Here’s to another fantastic year! Here are some of my New Year’s Resolutions, in no particular order.

1. Lose 20 pounds and get back into shape.
2. Replenish the old art supplies and start painting and drawing again.
3. Finish the children’s book with Sara. Illustrate it.
4. Get refocused at work and outline goals, separately.
5. Train yourself to be more of a morning person. Get to sleep before 3 AM and wake before 9 AM. Get 8 hours of sleep a night (HA!)
6. Reorganize all music, movies, and photos.
7. Travel! Book the European cruise for 2011. Setup the vacations for Ireland in Spring-2010 and Oktoberfest in Fall-2010.
8. Go skiing. You haven’t been skiing since eighth grade. It’s about time.
9. Pay off ALL student loans by Dec 2010.
10. Buy the building and open the restaurant by the end of the year.
11. Stop double-booking yourself with everyone. Make better use of your iPhone’s planner.
12. Leave weekends in the summer open for the beach house and boating/fishing/etc.
13. Replenish the Emergency Fund.
14. Start cooking more. Take the advanced class at the Restaurant School.
15. Participate in the 3sixty5 project.

Keep me on top of these. I may edit them in the next few days (probably just by adding a few more). Happy New Year!

So, this site crashed back in the summer, and I really didn’t care. For years, I have struggled to give it a face, to figure out exactly what I want it to be. And I still don’t know. But I recently brought the ole’ art easel back up from the corner of the basement where it was collecting dust. I hope to get back into a few things (drawing, painting, photography) and figure maybe I can share it on here. But then again… check back in a year, and this still may be the most recent post.

** I erased all of the syndication posts I was sharing out.  Why bother duplicating a post?  I’ll add my Google Shared Items to the side for anyone interested.

So we got a puppy for Christmas, as many of you know. Her name is Jovie Noellle. She’s a Goldendoodle (Golden Retriever and Poodle mix). I just wanted to post a photo. It’s a sad excuse for a post, but at least it’s something. I’ve been swamped at work and even busier at home (read that as “playing with my new Wii”).

yeah, it’s a bit late, but here are some of my new year’s resolutions for the coming year. i really am trying to stick to them this year. i didn’t record last year’s, so they weren’t staring me in the face. hence, i probably didn’t even complete them. hell, i couldn’t even tell you what i said i was going to do. so far, i have been very good with all of these… i’m just hoping that it continues:

1. Budget your entertainment expenses. No more spending 2 grand in one month on booze and parties.
2. Lose some ell-bees. Run at least 4 times a week. Continue playing weights, even if it’s by yourself — at least three times a week. Eat healthier – restrict the “good” foods (pizza, etc) to once a week or less.
3. Do not take an elevator if the destination is less than 8 stories. This includes the flights of stairs in the hospital you traverse 10 times a day.
4. Save more money. Continue putting what you’ve been putting into the IRA / 401k / more real estate. Stop spending ridiculous amounts on stupid things though. Instead, put that money into your high yield accounts as a backup.
5. Dust off the easel in the basement. It’s time to start drawing and painting again. Do this at least once a month.
6. Read one book every three months. Yeah, not so hot of a pace, but when you consider you only read 3 books last year, it’s an improvement. (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows does NOT count…)
7. Finish writing that movie script you started in college. You know where you hid it. You have 365 days. Should be enough, slacker.
8. Bring out the old notebooks and work on some of those “invention” ideas. Try to actually complete one of them.
9. Play more basketball.
10. Keep writing. Finish another notebook within the next two months. Finish yet another by the end of the year. In line with this, put some of “the notebooks” online. Or attempt to keep current on this website.
11. Travel more. A. Backpacking in Europe. B. See a state or attraction you haven’t seen before (ie Niagra Falls). C. Go skiing in mountains larger than the hills of Pennsylvania.

yup, i do have a bunch of goals listed there, but who are we kidding – i am a goal oriented person. let’s just see if i can follow through. i’ll probably change this list or slightly modifiy it within the next few days.

So, if I kept waiting to launch this site until I was actually *done* redesigning it, I would never be able to break the proverbial champagne bottle. Therefore, in all its totally incomplete glory, I opened back up BrianFlounders.com.

I actually have some guest writers that will pop in once in a while, and prefer to remain nameless. So look out for that, yo.

** Funny how I don’t really even like this design anymore after months of not looking at it…

I have been crazy busy with my company and my nine to five. Very stressed out. I began running again; tonight I ran for 8 miles. I was dead tired after 3, but this girl with a great ass somehow got in front of me and provided the eye candy and motivation to put in a few more miles. I want to get back up to 10 miles, but I think that I may be regretting pushing 8 miles tonight in the morning.

OH! !(&E$^#%&@! I can’t freaking believe it. My room got flooded AGAIN – that’s 4 times in a fucking year. I am ready to get the hell out. This set me over the top – MY WHOLE FUCKING ART PORTFOLIO WAS RUINED! I didn’t even think about it. All 100 or so projects were in “Archival” portfolios behind my desk – in one of the spots where the water table must have leaked into my room. All I can say is – ARCHIVAL MY ASS. Because they were COVERED in mold and were drenched and smelly. So they got destroyed one of those first floods, and I didn’t realize it… then molded up and got wet 3 more times. If I had acted that first time, I probably could have salvaged at least some of them. I am so so so bummed about this. I have a VERY small number of items scanned into my computer (just photo slides). But for the most part, everything is ruined except the one damn picture I drew this past Christmas break. I wanted to cry, and I am being serious. You don’t know how much it meant to me. It was a huge part of my college life. HUGE. I’m such a goddamn idiot. I should have had it somewhere safer. I know I was asking for more reasons to draw (regardless of finding one in the winter), but this is a little much. Someone’s playing cruel nasty-ass tricks on me. And I do not approve.

