Accident free since 1995?!

Not anymore!! I was driving home tonight from Milford and a lady ran through a stop sign and slammed into the front passenger side of my car! I saw her coming and tried to brake, but I had a choice between crossing into on coming traffic and hitting someone there or letting her hit me! I've always been one to say that accidents are avoidable, but this one was not.. I pulled over and walked back, while I was walking back she backed up from to make it look like she was well in front of the stop line. I just figured she was backing up to get out the way. I told her I would move the car and call the cops, she asked that I wait to call them.. No such luck lady, I care too much about my car to not report it. I went back into my car and traffic stopped for me to pull a u turn in the street and pull down the side street she was coming out of. While I was moving my car I called 911 and told the cops what happened and where we were.

I get out of the car and she puts me on the phone with her sister who tells me that if I don't call the cops she will come down with $4000. Umm, no thanks... Cop shows up and this lady forgets how to speak English and puts her sister on the phone who promptly tells him that it was my fault, that I was turning into the road and hit her. Unfortunately for her there were pieces of her car in the road I was driving down (rte 16) and even some pieces in the on coming traffic lane of that road. The cop looked at my car and could tell from the damage the angle of impact. He took my insurance, reg and license. The lady has (I know this will shock you) no license and no insurance! She had a little girl with her and didn't know her (the girl) birthday even though it was "her daughter".

I felt bad for her till she tried to tell the cop it was my fault! Seriously!?! I suddenly didn't feel too bad that her car was totaled and that she was facing a minimum fee of $500 and a maximum punishment of jail time. When I say her car was totaled I mean it, the entire front end was smashed in. Damage to my car you ask? If I didn't care so much about my car it might not even be worth fixing, the fog light is sorta out of whack and the bumper is cracked. Gotta love Subaru tanks!! I posted a picture of the damage to Flickr if you want to see it, actually with the new settings on this blog it's probably in the left hand column.

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On a happier note.. FI was amazing as usual. Friday night was brutal with the bugs attacking, within the first 10-15 minutes of game I was killed, quick deathed and drained a vitality! Happy to say the rest of the weekend went MUCH better! I went on a mission Saturday night in which we had to break into a section of Aleph Complex and we did such a great job the NPCs who were in the building didn't know who had come in.. The only thing they heard was the computer announcing the microwave barrier and been dropped and then a few minutes later that it was back up. Thanks to my keen eyesight we avoided all the traps and the computer hacker who was with us did such a good job she didn't trigger any of the computer traps which would have released a horde of NPCs on us.. Go team sneaky!

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

April catch up blog

So, the picture that was short-listed for inclusion in the seventh edition of the Schmap Sydney Guide was officially put to use in the guide which I think is pretty rockin'...

Here is the link - http://www.schmap.com/sydney/entertainment_concerts/#p=339954&i=339954_21.jpg

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The other night at dinner John mentioned an article on the Onion that talked about Mr. Met not getting enough sleep at the new stadium. Check it out..

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I've neglected this blog for far too long. I now need to recap almost the entire month of April..

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The week of the 5th - 11th..

Monday the 6th I woke up and decided I was going to try and walk on the cast, I took a few tentative steps before I put the crutches down and everything was great. To compare, I didn't walk on the cast until the beginning of week 4 during the last surgery and even then it was only for very short spans of time. This time I started walking in the beginning of week 3 and I only used the crutches a few since the 6th.

Melissa came over that day and we hung out and watched opening day! The great thing about opening day is no matter what, every team at least thinks they have a chance to make this their big season.. Thursday I went over Nathan's house up in Beverley for the first time. His house is very nice and they did a lot of work on it since they got it, it would have been interesting to really see how it looked before hand. We ended up going to Home Depot and Lowes and it was probably more walking than I should have done, by the end of the day my left knee, back, arms and shoulders were killing me. Luckily for me Lynz came over on Friday night and did a lot of work on my legs, arms, shoulders and back. I can't say how thankful I am that she was able to put everything back in place.

