two dolla

saturday we were big ballin’

There are about 870 closed freeways in the Twin Cities this weekend, so I decided to take the train into downtown Minneapolis last night to meet up with The Crew for drinks and the P.O.S. show. Logistically, it worked out on my way there, because the end of the train line also happens to be right smack dab in front of Sneaky Pete’s, the Ultimate Fun Bar, which is where our rally point was to start the night. Say hi to our second waitress of the night. We had some drinks, some food, some shots, and some Ultimate Fighting Championship fights to watch while we killed some time before the show.

We headed over to The 7th Street Entry (it’s the tiny room in the back of First Ave for non-local folks) to see how the show was progressing. We really only had intentions of seeing P.O.S. and whatever awesome members of Doomtree he brought with him, so when we found out he wasn’t due to take the stage until midnight, we found ourselves with two options.

1. We stay and watch the screaming band on stage, sweat for another couple of hours, and find reasons not to kick all of the hipster kids drinking cans of PBR in the wangs.
2. We go to another bar that has cheaper drinks until closer to time.

NBA City, a place I’ve been only twice and only before Lynx games, has a Happy Hour that runs from 10 p.m. to close every night of the week. Why, yes, NBA City, we will join you for a few drinks. We took bets on how many people would actually be there, since it’s only really busy during basketball seasons and more specifically before and after Timberwolves/Lynx games. There were 16 people in the entire place, other than us. I wasn’t too far off with my guess of seven.

We had Long Island Iced Tea’s (with rail liquor natch) and simultaneously watched three college football games that were still going on after 10 p.m. Jenni was big ballin’ a lit more quickly than Matt and I, so we worked our way through the shortest of the NBA players until we finally caught up with her. You probably had to be there to enjoy the conversation of Mugsy Bogues (he’s the short one), Earl Boykins, and Sam Perkins. After our LITs (oh, that’s what they call when you’re ballin’ at NBA City), we shared another one, a Jag Bomb, and Hennessy. We’re sure it’s what the T’Wolves (or the Lynx!) do after a game.

After the five of us got our drink on, we played the interactive basketball games. I realized I probably should have had a couple of cocktails prior to the JV games I played in high school. I’m a damn fine set-shooter and am keeping my fingers crossed that there may have been a talent scout for the WNBA somewhere in those 16 people at the bar.

We headed back over to First Ave, got our pee on in the bathrooms upstairs where people walking down the street can see you, and then started work on securing a spot to watch the show. It was super high-energy and incredibly awesome. I’ve only seen P.O.S. twice, but I really want to see him every time he’s local, because damn.

He stopped the show twice because douchebags down in the front were fighting. The people in the front row that refused to even do so much as bob their head are my favorites, because how in the hell can they possibly be enjoying themselves, ya know? I mean, watch this and tell me how you can enjoy a show like that without moving.

A nice distracting Saturday night was exactly what I needed, yo.

self improvement test for success

With my current work “situation” (sorry, you’ll get more details later, I’m sure), I’ve been doing a lot of re-examining and looking into different means of self improvement. We can all use some of that every once in a while, right?

I took this Test for Success to find out if I’m living in the top 2% of Americans, and I guess I can’t say I’m too surprised at the results. It ranks test-takers on discipline, passion, risk, optimism, and interpersonal skills. If you know me at all, I’m sure you can guess what exactly most of my results were. They’re below in italics.

Discipline: “According to your responses, it’s probably safe to say that you couldn’t be more out of balance if you planned it – which we both know you never would. You try your best to keep things together, but if just never seems to be enough. If only there were a solution! Think about how much better life would be if you could learn the secret to this art called discipline.” Discipline? What does that even mean?

Passion: “Although you are always enthusiastic about your goals, you also tend to be practical in your approach to accomplishing them. All passion can lead to disaster without the proper forethought.” I’m passionate, yet practical. I can agree with that.

Risk: “While you’re always up for a good adventure, you’ve learned to wisely temper the thrills with a bit of discretion. You’ve undoubtedly had a few failures that have made you less likely to “dive in without testing the water” first these days.” Oh, my, have I ever had a few of those incidents where it resembled diving into a 5-gallon bucket of water head first.

Optimism: “You’ve got a pretty good attitude about life, and while others view you as positive and approachable, you require time away from people. You prefer to surround yourself with quality rather than quantity.” I don’t think I could possibly describe my outlook in life any better than this.

Interpersonal Skills: “Face it, you’re just not an extrovert, and depending on your career track, that could be a problem. While you do enjoy a certain amount of interaction with people, you’re most comfortable in small groups or one-on-one.” Now, I don’t know how right this one might be. There was a question about public speaking, and my answer to that question was about the equivalent to a kick in the nuts, so that may have had some bearing on my final score in this category!

If an Internet quiz can gage my lack of self-discipline, I think that’s something I should probably get started on improving… and probably sooner, rather than later!