Since the completion of my Top 100 countdown, I’ve led a varied and awfully hectic life. I’ve been hellishly busy. Because of that I haven’t written anything, blog-wise, since last Tuesday – when I finished the countdown and began time-releasing it to the public. After 22 days in a row with at least a post a day, I had to take a break.

Still, I’ve had a whole mess of things that are blog-worth – at least in my mind. Remember, anything out of the ordinary to me becomes fodder for the Internet. Anything that happens to me that doesn’t follow the natural progression of the day becomes more important than life itself.

So, with that: My Past Six Days.

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– Tuesday, March 29th: The Day of the Kidney Stone.

I didn’t want to touch on this too much because, well, nobody enjoys hearing about a 27-year old man passing kidney stones. It’s proven. It’s a fact. What happened was hellish enough – equated to giving birth by my doctor – and reliving it doesn’t seem as great as one might think.

Of course, I’m a glutton for punishment. I’m always prepared to sacrifice myself for the better of the public. So I’ll summarize the experience.

I awoke very early – 9:00 am, just six hours after getting to sleep after a night of closing at the Relay center. I knew something was wrong because I had what felt like severe indigestion, except it was more painful that I had ever imagined. Oh, and it wasn’t in my gut. It was to the right, exactly where I imagined my appendix was. I had Kerrie rush home from work and take me to the hospital. I had a morphine drip. I writhed in agony.

It sucked.

Then, just like that, it went away. The doctor came in and told me that I had a kidney stone, and congratulations, I’d passed it. Hooray for me. It was sitting in my bladder waiting to be transported out with the rest of my urine at a point later on in life. I received a prescription for Percocet and went on my way.

– You’ll be happy to see that someone has started posting over at Misc.Asst. again – Ryan Swanson, brother of Eric “He Who Was Going To Write A Tribute To Kirby Puckett But Didn’t” Swanson, wrote a tribute to Kirby Puckett. Go visit his foray into blogging – give him a comment or two and welcome him to the blogosphere.

– There are three new sets of “top-10” lists – I’ve put them on the original post, to the bottom. Here’s the link to it: The Friends of BMOWP Top-10 lists.

You’ll notice that Eric submitted two lists; one hip-hop list and one “the first ten songs that showed up on my iPod” list. Well, I love this idea. I don’t remember where he said he stole the idea from (The Onion, maybe?) but I’m doing a secondary pilfer of it. Starting this Friday and every other Friday from there on I will be presenting “Steinbeck on Random,” a peek into the little robot that rules my life on multiple levels. Scott Hudson used to do this with Jenna The iPod, so I can’t say it’s an original idea, but it should be fun. Be on the look out for it.

– I’ve had this weird commenter on an old column: 25000. I hate him. Eric said it right with his comment – he’s dumb.

– My column for The Millions is up. Everyone should read Other Electricities by Ander Monson, It’s an awesome book. Go now: The Corey Vilhauer Book of the Month Club.

While I’m thinking about it, the What I’ve Been Reading for March is running a lot later than usual. I’ll probably finish it tonight or tomorrow, but proofing and revising will push it back to this weekend, quite possibly. Who knows? I don’t.

– We went to Kansas City this weekend and it was awesome. We didn’t do a lot; we drank, we ate, we ate, and we drank. We did visit the Boulevard brewery and that was pretty great – the brewery was shut down because of one of the brew masters was having a wedding that day, but that didn’t stop us from getting samples. Including a new, unreleased beer. Oh, and the owner and founder served us – a rare sight since, apparently, he doesn’t show up that often for the tours. Yay us!

– Finally, I quit one job and started another.

Leaving CSD Relay wasn’t hard. What was hard was knowing what to say. I got a lot of “We’ll Miss You’s,” but the truth is, I couldn’t say the same back. I will miss the people. Yes. But I will not miss that place. Not a chance. I’ve never worked anywhere that’s been so weird, so unorganized, so fiscally irresponsible.

My coworkers, however, were great. I never really had much of a chance to get to know any of them on a personal level, aside from Chris, so leaving wasn’t difficult. I still feel like I jetted out of there with little, if any, closure. Leaving felt incomplete.

This rolls over into today – my first day at HenkinSchultz. I like the place, the people, the atmosphere, the job, the ideas, etc. Still, today was really weird – I didn’t have a lot to do for most of the day so I just got myself acquainted with the daily routine. Working 8-5 is such a foreign concept to me that I know it will take months for me to get used to it. Or maybe it will take two days.

Still, with my lack of closure at CSD I felt as if I was coming in on my day off. I’ve got to get used to the fact that I’m not going to be hounding prank callers and working until 1 am anymore. I’ve got to clear myself of the lurking feeling of dread that I was starting to get whenever “work” was mentioned. I like my new job, but it was the first day. The second day could bring something different.

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And with that, I’ve caught everyone up to date. I guarantee that blogging will be lighter from now on – I just won’t have the time I used to. That’s fine. You’ll just become a little more used to 3-4 posts a week instead of 7-8. You’ll do okay.

I hope.