a Wedding and a possible Funeral

I hate playing catch up but I apparently suck at this blogging thing lately. I would really like to get back into my daily blog mode but alas it keeps not happening.. It's not even like I don't have anything to say I just can't seem to find the time to say it. When it gets a few weeks out then it feels like I either need to write a smeggin' novel or not blog at all.

As you know (if you read the last blog) I had recently gotten my Droid X. After having it for over a month now I have to say I still love it. I do however wish the stupid 2.2 upgrade would be pushed to it already. I "check for updates" on the phone every day and still nothing.. The version of Android OS I have is buggy and it's annoying when little things hang or when you can't access all your contacts. The biggest bug I've had is the Social Networking app which does not work with any contact that is linked with a phone book contact.. This problem only happens if you try to hide anyone from the app so it's not a big deal, but still slightly annoying.

Oh, and speaking of issues with my phone... My stupid SD card died!? I lost all my pictures from the day I went to see Adams Family and the Mets game with my dad which included maybe the best picture I've had of him in a long time. I also lost all the pics and videos of my mom's "4th of july" bbq. Lesson here - copy pictures to your PC on a regular basis.

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Speaking of my mom's 4th of july bbq.. Because of everyone's crazy weekend schedules my mom moved her 4th bbq to Aug 21st, that's kind of like the 4th of july right? It was fun but it was also sad that Jessie and Lenny were missing. Lenny was out in Chicago and Jessie was taking care of Hoyle who had just had hernia surgery. Did have a blast hanging out with the kids and shooting off fireworks! And as always the food was very good as was the company.. :)

The week before the bbq I was in NYC again for work. I drove down on Sunday and went to the 8pm Mets game, after the game I went back to the hotel to find out they don't have a bar right now (construction) so I went to a local bar down on the corner. They had Abita on tap and the bartender was very cool, I ended up hanging out there till they closed.. I don't really remember what I did what day anymore but I ended up hanging out with Michelle and Jim one night, we met at a vegan place and then brought food back to his apartment. We just hung out on his balcony for a lots of hours chatting, listening to music and playing with phones.

While in NYC I went to see Expendables with a bunch of guys from Laire. It was very good, lots of unnecessary action and lots of good one liners. As Schwarzenegger was walking away in a huff Bruno asks Stallone what's wrong with that guy to which he responds oh, him, he just wants to be president! The bad guy telling a female captive that he does not believe in hitting women but that guy over there (Jesse Ventura) has no problems with it! Gotta love big stars making fun of each other on film.

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The day after my mom's bbq me and Jessie went to the beer and chili festival at Mohegan Sun. The stand out chili for me was Willi Brew Pub's chili, I had never had it because I am not one to normally get chili in a restaurant but I will make sure I get there more often. The best thing at the chili/beer fest was probably the ice cream! A company in Old Lyme called ironically enough Old Lyme Ice Cream Shoppe makes ice cream with beer, they had a few flavors to try and I was very impressed. Perhaps someone who lives or works near there should pick some up one day when they are in the area.. (hint hint)

Lush stopped making Tramp again!? When we first found Lush in Montreal I fell in love with Vagabond/Tramp, this is now the second time it's been discontinued.. Hopefully it won't be for very long this time. 

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My dad had gotten tickets for us to sit in the Delta Club for a Mets game on the 28th. We decided to make a long day of it and got tickets to see Adams Family: The Musical on the same day.. The musical was good, the casting was great (except Pugsley), the story was all original and very well thought out and written, the dialog was classic Adams Family and they did a few awesome in-jokes throughout for the loyal Adams Family fans. The only thing that fell a bit flat was the music unfortunately. Some of the songs were very good but overall they were just eh. I think it would be more successful as a play and not as a musical. I do however recommend seeing it if you are an Adams Family fan. It is crazy expensive so maybe wait till it does a touring cast. It was very cool sitting in those seats for the Mets game, we had waiter service so you never had to leave the seat! Just wave your arm and a guy would come and take your order..

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This last weekend was a mix of great and REAL bad! Started out great, went to Laire on Friday and was pleasantly surprised at how painless check in was this weekend. We had a bunch of pre-regs so I thought it was going to be a painful night but in the end it was not bad. Went to bed after my work assignment because my back was killing me and I was tired. Played all day / night on Saturday and lots of fun playing Daimone. I have been playing Brother Hawk more lately so it was a nice change of pace, plus Rich, Harry, Bryan and Corina all showed up so we had almost the entire Order for the first time in a very long time. Sunday I played during the morning and then left to go to Vin's wedding. Vin's wedding was very fun, I had a blast dancing (thanks Dianne for pulling me up to Come on Eileen) and catching up with Mike, Steve, Vin, Randy and Matt.

After the wedding was the problem... I went back to Laire and was not in fighting form on Sunday night, very tired from the dancing.. But, after fighting for a while I got back into form and was fine by the end of the night. Monday the town got over run, I was in good form but we were getting pressed hard! The mages got so low on power that I was told there was not enough power to give out spell defenses, I should have taken this as a sign to stop fighting so hard. But, one of the Order was down and dying and after arguing and trying to convince the other Order members to assist me in saving him I did the only thing I could do. I grabbed too little support and ran out after him. A second or two into the rescue attempt my support had fled and I was forced to run back towards the line, on the way I got hit by a dark paladin's lucky shot and fell. Was brought back to lay next to my dying brethren and was turned into a Drowned One (think zombie but more powerful). Spent the rest of the event as Daimone the Drowned One attacking the town! I have a 1 in 20 chance of coming back.. If that fails it will be a sad sad end to an epic character. At least I died trying to save my men..

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This weekend is Future Imperfect, hopefully it will go better than Laire did last weekend.

Staycation 8/6 - current

Staycation, all I ever wanted...

After a long night / morning of flying I went home, did laundry, packed and left for Laire... Friday night I did my logistics shift and went to bed! I got woken up in the middle of the night with someone trying to kill me in my sleep, no... Not in game, sorry... The rest of Laire was good but too quick.. I tweaked Chatima so he would be more assertive and had a very fun time playing him.

I left early so I could spend some time with Jessie but that was thwarted by important phone calls... Monday was craft day, me and Kevin got a lot done and Hoyle came over a bit latter and we ended up watching TV till too late.. Tuesday was dinner and it was nice to be able to veg out there.. Janine came over on Wednesday and we watched Wicked, I have not seen it in a while and it reminded me how much I like it.. Wednesday night me and Jessie caught up on Next Food Network Star and Daily Show. Thursday I basically hung out all day and worked on my medical pack for FI, I would probably have finished it but someone took the glue with them when they left on Monday night so I spent a lot of time on Wednesday and Thursday morning getting glue.. Thursday night me and Jessie finally had some time to ourselves without any distractions.. :)

We went to Turtles Taco Shop which is right down the street from us, I've eaten there before and I know they say they are SoCal influenced but now that I've recently been to Wahoo's Fish Taco I certainly agree.. The same fresh and vibrant flavors are here in little Putnam.. I will probably be bringing all my dates there... At least for a little while.. Speaking of bringing my dates around Putnam, Bella's Bistro finally has gluten free pasta and pizza dough.

