Life, in general: Only 362 more days!

I have been 23 for 3 whole days now. I am old. I remember in high school when you would watch TV and see 23 ish year olds on MTV and stuff and be like man they're old. Guess it's all downhill from here right?

My birthday, uh, weekend was awesome. I told myself that I would do no studying at all on Saturday and just kick back and do what I wanted. I did just that. Unfortunately I did that on half of Friday and most of Sunday as well. Oops. Now I'm playing catch up, but it's not too bad.

I would like to thank everyone for the gifts, cards, money, etc that I got over the course of last week. It's pretty awesome to check the mailbox and find cards in it or find boxes of banana bread on my doorstep, so thank all of you. Any food items that were given to me are most likely gone now because nothing edible really lasts long around me.

So Friday I went riding with a med school classmate. I didn't have my road bike because it was in the shop for a new bottom bracket, so I rode my fixed gear. It was fine because we were only supposed to do 20-25 miles, which is totally doable on my fixie. We got about 8 or so miles south of campus and turned west to do the bottom part of the loop before heading back toward campus. I was in front of him pulling (it's when the front rider does all the work to cut through the wind so the back rider can take a break). I did my part then pulled off to the side so we could switch places (do it every few minutes or so). However, he was riding overlapped, meaning that his front wheel was overlapping my rear wheel so that when I pulled out left, he buzzed my tire and consequently wrecked. It was kind of ironic because we had been talking not 10 minutes before about how he didn't wear gloves when he rode (which will protect you in a fall) and he didn't have a helmet on because he said it was at home. Now, if I would have known that he didn't have a helmet, I would have advised him to not ride until he had one, but we met up somewhere, so I just decided to go with him. He did not injure his head in any way, lucky for him, but he ripped up his right shoulder, elbow, knee, ankle, and both hands. His hands looked like someone took a cheese grater to them because he fell on the most bumpy part of the road, stupid farm roads. He also broke his deraileur and his deraileur hanger, tore up most of the shifter hood, pretty severely scratched his break lever, and bent his aero bars. The bike was unrideable, so I had to call Jenna who was nice enough to come pick us up. While we were waiting the lady whose house we were in front of came out and let Jake in the house to clean up and then gave us water. Turns out her son graduated from the Rockford campus of U of I's med school 5 years ago. Small world. After dropping Jake off at home, Jenna and I went to Dos Reales, a mexican restaurant, with some of her friends. I was so lucky to have such a thoughtful girlfriend because she informed the waiter that it was my birthday. They came with a gigantic sombrero, put it on me, and sang me a song, but it wasn't happy birthday in spanish, or at least the version I'm familiar with. Oh well, it was super special either way.

I studied for a bit on Friday and then went to Jennas to hang out with her and the rest of the village people. (she lives in an apartment complex-like town that is called the village, hence her friends that live there are the village people). She made me fruit pizza, which she originally made like 2 years ago because it is a sweet, but she said I would eat it because it is hidden under the fruit. Works for me.

Saturday was awesome. I ended up riding my fixie for probably like 2 and a half hours total. Another kid got a fixie last week so we've been doing some riding together. Also, I am learning how to ride backwards. Takes a lot of time, but I'm getting better. I really just want to ride to class backwards. I mean I can ride a unicycle, so I feel like the next step up from there is riding backwards, but thats just me. On a side note, one time last year a friend and I went out at 11:00 pm on a Friday or Saturday night on unicycles in my spandex riding gear. We did this to get weird looks from the people in line at all of the bars we rode past. Also, it was raining, so we were holding umbrellas to stay dry, you know don't want to be completely stupid. It was a blast and I spent most of the time laughing to a point that I could not breathe. Oh, and alcohol was in no way involved in the planning or execution of this meaningless stunt.

Sunday was also awesome. The rents (parents) came down with Mark for a day of putting up curtains (because my apartment has, nay, had none), Walmart shopping, seeing Jenna's apartment, and food eating at Biaggis. Good day.

Then back to class as usual.

Except last night I assaulted my freezer. See the thing is my freezer had about 2-3 inches of frost built up on the top and some on the bottom, greatly reducing the functional size of my already small freezer. With the addition of a new bag of chicken from the rents there was 0 room. So I took out my screwdriver and a hammer and went to town on the freezer. It didn't stand a chance. It was like it was David and I was Golaith, except in this story Golaith crushed David and beat him down with a hammer and screwdriver. Strangely enough then David turned into a snowcone like snowy powder. Weird. Anyhoo I have included some pictures so you can feel like you were there with me.

Before, well I guess I had already started

During. Note, I was shirtless because I had just gotten back from working out and was warm. And it's my apartment and I now have curtains, so I could have been naked. I think you should thank me for even wearing shorts. You're welcome world.