19/365: Capture the Moment

19/365: Capture the Moment, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

A little picture-in-picture of C.M. Punk celebrating the the Intercontinental Championship he just won in front of his hometown crowd Chicago on WWE RAW.

18/365: Fun With Hair Gel

18/365: Fun With Hair Gel, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

It's not just for hair care!

17/365: Frozen Waterfall

17/365: Frozen Waterfall, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

Frozen waterfall in St. Louis Canyon at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois.

16/365: Red Robin

16/365: Red Robin, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

The opening of another Seattle export to the Chicagoland area (Orland Park). Decent burger place that prides themselves on bottomless fries and "gourmet" burgers. For a Pac NW touch ask for tartar sauce with those fries.

15/365: Introducing Cathy

15/365: Introducing Cathy, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

Meet my wife Cathy! She's a little camera shy, but I was fortunate enough to snap off a few quick picks.

14/365: Chinese Take Out

14/365: Chinese Take Out, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

Yummy Singapore noodles

13/365: Stress and Anxiety

13/365: Stress and Anxiety, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

With all the crazy stuff going on around me, all I can do is hold my head which weighs heavy with all the burdens in my life.

12/365: 1304CA

12/365: 1304CA, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

It was a nice educational experience having my old laptop taken apart to remove the hard drive so we can finally recycle it (the laptop). Here's a macro shot of part of the hard drive.

11/365: Post-Its

11/365: Post-Its, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

Went to Panera Bread today to do some review in preparation for the GMAT exam. While pondering a math problem, my eyes were glued to the contrast of colors on these post-its.

10/365: Water Drops

10/365: Water Drops, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

It's been snowing like crazy today so I stayed home and watched TV all day. During a commercial, I looked out my window and liked how the light was reflecting on the melting snow that was transforming into water drops on the lid of my barbecue.

9/365: Love Note

9/365: Love Note, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

My wife Cathy headed out of town for a night to do, umm, out of town stuff, but before she left, she wrote me this nice little note and left it in my car.

8/365: Ouch!

8/365: Ouch!, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

Ingrown toenails really suck. BTW - If you really want to gross yourself out, just flickr search "ingrown toenail". You'd be surprised to see how many people make their pain picture worthy.

7/365: Off With the Head

7/365: Off With the Head, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

Time to slice up some pineapple!

6/365: Self Portrait Tuesday

6/365: Self Portrait Tuesday, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

My photography lesson of the day: Self portraits are freaking hard! After taking some badly off-centered and out-of-focus shots, it took me a good 20 tries to get this decent one to come out.

5/365: Gotcha!

5/365: Gotcha!, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

Caught you white handed!

4/365: Cheese and Wieners United

4/365: Cheese and Wieners United, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

Appetizers for a friendly get together

3/365: 3 Days and Still Sticking to It

3/365: 3 Days and Still Sticking to It, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

Motivational words for those whose New Year's Resolution is to be fit...or become an alcoholic.

2/365: If Only My Sandwich Could Talk

2/365: If Only My Sandwich Could Talk, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

Mmmm...Potbelly's sandwich...

If you were a Potbelly's sandwich, what thoughts would be running through your mind as your soft squishy body goes through the toaster and you become nice and tasty?

1/365: Celebrating Christmas on New Year's

1/365: Celebrating Christmas on New Year's, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

Since Cathy and I spent Christmas day with her family in Washington State, we didn't have a chance to exchange presents with each other until New Year's Day. Here's this year's ornament I gave to Cathy, a little tradition I started since we started spending our Christmases together.

Tree Reflection in Ice

Tree reflection in ice, originally uploaded by fatalysis.

Uh-Oh

I love love loved Google GChat. For those who don’t know, GChat is an IM chat feature that’s built into Google’s GMail application. It's pretty handy since you can stay in constant contact with your friends and family throughout the workday as long as you keep your GMail page up.

Like most IM applications, you can create a custom message on your status bar to make people aware of whatever you want them to be made aware of. Some examples of common custom messages that I’ve seen are “Out for lunch”, “In a meeting” and “White cream on my lips = Happy soul”.

