/sigh... Jose Reyes was told he has to rest for 2-8 weeks while he takes medication for his thyroid.. That leaves Reyes and Beltran out for the season opener.. ugh... Who ever heard of a smegging baseball player having to sit because of a thyroid problem...
I finished Sea of Monsters this morning, it was very good and I'm looking forward to the 3rd book, but before I do that one I am doing Good Omens which was finally released on audio. So far it's good, I like how any tape left in a car for more than a fortnight becomes Queen's greatest hits.. :)
Speaking of music, Jessie just sent me a Folk Opera, the music is very good and it's coming to MA in April, I may have to go see it if I am free.. Check it out here..
Last night I went to Lov'n it Live which is a raw vegan restaurant in southern Atlanta, I went there the first time I was in the area and it was just as good if not better. I got a seaweed soup which was good and a nutloaf with broccoli & cheese which was amazing. The broccoli that is, the nutloaf was just ok. I asked for the recipe for the broccoli but they wouldn't give it to me. I took the train there instead of driving and it only took like 40 mins total to get there, the food took forever to get, I was getting upset as I sat waiting for them to serve me. It took almost an hour to get the soup and about 20 mins more to get the main course. They are just lucky they are that good.
After class today I went to Old Norcross and wandered around, it has the feel of Putnam with cute little nick nack stores and antique shops. They have a neat coffee house that offers beer and wine tasting as well as coffee. They also have a real expensive steak house and the british pub I went to the other night. I walked around for a bit and took some pictures of the really cool kids park. Not the one I was in the other night, this main street area has two really cool parks (one on each side). Hopefully the pictures will do it justice, I will post them either later tonight or tomorrow from work. After hanging out there for a bit I came back to the hotel and then to Barnacles for dinner. Brandon was there tonight! I hung out with him for a bit before he went home and I came back to the hotel.
Now I'm just listening to the songs from the Folk Opera while waiting to play my OOTP games against Lee. Meeting him online at 9.
Went to dinner with Harry, Nicole, Josh, Keith and Beckie at a place called Wasabi over by Keith and Beckie's house. If you remember from the other day I had sushi with Jessie, Holly and Louie and had these things I had never seen called Johnny Mussels.. I almost died when I saw "Spicy Mussels" on the menu at Wasabi because they were the same thing.. So, now I saw (and ate) them twice! They were just as good at this place.. The regular sushi and maki was not quite as good but it was still very good. It was nice to see Beckie and Keith again and we had a great time over dinner.
After dinner Harry, Nicole, Josh and I went to Rodie's Tavern which is a biker bar over by Harry's house. The owner was an awesome guy who seemingly bought the bar to have fun. He goes around to each person and offers them challenges like beating his score at a boxing game for a entire day's worth of food and drink. I was shocked to see they had Yuengling on tap, I even more surprised to find it was only $1 per beer and/or $6 for a pitcher! We played a few games of pool before the owner came over and asked if anyone wanted to challenge him to a game for a beer. Harry took the bet. This guy was good and Harry was just as good if not better! The owner won the first game and they played double or nothing on game 2 which Harry won. Very fun night.. I really felt at home at Harry's house and was kinda sad to leave..
Left Harry's with the intention of meeting up with people in Duluth but as I was most of the way there I found out nobody was available that night.. doh.. I could have just stayed at Harry's house another night, but oh well.. Since I was almost at Duluth I figured I would stop at the sports bar and get a Fat Tire while I figured out my plans. After some research I booked a room using Marriott points in Jacksonville Florida. After a long drive in which I got pulled over I arrived at the hotel here. I was talking to Jessie and being very aware of the speed limits when I passed a cop. I checked my cruise control (65) and checked the speed limit (55) and figured I was safe. The cop pulled out and insisted I was going 80! I argued with him for a bit once it was obvious he was going to give me a ticket and he basically said since I'm out of state he knows I won't fight it but that he would write it out for 75 in a 55! WTF!! I guess the lesson here boys and girls is don't drive at night on back roads in Georgia with Gay Rights and Mets bumper stickers!
This morning I got up and went for a walk around the hotel, ate lunch, went to a state park in the swamp and went to a state park on a peninsula. Took lots of pics and even one video which are posted to Flickr and Youtube respectively. I have been taking some very nice pics this trip if I do say so myself.
Tonight? I don't know.. Go to the pool? Grab some dinner? Just be lazy.. Tomorrow I drive to Disney.
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.
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...
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.
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..
