House Party on Friday May 9th.
Ninjas Vs Pirates
Free Rum and Beer
Come dressed as a Ninja or Pirate and fight your rival faction. Get drunk doing it.
Here is some inspiration for costume choices ladies 
Munns convinced me to check out MeetUp.com for something I might be interested in.
I love reading, and need to meet more people / become comfortable talking to strangers.
Joining a book club seemed like a great way to accomplish these things.
Brendan and I joined this club that meets in and around Durham. We had our first meeting tonight reading God’s Middle Finger which was really entertaining. Talking about it was just as fun.
Next month we’re reading Maus, a graphic novel about the holocaust (sounds crazy but won a pulitzer back in the 90s). I’m really excited to expand my literary horizons. Normally I read the same stuff over and over.
On top of meeting new people I hope to meet new types of books. So far it’s going well.
Updates monthly on this.
It’s taken me a while to get around to posting, but the holidays around here were a pretty good time. There was some celebrating, and a lot of relaxing.
Mostly relaxing.
But I do have pictures of the celebrating part. Let me give you some of the high lights.
Wes had a party over at his place to celebrate christmas. The Cisco folks were that and we tried to have a little bit of christmas spirit. I think Peng did it best:
We had a secret santa at Matt’s house. Interesting that he was into christmas given the whole jewish thing and what not. We played monopoly.. well I watched people play monopoly.
New Years was an awesome time. We had pretty much no clue what we were going to do before hand, but I came up with the idea of ice skating. It turned out to be awesome.
It had been a while since everyone was together:
A rare picture of me:
An interesting pose:
We went out to Napper Tandy’s later and ran into Ray and Ashlynn. That was pretty awesome:
and everyone rejoiced… maybe a little too much for some:
And then everyone went back to work.
Up next.. CCIE attempt #2 then vacation.
Labor day weekend has been a glorious time so far.
It started out with motorcycles, moved on to drinking, and finished up with a slip and slide party.
I’m using today as a recovery day. I hurt everywhere from that damn slip and slide. Apparently the ground is hard as hell at Kaufman’s house. Pretty hard everywhere so I’m told.
Saturday we went out to Rum Runners
We had a good time there after we made it through the post game traffic downtown.
Kurt and Brendan pretended to be the Captain:
We lubed up with some shots:
Took some good group photos:
Brendan and Lauren made some awesome faces:
And Kurt got molested on stage:
That sums up Rum Runners. There was some very drunk Cook Out after that… but I can’t say that I really remember all of it.
Sunday was the day of the Slip and Slide Party. I had been promised a cornucopia of hot college girls ready to slip and slide all day long in the hot sun wearing barely nothing and drinking like fish.
This did not come to pass… but I got to slipe and slide with a whole bunch of dudes.. and we still had fun with it. Got pretty drunk to boot. MMMM Keg of Yuengling.
Here’s Lauren’s Ass just because she thought Kurt got too much camera action the night before:
And here’s some wet dudes. Do with it what you will.
And Just for Fun… Rey’s Balls!
And now… on with the Monday afternoon relaxing. Bring on the awesome.
One word will summarize this weekend.
Mustache
The weekend of the Mustache party was upon us. Everyone had worked as hard as they possibly could for weeks (or a few days for some) to grow the most glorious Mustache possible.
I went with a T formation
Jesse went with the very awesome southern extended mustache.
I think the general consensus was that Jesse won the mustache contest.
Heather even rocked out the stache
Amy was wearing a surprised mustache
As with any of our parties, there was drunken ridiculousness
Rey brought a whole bunch of hotties. I don’t have any good pictures.. but it was awesome.
There was some flip cup, some beer pong, and some drunk sets.
All in all it was a great night. A night to be remembered.
What a long and fun filled weekend.
There was drinking at East Village. We ordered 20 shots at one time.
Bathing suit competition on Friday.
There was Rum Runners on Friday night.