Friday night Melissa went to Alliance (LARP formally known as NERO), Saturday morning she came over to shower and get changed before going to a friend's party in Boston. I'm usually the one coming home from LARPs and being all excited about what happened so it was odd being on the other end of that.. A good odd, but certainly odd. I can't wait till Laire in May... I had to miss the April event because it was too close to me getting my cast off, but I'm ahead of myself..

Saturday night Sara came over and we went to Pho Evergreen in Greenville RI and had really good soup. It's a really nice family run restaurant, Sara told the girl she was allergic to gluten and she made a really good point of checking with her mom about each ingredient. On the way out the youngest boy was sitting in the reception area watching TV and we heard a dog barking from what appeared to be the back room.

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The week of the 12th - 18th..

The 12th was Easter or as a friend called "Zombie Christ Day".. We went to my brother's house which was nice because we had not been there in a while and the food was really good... His kids are getting real big, it's sort of amazing to me to realize that little Lenny is now 16!

Monday I went to dinner with Kaitlyn at our normal restaurant (the People's Pint) and afterwards got to sit and listen to her play the guitar and sing! It was finally nice enough out so that we could sit in her breezeway and just relax. She'll probably yell at me for saying this in my blog, but she has a great voice and I could totally see her playing an acoustic live set in a local bar or club.

Tuesday I got my cast off!!!!! I was supposed to get it off on Thursday but I could not get an appointment early enough to do it and then get to the Mets game in the same day. I really wanted someone to be there with me when I got it off because I was unsure how stable I would be afterwards so I picked Melissa up Monday night and brought her to Putnam so she could go with me on Tuesday to the doctors. The cast came off and the foot actually had strength enough to push the doctor's hand which is way better than last time when I could barely stand. They gave me a soft boot cast and it was really nice out so we went to play Mini-Golf afterwards which Melissa won by one stroke!

Wednesday night I went over to Willimantic and ate dinner with Lynz and Anja, we went to the sushi restaurant in the mall and hung out at her house afterwards. I had not been down to Willi in a while so it was a good change spending some time there.

Thursday was my first game at Citi-Field! I think I am going to write a separate thing about the stadium in general so I'm just going to say that for Thursday nights game is was COLD! I went with Melissa and my dad. Mike, his mom, Amber and Kris met us there. Ivon ended up spending the whole game in the Promenade Club bar and only came to the seats for about 10 minutes towards the end of the game.

Saturday me and Jessie went to lunch with Hoyle and his wife Janine. We met up at Unos by their house and afterwards went back to their place for a while to hangout and chat. She is a very nice girl and I think we may have convinced her to come to Tuesday night dinners. Yes, I have not mentioned anything about Tuesday night dinners in this blog. And Yes, they are still going strong. Trick is I don't remember what everyone brought each week so I will just say that they were fun as always! I will actually talk about this weeks in a bit but I'm not there yet... So... After leaving Hoyle and Janine's house we went home and met up with Ryan and Sara for dinner at Bella's Gourmet Market in Putnam. The just reopened after being closed for a week to put in a kitchen, they now have a full dinner menu and I highly recommend you check them out if you live in the area. They have this amazing Balsamic marinated grilled Watermelon as an appetizer that comes with chocolate goat cheese! I would go there and just eat that! I got a steak which was so tender I was able to cut it with my butter knife!

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The week of the 19th - today..

The 19th saw my 2nd game at Citi-Field, it was still cold but a bit warmer. I went down with Jessie, Sara, Ryan and my dad. We gave Mike's tickets to Amber and Kris but they didn't show up. Ivon sat at his seats this time and once again we lost. Walked less this time but still probably too much.

Monday was my first day back at work, I went in early because of the silly Boston Marathon and ended up lasting till after lunch before my foot was starting to really bother me and I took off. Monday night Amber came over and we went to dinner at Someplace Special. She filled me in on all the goings on at Laire over the weekend while at dinner much to Jessie's boredom.

