Saturday, November 5, 2011

The In Crowd

"If you do what you've always done, you'll be where you've always been"

A little different feel to the blog this time around, not really so much about my self proclaimed quest to 50 as it as just about an update on life. So first of all, and probably most disappointing for some of you, I've decided to skip out on going to AA for Thanksgiving. I've decided that these next two months I need to focus on two things, working and saving money. There's a great deal about the Business I'm in that you guys don't understand yet and eventually you will, (with the exception of Wheeler, who already gets it), but essentially I'm in a position now where if I put in some quality work, I can greatly improve my financial situation and get myself rolling on the career path. That being said, an impromptu trip to AA usually runs me about 400 bucks when it's all said and done, counting the ticket cost and the amount of food and alcohol I will undoubtedly consume while there; not a terribly big deal but I'd rather save that and use it for something else at this point in time. That being said, CHIN mentioned the idea of a Chicago for New Years trip, that sounds pretty sweet to me so that will be my plan for the time being.

Bottom line, for the months of November and December, no one will out work me. I have a very tangible vision for my future, and our future as friends, and today marks the day where I put all my efforts into making that vision a reality. People always say you can do whatever you put your mind to, well after spending a weekend with a couple of millionaires, I believe that to be unquestionably true. The American dream is simply that we can accomplish anything with hard work, and I'll show you guys exactly what that means, that is a promise to you, but more importantly a promise to myself and my family.

Ok switching tones again A little wrap up of these past couple weeks. Wheeler and Sweeney came to Baltimore a couple weekends ago and we had a blast. Unfortunately "Stupid Raymond" missed his first flight so my all day plans for Saturday fell through, but they still got to see a small fraction of the Baltimore nightlife on Saturday night. Wheeler spent the rest of the weekend with me and I got to show him around a little bit more, and just in typical Wheeler fashion he ended up taking a tour of the Harbor with some stranger on his boat haha. After hanging out with them I realized that the times we spend together will never really change, we all still have the same type of personalities when going out and still find a way to be the life of the party in one way or another. Eventually my plan is to get EVERYONE out here to Baltimore, and then to DC and then CHICAGO, and yea even DENVER. I love AA and all, but we all live in different exciting cities now so no reason why we all can't travel to see each other.

Last weekend I flew out to Seattle with my boss Eric and another co-worker Ulysses. To sum the trip up, 1/2 business, 1/2 learning, and 100 percent awesomeness. Spent some time in Meetings and going out on Campaigns with different clients, and learning how to be a better trainer, recruiter, and salesman. The awesomeness came from Hanging out in Seattle with a handful of really successful men and women. At some point someone told me that if you want to be successful, you find someone in the position you want, and then ask them how they got there, I spent 48 hours doing exactly that and I've never been more inspired. The most inspirational part was seeing that these people weren't anything special, they weren't given any unique talents or gifts, they were just willing to put in the hard work in the beginning, and when everyone else was giving up and moving on, they endured. So now my resolve, which has always been strong, is rock solid, I Will Change my Stars (sorry for the Knight's Tale reference).

Lastly, to address the title of the post, I feel like I've finally gotten a chance to start. Most of the time in this job i've been on the bench, taking notes and watching people go out and perform. Well thats not the case anymore. In every aspect of life there is an "in crowd" whether it be work, school, social life, or sports, We all know this better than most people, being athletes and such. At work, the in crowd are the people that you just know will be successful, they have that swagger about them that commands attention when they walk in the room and says "follow me and your life will change."This weekend was the first time I felt like I joined the ranks, I wasn't just seen as someone on the team, but an Impact player. No longer are people talking about how I have the "potential" to do big things, now they have the "expectation" that I will do big things. I should note that there wasn't a specific moment or instance where people just started saying these things, but  I can sense that the perception people have about me has changed in this manner, and perception is all I need to influence and then to lead. If this is confusing to you, which Im sure it has to be, you are more than welcome to give me a call to get some more detail, but I would say just sit back and watch, and you will see for yourselves the differences we are all about to experience together.

