70 hours down

Let's do the math.

37.5 hours at Houghton Mifflin
32 hours at the Daily Herald

That's 69 hours I have worked since last Monday. And that's not counting the extra 8 hours of credit I get for covering the Batavia tennis Quad. And let's count 80 minutes driving as well. That's not much when you factor in 5 days a week and round trips. So when you get right down to hit, I hit over 70 hours of work this week.

Money is going faster than I realized. A couple of reasons. One, I have to pay my maintenance fee in the next two weeks. Two, my car insurance bill came. Thank God for 25th birthdays coming up! Three after Ecclesia, a bunch of us have started hanging out at the Village Tavern. This is also the spot a bunch of us went on the night of my 5-year high school reunion. Now when I think of this place, the first thing I think of is chicken fingers. Nobody beats their chicken fingers with that honey mustard. So that's knocking me out an extra 10 bucks a week. So how am I saving money? I've been to the gym once in the last 5 weeks. And when I do go in, it's not to work out, it's to hit on the girl at the front desk.

Oh who am I kidding? Whenever I start to talk about women here, it never leads to anything good, so let's go on.

I got to eat at Claim Jumper's on Friday night. If you haven't been there, I do recommend it. It was kind of like a Cheesecake Factory, because the portions are large and the menu is so ecclectic. We split southwest egg rolls, sliders (min-cheeseburgers), and we each had a salad. I must admit I think I would actually like the desserts at Claim Jumper's. I still maintain the cheesecake at the Factory is too sweet. Some may wonder how can a dessert be too sweet? Uh, when I can feel my teeth rattling three days later, that's how I know.

Now the salad thing is tricky. I'm a guy and I like a salad. But it's not a good idea for a main course. One, it rarely fills you up (then again my appetite is a bit larger than normal). And two, and I got this from Seinfield so it has to be true, women don't respect salad eaters.

The cool thing is they have a full dessert case where you can look at these things. They muyst have 20 desserts. And I'm not a big dessert eater, probably because I don't like chocolate (which is good, because their six-layer chocolate cake will never tempt me). There was this lemon shortbread bar that I wanted to try. And maybe I should have gotten a piece to go. Ah well. I had carrot cake at Bible study later that night. And the thing is when people know you can eat a lot, they want to see how far can you go. I never asked for a huge piece or anything, but my portion looked twice the size of anyone else's. I mean, come on, I have limits.

See God was smart. He gave cows four stomachs and he gave people one. One will suffice for us.

American Idol picks: With Kellie out, I hope Chris or Taylor win. I've always rooted for underdogs (hence hockey and country music) and they don't seem to fit the prototype that other previous winners fall into.

Trace Adkins and Travis Tritt are playing the Kane County and DuPage County fairs, respectively. Hmm. It would be fun to drag Mom to hear a live version of Honky Tonk Badonkadonk! Keeping perfect rhythm, make you wanna swing along. Got it going on like Donkey Kong! She hates that song!