Tuesday I went to work, then the dentist... I had a cleaning appointment scheduled for 2, I got there a few minutes early and found out that my dentist had retired and given the practice to another dentist. I've never met the dentist so him retiring is really not that big a deal, but.. The dental assistants were very upset over the changes which included having to use new machines. Upset dental assistants + new machines = horrible cleaning! I left there feeling a bit violated and in pain. I hate dentists! Dinner was quiet this week, in attendance was me, Jessie, Melissa, Sara (for most of it), Ryan, Joe, Hoyle, John (for a little while) and Kristen (for a few minutes towards the end). We (me, Jessie, Hoyle and Melissa) got there late and were the first to arrive. Joe showed up a few minutes later and then Sara had to leave because of "mom issues". We ended up going to the table with just the 6 of us. John showed up a little while after and then Sara came back to bring our little group up to 8. Kristen showed up while everyone was eating dessert to drop the kiddies off for Sara to watch for the night.

Yesterday I went to dinner with Sara at Thai Basil while Jessie was at Yoga. We were supposed to go early but we had to wait for Kristen to come get the kiddies before Sara could come out. I got home from dinner around 9 and ended up chatting with Ange and Melissa before heading to bed.

Holy crap - it's today! I am sitting at work with a bunch of pissed off employees, apparently even though my company made record profits last quarter they are giving everyone a pay cut for the rest of 2009! Oh and they stopped 401k matching funds too! I'd hate to see what they would do if they didn't post record profits! I dropped my car off at Patrick Subaru for it's first 3,000 checkup since the new engine. It's been getting very poor gas mileage and running kinda loud and although Kiss may Love it Loud I don't when it comes to my car. They just called a few minutes ago to tell me it's done so now that I'm done with this long ass-blog I'm going to go get it. Tonight I'm going to the movies with Jessie, we are going to see Earth. I'll let you know how it is. If you don't know Disney is planting a tree for every ticket sold this weekend so go..

---Diversions of the Day
It's been long time since I blogged so I will give you two today...
http://mchat.comicgenesis.com/d/20090413.html
http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/2009-04-14/index.html

Something to sing about...

I have been very lax on blogging lately.. I feel like I'm blogging for the sake of blogging and not to impart any cool and exciting news...

I guess I have writer's block? It's not like I don't have anything to say, I am just being very blah when I think about actually writing anything. Perhaps if I just keep writing an endless stream of nothing something real will show up...

So, the big news is that I got my car back yesterday! They put the 84,000 mile engine in and did a used car certification and said everything checks out and if my car was for sale they would have confidence selling it as a certified used car. Good to be driving my car again although it did take re-reading the stereo book to get my iPod working again.. I have an iPod cable that connects to the CD Changer control, there is a setting in the stereo to tell it whether or not you have a CD Changer connected or a 3rd Party device.

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Let's see, last I blogged was watching American Idol.. Friday night me and Jessie went with Joe and Renae to see Toad the Wet Sprocket, I met a cool guy before the show who was there alone. He had never seen Toad and could not get anyone to go with him so he decided to go alone because he didn't want to miss the opportunity to see them. He made the right choice, the show was great. The opening band, Adam Ezra, was very good as well. They had two drummers, one played Randy's normal drum kit and the other one played a stand up drum kit, bongos and other various drums. It was a really good sound to have that many drums, they also had an accordion/piano player a guitarist and a bass player. We purchased their CD and it's good, but nothing special. It sounds too polished and the instrumentation is turned down so you can better hear the vocals, I think if they remaster the CD to make the music stand out more it would be much better. They are headlining a show in Boston and I would like to go see them in a full show instead of just a short opening show.

Toad was awesome and the redeemed the crappy show we saw at the Cape Cod Melody Tent. Everyone seemed to be getting along and having fun. One odd thing for me was they came out with a set list and stuck to it, usually Toad (or at least Glen) does not use a set list. Glen did very little talking between songs, one of the times we saw Toad (I think the reunion show in NYC) Glen did a bunch of talking and the other band members were cutting him off because they just wanted to play so him not talking was probably a way to keep the peace between the band. Todd only sung two songs (Inside and Crazy Life) out of the 20 or so they played. I was very happy to hear some lesser played songs like Little Man, Big Man but was sad that they played Know Me without Spirit... I was very excited when I saw Know Me on the set list because I have never heard them do Spirit in person but then they didn't play it.. All in all though it was a great concert and a great time hanging out with everyone.