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.. :)
Me and Jessie decided to head to PortlandOregon for my birthday this year, why Portland?Storm Large wrote a one woman musical about her life that she is performing at the Portland Center Stage, the show is running from March till the end of May and I hate missing once in a lifetime shows.If you don’t know who Storm Large is she is a singer/song writer who is from MA, she moved out west and started a band.That band had released a few CDs and then she went on Rockstar Supernova which is where we found her and fell in love.She is a tough, kick ass girl who makes no excuses for her attitude, language and appearance.Since Rockstar Supernova she has released another CD which not surprisingly was her best selling one to date.Check out her song Ladylike which she sung on Rockstar Supernova and later recorded for the CD of the same name.
So, using Marriott Rewards points, Continental miles and a travel voucher we got our trip all set for a grand total of $80 + rental car and food.I may bitch about my job but the travel thing is one part of it I really do love.
Enough background, let’s get to the fun that was this trip…I mean that in a mostly serious way..Thursday’s plans: Fly from Hartford to Newark, check.Fly from Newark to Portland, how ‘bout Friday?It turns out that Newark was having bad weather so our flight from Hartford was delayed, ironically (or rather unfortunately) the flight to Portland was not delayed by the weather..Our flight to Portland was supposed to leave at 6:05 (and did) and our flight from Hartford got in around 7:00… No big deal, the hotel will be on the airline right?Nope…Because it was the weather that caused us to miss our flight they would not put us up in a hotel for the night.We were made aware of this while still in Hartford so I started calling/texting a bunch of people from Laire to see who lived near the airport.Our new flight was at 7am so we decided it would be silly to get picked up by someone local just to have to be back at the airport for 5am.A few calls later and I cancelled one night in Portland and used the points to get a room in Newark..
After texting, chatting with a bunch of people in the area we decided to have Grifo meet us at the airport and go out with him for dinner/drinks.He got on a few wrong trains and in the end never made it over (gave up around 9:30).While waiting for Grifo to show up we met some really cool guys, one of them was from Chicago and visiting his friend in NYC.His friend apparently hooked him up with a crazy girl, depending on who’s version of the story you believe he was told that the girl was crazy before he went off with her.Regardless, she was crazy and not the good kind.She is on medication and once it wore off she got real crazy and the whole experience ended with her hitting him while sitting in the airport waiting for his flight.I have to give him credit for doing the right thing, he grabbed her hands and restrained her knowing that the cops (or goons as he called them) would show up and break it up.As it turns out nobody reacted at all and he had to just sit there and take the beating, makes me sick that we pay a so called security force to let that happen.
We finally made it to the hotel and now it was getting late so our food options were very limited, we ended up eating in the hotel restaurant which ended up not being that bad.I had a steak which was very well prepared, the spices were done very nicely and it was cooked almost perfectly (crispy on outside but still pink in the middle).The hotel had Yuengling as well which is always a win.Not the birthday dinner I imagined (eating at a nice restaurant in Portland) but it ended up being really good.
---- Crazy Enough
When we got to the airport on Friday we couldn’t use the self check-in because our flight had been changed from the original plan, we went to the elite check in area and the elite security clearance area and were on her flight with plenty of time to spare.Again, I love this part of my job..The non elite lanes were out of control and we probably would have missed our flight.
Arrived in Portland, got a car and went to the hotel to shower and change before heading out for the day.We were going to do a walking tour of Portland so we parked between the tour starting point and the theater but due to my foot we decided not to do the tour.Instead we did the beer tour, we had lunch at a brewery called Deschutes Brewery, it was very good.I had a burger with garlic, goats cheese and some mustard.Jessie had a lamb burger which had tzatziki sauce on it, her burger was ok but mine was better.We each got a flight of beers which includes six four ounce glasses, my favorites were the Mirror Pond Ale, the Amber Dawn, the Bachelor Bitter and the Gluten Free ESB.
After lunch we went to a book store called Powell’s.This place is out of control big, they are at least an entire city block and three stories tall, they have different color rooms for what genre you’re looking for (the blue room was Sci-Fi, the red room was games, etc.).They had some really old out of print books just sitting on the shelves used and some even new, they had autographed copies of some books for sale as well and they had a RPG section that was bigger than most stores entire sci-fi and fantasy section.They had RPG books from the old West End Star Wars and one book from the Decipher Star Trek as well as almost any Wizards of the Coast book you could ever want.We wandered around for a while to walk off the buzz we had from lunch.They had an Ancient Greek section that was an entire isle, some of the books were in Ancient Greek and some were the translated versions we are all used to seeing.