My custom messages as of late, on the other hand, have been anything but common. Rather, my messages convey a sense of the different aspects of who I am:

Erwin the food critic:
“Used Kleenex from funeral homes taste good.”

Erwin the philosopher:
“Trees play with Mr. Potatohead in the puddle that is your toejam.”

Erwin the picky home cleaner:
“Please wash dishes with your hands no fingering allowed.”

Erwin the savvy internet surfer:
“Honey and cream we are in each other’s pockets.” (Taken from engrish.com)

Erwin the green earth conservationist:
“Fossil fuels in your anus add unnecessary energy to the dolphin show in Thailand.”

Erwin the simple man:
“Boobies!”

I love love loved Google GChat...up until I reviewed who my contacts were that could read my Erwin-enlightening status messages and discovered that my mother-in-law is on the list. Since she never logs on during the day, I felt a little relieved that there was a slight chance that she might not see these messages, but then I realized that even when I’m not on GMail, the Google Talk application has my messages up all day and all night. And since she checks her e-mail regularly, I’m pretty sure she’s noticed a few of my not-so-G-rated status messages. Doh!

Gay or Not Gay?

Office Job Confessions

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program, Entirely Erwin, already in progress:

Complete silence.

Toilet paper rolling.

Wiping.

Flush.

Pants pulled up.

Work shirt tucked in.

Jangling belt tightened.

Stall door lock turning.

Those are the sounds that the guy in the stall next to me in the washroom at work is hearing. Bet he didn’t expect to hear this one coming:

BOOM!

That’s the sound of me giving the stall door a nice shoulder block. Mistakenly thinking that unlocking a door actually means that the door is not locked and therefore open, I ran into the immovable object that is the washroom stall door on the left. I'll never assume that again.

Then a brief moment of self-discovery – holy crap, when I’m stuck in a washroom stall, I get claustrophobic! I’m not sure if my anxiety was coming from turning that damn lock back and forth and shaking the walls of the stall as I think of Chris Jericho's entrance song "Break the Walls Down" in my head without anything happening or if it was the feeling that the guy next to me (who was completely silent throughout my whole ordeal) was like a time bomb literally waiting to explode with the biggest, stankiest, nastiest shit known to man.

I digress – is it me or does it seem like office washrooms are like church of scientology birthing rooms? I’m not sure how it is in other places of work, but in mine it seems like a requirement that there must be complete silence as guys do their business bringing some nice steaming turds into the world.

Lost In This Moment

After many moons, my abandoned blog is abandoned no longer...and just in time for my 2007 year in review! 2007 was just as busy as it was memorable, barely finding anytime for rest between work and play.

So what was my most memorable moment of 2007? I would say that being in Dallas sitting in an outdoor hotel hot tub and watching my hair freeze in the middle of February was pretty memorable. So was going to WrestleMania 23 at Ford Field in Detroit and experiencing the greatest spectacle in sports entertainment with 80,102 other people. I’d also say that traveling down to Memphis and finding out what real barbecue tastes like was memorable. And I’ll never forget that July weekend in Wisconsin, being stuck behind a barricade with my friend Eric and asking him to be one of my groomsmen as a barrage of fast moving paintballs whirred all around us.

Closer to home, 2007 marked the addition of my two fuzzy cats, Domino earlier in the year and Turtle towards the end. I also ran my first official race, the Shamrock Shuffle. At work, I was the human band-aid and proved to myself and hopefully to others that I’m just as versatile and flexible as I am dependable and reliable.

These are all memorable moments, but when I look back at 2007, there’s one memory that sticks out just a little more than the others – and it’s NOT my wedding. Granted, my wedding was truly memorable and is definitely my biggest moment of 2007, but when I think of my most memorable moment, I don’t think of the day of the wedding; I think of the day after.

My most memorable moment of 2007 was the effort everyone gave in helping my friend Santy get to where he needed to be in order to catch his flight back home. I know that it probably wasn’t a big deal to everyone involved, but it was a big deal to me. That one moment reflected what Cathy and my wedding was all about – the coming together of two families - friends, relatives and strangers alike - as one. A day after doing a unity sand ceremony, it was good a feeling seeing what was said being applied. People on Cathy’s side and people on my side came together to help Santy in the unexpected rut he was in, not as friends, relatives or strangers, but as one united family.