If you have not checked my youtube or flickr recently I have uploaded a bunch of pics and videos, one video from Ryan Adams and a few from Toad and Adam Ezra.

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Saturday and Sunday morning were very surreal.. Amber was supposed to come down with me to Brad's house for a board game birthday party but she ended up not being able to make it. I took Jessie's car and headed down. On the way down I called Amy to let her know that my NC trip was cancelled, as it turns out she was in NY at her mom's house! I drove over there and hung out for a few hours before going to Brad's house. It was very odd and very cool to see her again after all these years. We spent hours comparing old memories and having her sister fill in some of the blanks. Her sister recently had a baby and it's so odd to see her as an "adult" since she was always Amy's little sister. I've found that when you see people from your past one of two things happens, either you immediately click as if no time has past or you end up doing that awkward thing where you pretend to be all nice and happy to see the person and as soon as they leave hope you didn't come off as rude. This was certainly one of the first, I wish she lived closer, I feel if she did we would end up being really great friends again. I guess that's what the telephone and internet are for, she is going to make a facebook page so that should make keeping in contact a bit easier.

I left Amy wishing I had more time with her but I didn't want to short change my time at Brad's house either. I had fun playing a new board game called Agricola with Randy, Christian, Mara and Brad's friend Vin. I apparently mis-read the scoring rules and ended up losing because I thought it said +1 per un-used land square, but it was -1 per un-used land square... After Agricola I played Blockus with Randy, Christian and Vin till we went to bed.

Woke up early on Sunday and went to Joe Borst's house for breakfast. It was nice seeing how grown up his kids got, except Amanda who was sleeping the whole time I was over. I also got to meet his new girlfriend and see his new house which is really nice. He has a great room which has windows covering three walls and goes out onto a really big deck. The kitchen has places for windows facing out into the great room, Joe has the windows out so he can talk into the great room and be part of the family while cooking.

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Sunday night Lynz, Sara and I went to JD Coopers to play pool and eat some dinner. We played five games of pool with Sara and Lynz teaming up against me, I won 3 of the 5 games for the overall win.

So, on a health related note... Saturday, Sunday and Monday mornings I coughed up blood.. Monday I went to the doctors and found out I had a pneumonia so now I'm on anti-biotics and had to cancel my dinner with Kaitlyn on Monday..

Yesterday was dinner at Sara's house.. Sara made a raw apple pie, Lynz made a pork roast, I made a buffalo/rice dish, Kristen made raw alfredo sauce with pasta and Joe brought a salad. As always the food was great and I was finally well enough to enjoy everyone's company. I ended up playing a few rounds of Boggle with Joe, Jessie, Kristen and Sara.

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Yay for getting everything back current...

---Diversion of the Day
http://xkcd.com/548/

Car Troubles

I apologize for the lack of detail in this blog.. I've been pretty sick since sitting in my car in the cold for hours but I wanted to post something since lots has happened..

Saturday night I went to see Ryan Adams and the Cardinals with Kaitlyn. The show was very good, and I had a great night until the ride home.. My car died on the way home and we were stranded on the side of the road for hours.. I called AAA around 1:30am and the didn't show up till after 4:00am!! Jessie came and picked us up and we headed home. Even with the death of Sonic I had a very good night. I posted some really good pics from the concert on flickr and one video on youtube.

Sunday I met up with Holly at Mohegan Sun, we ate lunch and had fun in the arcade for a few hours..

I stopped by Patrick Subaru on Monday before my doctors appointment and found out my engine had died and needed to be replaced... I spent the rest of Monday and most of Tuesday deciding what to do about my car.. In the end I decided to replace the engine and hope for the best.

Yesterday at dinner I ate a bit and slept a lot..

American Idol Week 2 is on tonight. I will probably post another blog later tonight with my picks for this round.