This week has been full of downloading great little apps for my Droid X. Such a great phone by the way, only touch screen I've actually liked.. It's so responsive... Anyway, because I like to share, I got:

Games: Phit Droid 3, Phit Reload, a Scavenger Hunt game, Andoku Sudoku, GODroid, Dominion Card Shuffler

Utilities: Adobe Acrobat, a Bar Code Scanner, Ebay, a Shared Shopping Cart, Unit Converter, Flickr Droid

Travel: Fandango, Airline Checker, Yelp, HappyCow, NYC Subway maps, DC Subway maps, I downloaded the Chicago subway/bus map but it sucked.

Toys: Shazam (figures out what music is playing), Google Goggles (not very successful app thats supposed to determine what things are by taking their pictures, MotoTorch LED, SportsTap

If you have any other suggestions let me know.. Always looking for good apps.

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Tonight Lynz is coming over, it will be nice to spend some time with just the two of us.. Tomorrow me and Jessie are going to our friends Sarah and Mark's house for dinner and then depending on how late that goes to Rob's party. Sunday I drive to NYC for the 8pm Mets game and to teach next week.

Smegging caught up batman!

I'll try to make this a more regular thing again so you are not bombarded with this stream of blogs.

Oh, and I also updated Flickr and Youtube if you have not already seen..

:D

Sweeps week.. 7/23 - 8/1

Got home on Friday the 23rd just to run back out again to Boston.. Jessie had gotten tickets to see Marc Maron at a bar in Allston, she listens to his WTF podcast. I listened to it once or twice and have been eh about it but I figured it would be at the very least funny.. I called the club and they assured me that the 7pm start time was accurate so against Jessie's better judgement I met her on the way and we drove up without eating first. I just have to say Smeg off to that bar! The doors opened at 7 but nobody went on for a long time after.. I can't be too upset at the cock knockers because we did end up with front row seats which is really great because of the way Marc Maron makes eye contact with his crowd and really seems to connect with them..

The first guy (who runs the comedy show there every week) came up and was pretty funny, he did a bit about hybrid Halloween costumes and did a Marty McFly / Abe Lincoln mix which was very good, his Michael J Fox impression was perfect and Abe Lincoln stressing out about getting back in time to free the slaves was awesome. He did another bit which was almost awesome, I saw almost because he went a bit too far with it.. It was about how he found a leather jacket at a hand-me-down clothes store and what he could deduce from the previous owner by what was in the pockets.. Great joke during the inspection of pocket number one, went to far when he looked in pocket number two.

The second guy was a local guy, Sean Sullivan, and he was very good. He did a bunch of jokes about buying a house in a horrible area and about buying a new toilet for that house. His stand out bit was certainly about the toilet..

Finally came Marc Maron who was the best of the night.. The only thing I will say about him is that if you ever get the chance to see him grab it.. I think he has a comedy central presents and a few other recorded stand up bits, actually I know he does because we have one on our iTunes. If you like funny with a bunch of real thrown in check him out.. Seeing him live will make me go back and try the WTF podcasts again, just need to get off my arse and put them on my iPod.

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Saturday was Scott's wedding, me and Jessie drove down and checked in at the Brooklyn Bridge Marriott before the wedding and then walked over the church. The church part was a church wedding, the music really stood out for me which is not surprising since music is a big deal to Scott. They actually had one of Scott's friends there via webcam so he could watch the wedding which was a really awesome idea.. The reception was a ton o' fun! It was nice to see everyone (including my brother) be silly and relax, it was so silly and relaxed that I even ended up on the dance floor for the end of the night. Lots of great pictures on my cousins facebook site, they had a silly photo booth which ended up being the biggest hit. You go in and click the button and it would take four pictures.. Great idea, will steal it... :D After the reception the place had a burlesque show so we stayed for the beginning of that, I was so tired and it was a very low energy show that we didn't stay long. It was more like half naked cirque de soleil then what I think of as burlesque. I want my burlesque to fun, goofy and high energy, I guess I can thank Pam for that..

Sunday we drove home and I got to spend a little bit of time with Lynz at Thompson Dam before the super work of cleaning my house on Monday..

Sweeps week... I was a bit stressed out about getting my disaster area of house set up for the bbq.. Luckily for me Kevin and Hoyle came over and helped me rip through the basement on Monday! We even cleaned the windows in the basement and garage! Vacuumed basement floor, walls and ceiling.. I don't remember which day I figured this out (might have been Monday), but the Furminator works wonders on getting cat hair off furniture! I spent a lot of hours working on each chair, couch and cushion so that our pet allergic friends could bare to be in the house for an extended period of time. I was going to bail on Tuesday dinner to clean but once again, thanks to Kev and Hoyle, I felt that I was able to go because the house was almost done. Wednesday I went to the Mets game and watched the Mets come back in the late innings just to lose in extras because our manager does not manage to win.. When you're home you can't reserve pitchers for innings yet to come, you need to play each inning in extras as if it were the last. Because of that he left one guy in too long and we ended up losing. That really sums up the entire season for the Mets.. We don't need to win today, as long as our players are healthy and rested tomorrow! How can your team lead the league in shutouts and era and be under .500!? Sigh... Maybe they will lose so many games between now and the end of the season they will have no choice but to fire him and bring back Bob Vay..

Thursday and Friday were spent prepping food and making sure all the last minute shopping was done. Oh, I forgot to mention, as if the normal load of getting the house ready was not enough.. We had a pipe burst in the basement! Luckily it was the outbound pipe so there was no water running into the basement unless you ran the sink and/or dishwasher. Almost $400 later we were able to do the dishes which had been piling up.

The bbq was great, thanks all for coming out! I even got to get out from behind the grill and play some games and hang out..

Sunday morning I got up and with Brad and Chris' help got the place cleaned up before heading out to Irvine...

--This weeks cleaning and being home was sponsored by teaching an online class!

FiveFingers Take Two

My VibramFiveFingers broke again the other day, I put the piece of the strap somewhere for safe keeping till I had a chance to sew it back on.. But... It would appear that wherever I put it is so safe that I can't even find it now... The only thing left to say is SMEG!

I kinda need them functional for this weekend since I'm playing Chatima and wear them as him.. I decided today to look for a knockoff pair but after searching for a while I'm finding that Vibram is doing a great job of shutting those places down as soon as they show up.. grrr.. The few that were still up and running were charging $50-$60 for the shoes + shipping.. The only place on ebay I did find for $25 wanted $25 in shipping and is in China so no hurried shipping would be available.. I hear REI has a crazy return policy so I might just buy a pair there and that way every time they break I can bring them back. I sent Vibram an amusing email today, they had a big thing on their website about if you have any information on counterfeit ones you should email.. Here is my email..