Happy New Year!

Caption This!

See what happens when you feed the bear?

Marc's Bachelor Party Weekend

As with all things involving a bunch of city folk going out of town for a weekend full of good ole' southern hillbilly fun...and Cracker Barrel, what happened in Tennessee stays in Tennessee. All I'll say is that an excruciating painful bad knee (much thanks for Naproxen), a torn contact lens, and a World of Warcraft podcast that just wouldn't end couldn't ruin the good times I had...

"Dude, a cockroach!"

Jack Daniels Distillery

Must...get...high...

Pork

Beale Street

Interstate

In With the New

After being frustratingly, errr, frustrated, I have finally upgraded my what was once called a (two finger quotes) laptop (two finger quotes) - then called a (two finger quotes) notebook (two finger quotes) - now called a (two finger quotes) (one finger quote) desktop replacement (one finger quote) (two finger quotes). After checking out the specs, you'll find out that the 2007 whatchamacallit is so rightly named since it definitely could replace a lot of PC's that are now sooooo XP.

Da Specs:
-Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (2.00GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 667 MHz FSB)
-Memory: 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
-Storage: 250GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
-Display: 17-inch HD-quality widescreen
-Video card: 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS
-Sound card: Sound Blaster Audigy HD
-Media drive: 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with dual-layer DVD+R write capability
-Network card: Integrated Wireless-N

It's also Vista compliant (scores 4.5 out of 5.9 on the Vista rankings), but more importantly WoW-mobile ready. Anyone got a subscription card?

Caption This!

Meet the newest member of my "You Got Humped" Club - Joey (Cathy's brother):

(Click on the picture to see how excited Joey is to join the club)

On a sidenote about blog features, the labels feature of Blogger is going to be pretty useful. Hopefully there'll be some regular features like Caption This! and Gay or Not Gay?

E-Session Pictures

Check out a preview of our engagement pictures here! April is an awesome photographer who has a great eye for capturing the moment and a sixth sense for creativity. Highly recommended and wonderful to work with! Great work, April!

Alternate Beginnings

It’s 5 PM on a Friday and I’m on the train leaving work. It’s been a long time since I’ve left right at 5. And there’s lots of time before the 8:30 PM flight out to Washington. Yabba-dabba-...poo??? Awww, crap. The iced venti non-fat extra-caramel caramel macchiato that my friends at work got me is hitting a lot earlier than I had expected and it’s hitting hard. It must be from all that milk in the venti. Or maybe it’s the two extra espresso shots I’m not used to getting since I usually order grande’s. Either way I gotta go and I gotta go right now. I see Cathy in the parking lot with our bags and I can tell she’s confused when I tell her she needs to go back to the car. She can drive as crazy as me when she needs to so I’m squeezing those cheeks and holding it in for dear life. We get back home and I feel so much better. Back to the airport. Not good. I go again as soon as we get there. While I’m sitting in the stall, I look at my watch and realize that we’re starting to cut it close. I’ve never missed a flight before, and I didn’t want the reason for the first time to be because I had a case of the squirts. We check in baggage and get through security with just enough time for me to make one more pit stop before getting to the gate. I sit on the toilet and this time I feel relieved. Oh shit, where’s the toilet paper??? There’s a new unused roll that’s up in the dispenser and I can’t reach up there to get it started. And my plane is boarding! Ahhhhhh!

That is how my weekend started.

It's 11 PM on a Friday night and I'm stuck waiting in line at a car rental place after a long and cramped typical flight from Chicago to Seattle. The clueless customer at the counter makes it pretty obvious to the entire world that he's not from around there, yet he declines the handy navigation feature. Better watch out, Washington, a tourist is on the road so the streets are no longer safe. Not to worry though because after miraculously getting a rental, he comes back a few minutes later and asks if there are other cars available…smaller cars…a car he can actually drive. That’s right, he wanted to return the car he got because he didn’t know how to drive it…and it was an automatic! I’ve got to admit, there are lots of things I don’t know how to do (float, tread water, drive by a funeral home without shouting something inappropriate), but I would rather spill the beans and admit to getting a freaking pedicure before losing all manhood and telling everyone and my mother that I wasn’t able to figure out how to drive a car. I’m still waiting in line.