With that being said I wish you all the best as you continue to progress towards your goals, if you don't know what your goals are or feel like you're working towards anything, I urge you to take a couple minutes and write them down. Whenever life throws us a curve ball, which it always does, having your goals in mind will make overcoming them all the easier.


Looking forward to the future that lies ahead of us and working hard in the present to get there....


Go Blue.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Wheeler is Coming to Baltimore....Let's see if this weekend can turn into everything I imagine it can be....


If I were a betting man, I would bet that 49's likely to happen this weekend. I'll see you guys on the other end of this blog, look to Monday.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

For Once, the Majority

"I want to tell you a secret I think about you"
"Oh really, whats that?"
"I think you're a Diva!"

If you haven't figured it out, my speech is in bold. The other comes from a girl I met last night while at a party in Annapolis. And to the post.


So I told you guys in my earlier post that I was heading to a party in Annapolis this weekend where I figured that there would be a chance for 49. Well there was no 49 involved but I still had a good time. You guys know that I don't really hang out with a lot of Black people. It wasn't always my choice, at a very young age my parents made sure that they sent us to predominately white school as to make sure we had as little "bad influence" from the kids we lived around as possible. I actually grew up in the City, but almost always went to school out in Baltimore County (The suburbs for people who don't know) because like I said my mom wanted nothing to do with kids who wore their pants around their ankles. Needless to say I grew up having very limited "Black tendencies" and people often referred to me (In the Black community of course) as an Oreo or many other names of that type. I mean I never really minded, I would always come up with some sly response that made them see how much better educated than them I was and they would eventually move on.

Around middle school my mom kinda abandoned this practice, or rather I guess they just let me make more decisions because I started hanging out with more neighborhood kids. And yes that means Black kids. I was still known as the smart guy of the group but they actually started to respect me because well I always found ways to keep us out of trouble and from getting caught from all sorts of various not totally legal behaviors.

That continued through highschool with me now being apart of two groups of friends, my smart white friends in school, and then a couple neighborhood black friends. Eventually I decided to go to school in Michigan, where once again I spent almost all my time with White friends and so forth. let's just put it this way, if I had joined a frat, it would not have been one of the black frats....as much as I like steppin and all I just don't think I would have.

So fast forward to last night. Tasha is a friend of a friend of a friend, and her dad was having this huge party at his ridiculously nice house. The only thing is that Tasha is Black, and so of course is her dad and then so were ALL his friends. This was cool for two reasons, 1 because I was finally in the majority of a party I was attending, and 2 because 2 of my friends were white and on many occasions said "so this is what it must feel like" referring to being the only ones of a certain race present. Ha it was pretty funny but also an amazing time because everyone was older than us. There must have been a handful of people in their 20s there, everyone else was greater than. At some point in the night two more of Tasha's friends came over and one of them was white. I dunno what it is about a white girl showing up at a black party but all the guys generally love them. So this was def the case last night, where this particular girl garnered the attention of every 20 something guy there.

This girl in question is the one who has that wonderful quote to start this blog. A long time ago I wrote about a dance called the "Wobble" It seems like my previous learning of the dance came into play here because the  DJ chose this song as his final request of the night. (Yes there was a DJ, and a Live Band, and all sorts of "I'm rich" things going on). So of course being the phenomenal dancer I am, I decide to get in the middle of everyone and have a good time (Think Rick's stage ala Cupid Shuffle, or Walk it out, or Dougie). Well at no surprise to myself, I attract the attention of the white girl (I feel weird referring to her as that so let's call her M) and she comes up and starts dancing with me. Well actually she first asked me to teach her the dance, so I did and then she proceeded to do the dance while holding around my waste and pretty much touching me like she knew me. So naturally my normal thought pattern is "I got this in the bag," M is a really cute girl, in the face, which is what I really like. Her body was good but nothing terribly special, I guess if it had been I might have approached things differently. In any case We flirt it up and I start making my move in to say "hello." It was then that the totally unexpected happened. She leaned over, and whispered into my ear the beginning quote, I don't remember exactly the format but I remember as plain as day the resounding DIVA that came out of her mouth. Now Diva really has two connotations. BOTH of which refer to feminine characteristics. The negative DIVA is like a high maintenance I need attention doing too much kind of girl. This is not what she meant. The positive connotation is the Aretha Franklin, R-E-S-P-E-C-T you go get it girl kind of Diva, and this IS what she meant. I'll tell you what, it was at this point that my entire grasp on the whole situation came crashing down....

