Five Fingers? More Like Five Toes!

It's been far too long.. I guess I will start with the list I posted in the last blog...

-DDLC

The guy from DDLC came out (a while ago at this point) to do the yearly cleaning of our oil burner and to fix the door on the chimney. He was a really funny guy who was a lot of fun to talk to. Apparently the lady on the phone told me that he could of course fix the door but they never told him that he was going to do that so he didn't bring the stuff he needed to do it. Luckily he had spare stuff in his van from the last one he did so he was able to take care of it. I was going to post this whole big thing about talking to him but it's been so long now I don't remember most of it. I really need to blog more often.. /sigh

On the same day I had the lady from the town zoning board come out and look at where we want to put the fence, she said as far as zoning was concerned there was nothing stopping me but recommended I talk to the guy in the highway department to make sure it was ok for snow cleaning and walking rights. Talked to him a few days later and he said that as far as he was concerned if nobody complains there is no problem. He did say that the town owns 40ft of road so I need to measure from Elizabeth's yard (back of the sidewalk) to our yard and see how many feet that is.

-Dr Pialtos

Apparently I skipped a year in my yearly exams.. Did that matter? No.. I still have the same vision as I had the day after my surgery in terms of distance. What has changed is my astigmatism, I now have 2 "clicks" of an astigmatism, it was 1 "click" 2 years ago. He said he would not prescribe glasses for anyone under 4 "clicks" so I guess I have a while still before I have to worry about that which is a great thing! When he first put the letters up and asked me to read the lowest line I did without hesitation and he asked if I had memorized the chart.. :)

-Jesse and Marie's Party

This is one of those things that at the time I had lots of cool stuff to write about but now it just seems outdated.. I had a really good time there and met some really awesome people. Their house is great for hosting parties, they have a nice size deck and two fire pits, one close to the house and one far away on the yard. The basement has a built in bar and plenty of room for people to hang out. One of the really good things about going was it was the first time me and Marie really got to talk, which at the time was all exciting but now it's common place.. It took a while to get to know them but I'm really glad that Sara brought them into the Tuesday dinner crowd because they are really cool people..

-Yankees game on Sunday

I went to a Yankee game with Matt, I bought tickets for us to go to a game for his birthday earlier in the year. This was my second time at the new Yankee Stadium and my opinion has of it has really gone up. The first time I sat in the bleachers with my cousins and I was far from impressed with the stadium.. Back then we had walked around the Main and Field levels of the stadium and it was very closed and felt like a mall that happened to have a baseball game. This time I sat in the upper deck and was very impressed at how open it was, the concessions were all done like at CitiField so that you had a view of the stadium no matter where on the upper deck you were. Me and Matt walked around each deck and I think the upper deck is by far the best place to be. It still pissed me off that you had to wait in different lines for different food when the two lines were at the same booth but it wasn't so bad up there because you could still see the field and still felt like you were at a game instead of in a mall.

- http://www.stopbirdporn.org/

Go check it out! I took the train from New Haven directly into Yankee Stadium, on the way I went into the bathroom and saw a sticker for this site. It made me laugh and laugh even harder when I actually looked at the site. Apparently it's a website whose premise is that watching birds is voyeurism and must be stopped!

- Ruca

I met Ruca the other day (again, a while ago now).. We met at a parking lot near Holly's house and ate outside with her (Ruca, not Holly) leashed to the chair. After dinner we went for a walk on a trail in the woods. I even got to walk her for a while which was good. She can certainly pull so when it got to uneven ground I gave control back to Holly because I was afraid of hurting my tendon. Still have not met Brutus, we need to schedule a time for me to do that. Who's Ruca and Brutus? Holly and Louie's dogs..

- Mets game - Ebbet's Club / Cleaning / Air Conditioning / Hornet = wants bats

Dad bought tickets for me and him to sit in the Ebbet's Club for one of the games we had tickets for in our season plan. We gave our tickets away and drove down on Wednesday, unfortunately the game was rained out right at 7pm. I was trying to get the house cleaned for the BBQ and had everything scheduled so that I could go to the game on Wed and still get everything done for Friday night. When they announced the rain out they said that our tickets would be good for the next day at 7pm! So much for my cleaning schedule.. We headed home just to make the trip again the next day. It really is a long ride/day when going to the games because we leave typically at 2pm for a 7pm game so that we can get good parking and eat/relax a bit before the game starts. Got a little cleaning done late Wed night and a little more Thursday morning.

Let me back up a bit, Wednesday morning I got up and mowed the lawn until the batteries ran down on the mower. I really like mowing the lawn and it was the first time this year I got to do that because my legs are finally good enough to push the mower around. My enjoyment of mowing the lawn was really shit on when I got stung by a hornet near the bushes in the front of the house, if getting stung by a hornet was not bad enough I got stung on my left tendon! Let me back up a LONG time.. A few years ago I was cleaning out the area around the stream by our house and stepped on a ground nest and was stung an assload of times in a matter of a few seconds, it hurt for days and apparently left me hyper sensitive to hornet stings! So, back to modern times (well, modern in terms of this dialog), by Thursday morning my leg was REAL swollen. It was to the point where having a sock on was painful because of the compression of the sock. I looked up what eats hornets and found bats being the main animal that eats them. I am seriously looking into getting a bat house or two to put in my yard.