I purchased a pair of your fivefingers back in August of last year. They ripped for the first time in April, when I called your company the response was "well, you're not supposed to wear them everyday" and "we know they rip, you should try duct tape".. With comments like that how can you expect people to *not* purchase counterfeit ones? I sewed mine in April and have been wearing them everyday until they just ripped again. I now begin the process of looking for a counterfeit pair, I understand that they will probably fall apart in less than a year but how is that any different than yours?

Anyway, I ended up cutting the straps off today, I was reading on the vibram forums and people said that the shoes stay on with no straps. There are few people who say otherwise but at this point I don't really have another choice since I lost half of one of the straps anyway.. I figure I'll wear them today/tomorrow this way and if I really need to I can stop and REI on the way to Laire tomorrow..

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Anyway, back to the Zev Zev..

I was up to Saturday July 3rd which was spent at my friend Chris' birthday party in NY.. Well that's not entirely true, most of the day was getting there.. We had a lazy morning but it was a good lazy because we didn't really have a time in mind to be there. He had these fireworks which can only be described by watching it in action. I have found a youtube video so you can enjoy the smegging beauty.. They are called Magic Snakes!

Sunday morning we (me, Jessie, Dianne and Randy) went to a raw restaurant in Beacon NY called Superfood Citizen, I can't find their real website in my 1.5 seconds of searching so here is the google link... :) I had a pizza and a "purple drink" which was all very good. The purple drink was beets and mangosteen as well as other good stuff. It did however make my pee purplish for the next few days.. After brunch we went to Brotherhood Winery which is right near their house. It is the oldest (never closed) winery in America, they made a alter wine before prohibition so they petitioned the government to stay open because the church needed their alter wine.. Gotta love the church?! Smegging politics.. Anyway, they make a really good riesling and one of the best meeds made commercially.

Monday was a craft day.. The main accomplishment was getting my Laire closet fixed, we took everything out of it and made a new frame for the top and then re-supported the straps and actually nailed it into the wood. It is MUCH bigger now and has everything in it.. We also found the tent we will get for FI, it's the Coleman Hampton Tent, it's $199 at Target but I'm sure I can find it cheaper online when we are ready to order. Interesting.. I may need to go get that now.. I just did a search for that tent and it's not listed on Coleman's website and the only sites I do see it on are more than Target... It's apparently a discontinued tent.. Here is a picture of it from an ebay listing..

Tuesday was dinner, Hoyle brought a little grill and we used that and Ryan's to grill up some tastiness!

Last night I went to my brother's house for dinner because we will be watching the kitties while they are away.. So you know how a lot of houses have a little loft area above stairs? Well, they have one of those areas and it's been just a wasted area till now... They made it a cat haven with their food, water scratching posts and play things.. So cute and probably the best use of that space I've seen.. :D

Another Christian Nation

I just got to Sao Paulo today and found out almost everything is closed.. I went and walked the city a bit this afternoon and found that the only thing open are gas stations and chains like McDonalds. I guess I'm going to eat dinner at Hooters since I assume they are open and they are right by the hotel. If they are closed I guess I'll eat at the hotel.

The taxi from the airport cost me 120 Reals which is outrageous, I guess I'm glad I can expense it.

The flight from Boston to NJ was delayed but they got me on the earlier flight so I ended up getting to NJ about the same time I would have if I had gotten the correct flight. As I was wondering around the Boston airport I found out they now have a Harpoon brewery on site which had Winter Warmer on tap! I was so excited since it's one of my top 5 beers of all time. I got to NJ and ended up going to the Brooklyn brewery and chatting with a girl from LA. She is working on a dating site geared towards lawyers, we talked a lot about OKC and my relationships which gave her some ideas for her site.

The flights were pretty uneventful but I should mention the plane was going real fast on the flight from Boston to NJ. He made it from Boston to NJ in about 34 minutes! While I was on the plane getting ready to take off they announced that they had too much weight and they said they were taking all of the later flight passengers off the plane to correct the weight. They announced like 10-15 people but I was not one of them, I guess it helps to be "Elite".

The week behind.. The biggest thing since my last blog was Future Imperfect, it was an awesome time! If you don't know what Future Imperfect is, it's a sci-fi LARP that takes places on a newly colonized world. In just one short weekend I got sworn in as a deputy and made lots of friends. I can't wait till the next event. The FI dates do not conflict with Laire which means I will not have to miss one over the other. After the game I went and saw Kevin in a vampire musical called Nightsong. The story, dialog and lyrics were all very good but the acting was BAD, I really hope that someone else picks this play up and does a better job with it.

Thursday night me and Jessie went to Bella's and had some great food as usual. Dianne came up after dinner and we hung out for a bit before bed. Friday we went to see WPA which was a great show, it was at Passim and somehow they got 6 people and a drum kit on the stage. Not much room for them to move but they did a great job. We were supposed to go to the 7pm show but Jessie must have clicked on the wrong show when buying tickets so we ended up wondering around Cambridge for a few hours while we waited for the late show.

Off to dinner.. yay Hooters?

Prius and warmth..

Saturday after dinner, I'm picking up where the last blog left off, me and Jessie went to see A Murder is Announced at the Bradley. We had not been at the Bradly in a long time, we apparently missed all the plays this year.. Have to make sure to get to more of those next year, the only one left this year is the Broadway Live Christmas show which is always "eh".. This play was good, I was actually wrong at guessing who did the murdering.. Jessie was right.. Not going to say who because I don't want to ruin anything for anyone who might see this play in their lives..

Onto sunny California..

The flight from Hartford to Minnesota was great! It was a brand new plane and had next to no noise and no turbulence, I actually walked up and down the aisle without having to hold the seats.. I sat next to a lady and her baby who where on their way to Irvine, she grew up in WeHa and now lives in Irvine with her husband. The baby was amazingly quiet too which was good because when I saw them come onboard I was a bit scared it would be an annoying flight.

The flight from Minnesota to San Jose was NOT a new plane, it was actually so old it still had ash trays in the seats! It was NOT a quiet turbulence free flight, as a matter of fact we hit a big storm right outside San Jose and ended up getting thrown around quite a bit.

Landed and shuttled over to rent-a-car where I was given a Prius! It's a 2009 Prius, but it's a base model which means it has no iPod connection. The radio station it was on had Madonna playing when I finally turned up the volume so yay for me.. :)

Speaking of iPod, I finished the Element on the plane and started Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I figure it's almost Halloween so it's a good time to listen to this finally. It's pretty short (7 hours), I listened to about 1/3 of it already. It's a fun book so far.

Oh, well back to class for me.. I have not done any real exploring but I found out that the hotel has free breakfast and dinner! I probably won't take advantage of the dinners because I want to hit some of the sites while I'm here but it's good to know.. Oh and since this is a customer class I get free lunch too!

OMG - 1st Blog in September and it's already the 18th!