Finally my perception of all the earlier "flirting" events made sense, she wasn't flirting, she was just overly comfortable with me because she thought I was gay. The body rubbing, the butt dancing, I guess it wasn't too much of a surprise. You guys know How I dance, I like to challenge girls to a "How Low" contest, and booty shaking contest, and I finally realized that if you're meeting me for the first time, how could you not think that haha. I feel like Vince Vaughn in wedding crashers, I sabotaged myself on the dance floor. I've been hit on by many a gay guy before, no big deal, kinda a compliment depending on the guy, but never really have a had a girl think that about me, now I know what Wheeler must feel like sometimes haha.

Moral of the story, I just thought it was more funny than anything, and I suppose that I should make sure I don't bring out that kind of dance moves until i've already established my heterosexuality to a girl ha, because really it can swing either way. All in all a great night, my Wobble is on point, and I learned that you CAN teach uncoordinated people how to dance, its just that more enjoyable to watch them.


How about them Lions?

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

HalfWay to a Century

Just to clarify, I'm still at 48, but I figured that I haven't talked about this in awhile and it randomly came into my mind while reading Chin's blog so I figured why not update you guys.


So you know How I originally said I was going to throw a party for number 50, but then I said I probably wouldn't, well now I'm for sure going to do it. My thought is well why not? At this point, it will be no secret to anyone who get's involved with me that it is not my first rodeo, sure they might not need or def want to know the exactly number (As I've found, most guys don't know they're exact number or even want to, I get the "dude I stopped counting a long time ago" response from most guys), but they will def know that I'm not a virgin or anything ( I wonder if anyone would believe me if I said that?)

The idea is that I've slowed down, not a little, not a bit, but by a HUGE amount. I mean coming out of UM my fifth year I was adding numbers on pretty good, and even when I first got back home I was still in the groove, but since then I just don't hook up with people all that often. This is for various reasons, mainly because well I don't like rolling solo. If I wanted to go out by myself, find some drunk girl stumbling around on the dance floor, I probably could, but where's the fun in that. Now if I'm out with a bunch of friends, go to the dance floor, say "hello" to said stumbling drunk girl, then its cool and worth it. But I digress.

The reason I want to have a big celebration for number 50 is because well Holy Crap its 50! As disgusted as some people may be by that, it's Still very impressive. I really don't know many guys who would admit to such a thing, but I've come to accept it as just a part of my crazy times at Michigan, times that will stay with me forever (It is tattooed to me after all).

Secondly, I think I want to do it just as a slap in the face for people who think it's stupid. I've had a couple of girls mention how that is just wrong to want to celebrate something like that, and how unlucky the poor girl who might end up being 50 will be, to that I say "PUSHIT." Listen, there's clearly a reason that I haven't hit 50 yet, a reason why I've drastically slowed down. It's because now, I think i've grown a heart, or conscience or whatever and I actually CARE about the girls that I potentially hook up with. I mean i've never really been a hit it and quit it type, I only have had what are 2 one night stands now, 2 out of 48, a ridiculous percent! So the point I'm trying to make is 50 will be a LUCKY girl. I mean clearly I've given up on just settling for anyone, I'm on my Cassie and Craig tip now, where I'm looking for that someone special. It's a long shot but it is possible that 50 could be the woman I marry, things just seem to be going that way.