Beach on Saturday for more bathing suit competitions. I don’t know who won. I think in the end I was the real winner here….
Sunday dinner involved Garbage Plates.. awesomeness.
I have pictures of all of these things.. but they won’t be posted until tomorrow since I left my camera at Lauren’s.. whoops.
I’ll post them when I get a chance.
I’m a bit behind on posts as always.
A week or so back my roommate Khalil started a job for Cisco up in NYC.
This is great for a number of reasons.
1. Khalil gets a pimp job in NYC.
2. I get an awesome master bedroom.
In honor of Khalil we had a “Going Away” party. It was a damn good time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many people in the house at one time before.
Here are some pics to document the craziness.
So remember that post a long time ago about going to Wilmington and Brendan meeting Jenn?
They’re dating now and Jenn has a birthday coming up. Brendan decided to earn some major boyfriend points by throwing a surprise birthday party for Jenn last night.
I’ve never had a surprise birthday party thrown for me but I can imagine I would probably swear up a storm if I walked into a house and a bunch of people scared the shit out of me by yelling “surprise”
In any case.. the night was good and here are some pics.
Here we are almost prepared for the attack.
Sweet cake. Love the skull and cross bones. Goes well with the little mermaid theme.
The Z had to sleep outside in the cold and damp 
I was a bit “un-sober” so got to enjoy the magnificence that is Brendan’s couch.
When I woke up it was 41 degrees outside and the Z’s tire pressure sensor kept bitching because they dipped to 28PSI in the cold. Definitely handled different with low presure.
I bought a new Canon SD700is so there should be more photo updates.
I started out with my cube
Then since the weekend rolled around I moved to taking pictures of drunken friends
So I posted last October about being lonely in NC.
Almost a year has passed and I feel pretty much the same way.
I looked back on that post and realized that three good female friends of mine commented on it.
Then I look back even further and I sort of always remember being lonely at times. Maybe it’s part of the human condition. Maybe it’s because I go through big periods of time when I’m feeling anti-social. Tough call.
I do rememeber a period of a few years in college when I always had someone to talk to and was in constant communication with friends and others.
I think that’s what I miss.
I need to spend less time at work stressing out about work, and more time chatting it up with friends and doing random things.
Here’s a typical re-enactment of an outing with friends.
—–
Waitress comes to table.
Me: I’ll have a Killian’s
Brendan: Can I get a Yuengling
Marv: Guinness
Kaufman: What do you have on tap?
Waitress: Answers.
Kaufman: Hmmmm… how about…
Waitress walks away..
Silence ensues..
Lauren: Silently thinks “Man I love New Kids on the Block”
Me: How bout that crazy work thing.
Everyone gets excited and animated about crazy work things for 3 minutes.
Silence
Drinks Arrive
Silence
More drinks
10PM rolls around..
Me: Man I’m tired.. work is killing me.
Kaufman: I’m gonna go home and play WoW
Brendan: I’m going to bed
Kurt: Silently thinks “mmmmm bed with Lauren”
Exit.
—–
I think working form 9:30 – 7 puts a huge drain on the social life. Most days I go home and just pass out and do nothing until it’s time to go back to work.
Where am I going with this you ask?
The point here is I need to adjust my work life balance.. make more time for being around people.
I can hear Heather saying now:
“It’s people time now Jason!”
Probably true… so maybe if I stop spending so much time at work, or home alone, things will start looking up.
I think the secondary point is that more of those girls I mentioned at the beginning of this post need to come to Raleigh, NC for a visit.
The tertiary point is that even with the friends I have now I miss having a sidekick. I think everyone needs a sidekick. This doesnt have to mean dating or anything like that… just someone to talk to who really understands things. Someone to confide in, and someone who confides in you.
I feel like I had one or two at some point.. and now I don’t. I can’t really define it more than that.
I am much too tired to be posting. That will probably all sound ridiculous when I wake up in the morning and read it.