I'm sorry for not writing anything, I keep saying this in most of my newest blogs.. I need to do a better job of sitting and writing at least once a week if not back to once a day. I'm not really trying to create the longest blogs ever. ;)

As mentioned in my last blog, me and Jessie went to see Jon Oliver in Boston on Friday the 28th. We ate at Jacob Wirth before the show and met a really cool couple (Kriss and Jonathan) who was sitting next to us. Jessie was trying to decide what to order (I know, shocking) and Jonathan started giving us his review of her choices, we hit it off really well and hung with them until we went into the show. The warm up comedian was the same warm up guy from when we went to see the Daily Show, he was much funnier this time. Jon Oliver was as good as expected so it was a very good night.

The only problem with the night is we got home very late (as expected) and I had to get up early in the morning to drive to Brad's house. AnimeFest was really good, but I think the name should be changed to Board Game Fest. Anime was only on in one room and it was mostly old stuff, the only Anime I watched was some of Ponyo in Japanese and that was at the end of the night. I played two games of Carcassonne: The City and won both and one game of Apples to Apples which I lost to Kelly (Brad's girlfriend). The kicker to that game is she joined late and still managed to get 7 cards first.. The highlight of the night was probably going out for Japanese food with Christian and Mara, we went to a place right by Brad's house (don't remember the name) and spent a while talking and catching up. I left in the early morning because I had drank way too much caffeine and there was no way I was going to sleep there.

The problem with writing blogs infrequently is I don't remember everything.. I know I did something on the 30th and 31st but I don't remember.. So, checked Google Calendar and Flickr and I have no records for those days. Nurit mentioned to me yesterday that she adds things to her calendar after she does them, now I see why she does that.. Just asked Jessie and she recommended checking my IM logs..

September 1st's dinner was at our house but I don't remember any specifics about dinner, don't even remember what I made.. I love chat logs! I just read the chat log with Holly and it reminded me that I made a Rhubarb Cheese sauce and put it over Ham. AH-HA, I just realized something.. When we went to make the Brazilian cheese Jessie asked me what happened to the Muenster we had in the fridge, now I remember.. I used it for the Rhubarb Cheese Sauce!

Ok, back to Sunday/Monday.. I just checked my chat logs with Holly and found out that Sunday was mostly spent sleeping, the rest of the time we watched Weeds. Monday night we watched more Weeds and Jessie made her "German" meal which was Chicken Sausages, Red Cabbage with Bok Choi and Pirogies.

Wednesday Sept 2nd will always live in memory as the day Matt Salvatore lost to food! Casa Mariachi in Putnam has a 5lb Burrito challenge, if you win you get a bumper sticker, a shirt and your picture on a wall of fame. If you lose you get your picture on the wall of shame and pay $27 for the burrito (if you win it's free). Anyway, I think he made two fatal mistakes: 1. He chose Chicken which means he got 5lbs of shredded chicken. 2. He didn't spread the toppings (guacamole and sour cream). You have an hour to finish, he probably had half of it down in the first 10 mins before slowing down. He was still moving at a good pace till he hit the 2nd consecutive glob of sour cream which crushed his hopes. There are pictures, check my Flickr.

I was supposed to have dinner with Lynz on the 3rd, she called me from work to tell me her mom had tickets for the CT Defenders for that night so me, Lynz and Anja met her mom at the stadium instead. We sat in one of the luxury boxes and made friends with the waitress. It was nice to be able to chat with Lynz's mom and it was fun explaining baseball to Anja. Cutter came up and hung out with us in the box which I think made Anja's night. One of the biggest highlights for me had to be watching Lynz and Anja doing push ups in the luxury box during extra innings! We ended up leaving the game early because it was a weekday and the game didn't matter since the Defenders had already clinched the division.

Nothing like going to Laire when you're already exhausted! Friday drive to Laire was tough, I had to stop a bunch of times and get coffee and walk around to stay awake. Did my work shift Friday night and went right to bed. Saturday I played, and when I say played I mean "FULL Combat". The plan was to play from morning till dark, the actual-laity is I played from about 9am till 3am! The only time I stopped was when I went out to Veggie Heaven for dinner. I ran, I jumped, I fought and I killed! Sunday was more of the same, got up around 10 and played till about 2am only stopping to go to Fu's for dinner. I did plan to play Monday but when I woke up I was so sore I had to leave. When I say sore I don't mean my tendons either, I mean my calf muscles. All in all this was a VERY successful event, no tendon pain and no knee pain!

September 8th's dinner was at our house again and Nurit came out for it. She got there early so we had some time to hang out before the crowds showed up. Speaking of the crowds: Sara, Sean, Ryan, Gwen, Lynz, Jesse and Marie all ended up calling out. I made some steaks on the grill and Kevin made some kebabs and Sarah brought shrimp for the grill. It was a good night but most of it was spent with me at the grill, ran out of gas so me and Joe had to go get more before I could finish grilling.

The 9th and 10th are missing from my memory and I don't have any chat logs with Holly for those days because she was not at work. I know the 10th Jessie went to Yoga and then to Hoyle's house, I hung out with Elizabeth for a bit and then I ate dinner, made the Catupiry Cheese and went to bed. I'm going to guess the 9th was watching Weeds with Jessie.

The 11th me and Jessie went over to Matt and Sile's house and made the Brazilian style pizza. We made two, one traditional style with ham, onions, hard boiled egg and catupiry cheese and the other one had lots of veggies. The pizza's came out great and we had a good time chatting and hanging out.

Jessie was real sick on the 12th, we watched LOTS of Weeds and ended up bringing her to the hospital in the evening. Joe came over around 9 and I went to dinner with Matt at the Courthouse.

Phew - Almost done.. The 13th I went and had lunch with Lynz for her birthday, I packed up a picnic and we went and got "lost" in the woods in Willimantic for a few hours. We found a nice spot in the woods that had a little stream sat, relaxed and snuggled.. Yay picnics, I've missed you.. Wine at Lunch returns, at least for a day. After lunch I headed back home and took Jessie out to a corn maze. We went to the corn maze in Pomfret, their maze is laid out as a spider in it's web. They had a bunch of scarecrows scattered through the maze and you had to answer 9 questions about them (which one plays baseball, which one is holding a christmas bear) so you couldn't just "solve" the maze without finding all the scarecrows. I like corn mazes and hopefully we can get to the one in Thompson before the season ends.

We're finally on the current week! Monday I went to Nurit's new house and hung out there with her and her room mate helping her organize her room. We went to this amazing apartment complex to get her a box spring from a couple that couldn't get it in their unit. This apartment complex was built inside an old middle school so it had massive ceilings and massive hallways. I didn't feel right taking any pictures but wished I had. We went to Ohara's which is an Irish restaurant/pub by her house, I had a Wasabiaki Salmon which was a wasabi/teriyaki glazed salmon. It was very tasty but certainly not spicy.

Tuesday - Dinner.. I made cheeseburgers at Hoyle's request (it was his birthday) and Badger made some amazing pork chops. Sara, Sean, Lynz and Kristen did not come this week. Hoyle brought Janine and Kevin brought two new people who were both very cool. After dinner and after Rowan left we pulled the porn pile out and tried to get some porn diving going. We didn't get any porn diving but we did at least sell a few.

