to make sure he was going to make it until the end.

Well hey what's shakin'. I'm here in Mackinaw City with Shannon right NOW and it's pretty fun. We're cillaxin' like never before and it's been a blast so far.

First we hung out around the town and went swimming in our hotel's pool. So that was fun.

Then today we slept in a little bit and then proceeded on over to the island. After, of course, we ate some pizza and bought me some slick new sandals. So anyhoo, we rode the Ferry over to the island and ummm, got off of it. Then we ummm, rode bikes around for about an hour, and then we ate some ice cream and laid in the grass. Then we almost paid $80 for a carriage ride. Then we sat around a little, and then rode bikes halfway around the other side of the island.

Then we had an old-time picture taken and then we cam home.

And THEN, we went and played Adventure mini golf and that was fun. OH, we had KFC for dinner before that. And then we went swimming once more.

So I just got on someone's free wireless internet so that's how I'm able to post this. Talk to you all when we return to the bottom of the state once again.

Oh yeah, and Shannon might have permanently damaged her ear in the pool. Hmm, that wouldn't be good. Hopefully she'll be ok.

Well, it's back to school time for BradBice.com. I'll try to do some regular updates throughout this first week and let the world know just how exciting and wonderful Community College really can be!

First up this morning, at 9:30am, American Literature, 19th century! The bad news about this class is that I had to go buy the book this morning, which at around $40 wasn't too bad. But, that was only the first volume (volume B). Volume's C-E costs another $40! So hopefully I can get by with 'B' for a while.

Directly after that is Economics, which is being retaken because I suck. But oh well I'll do better this time around (still have the book, though!)

And after that it's Intramurals, homework, meetings, and other fun stuff around campus. Hope everyone else that are taking classes is having a good one so far.

Viva La Community College!

1. Go here.
2. Pass it on.
( my answers )

Well I participated in helping out at this year's orientation at the local Community College yesterday. Got a free t-shirt out of it and everything! Unfortunately I was a little late in getting there (meaning later than everyone else, but still on time), and I was given the very last table and thus all of the new students who got to orientation late were sent to me. Shannon dubbed us the "slacker table". But it turned out 3/4 of them weren't all that bad and one of them was really nice and actually listened to some of my advice! Look kids, I've been there (off and on) for 7 years, I should be presenting at the damn orientation!

Ok, so anyways, Shannon and I had a nice weekend despite not being able to join our friends up north. Financial and banking errors, gas prices, and a late starting-out time deprived us of our visit to the Martin cottage. We made the best of it with a stop at the local Barnes & Noble and Coldstone Creamery. Mmm, that was my first taste of Coldstone, and I had a Cheescake Fantasy, and it was scrumptious.

The rest of the weekend was spent saving money and visiting family. I finally exposed Shannon to my dad's side of the family, and hopefully she'll recover soon. I'm sure our boys vs. girls game of Pictionary didn't help (I'm sorry, but I have to recap: 3 boys vs. 5 girls; The girls were destroying us, getting all the way around to the very last square while we were only half around the board; Then we staged a super-comeback and ended up winning! Amazing! Sorry Shan, I promise that's the last I'll mention of it....for a while.)

Other than that, classes start soon so I'm getting primed for that. I'll be taking a full-load, so hopefully I can stick to it and do well. Economics, American Literature, and Speech are currently on the schedule, to be joined soon by something I think.

There's also the potential of an internship with the college, working with the marketing team on the website. Their new Web Designer finally has the right direction going and hopefully I'll be able to add my two cents.

The current volleyball record: 13-5 with 12 more games to go before the tournament. We're probably in the top 4 of 8-10 teams. Come see us on Monday nights at Hudson's Grill.

My growing collection of fine CSS literature welcomed another addition today, Dan Cederholm's Bulletproof Web Design! Which, for those that don't know/care, explains fool-proof methods for creating websites that will stand up to multiple viewing environments including resized monitor screens, toggled accesability options, and other worse-case design scenarios.

Library items not pictured:

• Jeffrey Zeldman's "Design With Web Standards" (it's at home)
• Jason Cranford Teague's "DHTML and CSS For the World Wide Web: Visual Quickstart Guide 2nd Edition" (a little outdated)

Sorry about the techy update...just had to share something with the rest of the world. Not that anyone that reads my page would be interested, but maybe someone searching on Google or Yahoo would be.

Anyways, so Shannon and some mystery people have been bugging me about updating here more so that's just what we're going to do as I await my Subway lunch here at work.

Lately 90% of my free time has been happily spent with the newest player in my life, Shannon. It's been great, we get along good, we like most of the same things, and we can't get enough of spending time with each other. It's fun. So we went home to see her family last weekend and that was fun. Got to meet some more people, hang out at the lake, meet the last of Shannon's sisters, go bowling with Shan's crazy (yet fun) friends, and just hang out. Can't go wrong there.

Other than that, life is good elsewhere too. I'm starting school full-time this fall at the good 'ol Community College (Here's $5, lemmee get my learn on!), so we'll see how that goes. It's Shannon's job to slap me around if I get off track. Aside from that I'll be working still (speaking of which, make sure you check out B & I Nameplate - Engraved Name Plates, Push Button Tags, Lamacoid Tags, and Name Tags).

Also, if Shannon (there she is again!) ever takes me to any more movies, I'll posting reviews of them on here with my handy new reviews feature. Oh, and I'll probably be redesigning soon, too. If I can find the time between the 5 other websites I'm supposed to be working on right now.