After lunch we went to one of McMenamin’s pubs (the Ringler’s Annex) and I had a their raspberry beer (Ruby) which was very good, Jessie got a coffee with rum and it was super strong.After our mid day drinks we went for a walk around the city, we didn’t see too much other than pubs and after a while ended up back at Powell’s so Jessie could get a real coffee before the show which we split.
The Portland Center Stage is a nice theater, they are actually two theaters, there is a big one upstairs which has two levels of seating and then there is the small one down stairs.Crazy Enough was downstairs in the smaller of the two stages.Before the show I saw Storm come in and walk up to the third floor to get ready, Jessie was standing on the stairs taking a picture of the poster when Storm walked past her.While we were waiting for the show we saw the announcement that they extended the run to the end of June!
I don’t know what to say about the show, it was the most personal thing I think I’ve ever seen done on stage.She talked in depth about everything in her past, her mom had made a lot of attempts to take her own life and when Storm was a little kid she was told by her mom’s psychiatrist that it was hereditary and that she was be crazy like her mom.She was told it would probably kick in when she was in her 20s or at the latest when she had kids of her own!What a thing to tell a little girl!She talked about a few of her mom’s attempts including one in which she put dishwasher detergent in dinner.She talked about going to see her mom in the hospital and how it was when her mom would come home from these trips.She talked about her sexuality at school and her bout with heroine when she moved to CA.There was one really funny point when she was talking about her early sexuality when she had gotten an older lawyer in bed while she was still very young and after hours of sex after all of her makeup had worn off the guy looked down at her and asked “how old are you, really?” and she said 13.I don’t know if she was 13 at the time or if she just said that to fuck with the guy but his reaction was hysterical.She went on to talk about how her band and her attempt to get onto the Lilith Fair.She also was a model for a dildo company and she relayed a really funny story about her time posing with the “product”, the camera man told her that she made their penises look small.She finally made peace with her mom right before she finally died a few years ago, and she admits that she is indeed crazy, but unlike her mom her crazy works for her.She’s not too crazy, she’s just crazy enough..If you have the means I would recommend the trip out to Portland if only to see her show.Hopefully she will release a live copy when the run is over, it would be awesome if it became a touring show.We got the soundtrack and it has some truly amazing tracks.
---- Speaking of crazy enough…Did you know that Seattle is only a 3 hour drive from Portland?Why is that relevant?Well, the Red Sox were playing the Mariners so Saturday afternoon we drove up to Safeco field and saw the game.Saturday morning we met Mik (a guy Jessie had been talking to on IM since Australia) and wandered around the city.We went to the Saturday Market which is an outdoor market with food, drinks, clothes and artwork.I had a Rogue summer beer and got a few cool things from the market.We ate breakfast and lunch at the same vegetarian restaurant and then headed off to Seattle.Safeco is a nice stadium, the view from the seats was very good, we had row 1 in the upper deck so we had a great view.The only problem I had with the stadium was that when you were not at your seat I felt very away from the game, you could not see the field from any of the concourses.The food was good, I had an Ichiroll which is a really spicy tuna maki roll, it was so spicy I almost couldn’t eat it.One really cool thing about this stadium is that they had the ability to order food from your seat, you could do this on your Nintendo DS (Mariners are owned by Nintendo) or your Verizon phone via text messages.The other nice thing (hope you’re not surprised) is that they serve Starbucks coffee instead of Dunkin Donuts.I had a few different beers at the stadium including a Pyramid Amber Ale which was really good.Speaking of Pyramid, they had a brew house across the street from the stadium which we went to after the game.I had a summer brew from there which was also very good.
We didn’t get back to the hotel till after 2am and had to get up at 4am so we could get to the airport in time for our 8am flight..At the airport in Portland we went to the Rogue brew house and had a pre-flight drink and breakfast which included Kobe beef meatballs with blue cheese inside them.At the Detroit airport I had my mid-day Murphy’s Irish Stout..Got back to CT and ate at the Japanese restaurant in Willimantic before finally getting home to pass out..
---- Portland is a really cool city, it's very laid back and very spread out. There are no really big sky scrapers and there is a bunch of greenery in the city. The ride to Seattle was amazing, there was this enormous snow caped mountain off in the horizon and the road was lined with big hills and enormous trees! I can see why people love it out there, I wish I had more time (and healed feet) so I could go hiking and enjoy the lovely surroundings. I would like go back there when I have time to just veg in the wilderness for a few days.