Wednesday and Thursday was Weeds, Weeds and more Weeds. We are half way through season 4. I guess it's not fair to just say Weeds, Weeds and more Weeds, we also watched Daily Shows (welcome back after a 3 week vacation), Monk, History Detectives and Chopped.

--Quote of the Day

Another day, another way to change the future of yesterday. - Stacy Davenport

Upcoming Events: Works Progress Administration concert at Club Passim on Nov 13th, we are going to the 7pm show if you want to join us.

Another late night.. No wonder I'm tired all the time.. Ah, well.. Wouldn't trade it for anything.. :D

Wednesday night me and Jessie went to Armsy Abbey in Worcester MA, they did a special vegetarian beer diner with Pretty Things Brewery. The trick to the meal was that everything served had to be harvested from no further than 50 miles away from the restaurant. You may or may not know but the New England area has had a very odd summer and therefore a very odd crop growing season. This made the menu very challenging but they did a great job presenting a raw bar appetizer and 5 courses, each course came with a beer that Pretty Things paired. At dinner we met a very cool couple who had just moved to Auburn from CA to teach at Holy Cross, the restaurant only holds around 60 people and all tables hold 6 people so we ended up sitting with them, her mom and her brother.

Menu:

Raw Bar was lots of raw cut up veggies, with a goat cheese dip and home made bread. Even the butter was made fresh the night before. They paired the raw bar with their American Darling which is a light summer beer.

1st Course

Arugula & Black Seeded Simpson with Fresh Nectarines dressed with a Basil-Honey Vinaigrette and topped with Blue Goat Cheese and a Spent-Grain Crisp. This was also paired with the American Darling.

2nd Course

Creamy Baked Corn & Chevre Pudding. This was paired with Mr. Sysiphus which tasted like a Don De Dieu with a hint of cherry flavor. I think this was my favorite of the courses and also my favorite of the beers.

3rd Course

Roasted Corn Bisque served with Squash Fritters. This was served with their signature beer Jack D'Or. This beer was not well received at our table. I don't think any of the six of us finished it.

4th Course

Whole Wheat Popover filled with sauteed Black Trumped & Chicken of the Woods Mushrooms served with a Carrot-Parsnip-Mint Puree and Blanched Green Beans. This was served with St Boltoph's Town which is a dark beer, this was Jessie's favorite beer.

5th Course

Housemade Ricotta sweetened with Honey and set in a crust of Spent Grain & Whole Wheat Flour topped with Caramelized Peaches and a Lavender infused Whipped Cream. This was served with Baby Tree which reminded me of Slippery Slope and not just because of the 9.x% alcohol content.

In between each course the owner would speak as would the owners of Pretty Things. They would talk about the course you were about to have and the beer that went with it. It was a great experience although I didn't realize that it would last from 6pm till after 11pm.

I really hope they do more of these in the future.

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Hmm, I know I say this all the time but I really need to be better about writing blogs in a more timely fashion. Last blog was on the 15th.. So, what's happened since then? Lots of long nights for one. The problem is that I don't have the energy to write everything because I'm too busy doing it.. I know.. Excuses, excuses, excuses.. Well screw you... :P

Me and Jessie went over my mom's house on the 16th to hang out in the pool since we have not been able to do that so far this year. A tree fell in her backyard and hit part of the pool but it's still intact! The ladder broke in half and there is a small dent, but otherwise it's still usable. Had a really good time but ended up leaving my sunglasses there which is why I'm stuck in Farmville! Why? Because we went back there on Saturday the 22nd to get my sunglasses and she sucked me into that game because she needed more neighbors! Ok, so the real reason I have not written a blog is probably that I've been playing that stupid game. You have to go into this game every so many hours to harvest the plants you are growing. If you know you're going to be away for awhile you can plant long term things, but if you want to make money you need to plant the 4 hour crops.

The 17th (I know, I hate going day by day too I've been busy)... The 17th Jessie helped get together a raw foods meetup in Thompson, we ate lots of really good raw food and watched Fresh. Fresh is very similar to Food, Inc and Omnivores Dilemma. This movie was a little more in your face about the cattle farms and such, they even showed one scene where they were removing waste from the cows stomachs. They apparently cut a hole in the cow and permanently insert a tube so they can reach into the stomach area and remove the shit the cows can't digest! You know, at some point doesn't it just make sense to stop feeding them this shit to begin with?! I gotta think, when you have to install a tube in a cow so you can manually remove indigestible waste it should be a sign you're doing something wrong!

On the 18th we had dinner at our house.. How can I talk about dinner in the next paragraph after talking about watching a cow's insides be cleaned! Funny thing is, I made burgers! NOT beef burgers, they were made of buffalo and oh so good.

The 19th I went down to the Mets game with Bradley J and met up with Rick Lopez, Amber, Kris and Josh Goldberg. The game was interesting to say the least. They are seriously bad right now. Bobby Parnell gave up 8 runs in the 2nd inning and we lost by a BIG margin, I want to say it was something like 18-2. I know, I could go look it up but honestly I don't care. Murphy went 2-3 and that's really all that matters. I had an awesome time and we really pretty much stopped watching the game after a while and just hung out.

Thursday I went and hung out with Holly and had Mexican and stayed out way too late again.. I posted my facebook status last night.. "Another late night.. No wonder I'm tired all the time.. Ah, well.. Wouldn't trade it for anything.. :D" That's really the only thing I can say about not only Thursday the 20th but also for last night too, which by the way was a super cool night. Last night (I know I'm jumping ahead) I went to Holly's house.  I made a buffalo rice dish and brought it down. The downstairs of her house is kinda odd, they have a family room off the bathroom? When you're in the main section of the house and you want to go to the family room you have to go through the bathroom, I don't think I've ever seen a bathroom/hallway before. The only other way to get to that room is to go outside. The upstairs of the house has two bedrooms and a bathroom and all the doors are like wood slat doors. They are vertical beams of wood with a cross beam near the bottom and top to hold it together. Plus, one of the bedrooms has a big overhead window and a wood canopey.

Nurit came over on Sunday morning and we went to the game with Matt. Randy met us at the stadium and we once again watched the hapless Mets lose. This time they actually made it an interesting game in the 9th before... Oh wait... Rewind to the beginning of this masterful game.. Oliver Perez started and failed to make it out of the first inning! Pedro Martinez started for the Phillies and Perez was taken out with 3-0 count while Pedro was batting. Yes, that's right, they took Perez out in the middle of an at bat and not only in the middle of any at bat, but in the middle of facing the opposing pitcher! I was trying to find out how often that has happened in baseball, but I can only find questions asking if that's legal so I guess that shows how infrequently it happens. I've certainly never seen it unless the pitcher was hurt which he was not. Speaking of things I've never seen. Pagan led off the Mets 1st with an Inside the Park Homerun! I mean, I've seen Inside the Park Homeruns but never live.. Oh and in the 9th with the Phillies batting and two outs Francour made an amazing catch and the ump said he trapped it, after a bit of an argument the umps actually reversed the call to the correct one! I mean how often does that happen.. Now all of this is great but lets get back to the Mets batting in the 9th. Down by two runs Castillo on 2nd and Murphy on 1st with Francour up at bat. No outs by the way, that's key here.. So.. The pitch, the hit and run is on, the 2nd baseman moves over to cover for the throw from the catcher.. Francour connects, he rips a line drive up the middle right into the waiting arms of the fucking 2nd baseman who takes one step and tags 2nd retiring Castillo and waves his arm slightly to the left to tag Murphy who had no chance to return to 1st to complete the UNASSISTED TRIPLE PLAY! There have only been 16 Unassisted Triple Plays in the history of MLB and this was only the 2nd ever that ended a game! You know, if you're going to lose a game at least this one was lost in style!

