Has anyone worked with a local St. Louis area t-shirt supplier and printer that they can recommend? Alternatively, an online t-shirt printer is also an option. I’m looking for a company that uses quality materials and can be flexible with graphic placement but still competitively priced so the shirts can be resold at a reasonable profit. Reliability and honesty would be nice features too.
If anyone could make some suggestions, please leave a comment on this post or send me an e-mail at:
If someone suggests a good printer that I end up using, I guarantee that I will send that person a free t-shirt. How’s that for incentive?
I don’t normally browse MSN or anything, but I just rebuilt my new work PC and that is still my home page by default for Internet Explorer. Ah well, I can change that later. But something caught my eye on there. Two articles about the Best and Worst cities – one for men and the other for women. I was intrigued, so I took a few minutes to check out the one for Men.
I read through the article and look at the top 10 best cities to live in and continue on reading. Silently I muse to myself that wouldn’t it be funny if St. Louis was on the list. Funny indeed. There at the bottom of the page was listing number 99 out of 100: St. Louis.
Holy crap! I’m living in the second worst city in the entire United States according to this study! I was really dreading coming back home to St. Louis after living overseas, but this isn’t even the kind of thing that I was dreading.
Of course I had to check the sister article for the best and worst cities for women next to see if my hometown would (dis)grace that page as well. Sure enouh I skip to the bottom and see St. Louis proudly in the same spot of second worst of all. I can just see that little bit of text looking rather smug thinking, “Hey, at least we’re not last on the list!”
Damn. Since the article takes into consideration things like heart disease, diabetes, pollution, air quality, etc. I have a hard time believing that this is skewed in any way.
And according to both these lists there are two top cities that are great for both men and women: Seattle and Salt Lake City. Which is kind of a nice thought because I would love to live in or around Seattle. On the other hand, you couldn’t pay me enough to move to Salt Lake City. I’m just not the cult type.
So what now? Considering a large portion of my readers are residents of St. Louis, MO – what do you think about this? Are you surprised like I was?
For those of you who can and desire to do so, Henry Rollins is live at the Pageant tonight in St. Louis, MO. I would love to see him live but with the baby coming at any time, it’s just not gonna happen. But for anyone else who can go, you should. He’s smart, funny and not afraid to speak his mind about anything and everything.
If you do get to go, please leave a comment and let me know how it was. I bet he’ll have lots to say on the recent elections and the state of the nation in general.
Sunday it rained like hell. The perfect day to go look at houses. If you ever in the market to buy a house, rain is your friend. The harder the rain the better. Why? Because if a house has roof problems or a leaky basement, you may not find that out if it’s been dry out for the past week. Not everyone is completely honest on those Seller’s Discloser statements and nothing beats rain for an equalizer.
That being said: when we went and looked at houses on Sunday, we saw a lot of water in basements. Even houses that have no previous signs of water were leaking. That was serious rain we had. Seriously. There were a few houses that we probably would have loved in a dry spell and would have been cursing the heavens when that rain came during our ownership.
And yet, we found one.
A contract was written on Monday for a house in Manchester and we got a verbal counter-offer that we accepted (again verbally) and we are one step closer to having a home again. I’m expecting to see a written counter-offer to sign any time now. Sooner rather than later of course. The seller only has till 7:00pm tonight before our contract expires.
Of course that’s not the end of it though. We have a bazillion inspections that need to be done (yes a bazillion) and you never know what will come from those. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Well not when I type of course….
Oh I have been absolutely terrible with updating lately, haven’t I? Well, I’m not one of those weirdos who feels like I have to apologize to you people for not entertaining you for a few days so just deal with it. I’ve been busy.
Muse and I have been using every available minute of our realtor to look at houses. We looked at eight or so last night and will be up at the crack of dawn to look at another eight tomorrow morning. So far we’ve found only a couple of decent places and a whole lot of crap. Nothing really that just says “Spend $200,000 on me!” as soon as you walk in though. It’s getting a little depressing. The agent is a good sport about it all but he did gently let me know that after this weekend we will have looked at around 70 houses. Wow. That’s insane.
I remember all of our friends and family telling us how great the housing market was and how everything was dirt cheap. Of course they also said that about cars and we found that it just wasn’t true unless you want to buy an SUV that guzzles gas. The housing market sucks ass. At least here in St. Louis, Missouri. Sure there are a lot out there to choose from but a bunch are in financial or physical distress. Many are still over priced and “haven’t gotten the memo” about the economy. Others, are just a bad fit for us for one reason or another. Sometimes many reasons.
Well, I’m hoping we find an ace tomorrow. We both are. We’re running out of time and that baby is getting big!
Well, it is Friday morning and I’ve survived my first work week back here in Saint Louis. The jet lag has been hitting me pretty hard as it usually does when I’ve flown back to the States. But I was doing pretty good yesterday and feel pretty good today. I’ve had a persistantly random cough of the phlegmy nature since the flights which also isn’t too unusual for me travelling long distances. The people in the office are a bit concerned that I brought SARS back with me. I tell them they are just being silly. It’s Bird Flu.
I’m planning on leaving work today and venturing up into the unknown wilderness known as St. Peters to buy a car. I’m sure there are ogres and dragons that far away from civilization but there are also a ton of car dealerships so it’s still rather convenient. I’ve got an orange Mitsubishi Lancer GTS being held for me to buy tonight. It’s pretty damn nice. I’ll get some pics snapped maybe this weekend while it’s still all clean and shiny.