I am totally in love with this heat wave! I bitch and complain all winter but I do think the change in seasons makes you appreciate the warmer weather and the regrowth of nature. I just wish the colder parts of the year didn't last as long.
Yesterday I went up to Kaitlyn's house, we went and got some sammiches and brought them up to a beautiful waterfall in the middle of the woods. The water is all mountain run off and runs really strong this time a year due to the snow melting. All around the water there are amazing looking big rocks, Amber could probably spend an entire week there just studying the rocks.. I took a few pics (posted to Flickr), but they don't do it justice. The water comes down a waterfall and forms a really nice swimming hole that is a little over head deep, on the other side of the swimming hole is a cliff face of clay. Kaitlyn was telling me how in the summer they will swim across and get a bunch of clay, they swim back with it and put it all over their bodies and lay out in the sun on the rocks! Free spa anyone! I know, you can't have a spa without a hot tub/jacuzzi right? Well, if you swim to the base of the falls there are rocks you can sit on in the water and have the waterfall pounding around you.. After we ate and chatted for a while we ended up going for a swim, the water was surprisingly not cold. I would say the ocean in Australia was colder, I was able to sit in the water for a few awhile whereas in Australia I was not even able to get legs in the water!
Nature is really the best medicine, my foot feels great after spending a few hours out by the falls... I even slept without my boot on last night for the first time since having the cast off!
Saturday morning me and Jessie went for breakfast up at the Quay, she had a salmon, egg and spinach sandwich on a bagel and I had a BLT which served on Turkish bread. She was not very impressed with the bagel, but liked the sandwich as a whole. The BLT however was great, I really like Turkish bread which is crunchy but also soft and how could you not love a sandwich of back bacon! After breakfast we grabbed the ferry and headed over to Manly to hit the beach.
Although it was very warm out the water was crazy cold.. We got to the beach and found an empty spot close to the water to put our towels (newly purchased) down. There were two girls sitting down feeding the birds so we asked them to watch our stuff for a few minutes while we went into the water, they said yeah and laughed giving us 5 minutes, no make that 2 before we get back. Me and Jessie walked down to the water and I got my feet in up to the shins before retreating back to the towels, Jessie actually got in and went swimming for a few minutes before joining me at the towels. We ended up chatting with Sara and Irina for awhile, Sara is from the Netherlands and Irina is from Russia via Spain. They met at the university over by work where they work. When they were getting ready to leave I asked them to lunch on Monday which Sara accepted, we were to meet today at 12:15 at the escalators.
Me and Jessie soaked in the sun for a bit longer before heading out to the upstairs bar that overlooks the beach where we had a beer each before heading back towards the city. Jessie had been talking to guy Mik who lives in SF but spent some time in Sydney, he recommended eating Turkish Pizza over at a place called Saray's. We went over there for dinner, most places in Sydney are BYO (Bring Your Own) which is really good because you can usually buy an entire bottle of wine or beer for the same price you would normally pay for one glass at a restaurant. Before dinner we went to a bottle shop and got a bottle of sparkling shiraz, being American I never thought of red sparkling wine before but it was really good and I'm actually surprised now that we don't have sparkling reds in America. Armed with our sparkling shiraz we went in and got some pizza. Jessie got a lamb pizza and I got a egg and sausage pizza, they were both they were both so much better with the addition of a tzatziki style sauce Jessie got to "dip" the pizza in. I say "dip" because we really just smothered it on and enjoyed. Jessie also got one of the grape leaves because we were watching the lady make them fresh, it was the first time I've ever had one of those that was spicy.. It was so good.
After dinner Ange called, her evening ended early and she was still up and very awake. She met us at the hotel and we ended up driving with her up the Rocks to park and walk back to the hotel. I thought the pub on the Quays was still open but it was not so we went back to the hotel bar which was just calling last call. Jessie got a beer and I got two beers since it was last call and we all hung out and chatted while we drank our beers. Afterwards I walked her back to her car and she drove me back to the hotel. I know she's probably reading this right now so I won't say too much, but.. OK, I know, when has that stopped me before... Ange is a very cool person, I had a blast talking to her on the phone the other night hanging out with her in person was even better. It felt very comfortable for the three of us to hang out, it was like she was an old friend instead of someone we just met. I'm hanging out with again on Wednesday night and really looking forward to it.