Now onto Monday.. Almost done.. I already did Wed and Thurs up in one of those tangents.. Monday me and Jessie ran to Manchester with hopes meeting Lynz and Anja for a 7:20 show of Ponyo. Well, we failed.. I hate Manchester, we made it to Red Robin around 7:05 and then preceded to get lost trying to get to the movie theater. Why didn't I just type it into my GPS? Because the movie theater is NOT in my GPS! Oh well, I stuffed my burger down as I walked from the car to the theater and we only missed the first few minutes of the movie. The movie was very cute and the voice acting was exceptional, it might be the best voice acting in a dubbed movie that I can remember. Not going to say much about other than go see it!

Tuesday dinner was at Ryan's this week. Before dinner we met at the pond by the house and went swimming. It was fun, but it made everything later than normal. We didn't eat dinner till at least 8:00. I didn't make anything this week but Jessie made a raw Strawberry Rhubarb pie.

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Tonight I'm going to see Jon Oliver with Jessie, tomorrow is Animefest XVII at Brad's house. Maybe I can sleep on Sunday?

Today's Secret Ingredient is... Horseradish!!

Last night I made dinner for Lynz and I.. Tonight I'm making dinner for Jessie and I.. Both dishes feature Horseradish as the main ingredient..

Last night:

Grass Fed Rib Eye

Corn

Grilled Potato

Last night's sauce was:
Big ass piece of Horseradish (about 1&1/2 inch of root)

Lots of garlic (an entire bulb)

6oz Greek Yogurt - Plain

A pour of Cider Vinegar

Cut the potatoes in half and spread the sauce on and closed the potato up before putting it in some foil. Cook on grill for LONG time, they were mostly done. Added some salt to them after they were cooked.

Pour the rest of the mixture on the steak and grill. Remember to save some to reapply when you flip the steak.

Tonight:

Tilapia

Rice

Mushroom and Garlic Spinach

Tonight's Sauce:

Big ass piece of Horseradish (about 1&1/2 inch of root)

Lots of garlic (an entire bulb)

Piece of Ginger

The juice of 6 lemons

1/4 of an Onion

A pour of Cider Vinegar

Salt

Let the Tilapia soak in the mixture for awhile, then wrap it in Banana Leaves with some of the sauce. Grill the Tilapia in the Banana Leaves.

Pour the rest of the sauce in a sauce pan with some cut up mushrooms and more garlic (maybe 2-3 cloves). Heat it up and toss spinach in for a few seconds before turning off heat, cover to let the spinach absorb the flavors.

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The other night me, Jesse, Jessie, Joe and Badger played a round of mini-golf at Mulligan's Island in Cranston RI. They have two courses, red - easy & blue - hard. At my suggestion we played the hard course which was pretty hard indeed. I posted a bunch of pics on Flickr. There was one hole which nobody finished. It was three islands with hollowed out logs between them. The bastards put hills in front of the logs so it was real hard to get into them. Nobody made it off the 2nd island before the 6+ stroke limit.

Joe ended up winning with a final score of 47, Jesse had 48, Badger 56, Me 59 and Jessie at 63. I certainly want to play it again when it's light out so I can better see the hills from the tee point.

At the end of the course they have a plinko type ball return, if you get the ball on the platform you win a free game. I was the last to drop my ball and the only one to win!

--Diversion of the Day

http://xkcd.com/610/

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

Summer's here! Even have pics to prove it..

Wednesday night me and Jessie went to a renewable energy symposium in Thompson CT. It started with a talk about water energy out by one of the waterfalls.. After the talk we walked back to the library for the rest of the symposium, during the talk I recognized a girl from VSC (Delia) and we ended up chatting. As it turns out Jessie and Sara had been given her information last year and they never got together.. What a cool small world.. Anyway, we ended up hanging out with her for the rest of the night and made plans for her and her husband (Martin) to come with us to dinner and the RiverFire on Saturday.

The rest of the symposium was nice, they talked about solar energy, wind energy and geo-thermal. If you're building a house today the government will basically pay for you to put in geo-thermal which is awesome but you only get a percentage off if you're replacing an already existing setup. Solar is nice but we don't have a southern facing roof so does not really do us too much good.

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Thursday night me and Jessie went and enjoyed a lovely bottle of wine while we ate outside in the patio seating at Bella's! Yay, BYOB outside.. I had their linguine and clams and Jessie had a shrimp pasta dish. Both of them were excellent as usual. Their head chef Allen does a great job of combining flavors. I can't say often enough how good the food there is.. If you're ever in or around Putnam make sure you get to Bella's..

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Friday night me and Lynz went to Waterfront Mary's in Webster. We sat on the deck outside even though the smell of rain was in the air.. I really love the fact that you can drive your boat up to the restaurant, I know I can't do that but it's awesome. There were two ladies trying to leave via boat and the boat was having problems and one of the ladies was obviously drunk and yelling alot (in a funny/happy way). The girls next to us made a joking comment about beating her up if we paid them.. If you have not been to Waterfront Mary's they have a gazebo with a large table in it. As the rain got closer I recommended the 5 of us (me, Lynz and the three ladies at the next table) go steal the gazebo table. We went for it but someone had beat us there so we ended up trying to sit under the umbrella at the bar. While we were trying to figure out lighting over there the gazebo table opened up and we pounced.

We had an awesome time hanging out and after we all ate we moved inside to get away from the bugs that were eating me and Gladi alive. We stayed a lot later than we planned but it was a great night. What a week for meeting random awesome people.. :)

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Saturday me and Jessie cleaned a bit in the morning, went to Quaddick Pond in Thompson and relaxed at mid day and cleaned again in the late afternoon. The house was pretty much cleaned (except floors) before anyone got there. We had Hoyle, Joe, Rowan, Delia and Martin all meet at the house around 4:30.. We walked down to Thai Place and ate before heading over to the River Fire.

Ryan, Gwen and Tim met us over at the River Fire and we grabbed a great spot right on the water till we were yelled at for sitting on the rocks.. We ended up going to the other side of the river where we wouldn't be disturbed.. The River Fire itself was pretty lame and we ended up going back to the house for Apples to Apples till almost midnight.