Hong Kong is a really nice place. Aside from the pollution and the jungle weather it really is a beautiful place to live. When the pollution haze lifts during a holiday and you can see all the way from one end of the country to another (it’s preety small), it’s just amazing. On a clear night, the city skyline all lit up is one of the most beautiful man-made things I’ve seen.
Here’s a link to the official government weather site for Hong Kong: Hong Kong Observatory. It’s a nice site that is quite thorough with moving pictures of clouds in the area and it’s updated quite often. However I really think they could save a lot of time and money if the just changed all that to the following static text:
Hong Kong Weather
Currently: Hot as hell and humid enough to sweat stain your shorts
Forcast for tomorrow: See above
5-Day forcast: Between 28-30 degrees Celcius and 75-100% humidity. Rain can and will happen when you least expect it. If you see dark clouds or have lost sight of land that you could see only moments ago, head for shelter or buy an umbrella. Buy two, one will break.
And really that about sums it up during these summer months.
I saw a guy I know from St. Louis complaining on Twitter about how it was a miserable 50% humidity in my hometown. I about fell out of my chair laughing. I quickly checked the link above for the current weather and saw that the humidity was at 98% at the time. After living here for two years I really hope to be able to better handle the St. Louis summers. However…
The winters are going to fucking blow.
When Muse and I were back home for the Christmas holidays this past year, we literally froze our asses off. I left mine somewhere between Fenton and High Ridge. One thing the heat here has taken away from me is my extreme tolerance to cold weather. I don’t think I’ll be out and about in my shorts when the St. Louis ice storms come rolling through. Not for a while I think. Not if I want to have any more children.
Here’s something I never expected to see: iconic St. Louis and American company Anheuser-Busch has agreed to be purchased by European based InBev for $70 per share. The biggest maker of beer in the United States is selling to the Belgium based maker of Stella Artois and Becks. Why? I have no idea. I’d never even heard of Stella Artois till I moved to Hong Kong where it’s a moderately popular brand of beer.
But why is AB selling in the first place? Their stock prices are as high as they were years ago which indicates no serious problems. Is the rising gas costs hurting them that much? I doubt it since they use all 3rd party shippers. So why is AB selling?
They say that all the breweries will remain open and that St. Louis will remain as the world headquarters of the AB brand, but it will be run and owned by Brazilian management in Belgium. I’m still waiting to hear of some nefarious plot and the appearance of James Bond to put a stop to their insidious plans or world domination by mind control drugs in the beer. It would make more sense that way.
Garsh Dangit: Space Ranger. Hehe. Sounds funny.
It seems that I never got around to making a post yesterday. Which is pretty damn lame if you ask me. Which you didn’t but if you had that would have been what I would have said. I have a stash of jokes and pictures that can be used in cases of post emergencies just like that but it does no good if I just plain forget.
Yesterday at work was insanely busy. I had a big implementation of a Cisco ASA 5510 firewall/Intrusion protection/VPN system for an affiliate company and it took much longer than anticipated to complete. I didn’t even really get to sit in my own office till about 3:00pm when I finally kicked the installers out so I could get some lunch.
Today has been busy catching up on all the things that didn’t get attended to yesterday as well as some things that needed to get done today. I spent some time talking to the guy who will be replacing me out here in Hong Kong once I leave to go back to St. Louis. He’ll be another ex-pat from St. Louis just like me and he has tons of questions just like I did when I was planning on coming here. I think he’ll do OK out here. He’s got some size 10 shoes to fill. Seriously, I’m going to leave him a pair of my shoes. No, not really. I’m all hopped up on sugar right now so anything I say can and will be held against me tightly and I won’t let go. What? Don’t mind me. My teeth hurt.
I believe Muse has already let the kitteh out of the bag, so to speak, but we will be coming home to St. Louis this year. Muse will be leaving Hong Kong before me to get the pets all sorted and safe. I was the first to arrive between us and I’ll be the last to leave. I suppose I should take some comfort in that I’ll get to live here in Hong Kong for just a bit longer but I also remember the loneliness of my first month here. But that was a long time ago now and I’m no longer a stranger in a strange land with no idea of what to do/where to go/what to eat. I no longer need to subsist on ham sandwiches and cans of soup. Although I may just because.
Now, when the time comes, I’ll probably spend my free time leisurely walking the street markets and shopping malls without the worry of wasting Muse’s time or needing to feed or walk the dogs. Maybe I’ll go directly from the office to a local bar with people from work and see what the night life is like before I leave. Maybe I’ll go for a hike without worrying about time constraints or anything but my own ability. Or maybe I’ll just sit in front of the computer and play World of Warcraft all night. It’s hard to say.
Actually when I say we will be coming home this year that makes it sound like something that will be happening at some far point in the future. But really it’s nothing like that. Muse may be leaving in a month or less. I won’t be here any longer than mid-August. It’s scary close to those dates already. By the end of August we will be back in the United States of America and trying to figure out life once more. This time with a baby on the way.
When we moved we did so on short notice and also threw in our wedding because it wasn’t a stressful enough experience. Now with a baby coming, I see now that we just really like to complicate things. I can offer no other explanation. We sold our house and our cars and most of the rest of the stuff we didn’t ship to Hong Kong. So add in another layer of sphincter-clenching in that we have a baby coming and we need to buy a house and at least one car but really we need two and baby stuff and furniture and Oh My Gawd what are we insane?
Yes. Yes we are. Nice to meet you.
April 23, 2009 10:15 am | 