My biggest test, to see if all this was just me rambling or being truthful will be this weekend. On Saturday I have this supposedly big party to go to in Annapolis or some other part of maryland. This girl is having her dad throw this HUGE party that like the entire neighborhood is coming to with multiple kegs, live bands, the whole shebang. And this girl seems to want to see what all the Stev hype is about. I only see two downsides to this scenario. One, the girl is Black. For all of you that have known me, there is not one member of the 48 club that is black (Again pretty impressive, and probably surprising to sum but not to all). So this will be a good test of my attractiveness to black girls, or I guess Drunk Stev's level of attraction to them. The second reason I'm skeptical is because it's a house party. I mean I have really yet to be to a kick butt house party like we used to throw or even used to crash, so I'm thinking it's time to take over again, play some zoomy zoomy, and get a game of survivor flip cup going like we used to.

Moral of the story, look forward to hearing about my night/s via this blog or if you hear from me in person.


Saturday, September 17, 2011

The Early Bird Gets the Worm

Looks like I will be the first to post since Sweeney accurately reached out and informed us that it has been far too long since any of us have.

My weeks have all gone the same recently, I work during the week, and drink during the weekends. As far as anything exciting, I still haven't really gotten anything going with any particular girl, although people do seem to have a fun time bringing girls to hang outs so I can meet them. But this for me presents a problem and let me tell you guys why.....

First of all, a little background. On our side of the office we are way over stacked on testosterone, its like a 80 20 guy girl ratio and I know it was awhile since we all applied to undergrad but everyone knows those numbers suck. So naturally everyone reaches out to the few girls and then girlfriends to bring more girls around whenever we hang out. So usually at least once a week I get the text: "Stev! I'm bringing a friend on thursday!" or "Stev! my friend is coming on Saturday ; ) " One might think that this is a good thing, afterall bringing girls specifically to meet me sounds like a win. However, if any of you remember one thing about me, remember this, I HATE girls that are highly sought after, or girls that are constantly getting the attention from every guy in the room. I know this is one of the few areas that me and O disagree, as he loves to know that every guy is drooling over his girl, me not so much haha. Anyways you can probably imagine where this is going. 20 something guys being overly excited to see any new face that has a vagina. So "Hey I'm bring a friend" turns into every guy in the office hurrying to meet her and talk to her and pretty much smother her, even the guys with girl friends ha. So what ends up happening, well I do what I do best, and ignore them haha.

Yes I know that this is a little sad that my exciting story is about something as silly as that but really that the one highlight I have for you guys. Work has been up and down for me, good weeks and bad weeks, so now I'm trying to string together a couple good weeks in a row so I can start to visit you guys again. My future plans are to go out to Michigan sometime in October and then to visit Mike D sometime after that, and then get Mike O off his Detroit (look at those Lions btw, and the Tigers!) butt and come down to B-more.

I will leave you guys with this one thought. Look at your lives right now. Take a couple minutes, take in your surroundings. I promise you guys that one year from now our lives will be so drastically different that it's ridiculous. Don't ask me why I'm saying this but it just came to my head. I know we've all slipped on the blogging but honestly it is one of the easiest ways for all of us to keep up with each other as to make sure that once we all go on to become successful, we'll still have that awesome friendship to fall back on. I dont know about you guys, but I RARELY meet anyone these days that will even come close to being as fun as you guys all are, I actually laugh at people sometimes because I think to myself "these guys have no idea what fun really is" really 100+ thousand people marching on to the Big House for a night game to beat Notre Dame and then party so hard ann arbor is left in shambles, some people will never experience stuff like that and we all did. My point is that I expect to share just as many great future memories with you guys as I do past memories, so let's all keep the hustle and grind going now so we can have some awesome grown up fun in the near future.

My immediate next step is to go visit Sweeney is D.C. because well he's soo close to me its actually sad that I haven't already seen him.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

The Gambler

As I walked out of the bar I looked over to her and she smiled, I approached her, complimented her ear rings, and the rest was history. A chance meeting after last call leads to "hello," a phone number, and my first real date in months.