Ciao!

I extrememly enjoyed this movie from start to finish. I went into it thinking that only the ever-reliable VInce Vaughn could save it from becoming a cliche follow-up to Old School, but was pleasently surprised by how frikkin funny it actually was.

The stuff you see in the commercials about the crashing all soerts of wedding is over in the first few minutes, so the spoilers and the good jokes that were shown in the commercials are all out of the way fast.

Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn go great together, but the truly hilarious parts involve each of them seperately. Mostly centered upon Vince and his newfound girlfriend from the wedding.

I would definitely suggest this to anyone who likes Vince Vaughn, "Old School", or anything along those lines.

(I'm testing a new review thing here at the ol' bradbice.com. We'll see how it works)

So I went and saw CATCF with Shannon last night and it was a really good, entertaining movie. Johnny Depp was his usual brilliant self, entertaining and innovating in an acting role designed to be creepy and disturbing. I love Tim Burton films though, so I was perhaps a little biased towards the whole thing. but having never read the book nor seen the original movie, I was highly entertained by what is a great story.

The special effects were nothing spectacular, but they didn't need to be. The sets and characters themselves were great. The part with the squirrels was one of my favorites, and it was amazing how they got all the squirrels to look so real and act so right.

Memorable quotes:
Violet Beauregarde: [hugs Willy Wonka] I'm Violet Beauregarde.
Willy Wonka: I don't care!

Willy Wonka: Ha ha ha ha. You're really weird!

Willy Wonka: Everything here is eatable. I'm eatable, but that my children is called cannibalism and it is frowned upon in most societies.

But of course, every movie has it's downfalls. This movie's downfall: the Oomploompas. They're pretty much mandatory to the story and to history, but they were the most annoying things. The song and dance was annoying except for Willy Wonka's delighted reaction to their routines.

A good movie, a good time, I recommend for all. I give it 8.5 Golden Tickets.

Today the Detroit Pistons officially unveiled their new logo, as seen above. It was used during the 2005 NBA Draft, but they kept it quiet. It fuses the old logo with the newer 2003-05 style. And thankfully they've gotten rid of any and all representations of horsepower and/or horse heads. The small logos on the uniform shorts will not be the "P" seen above.

Unfortunately Hooper, the Pistons mascot, will retain his job. I could have gone for a giant piston walking around or maybe a huge stone. Oh well.

Yet another awesome installment of the link extravaganza. Have at thee!

• Well we all loved Meet The Fockers. Or at least we all loved saying it in front of people without getting any weird looks. Well here we go again, because here comes Meet The Little Focker
• There are officially more cell phone lines than land lines in the US right now. That didn't take long. I miss the old rotary dials. *Zweep! Ratatatatatat Zweep! Ratatatatatat!*
• I just HAD to link to this: The Mariopedia! An online encyclopedia of everything Super Mario Bros.!
• George and Brad (yeah, that George and Brad) are opening up a casino and hotel in Vegas together
• Read about what really happened at the G8 summit
• Here's the Top 10 Best & Worst Pickup Lines. My favorite: "You must be Jamaican, because Jamaican me crazy."
• Oh man this takes me back: 80's Kids Magazine Ads!

If you have Google Earth installed, you can check out a satellite view of where the London bombings took place. Click to download below:

Google Earth map of the London Bombing Locations

Locations are approximate, but are pretty close according to CNN's account of where the bombings took place.

In another attempt to get off my ass and actually design my own website, I've wiped it clean of any default templates that Wordpress provides. See, when you download and install Wordpress, it comes with a theme which makes it look all pretty right out of the box. And then you can also download and use other themes designed by other people.



Well, being a self-proclaimed web designer, I guess I should probably put that to some use and design my own freeking website. So to motiviate myself to do that, I've made it as ugly as possible without messing up any of the structure of the page. Everything's still here and will work the same, it's just not as pretty.



Thus concludes my explanation about why things around here are weird looking. Hopefully soon we'll start seeing some improvements. (For those of you reading this on my LiveJournal page, head on over to my website at bradbice.com and see what the hell I'm talking about. Either that or don't.)



Oh, and from now on all of my entries posted here will automatically be posted to my Livejournal page as well. This way Shannon can keep up with my random musings and I don't have to update two websites! GOD, technology is so AWESOME.

Had to show off my awesome new shirt. Thanks Shanny!

Here's Shannon and I mixing it up in our sweet Hawaiian swag for her sister Kelli's graduation party. Check out the cool parrot in the background! As well as Shan's awesome Hawaii shirt. My shirt is the Target 12.99 special but it worked well. Overall, it was damn hot, but a very good time. I met pretty much all of Shannon's family and didn't even embarass her in front of them (I don't think).

Yayy!

The PIstons won game 3 at home, and I was lucky enough to attend. It was a great game and a good time. Had a beer, saw a fight 2 rows in front of us, saw a boob on the big screen, got myself a hat....good times. Now the tension sets in for Game 4.

It’s game 7. I’m excited. I’m scared. This could be the greatest Pistons game ever. This could be the last Pistons game this season. They’ve won in Miami before, six games ago. It’s game 7. My favorite number is 7. I don’t know why, it’s just a cool number to me. Its game 7. Last year’s game 7 versus the New Jersey Nets was scary. This is scarier. I’m scared. I’m excited. It’s game 7.