So that is how my weekend started.

It’s 3:30 AM on a Saturday and I’m in a rental minivan on the way to Anacortes. Between today and the day before I’ve slept a total of a whopping, get this, four hours. Kinda funny in a sleep-deprived sort of way that he who has the least amount of sleep is the one driving the six other people in the car who happen to be sleeping because our nice family-sized minivan has a DVD player in it and someone decided it would be a good idea to play Happy Feet. I really tried to give it a chance, but I had to stop playing the movie after hearing the lyrics, “Don't push me 'cuz I'm close to the edge, I'm trying not to lose my head.” Too late, I lost my head a long time ago.

And that is how my weekend started.

There are tons of movies that have alternate endings, but why aren’t there any with alternate beginnings?

Watching the sunrise at a picnic table in Anacortes at dawn:






Actual wedding location, 110 days from now:

WrestleMania 23 Weekend

Finally...I have come back to Detroit! The last time this pie-eatin, jabroni-beatin son of a gun was in the pimp capital of the world was almost four years ago for a concert which filled Ford Field almost to capacity. Now, I return to Ford Field for the biggest global phenomenon in all of sports entertainment – WrestleMania 23 – along with a record shattering 80,103 people in attendance. Here’s a breakdown of this weekend’s highlights:

Friday
I used to think that traveling was fun, but after spending almost two weeks out of every year for the last few years practically living in airports, going out of town has become downright stressful. Getting to Detroit was no different, having to get through a trains, plane and automobile relay race against time to check-in before registration closed at the hotel. After dropping my stuff off at my room, I decided to search Detroit for a late night dinner and ended up in their Greektown area. Saganaki looks cool, but eating a huge slab of flaming cheese all alone on a Friday night in Detroit of all cities can be very lonely.




Saturday
C.M. Punk’s in my autograph session! There were so many questions I wanted to ask:

How are the Cubbies going to do?
Where did you go to high school?
Since you’re straight-edge, can I get hardcore with Maria?

Too bad the chick in front of me became a woman (i.e. Total Bitch) and started berating Chicago’s Very Own over something that happened in the past to the point Torrie Wilson had to tag herself in to make the save. By the time the smoke cleared and I got to C.M., all I could say was “Uhhh, so can I have a straight-edge pose?”



Next up was a picture with Mrrrrrrrrrrrr...Ken-ne-daaaay (3 second pause)...Ken-ne-daaaaaaaaaay. One moment I’m walking towards him wishing Mr. Money in the Bank well in his match. The next moment from out of nowhere, I’m being body searched by Triple B (Big, Bald and Black) Security because he thinks I’m carrying a weapon. What’s up with that? Hey, at least it gave Kennedy a laugh.

Getting autographs made me hungry so it was time to get on the People Mover and search Detroit for food again. Detroit’s known for its Coney Island hot dogs (hot dog topped with chili, mustard and onions), so I walked from Ford Field over to Lafayette Coney for a couple. Coney dogs are good, but I’ll take a Chicago dog from Jimmy’s on Grand and Pulaski or Gene & Jude’s on Grand and River Road any day.

In the day and a half that I’ve been walking around, I’ve seen or met a bunch of people from the U.K., some Aussie chicks, an Irishmen dressed as Ric Flair, a bunch of Japanese tourists that I thought were related to Funaki and quite a few Canadians. All these people came from around the globe, yet I haven’t seen or met a single person from Detroit. What a shithole.

Sunday
There’s no better way to start off your day than having a nice big breakfast watching highlights of past WrestleManias. Mick Foley made an appearance at the Bacon, Bagels and Biceps Brunch which was pretty cool and even cooler was that he was presenting awards to special Make-a-Wish kids. In keeping with last year’s awkward moment, I was able to make my presence known among a bunch of these kids:

Foley: So what match are you looking forward to?
Make-a-Wish kid: Undertaker vs. Batista
Foley: And who do you want to win?
Wish kid: Batista!
Me: If Batista wins, we riot!
Rest of the crowd: Batista sucks! Batista sucks!

I don’t think Foley was happy with me turning the crowd against the Wish kid because he gave me the evil eye and had us pretend to root for the Ultimate Warrior of the new millennium to make the kid happy.