---- Speaking of looking forward to it... I was speaking with Robyn today and she is having problems with her car, it seems to be overheating.. After about 15 minutes of driving the car starts getting hot, the heat gets up to middle bar and then the check engine light comes on. Apparently the vents in the car are still blowing cold air but... I didn't get to talk to much about it with her because I just found out this morning but I had to run to class so we had to cut our conversation short. She is going to check into the cost of bringing to the dealer but if this does not get fixed she may not be coming up this weekend! I'm not very car savvy, anyone who is have any ideas? I would really hate to have her not come up, but I would hate it more if her car died on the way.
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Sunday we got up early-ish and headed up to breakfast before catching the train to the Blue Mountains. We took the subway from Circular Quay to Center Station and purchased round trip tickets to go from Central to the Blue Mountains (Katoomba) which was a complete waste because they didn't have a swipe thing or a collector at the Katoomba station and we didn't need them to get back either because once back in the city limits we could use our regular week passes. We had to wait awhile for the train and once we got on it was way to air conditioned, we were frozen by the time we got out there. Warmed up quickly once we were back out of the air conditioning. Grabbed the Big Bus Tour around the Blue Mountains and got off and Scenic World which had a open glass floored sky ride over the ravine to a restaurant & shop. From the restaurant you can take a 415 metre railway that runs at a 52 degree decline into the valley floor. Once on the floor there is a 50 minute walk through the brush before heading back up in another sky ride. The walk was amazing and took us a bit over the 50 minutes, my foot actually started to feel really good while I was walking down there in the woods, so much so that I was not limping towards the end! It didn't last long, I would say once we were back into town I started to limp again.. Maybe I just need to live in the woods.. Anyway, at one point on the path there was a gazebo they called the rainforest room, it had pews and a podium which would have been the greatest place ever to teach a class from. We took bunches of pictures yesterday and I posted what I considered the best ones from my phone.
We left Scenic World and met Kate from Canada on the bus heading back to the train, she was very cool and was in Sydney for awhile but was heading home soon. We got off the bus and the three of us went to a market before she left and got the train that we missed because we were still looking at stores and I was getting food when it came. We ended up getting off the train early and grabbed a train into Newtown to go to the Poly meetup. We met a few cool people there and had some good conversation before heading to dinner at Thai Tanic, I know lame name.. We had a good time chatting over dinner and one of the guys, Nigel, drove us back towards the hotel. He lives in Manly and made the offer to take us snorkeling, I think Jessie is planning on taking him up on the offer which should be really cool for her.
---- So, Jessie and Ange have been chatting and Jessie mentioned Elizabeth's username. I wonder what Elizabeth's reaction to a girl in Australia stalking her is going to be...
---- So onto today... Sorry for the long blog but not much time to write when you're living it... You know the line, "Don't dream it, be it".. That line is still just as much true today as it was when Tim said it in 1975. Remember that and you'll never want for excitement and enjoyment in your life..
Not much going on here, just watching students do labs.. I went to lunch today, got to the escalator at 12:10 and much to my pleasant surprise Sara showed up pretty much right on time! We chatted while we ate and then went and sat outside on a bench and chatted some more till I had to go back to work. We are going to meet tomorrow too.. She has a boyfriend back home and is not interested in doing anything while here in Sydney but loves meeting new people..
I have no idea what the plan is for tonight, I will text Jessie when I get out and see if she has any ideas.
---Thought of the Day "Don't dream it, Be-ee it" "What Spirit is, man can be" Who needs the Bear Necessities when you can have it all! "I want it all, and I want it now"
Jessie just got her tickets to Australia, we are actually flying back on the same flight which is really cool, she even got the seat next to me.. :D
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Is ESPN kidding with their articles? I am sick and tired of that website/network commending the Yankees for spending hundreds of millions!!!!! AARGGHHH!!
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Last night I went to the People's Pint again with Kaitlyn. We got there and the place was packed so we asked if they had live music and as it turns out they were having an "old time session" night starting at 8:30. What that means is that people from all over the area come to the bar with their instruments and jam/play old time songs, if you've read my Ireland blogs you will remember that type of thing is big in Ireland and it's awesome to have a place to go nearby that does the same things. Last night there were a few fiddle players, a banjo, a washtub bass and a few other instruments as the night went on. I had a steak salad which came with a sesame dressing that reminded me very much of Anne's Shitake Sesame dressing. We had chips and salsa and Kaitlyn had a burrito, apparently she is a big fan of spicy because she dumped a ton of this really, really hot sauce they called Rooster Sauce which tasted really good but jeez it was HOT! She said it's a similar sauce to this stuff. I had one bite of her burrito and my nose started to run it was so hot, it's a good thing I had good beer to kill at least some of the spice.