It was the eve of Irene, everyone was scrambling to evacuate their beach houses and summer jobs and find safe haven. I guess the one positive we can take from Katrina is that the US government will never let itself be unprepared again for a predictable natural disaster. After the earthquake hit and cell service was down for hours they told us to text and not call. Then they started to evacuate cities and beaches to make sure we wouldn't be caught off guard again by a hurricane that ended up being only Category 1. I mean Maryland is always just far enough west from the coast not to really be in any imminent danger, but strong winds and heavy rain always leads people to start driving retarded. Despite all this impending doom, I still decided to commence the weekend activities as usual, heading down to the city to drink.

This time around would be a little different. I decided to bring my lil sis (who is 20 and turns legal in March) and her friends down with me to hang out with the cool kids. I drove them down, dropped them off, and found some always difficult city parking. Once I got to the pregame spot I didn't really waste anytime and went straight for the shots of the hard stuff. At this point it was already 10pm and I was dead sober, something that I don't like being with a limited amount of bar time ahead of me. Stann was back in town so we wrestled a game of You Got Served together and after a couple of rounds headed to the bar. Plenty of couples, plenty of people, and plenty of dancing and plenty of free drinks, that is the summary of my night out at the "Ricks of Baltimore." Then came last call, I was actually out with Kerry and her friends, and was playing wing man for my boy Alex who was trying to get it in with one of Kerry's friends. I did my usual "after you" to the ladies and took up the rear. As I rounded the turn to the exit stairwell, I spotted this really attractive girl leaning against the wall next to what looked like a couple, who were clearly her friends. She has this bored/lonely look on her face so of course I decided to go up to her and start a conversation...

"Are those feather earrings you're wearing?"
"Yeah, they are"
"I really like them."
-Smiles
"Thanks, I really like you. What's your name?"
"Stevann."
"Steven?"
"No, Stevann"
"Devin?"
"Ha, no, Stev- ann"
"Oh, cool."
"Yo Stev, let's go, where are you?"
"Take my number."
"Alright, well I'll give you a call sometime, Lindsey right?"
"Yeah, but why don't you just come with me now?"
-Takes my hand and walks me out to the street.
We say "hello"
Stev?! What are you doing?! Kerry is waiting. Let's go!
-Literally pulls me away from Lindsey
-Makes a confused face, walks away


So yeah that was my last 15 minutes at the bar, or I guess technically my last 5 minutes at the bar and then 10 minutes outside getting her number, saying hello, and then getting pulled away. She later texted me asking if I had a gf and why my friends would pull me away like that. I have to say though it has been a long time since I've picked up a girl at the last moments of the night out. I guess Stalking Horse isn't the "Rick's of Baltimore" (I am the only one who refers to it as such) for no reason. After further conversation she tells me that she thought I was "hot" so why not try to take me home seconds after meeting me ha. She is actually a cool girl, she's a nurse, and used to be a gymnast, yeah a win win there.

Fast forward to 7 am when we have a hour long text conversation that leads to our first date. At this point it is Saturday evening and the rains and heavy winds come in so we decide just to go back to her place after dinner. We get some wine and watch Dirty Dancing (which is actually a great date movie) and cuddle up on the couch for a couple hours. Despite what all evidence may lead you to believe, I actually did NOT hook up with her. It was more of an adult type date where we got to know each other and look forward to saving the "promiscuous behavior" for later, those were her words actually.

So yeah thats about it, it was a nice touchy feely night, the lights cut off a couple of times and we had a romantic evening. Wow, romantic evening. Is that something that grown ups do? Is that something I'll have to get used to? She's 27 by the way. No more just getting down to the dirty early, let's see how playing it slow goes for me.

As for the rest of the weekend, I will spend it watching movies and just chilling. A hurricane doesn't really incite me to do anything crazy.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

P.D.A. We just don't Care

I had sex with a girl outside in the street leaning against her car.