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Sunday morning me and Jessie went out and did some shopping.. We got a new screened in gazebo for the back yard (where the picnic table is), a portable fire pit, a boche ball set and some other stuff for the house including the miracle hangers for my closet. Afterwards we ate lunch at Buster's and went home to setup the gazebo. Matt came over and helped us (I don't think two people could have put it together). We cleaned the house more and I actually feel ahead of schedule to get the house cleaned for the BBQ.

Speaking of BBQ. Matt, Sile and Daniel came over to eat the first meal in our new gazebo. I made pork chops with balsamic, soy sauce, garlic, and lemon pepper seasoning. I added some hot sauce to Matt and Jessie's but kept mine and Sile's unspicey. I also got a 5lb bag of Sabbrett hot dogs so we won't be needing those for the BBQ and we had some corn on the cob. Daniel actually ate most of a hot dog and half a corn on the cob! Matt and Sile brought over some sides and beer and made it a great first gazebo dinner.

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After everyone left Jessie got me to start watching Weeds. We watched a few episodes of season 1, it's a pretty good show and it certainly has potential.

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Today I have a guy coming to give us a price on putting a fence in our front yard and we are actually moving forward with getting estimates to replace our windows. I have a rough estimate from a place in Danielson and I am having Gladi's brother come from Webster to give us another quote.

Flickr has been updated with a few real nice pics, check 'em out..

---Diversion of the Day

http://xkcd.com/597/

BYOB - Outside too

Bloggity Blog Blog... What's new with me? Well.. The biggest thing is that I fought at Laire this weekend.. I was full combat Saturday from when I woke up till right before feast. We woke up to some orcs trying to attack our tent site and we went after them to kill them, during the fight Lux had his sword stolen so we tracked them into their encampment. I didn't get a chance to swing in the wake up fight because I was walking to slow to get into the fight. I was wearing my sandals and didn't want to chance rolling my ankle on the rocks. I did however fight at the encampment, I hit a few, killed one and didn't get hit so I would call that success. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful until they announced arena fights. I have never lost in an arena fight and really wanted to fight their undefeated champion, I also really didn't want to hurt myself so I originally denied the fight. After watching a few fights however I changed my mind and entered the arena, considering I had not fought since November I think I did pretty well. I did end up losing in the end but I made a pretty good showing of it. Good news is that I can still at least say I'm undefeated in the Avalonian arena..

So, how are my feet? Very good, thanks for asking.. I'm sore like I over did it at the gym but at least I'm not in pain.

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The week in review..

Wednesday night I went out with Holly, we went to Paul's Pasta Shop in Groton. It's a nice place right on the water, I had a Spaghetti Pie which is Spaghetti baked in a deep dish with ricotta, hot and sweet sausage, meatballs, green peppers, mushrooms, pepperoni and mozzarella cheese topped with red sauce. It was so good and crazy big, when it arrived I cut it in half and brought that half home for Jessie to eat for lunch the next day. Holly had Paparadelle Carbonara which is a crazy wide pasta tossed with prosciutto and peas cooked in a black peppercorn alfredo sauce. After dinner we drove to Dairy Queen and then went and stood on the waterfront by the restaurant.

Thursday night I went to dinner with Lynz, we went to Coyote Flaco in Mansfield Center. We sat outside on their deck and ended up having to prop a menu up to block the sun from being in my eyes. The place had this "door handle" which is a man's worst nightmare.. It was a horseshoe pointed upwards around crotch height. I took a picture of Lynz standing next to it, I will post it on Flickr when I'm done with this blog so you can check it out. I had a skirt steak which came with a chicken enchilada, beans and rice. The steak was very good but the enchilada was a little dry, it was much better once I dumped a bunch of guacamole on it. Lynz had chicken mole (if memory serves).

I'm so glad that summer is finally starting, to be able to sit outside two nights in a row should not be a novelty in July. Speaking of summer, I really don't want to be sitting in this class right now, it's really nice out and I'm sitting in a room with windows which just makes it worse because I get to see the sunshine but not get to be in it..

Sunday I went to the Mets game with my friend Lee and his wife. It was awesomely hot and the sun was on us for the whole game.. So, you know how when you normally wear pants and your legs never get sun? Well, that would be a good time to put sunscreen on your legs.. My knees got really sunburned, possibly to the point of sun poison. I had a really tough time driving home and ended up with a really bad headache after taking a bath. I bought some after sun burn lotion while I was in Australia, I put that on it after my bath which made it feel much better. My headache and lack of energy could also have been because I didn't eat much yesterday. Jessie made me some food right before bed and woke me up so I could eat it. I think that and some dead to the world sleep made everything better. I had so little energy I could barely get my car unpacked from Laire, I just threw everything into the garage, I'll start laundry tonight when I get home.

Saturday night (yes, while at Laire) I went to dinner at Veggie Heaven in Denville NJ. Everything on their menu is Vegetarian, they do an amazing job of making meat substitutes. I had beef and chicken in a sesame sauce, Amber had some spinach noodles with chicken and mushrooms, Al had a chicken cutlet supreme, Mateo had a seafood dish (don't remember which one) and Adam had sushi and some lo mein. Everything (even the seafood) tasted like what they said it was supposed to be! I've never had a seafood substitute that actually tasted like shrimp, crab, etc.. We will probably be going back there each month, it has a much better selection than Fu's (the place we normally go). It's about a 20 min drive but it's very worth it.

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In other Mets news.. Delgado and Reyes both worked out on Sunday and are looking good, there is still no timetable for their return but they are doing better and should be back sooner rather than later. Maine and Beltran have not been doing as well and they will probably be back later rather than sooner.. They enter the all star break 6.5 games back and will certainly have a up hill battle in the 2nd half, hopefully we can get our players back soon to make the hill a little less steep.

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Tonight me and Jessie are going to a town meeting to support/change the BYOB outdoor serving law. Over the last few years restaurants in Putnam have added outdoor seating. If you serve alcohol you are allowed to serve it on the outdoor patio seating, however if you're BYOB you are not allowed to let anyone on the outdoor patio to drink! The meeting tonight is to change the BYOB law so that they can allow people on the outdoor patio to BYOB.

Saturday Putnam is having it's first River Fire from 7pm till 10pm. Me and Jessie will be there, if you're in the area come on by. Maybe we can do dinner before heading over like we did at the fireworks.

---Thought of the Day

These cookies are magic! They cure sinus infections and cranky moods.. :D

---Diversion of the Day

http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/2009-07-07/index.html

Rollercoasters aren't just for Lynz anymore.. ;)

I have been taking a new way to Milford the last few weeks thanks to Google Maps and my GPS. Anyway, there is a home improvement store on the way that has the following quote on their sign out front.. "If you can't learn to do something well, enjoy doing it badly"

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Lots has happened since my last blog...

Went to the Mets/Yanks game at CitiField and was once again reminded why every year we say "this is the last Mets/Yanks game we go to".. I say this now, but I'm sure I'll go back on this next year.. I could sell those stupid tickets for almost as much (if not more) than my entire ticket package. Maybe next year I will really sell them..