After the brunch it was onto Ford Field. WrestleMania was more than 6 hours away, but being one of the first people at the gate was a pretty big deal to me. The brief moment that exists when you’re all alone in an empty stadium with nothing but the ring, the stage and thousands of empty seats in between is an experience that very few ever get. Over 80,000 people from all 50 states and 23 countries from around the world, and I’m #1 at the gates…now that’s cool...at least to me.





If you’re a true wrestling fan, there is no event bigger than WrestleMania, and being part of it was just as special as last year in Chicago and also my first time in Seattle. Getting to my seat and watching people sitting at ringside scream in sheer joy and excitement over their great seats brought me back to last year when I did the exact same thing with my WrestleMania brothers and practically lost my voice before the show. And looking at the sea of humanity that filled a football stadium reminded me of how I did the same thing at Safeco Field, amazed at how a single wrestling event could fill a baseball stadium. This year’s WrestleMania theme – All Grown Up – pretty much summed up why this WrestleMania was going to be special to me. Being in the city and the place that started it all, I’ve truly come full circle.

Now for some WrestleMania observations:

- Note to self: There is no better seat at WrestleMania than ringside. Even hobbits can be as tall as the Great Khali when they stand on chairs.

- After downloading and watching WM23, Jeff Hardy’s leg drop off the ladder looked way cooler live than on TV.

- It is impossible to have one synchronized chant going when there are 80,103 people in attendance.

- There were almost four times as many people at WM23 than WM22, yet WM22 was four times louder than WM23. There is no crowd that gets as hot as a Chicago crowd. Even Good Ole J.R. thinks Chicago pwns the world.

- Football stadium + dead crowd + outdoor event = WrestleMania 24 will be a disaster.

It's That Time of the Year Again...

Shamrock Shuffle 2007

Thoughts on my first official race to come soon...

The Big Grabowski

Everything is Bigger in Texas

The hometown team is in the Super Bowl, so other than being in the actual game, where's the next best place to be? Obviously it's Chicago Dallas. Some highlights and observations from Super Bowl weekend:

- If you don't know, the Super Bowl hangout, now in it's fifth year, is the longest running tradition among friends. Some unintended mini-traditions have come out of the big one, and just like Matt Hardy, they just won't die:

Super Bowl drinking game - with Texas playing host to our festivities, this year's shot of choice for every touchdown scored was tequila. Little did we know that the saying, "Everything is bigger in Texas" also meant super huge shots...and the drinking game ended as abruptly as Da Bears scores.

Someone falling - Karma strikes once again as Carl body-checks and tackles Eric against a wall in our hotel room and both fall interlocked in a pretty uncomfortable position. Also unlike last year, I'm not the one leaving the trip with a broken camera.

I get sick - For the second straight year, I've come into our annual get together pretty sick. I don't have a reason why I was sick last year, but this year I can definitely attribute my dizziness to Eric's driving and my nausea to Eric's bad gas. Both of them really stink.


Other highlights:
- I think I had more fun at the hotel going up and down the glass elevator in the hotel than sight seeing in Dallas. For some reason, all that walking in Dallas gave me the shits.



- Speaking of the shits, there's nothing more sacred than the personal time spent taking a nice healthy poop...unless you're with Jackass-lite



- Dallas-Fort Worth Airport is neither in Dallas nor in Fort Worth. Talk amongst yourselves.

- Can you guess the single one, the married one and the soon-to-be-married one?


- Centuries from now, kids in Dallas will learn about me at school. After searching the city for coffee only to find that the best coffee Dallas has to offer is at some a bar, I left my mark on Dallas history by peeing out the beer I drank on a downtown building in the middle of daylight. Seriously, who goes to a bar to drink coffee?

- I knew it was a long shot, but in visiting the site where JFK was killed, I also scavenged the street for any long lost forgotten pieces of his brain. My goal was to start up a new website where people could post their own theories using the free brain fragement they receive (with purchase of said website subscription, of course) as evidence to prove their theory. Was he really shot from the grassy knoll? Use your brain to prove it!

It''s a Girl!

Meet Domino, the new addition to our family!