It's Over

(Park Guell by Spanish artist Gaudi)

To whom it may concern,

This will be my last post. It's been fun trying the whole blogging thing, but now that I'm back from Europe I don't think there is much need to continue this blog or to blog in general. I don't think my day to day life would be interesting enough for people to spend their time reading about it especially considering the fact that I start work on Monday and I will slowly start to die inside with each passing day like many of you. Look at our parents (except Mr. Andy Kunz), who would want to read one of their blogs. Point made.

Well, I realize this may have taken a bit longer than necessary to do the final update, but I wanted to wait until I had finished uploading all the pictures, and until Dooley sent me his favorite memories. Well Dooley hasn't done that, but the inspiration for this blog, Mr. Peter Stojic, and Conor OB have been hasteling me (and rightfully so) for the final update so here it is.

Well we had one final night in Barcelona since our last post. Due to both the time since that last night and copious amounts of alcohol, the events of the evening are maybe a bit short of being perfectly clear, but the night was still pretty great. Dools and I decided that we didn't feel like doing anything too extravagant for dinner or anything and we would finally take the kids and operators of our hostel up on the offer to go out with all of them. What was advertised as Spain's version of 50 Cent would be performing at the club they were heading to so I was certainly a bit intrigued.

We went to the nearby grocery store and picked up a frozen pizza to make at the hostel, as well as a six pack of beer and a box of Don Simon for each of us. Dooley had been pumping up this Don Simon to me for some time as something he frequently did during his time in Spain. I was not disappointed. We each picked up our own 1 liter box of wine for what converts to less than $2.50. We headed back to the hostel, packed up, and enjoyed our pizza, beer, and wine and joined our fellow hostelmates who were watching the hilariously bad "Sex Drive" in the common room. It was so amazingly stupid it was funny, one of those types. We let the others in our hostel sample our large juice boxes of wine, but they were all pretty grossed out by the idea and taste of it. A short while later I switched to our beer as I had downed my adult juice box.

Around 11pm or so we headed to the other hostel (there are multiple in Barcelona of the same chain). It was a decent walk to get there and when we arrived they told us that the kids from our hostel should stay in a room they directed us to so that we could drink and hang out before going to the club. The kids living in that hostel appeared to be having a good time in a different small room with a large table. I quickly decided I didn't like this separate but equal crap so I headed into their room in case they were playing beer pong, flip cup, or one of the other great American college majors available at a state school. They weren't doing that, but I quickly made friends with an Australian couple (seriously, these kids are everywhere) traveling together. Matt and Sam (girl) decided I was dangerously under-served and volunteered to make me some drinks. I wanted to be a good guest, so I accepted.

We proceeded to talk about a lot of random crap and it quickly turned to politics. I'm not Stuart when it comes to talking about politics, but I figure sure why not, if foreigners want to talk about U.S. politics, I'll do it. Fortunately like most people of the world as soon as I said I voted for Obama we were friends. After talking for a while they told me how I was one of the first Americans they've ever enjoyed talking to. Dools and I were told this multiple times on our trip, and yea we're pretty awesome, but it really begs the question, what jackasses are traveling the globe these days?

We later headed to the club. I couldn't make it there before my instinct to dance took over. I have no problem admitting that I threw in some solid dance walking down the streets of Barcelona that night while telling Dools and our other friends, "necesito bailar...AHORA."

Once we arrived, the club was a good time, very attractive girls were dancing on small platforms in the club wearing very little clothing. I thought it was disgusting, but I watched anyway, just so I could give them disapproving looks, probably. Later, they vacated their stages, and I tried to climb up to dance because by now you know that I like to dance when I've got a few drinks in me. Unfortunately, Dooley grabbed me and pulled me down. Then he said, "No. I already tried, and they kicked me off." Dools is great.

We continued to dance our faces off for a while. It was a solid club for our last night in Barcelona and Europe. Here are the notes from the evening:

-Roger de Lluria y Gran Via
#40
Floor 1
(Dooley wrote the address of our hostel down and put it in my pocket in case I got lost)
-Cool, give me 2 minutes to dance my face off
(This was my response when Dools told me we had to go home. I needed to get some more dancing out though)
-I know him, no worries, but he can't have my beer
(When I went to go dance my face off after the last remark Dools found me dancing with some girl. This was my response when he tried to take my beer and the girl asked me if I knew him

The walk home from the club was a long one. Dools wanted me to be sure to include how pissed I was that there were no McDonalds around to grab some food, and hopefully breakfast on our way back.

We got back at around 4:00 am knowing we had to get up at about 7:00 am to head to the airport. At 7:00 am my alarm woke me up and I woke Dools up. At 8:30 am we woke up again and scrambled to throw our things together. I left my Conant football shorts (sorry Pykosz) and my watch in Spain, but we made our flight. And our flight was almost empty so we got to lay across rows of seats and sleep for a solid portion of our return flight over the Atlantic. Needless to say, although we had a very long day of return travel we made it back just fine.

Well this pretty much wraps up the blog. There has been discussion with Stojic about trying to turn this into a coffee table type publication as the support has been overwhelming:

"Your writing is the voice of a new generation." - Peter Stojic, Futures Trader at Johnson & Johnson

"You write exactly how you talk. I love it." - Conor O'Brien, Future Olympic Rower

"I loved the stuff about Canadians." - Rob Pykosz, Connected

"I stopped reading after the second or third post." - Jared Alton Richardson, University of Illinois Armory Floor Supervisor

"We loved your stories that were posted on the blog. (I especially liked your crack about the 24 hr batting cage!) I think you should quit your job and just be a writer. You could write for the Sun-Times, they need good writers." - Mrs. Trish Dooley, Mother of Co-Writer Michael "Mickey" Dooley

"With the amount you talked about mom in your blog, you're never going to find a girlfriend." - Ali Maier, University of Illinois Delta Delta Delta VP Administarion

"Thanks for the laughs guys! Fun reading for my MLK holiday." - Mrs. Kathy Elwood, Mother of contributor Daniel Elwood

"Is Scott really going to propose? When? I hope soon." - Kristin McMillin, Accenture Analyst

Me too Kristin. Me too.

Well to everyone who followed and/or read our blog, we hope you enjoyed it and killed some time at work.

My favorite picture from Europe:



Your friend and my favorite,
Tim Maier