Thursday was a great day with a capital G-R-E-A-T... Started out super exciting with a work con-call then going to Long Subaru in the down pour to get my 3,000 mile service.. I know, it does not sound to great yet.. Well as it turns out, Long Subaru gives you your first service free! After my car was done I went to Lynz's house for lunch, we ate at the Willi-Brewpub which I had not done in a long time and then got to relax at her house (kid-free and stress-free) which I had not done in, it seems like forever.. After dinner I ran home, took a quick shower and went out to meet Holly..  I got to meet Louie and then we headed out for sushi, the sushi restaurant we went to had outside seating so we got to enjoy the semi-warm weather while we ate. After dinner we went and played pool, I won both games with Holly scratching on the 8-ball, I guess that goes back to the quote on the top of this blog.. After pool we went to the boardwalk and sat on a bench looking out on the ocean. It was a beautiful night and it made for a wonderful end of a great day.

Sunday was not all bad, in fact it was not even half bad.. Actually, I think I quite enjoyed it (it being the day as a whole).. I went over Sara's house for lunch and we went and got (wait for it) sushi at Thai Basil.. After lunch we went and walked around the paths around her yard with Murphy.  Sunday night Jesse, Marie and Sara came over and we went to the Courthouse for dinner and then we met up with Rene, Hoyle, Janine, Matt, Sile and Daniel and watched the Putnam Fireworks. I love the Putnam Fireworks, they always do an amazing job. I don't know how much they spend on them but it's worth every penny..

Speaking of Fireworks.. Friday night Amber and Kris came over and we hung out with my friend Mike playing Guitar Hero till real late.. Saturday me, Jessie, Amber and Kris went to my mom's house for a bbq, I went to Smoke and Leather and finally got a pipe.. Joe (my mom's husband) makes a really good BBQ sauce that he marinated the chicken in and put on top of the burgers. My mom bought a bunch of fireworks and we had a really good time shooting them off in the evening.. Me, my brother and his kids played Croquet during the day which was lots of fun (thanks Randy for showing me that silly game)..

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In and around this crazy week I've been working on my new shield for Laire, I am planning on fighting a bit this weekend so I need to have my shield re-done. I had been trying to get someone who was actually an artist to paint on my shield but nobody could do it under short notice so I did it all myself.. I'm actually shocked at how good it came out.. Not to sound too cocky but, I do tend to do a good job at whatever I actually try to do.. "unquiet" right? Anyway, I have pictures of it on my computer and they should be on Flickr soon after I post this blog, go check them out..

My feet have been doing much better, I ran a few times in the last few days and I've even been doing push ups again. Must make these pants not tight!

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Yesterday me and Jessie were going to go to the Thai place in Webster but on the way saw signs for Waterfront Mary's and decided to go there instead.. I'm very glad we did, the place is right on Webster lake and they have outside seating right against the water. They actually have docks so you can drive your boats to the restaurant! What an awesome idea, I would love to live somewhere that I could drive a boat to a restaurant! The food was good and cheap as was the beer. I will certainly be going back and I would recommend it to anyone. We had crab cakes which had tons of actual crab meat and I had a shrimp ceaser salad. The waitress recommended I put lemon in my ceaser salad which I had never tried before and turned out to be an awesome idea. The restaurant has a Myspace page but I can't link it because I'm typing this blog at work and can't access Myspace.

After dinner we watched Iron Chef America and History Detectives while I worked on my shield. I am all gaga over Elyse Luray (one of the History Detectives), I feel sorta stalker-ish because last night I joined Twitter and she was the first person I added my following list..

I added a bunch of new Food Network shows to my TV lineup (Chopped, Next Food Network Star, and The Best Thing I Ever Ate) for the summer since all the regular shows are in repeats.

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Unquiet by Toad the Wet Sprocket

I am taught but i

Never learn a thing

I'm not deaf but i

Can't hear everything

A quiet world

Unquiet

I am strong but i

Never move a thing

I have words but i

Lack the voice to sing

A quiet world

Unquiet

I would sell the world

Would i...

I am fast but i

Never move at all

I have sight but i

Never choose to show

A quiet world

Unquiet

I would sell the world

Would i...

A quiet world

Unquiet

Ahh Warmth!

Had a great weekend.. Lovely weather and lots of fun events..

Thursday I picked Jessie up and we went to Red Robin for dinner before seeing Earth. When Discovery/BBC filmed Planet Earth they had a bunch of stuff they didn't use. Disney took some of the stuff they aired in Planet Earth and a bunch of stuff they didn't and made a really nice movie out of it. James Earl Jones narrated the American version which is always a good thing. Disney is planning on making this an annual Earth Day event, next year they are releasing Oceans. I just looked up the figures and it made $83,316,770 this weekend which is a lot of trees! Disney announced they would plant a tree for every ticket sold over the first weekend! When trying to find numbers I found out that Patrick Stewart narrated the International version of the film, hopefully when they release the DVD they will include both narrations.

Friday was wonderfully warm.. Melissa came over and we spent the day out and about, sat outside at Bella's Gourmet Market for lunch and I had the Balsamic Watermelon which was nice and refreshing.. Afterwards we went to Mohegan so she could put in applications before heading down to the outlet mall at exit 65. We got back to Putnam as the sun was starting to set, we tried to go to Thompson Dam but the bugs were coming out in force and we didn't think to use bug spray so we didn't last long.

Saturday was equally as nice out.. Putnam had their town cleanup scheduled for the morning and couldn't have picked a better day! Unfortunately I pushed it a bit too far during the cleanup and hurt my foot trying to get a boot from a pretty steep hill. Our cleanup ended early because I really couldn't stand/walk on my foot.. :(

After spending some quality time on the couch with an ice pack I felt good enough to head back out. We went down the outlet mall and I found a great piece of luggage made by Samsonite and Jessie finally replaced her sunglasses. After dinner we went to Water's Edge in Greenville RI, I posted some picks from there on Flickr but they don't really capture the beauty of the place. They have a porch that goes out over the water and creates a really amazing view, especially as the sun sets. The food there is really good too which could make it one of my normal haunts. I had the Rigatoni with Rabe and Sausage which was so good, the other nice thing was that the portion size was really nice and I didn't feel stuffed when we left.

After dinner we went to "Music at the Mill" and saw the West Eddy Trio. The Mill is a very small venue, they have couches and comfy living room chairs as their seats. They have a small selection of snacks and non-alcoholic beverages available which are all inexpensive. There is no set price for the show, instead they pass around a hat for you to contribute what you feel you want to. Adrienne West is the lead singer for the West Eddy Trio, she has a knock out voice. They did a bunch of covers and few of their originals, check out their youtube page. I personally can't wait for them to release their own music on a CD. They recorded the show and hopefully they will release some sort of live CD, the Mill has a few live CDs of people who were there in the past so there is a chance they will release Saturday night's show.

We went to the Mets game on Sunday and watched yet another bad game! Love the stadium, still planning on writing a blog about that, but it's getting very frustrating watching the Mets play bad ball... Murphy fell down again in LF... I know it's early but these early losses are killing us...

---Diversion of the Day
http://www.explosm.net/comics/345/