Speaking of good beer.. After dinner it was snowing again so we went driving around on back roads while listening to music, talking and drinking Slippery Slope beer, I didn't drink much of it since I was driving.. After the drive we went up and hung out in her room for a bit before I headed home.. So I am a big believer in the idea that everyone's stories are what makes them who they are, last night while hanging out I found Kaitlyn's coaster collection and we spent a bunch of time going through each one and the story associated with it. Did I mention lately how much I love my life.. :D
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Today was the 2009 Northeast International Auto Show in Providence.. Lame, lame, lame! So, I get out of work and drove all the way there to find basically a big sales floor. Every car manufacturer was there and they each had all of their current cars on display. They didn't have any cool concept cars or even upcoming 2010 models. You would have seen just as much if not more if you went into their individual dealers showrooms. The only semi-interesting was the stuck up rich bitch who jumped into the Black GMC Yukon Hybrid and proclaimed "this is my car", when her friend questioned if her mom would get it for her she replied something like "she told me I'm not allowed to spend more than $40,000 on a car today but this is the car I want", ugh! Speaking of a Hybrid Yukon, guess how many miles per gallon it gets? 20! That's right, it's a hybrid that gets 20 miles to the gallon! I really wonder why the American car companies are surprised nobody is buying the shit they are selling...
Speaking of which, my friend sent me an email awhile ago which had a really cool picture.. I am going to post it here, the fine print is amazing.. :D
(the fine print says "you probably thought it was smart to buy a foreign import of superior quality with better gas mileage and resale value. Maybe you even thought that years of market share loss might prod us into rethinking our process and redesigning our products with better quality in mind. But you forgot one thing: We spend a shitload of money on lobbyists. So now you're out $25 billion, plus the cost of your Subaru. Maybe next time you'll buy American like a real man. Either way, we're cool.")
---- Lynz and Anja came over tonight, we got some Chinese and Anja watched Muppet Treasure Island while me and Lynz chatted. She left a little while ago so I'm here at the blogging machine typing this stuff up before bed. Ok, well I started typing it while she was putting Anja to bed. Dani called while they were here and is apparently really sick so I will be running logistics this month which is just as good since I will still need to take it easy on my foot. Speaking of Laire.. Kevin will be coming down with me to NPC this month, hopefully this will become more of a regular occurrence.
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My friend Chris sent me a email the other day with some cool facts about Orange County NY.. Here are some of the more interesting ones:
'Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese' was invented in Chester , NY (1872)
'Velveeta' cheese spread (1923) and 'Liederkranz' cheese (1882) were invented in Monroe , NY
The oldest (1839) continuously operating winery in the US is in Washingtonville , NY (The Brotherhood Winery )
The Tuxedo dinner jacket originated in Tuxedo Park
The first Registered National Historic Landmark (1850) is Washington 's Headquarters in Newburgh , NY
Bear Mountain State Park has more visitors annually than does Yellowstone National Park .
The main runway at Stewart International Airport (SWF) (formerly Stewart Air Force base) is over two miles long (11, 818 feet) and is an alternate landing site for the Space Shuttle.
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Kristen sent out a video of how to make cows jealous, I think you'll all appreciate this one..
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Speaking of risque stuff.. Carrie sent me a really cool Facebook invite.. I urge you all to join us in celebrating the end of Bush on 1-20-2009!
Just got back from lunch a little while ago.. I love that spot, we have been there so often that now the little forest creatures are coming out to hang out with us.. Today a few chipmunks came almost to touching distance.. They are not afraid of us at all which is awesome! I love the views, every time we are there we see something new.. Today I saw a beautiful spiders web high up in the trees, it was glistening in the sun light, unfortunately I moved and lost it and couldn't find it again because the sun moved too.. Sometimes I wish I had cameras in my eyes to take pictures of all the beauty in the world..
Part of me is really sad that winter is coming, we will have to make sure we get there a few more times before it gets real cold..
An old favorite to lighten the mood.. Robert Tilton, I swear some of these have to be real!!
---- Thought of the day Never pretend you like something just because your partner does.. It's hard to deal with the fact that maybe you and your partner don't agree on music/movies/food but it's better to know now than to find out later.. Especially when finding out later also means finding out that you've lied all this time about liking it..