Have you guys ever had a moment of self reflection, where you look back and realize that you were just doing something crazy,stupid, creepy....Well it happens to me, not often but it happens. For the last two weeks I was trying to organize a party with my buddy Jerry. Well mainly what I was trying to do was get the girls from work to come to the party. Now I should be no stranger to get together, we invited hundreds of people over numerous houses over the years, but for some reason I didn't use my past experience. To make a long story short, I pretty much came off as a semi-creeper in the way I went about inviting people. The easy way would have been just to let everyone know all at once on various occasions when we are all together, instead I for some reason asked each girl individually, at different times, to the point where they were all questioning my motives. Now the party went on and was a success, and a couple of the girls did end up coming over, but I realized that they really weren't comfortable with the whole situation, and that was totally my doing.

I'm trying out a new format, I will start my posts with the "punch line" so to speak and then eventually tell you the story leading up to it. That way, anyone who just skims the blog or doesn't feel like reading a long post, they will be able to pretty much know the main point/story being shared.

So Friday night I hung out with some work buddies downtown. It was a chill night which I guess is cool but made me realize that not everyone can control hosting people. It wasn't like they did a bad job, but when I host I always want people to be involved and doing something, and I noticed that everyone isn't like that. My whole thing is if I wanted to just sit around and drink and talk, I could do it at my own house or at a bar, if I go through the trouble of inviting people somewhere, I want to make it worth it by including activities or games or even a general group conversation. Anyways, the moral of Friday was that I missed my closing sign. I apologize in advance for using work terminology, I've just gotten so used to teaching/training others at work that I just start to talk like that normally. But the idea is that I could have pursued this girl but I failed to pick up on the signs that she was interested. There was a point in the night where everyone was getting ready to leave and split off their separate ways, the girl in question lived about an hour away from the city and didn't really want to drive all the way home. Her friend was leaving her to pursue other "interests" and I could tell the girl didn't want to go on that chase with her. INSTEAD of inviting her back to my buddie's place to keep the party going, I just walked her to her car and let her go home. HOW do I know that there was in fact opportunity there and I'm not delusional, well I did what I always do I just asked her. Her exact words "Well I was waiting for you to invite me to stay downtown with you guys but you never did."  Yeah I don't know how I missed that one I was just off my game and now that opportunity is more than likely gone forever, but at least I learned my lesson.

Saturday was much more of an eventful day for me. I woke up around 8 and went for a run and did some various drills. I got back around 10 just in time for my buddy to come pick me up so we could start setting up for the party. Two hours later we had cleaned the house, cut the grass, trimmed the hedges, and did some weed waking and then bought food and a keg. So by noon I had one of my most productive Saturdays ever, I knew it was going to be a good day. It started to rain pretty heavy and I knew we were going to lose the people who were "maybes" for our party. You know the type who are looking for a reason either to come or to stay at home and rain during a day drink/bbq event is as good as reason as any to want to stay in. However we did not let that stop us and still had our cookout anyway. Fast forward many drinks and talks later. I guess I have what I will call a couple of "moves" when it comes to sealing the deal with girls. One of these said moves, the one I use most at house parties is to say "Let's go for a walk" Basically what I do here is try to get the girl alone and we literally go on a walk to have more "intimate" conversation. Last night my walk went as far as to her car parked across the street. I don't remember how exactly it got started, but next thing I know I'm pushing her up against the car and pulling her pants down. I'll save you guys all the details but you know where it went from there, in the words of Mike O, we proceeded to "fold laundry." Now I'm no stranger to the outdoors so to speak, but we were literally in the middle of the street in the middle of a nice family neighborhood, and it was awesome. Ha at any given point anyone could have walked/driven by, looked out their window, or even just stepped outside for a smoke and they would have gotten a show. Suppose thats a cool story for the books.

The final thing I noticed yesterday was that I can't go a full day of drinking anymore. I started around 2 pm and was ready to pass out by midnight. I guess that's a long time but I kinda feel like we used to start pre gaming for football games and then still make it out to ricks that same night and not always using the power nap to do it. Oh well guess we are growing up a little now and my body just likes to sleep instead of drink excessive amounts.