Bummer! We shouldn’t have taken those naps. Julia called me at 4:00 AM and I woke up, threw on my Eagles gear (and work pants) and took off. We met at her friends house in Morton (Ridley Township) and drove into the city together for the Wing Bowl XIII. We were so pumped! But we get closer, the cops blocked off the ramps off of I95. We thought we could be svelte and find our way in.

We were wrong. Cops had blocked off all of the streets, and cars gridlocked South Philadelphia. Julia had one All-Access Media Pass to the Bowl, but when you have three people – the math doesn’t add up. We considered piling ourselves on top of each other and throwing a long coat over us, but realized that there probably has never been nor will ever be a 16 foot man or woman. But Kristen had the thought to flash the media pass to the cops – to maybe get access to the Wachovia Center. It didn’t work. He said the doors are closed. The doors were supposed to open at 5:00 AM, but alas, they had to open them at 3:30 in order to keep the line from forming too long. In fact, the doors closed shortly after 5:00. So we thought we would just tailgate and call out of work, but every parking lot was packed to the brim. It was looking worse and worse.

So we decided to head to the South Street Diner. We got there, and to see South Street completely empty was eerie. And to see the South Street Diner completely empty was even worse – they were closed. A 24 hour diner – closed! WTF! It was a valiant effort, but alas here I am at 7:30, at work early in hopes of leaving very early. We have to remember next year to not sleep. To go at 10:00 or so, and drink all night in the parking lot. It sounds like such a fun time indoors. As I was driving to work, Angelo Cataldi, the host of the radio program broadcasting the event (610 WIP), was saying that a few female members of the audience were “getting friendly” with the crowd, if you catch my drift. And to make it less subtle, Al Morganti said “She may want to eventually put her shirt back on.” Oh man – this is what we are missing! And it’s no one’s fault but our own. We weren’t the only ones shut out – there were at least 60,000 people trying to get in after the place was already overflowing with people. Lesson learned. We should have tried to sell the Media Pass to drunk tailgaters.

Update: el Wingador is back as champ, bringing the title back to Philadelphia. This is a good sign for the Eagles! The article says the Wachovia Center filled up at 3:30. So weak. They need a bigger venue.

In honor of my 23rd birthday (eek!), I want to write about all the other Brian Flounders that I have found through Google. But first, I have discovered an advantage to working with people double my age. It makes me feel very young. 23 is an awkward age, at least to me. It’s not an age I have ever looked forward to, or seeing myself as. 16, you look forward to because you can drive. 18 – you are introduced to the world of porn; 21 – you can have your first sip of alcohol (riiight). Even 22 has an advantage because I graduated RIGHT after turning 22. So even if it had made me feel like I was aging too quickly, it was masked by the business of graduation and getting drunk as a Senior. But now, it’s like – WHOA! I’m freaking “real” now. I’m out in the real world. I have to work on my birthday. I can’t cut classes or drink all day. It’s the first real shocker. I’m not saying I mind it, because I want to be out there on my own; and now I have 40 to look forward to – my retirement (come on, it’s possible).

So anyway, it led me to realize that I am LESS THAN HALF the age of most of the people with whom i work. They make me feel like I am still an itty bitty baby. It’s all a perspective thing I guess. Okay, now on with the Brian Flounders connection.

Brian Flounders – the rabbit guy

This is Brian Flounders. He looooves the bunny rabbits. In fact, he breeds them and tries to achieve perfection with their speciality breeds. This is where it gets weird – his wife’s name is Pat Flounders (pictured to the right). For those of you that don’t know me that well, that’s my dad’s name. While my dad and I don’t breed rabbits, and while we don’t look like these folk, it was just a shocker to go to this page and see both our names on the site. Has that ever happened to you?

Brian is a National Dwarf, North East Dwarf and Northern Lop Judge, also Chairman of the North East Dwarf Club, his specialist colour in the Dwarfs is Chinchilla we believe we have made great improvements with them especially the colour.

This guy has a top ten entry in Google (as of July 18, 2004). I have never tried to contact him… yet.

Brian Flounders – the (other) computer guy… in the UK

This is also Brian Flounders. And this one is kind of eerie. He does computer consulting, servicing, building, and tutoring (with tuition available). As do I. He lives in Grayshott Village in Hampshire (Great Britain). This is from the village’s website… a website that has Parish information coupled with “Party in Grayshott” information. This is quite clutch. I may have to check it out, pop in and say hello. Unfortunately, there are no photos of Brian in the photo section (that I can tell of… or that I had the time to sift through). And there’s no other information besides this ad from 2001. I wrote an email to Brian, but never got a response back. Ho hum.

Brian Flounders – the army dude… also in the UK

Brian doesn’t have a picture, and it is hard to find any information on him online. His name is Brian Flounders, he was a private (Pte?) in the UK Army from 1954 to 1963, working in the Hospitals and in medicine. Brian used to have a post on some site that was missing-you.net, where he was looking for what I am guessing was a past Army-friendship. However, I couldn’t find that post at present time. Instead I see him with a general post to anyone in his Regiments – for an Army Medical Equipment Depot reunion. So the dude’s running this shit, and apparently he has the same type of organizational skills that I have (when nostalgia is on the line). That is all, private.