So, back to CitiField with my leg crazy swollen and lots of cleaning not getting done. I was a bit beat up and stressed out going down to the game but I would not have missed sitting in those amazing seats. The Ebbet's Club is at the top of the field level behind home plate, they have a private eating area that has a bar and some really good food. They have some normal food like hot dogs, nachos, and pretzels but they also have hand carved sandwiches which were amazing. You pick pork or turkey and that goes on a nice roll with your choice of toppings. On Wednesday I had pork with horseradish mayo, bbq sauce, an olive spread (think muffaletta) and cheddar cheese. It was $12.00 and came with home made chips. On Thursday I had meatballs on the same bread which was not as good as the pork sandwich. Drinks in the Ebbet's club have FREE refills! The other neat thing about our tickets is that it allows you into all of the other clubs in the stadium, well not all of them. It allows you to go into any club that's considered "lower" than the club you have tickets to. Because of that we walked through the Excelsior level and into the Ceaser's Club, the Ceaser's Club is behind home plate on the Excelsior level.

So, these seats were so close we got a bunch of foul balls into our section. One of them hit about a foot away from dad's head, the second one hit right above my head and I caught it as it bounced down, the third one hit my knee! Why didn't I catch that one? Well, I was texting Ivon (phone in right hand) and drinking a beer with my left hand. Sure, I could have dropped the beer but that would have freed up my left hand I probably would have missed it anyway and I didn't think dropping my phone was a good idea. I will say that was the last text I sent while a batter was up.

Oh, I put air conditioning into this section too.. Why? Well, while I was at the game Wednesday Jessie called me from Walmart to tell me she was buying a air conditioner for the bedroom.. I hates the ac so I am sleeping in the spare room for the summer..

Speaking of my leg/hornet sting, I went to the Urgent Care facility on Friday and got put on all kinds of crappy medication that I'm done with now.. If you ever get put on Prednizone be prepared to be moody and hungry..

- bbq

What to say.. It was great.. Thank you all who made it, screw you all who didn't.. ;)

- Man's night out

Kevin had the idea for us to do a man's night out the other night. Matt, Kevin, Ryan and myself went to JD Poopers and ate some good food and played some pool.. We played best 2 of 3 in team mode with me and Matt winning and playing each other for champion of the day which went to Matt as he crushed me in the final game..

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Former Giant Brad Benson makes a new marital vow, apparently he now owns a Hyundai dealership in NJ and decided he was not going to have sex until his dealership is the #1 dealership! Don't believe me, check out his youtube page..

While we were driving to and from CitiField we heard an add on the radio in which he asked everyone to please help him out because he wanted to have sex again! Crazy stuff...

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I started tracking my gas usage.. Here is the link to my car.

The site keeps a historical graph and tells you what percentage of the EPA you are getting. If you decide to track your gas usage send me the link..

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That's all the stuff I had in the last blog and in this text document I've working on.. Now on to new stuff...

- Vibram Five Fingers

Jessie went to a raw retreat and some dude there had these on. She told me about them and I went and tried them on with Holly.. I got a pair of brown KSO on the way to Laire and I have to say they ROCK! It's like walking around barefoot but with a sole. The oddest thing was when I stepped in mud and it went up in between my toes. Side note to that is that I had great traction in the mud because I was able to use all my toes.

Speaking of Laire, I played my barbarian shaman character and actually did a little running around. I played from Sat morning till about 11:00. I didn't leave the inn at night because I didn't want to step odd and hurt myself.

- Food Inc.

Monday night me, Jessie, Joe and Badger went to see Food Inc at the Cable Car Cinema in Providence, RI. If you've read the Omnivore's Dilemma you know what this is about. There were a few new things shown and it did a very good job of presenting the case against big factory farms. After the movie we went to Wild Colonial Tavern which is a really old bar on Water St. We hung out and had a few beers while playing pool. We did a tournament style and the final game came down to me and Badger with Badger beating me in the end. I'm sensing a theme here, I keep getting into the final game and falling just short of the victory..

- Tuesday Dinners..

Last week (8/4) we had dinner at our house as a change of pace, the weather was great and we setup the tables outside in the driveway and set the kids to watch Howl's Moving Castle and Totoro in the basement. Ryan brought over a venison roast for the grill, it came out really good. I cut it up into strips and seasoned it with (I don't remember right now) and grilled them for a few mins. How am I supposed to put recipes up if I don't write them down and don't remember.. I suck.. If anyone who watched me season the meat knows what I put on it please post it as a comment.. After dinner we made a fire in our new firepit and got to listen to Lynz & Marie play the Banjo and Dulcimer until Lynz's string broke.

This week (8/11) we were back at Ryan's house. Kevin, James, Fey and Mandy brought Muchkin Booty and we ended up getting a big game going. It's an ok game, I am just not a big fan of card games. Give me a nice long board game any day..

- Bobby's Burger Palace

Last night me and Jessie met Holly and Louie at Mohegan Sun and went to Bobby's Buger Palace.. Bobby as in Bobby Flay, does this mean I can cross him off my Iron Chef list? Nah.. But Bar Americana is opening in Mohegan Sun as well so I will cross him off after I eat there. It was very good but was a little pricey. My burger (Miami Burger) was $7.50 and then you have to buy fries on top of that for $2.50. They said the fries were big enough for two people, they lied.. Holly was the only one of us to get her burger "Crunchified" which just means with chips on it. We tried to get her to say "Chrunchified" but she just said "with chips on it".. After dinner I lost some money on the slots and then wandered the mall and played H2Overdrive in the arcade. It's a kick ass 4 player boat racing game. If you see the machine somewhere you should play it.. :)

---Diversion of the Day 1

---Diversion of the Day 2

---Diversion of the Day 3