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My dad put up an online database of his movies that he has for sale. Here is the link.. http://www.invelos.com/dvdcollection.aspx/GomezAddams

If you want any movies they are $2 per movie, if the movie is a set then it's $2 per disc in the set. Email me if you want to buy any...

---Diversion of the Day
http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/2009-02-17/index.html

Studio Ghibli

This morning started out pretty frustrating.. I went to the train station and could not put more money on my card because they only take cash. I went to the Japanese ATM but my card does not work there so I had to walk to the Citibank which is about 6 blocks from the train station. As I was walking to Citibank I stopped at 7-11 and got a surprise rice ball, I went with red this time and was pleasantly surprised by spicy shrimp and onion. I got back just in time to miss the "Ghibli Express" so I had to take a regular JR Chou line. I actually arrived at the museum about 5 mins after they opened so it all worked out in the end.. :)

I guess the best word to sum up the museum is WOW! I understand why they don't want people taking pictures, if you can't take pictures you have to bring your friends back in order to show them awesomeness! It was 3 floors, the roof walk, a movie theater and a restaurant. You are allowed to take pictures outside including on the roof walk so I have a picture of me with the robot from Lupata.

The bottom floor had this amazing room that had figures on wheels that spun, when the wheel spun a strobe light would light and you would see the figures running, it might have been the best thing in terms of sheer impressiveness. They had one of Totoro and one of Laputa. They also had a short film that ran on loop that was the creation/desctuction of the earth, it was pretty neat how it showed the cycle of the earth being created and destroyed just to be created again.. The movie theater was also on the 2nd floor, but I'll come back to that..

The 2nd floor had a mock up of the animation studio and a partner exhibit which changes each year. This year it was Petit Louvre which had paintings from some of the famous French artists. The animation studio had lots of preliminary drawings of characters from all of his movies. It was interesting to see Porco Rosso as more of a pig, less of a pig etc. They also had original artwork of what Totoro might have looked like, I'm glad they didn't use them because he was more ghost like and not so real. They also had books of storyboards from the new movie that just came out in Japan in July of 2008 called Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea and storyboards of Porco Rosso. Between the exhibits on this floor they had cells and a preview of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea which is a movie about Mer-people. A boy finds a baby mer-person and saves it in a cup of water and the adventure begins.. Looks good, can't wait for it to come to America.

The 4th floor had two stores, one of toys, shirts, cups, mugs, dvds, nick nacks and such. The other had books and original manga. Between the two stores they had the giant plush cat bus that kids got to go on and in. It was pretty cool. From this floor there were two exits, one to a spiral staircase that led to the roof and the giant robot. The other exit led to the restaurant where I had mushroom pasta in a creme sauce and a home made ginger ale. The pasta was served on a Totoro plate that they sell in the gift shop.

I spent too much money.. ;) I will just leave that statement right there for now.. :D

So, back to the movie theater. Miyazaki made 4 new films to be shown exclusively at the museum and they rotate them every month. This month's movie started with a boy getting dropped off at school, he drops his bag off and heads into the classroom to find that seven older boys had taken it over and were making a big ship out of the things you would find in a classroom. The little boy tried to help but they told him he was not able to because he couldn't swim and they didn't want him to drown so he went and watched with the younger kids while they finished building it. After they were done building it they went "to shore" to get supplies, while they were gone he hiked up his pants and walked "through the water" to the ship. When he touched the ship which was not fully formed a chair fell off the side and the whole ship looked like school items again. The older boy came back over and "repaired" the damage as water had begun filling up the ship. Anyway, they loaded the ship up and went out exploring the sea. I'm not going to write up the whole story line here but it was very cute and very fun.

Next month's movie is a new story involving May and the Cat Bus.. I did get a little picture book that they made based on that one so at least we can see the story and pics from it.

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After the museum I came back and went to the Subaru show room by the hotel. They had a new Exiga there which was kinda cool, but they did not have the electric cars on display. Everyone they made is out on the streets..

Plan for the rest of the night? I would bet you would love for me to say put up pictures.. I'm actually going to the office to call La Rochelle to see if they will let me in tonight. If they do I am going there, if not maybe I'll put up pics..