OK.. First let me apologize for not blogging since Santamas.. I hope you all got what you wanted from the big fat guy.. I feel really bad not blogging, I realized that most of my blogging happens from the comfort of my classroom while the students are on breaks and in labs. Well, I haven't been teaching so I haven't been blogging, plus I've been too busy man whoring it up to stop and type anything... I have been thinking about all of my loyal readers, and I know what you're going to say... You're going to say "why bother doing cool and exciting things if you're not going to blog about them?".. And, all I can say is you're right... Shame on me... :D
Oh, while I'm on the apology thing... Let me apologize for the length of this blog in advance.. It has been awhile...
Before I get into history.. I woke up this morning and went to go to the Terry Goodkind blog so I could paste it in here and talk about it and he had removed it, well not removed it but altered it drastically... If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm talking about Legend of the Seeker and Terry Goodkind's reaction to the first few episodes. As you may or may not know (or for that matter care) the show is based on Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series and each season is supposed to encompass one book. The show has had 7 episodes air (8th one to air next week) and everyone I know has been getting disheartened due to the fact that it does not follow the story and feel of the books. Anyway, so Terry Goodkind had posted a blog on Dec 29th which was as follows..
"As is my usual way, I'm pretty opinionated , Yes I know what a total shock!
BUT! as is my way, I generally am neutral up to the point that enough time and or events have taken place to clearly see something has to change.
I've been pretty much "watch the show for what it is, Love the book's etc...etc...etc."
We have seen enough from the shows to see a clear concise direction from the writers (under Ken Biller's direction) to know they (Ken Biller) have no respect for the content[s] of the series.
We have scenes where Richard is reduced to a peeping tom, Star Wars rip off's, Buxom Confessor spilling out of her bustea and running around in a corset, totally undermining the station of her office. The purity of which she portrays.
So many other things that would not happen within the world of Richard and Kahlan.. I'm embarrassed!
We have a voice, we have a means, we can make a change.
To this point we have asked that you all be supportive, give it time and a chance.
We have asked that you try and be positive.
We have removed and deleted posts ranting about how degrading the show truly is.
I will not sacrifice the integrity of this series and its characters.
I will not back down from someone like Ken Biller who is a coward and simply uses scenes from other movies like Star Trek, Star Wars, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves or Brigadoon. Someone like Ken Biller who steals scenes and plots from other shows to make this one. He isn’t creative enough, smart enough or talented enough so he must attempt to destroy what’s there by demoralizing its content and make the characters into dimwits and the show about selling skin shots for ratings!
We've allowed them to make too many compromises already; too many changes that corrupt the story line. They corrupt our story line weakening the characters morals and virtue, and we fall back. They assimilate entire aspects of the story essentially changing the latter books, and we fall back, say nothing, only showing support. Not now, not again, not ever!
The line must be drawn here!
This far, no further!
And *I* will make them aware of what they've done.
Ok, here's the game plain.
We need to start listing the reasons and areas the show is failing it's base.
We need to point out specific's that Biller has crafted to weaken and destroy the morality of character's, the integrity of the story line, the actions and events that would not happen because this story IS about hero’s, morality, objectivism and so much more.We need to lay out why.I will make sure the right people not only see these, but will also keep up the pressure until we have change! "
Pretty brutal right? I thought so.. I was kinda shocked because I had heard he had final say of storyline, scripts, etc.. Apparently not! Ok, so I saw this and realized that I needed to blog about it so I went back today as I mentioned before and this what is there now...
"Ok, here's the game plain.
We need to start listing the reasons and areas the show is failing it's base.
We need to point out specific's that Biller has crafted to weaken and destroy the morality of character's, the integrity of the story line, the actions and events that would not happen because this story IS about hero’s, morality, objectivism and so much more.
We need to lay out why.
I will make sure the right people not only see these, but will also keep up the pressure until we have change!"
I would assume (I know, never assume, blah, blah, blah).. Anyway, I would assume that Terry had gotten some kind of letter from a lawyer or something to make him change his message.. I'm just glad that google cached websites exist so that I was still able to bring you his original message.. :D
Crap, it's already 12:30 and I wanted to leave by 1:00 to go to NY for New Year's Eve, it is snowing like a mother fucker out here and we are debating on if we still want to go at all... Anyway, I have so much more to say and so little time to say it... hmph....
Strap yourselves down, here comes the quick version of the week...
Santamas Day we went over to my brother's house and had a great time, unfortunately for me almost all of the food had dairy in it so my stomach was not too happy with me, by not too happy I mean it was not happy at all.. The food was great don't get me wrong, I mean I love cheese and butter and milk but apparently my body sings a different song.. Anyway, after dinner we played Rock Band 2 on the X-Box 360 for a bit, then me and my brother played a silly Mario Baseball game on the Wii which was fun but I would need more time to get to know the players and their special abilities before I could have any chance of competing... After Mario Baseball we played this dancing game that Rachel had gotten, I forget what it's called now and don't have time to look it up.. See, this is the problem when I don't blog for a while... Hmm, maybe I'll look it up later and put it into another blog.. Anyway, so Jessie and Rachel played for a bit then I played with Rachel and Sandy but I didn't last long because of my foot so when I dropped out of the game we somehow convinced my brother to take my place! It was great watching him playing this silly game with Sandy, just one of those happy fun moments.. :D We ended the night with a little bit more Rock Band 2. I have to say that after playing Guitar Hero World Tour I think Rock Band 2 is too easy and I think it fails to capture the feel of playing the songs. In Guitar Hero World Tour I play on medium and the game does a really good job of making you hit notes in a way that falls in line with the rhythm, it obviously does not make you hit every note (on medium anyway) but you do at least feel like you're playing the song. Rock Band's medium seems to missing too many notes that need to be there, to me it seems like playing Guitar Hero on easy which I have not done since Guitar Hero 3.
Friday Jessie drove in with Doug and I picked her up after work and headed out to North Hampton area. I had to bring Jessie to the People's Pint since we were going out that way, she enjoyed it as much as I did. I'm very glad Kaitlyn showed me that place.. I am pretty lame though because I ended up getting the same thing again, they have such a good looking menu but for some reason I was really feeling that burger again. This time I had a slippery slope and a farmer brown which were both excellent. Jessie had gotten a sampler which was 5 different beers so I got to try those too.
Side note.. I hate the fact that I don't lie when people ask me questions sometimes... My mom just called and asked what my plans where, so I told her we were going to Dianne and Randy's house in NY... Obviously she thinks we're crazy and was telling me how crappy the roads are, etc.. /sigh
Right, so back to Friday, we ended up taking some beer home from the People's Pint.. We got a 22 oz bottle of Slippery Slope, 2 22 oz bottles of their Oatmeal Stout and a growler of their IRA. After dinner we went to Kaitlyn's house to drop off her exercise bike and hung out there for a few minutes chatting before heading down to North Hampton to see Dar Williams at the Iron Horse. We got in line and started chatting with the people in front and behind us. The people behind us were a cute lesbian couple from the area and the people in front of us was a girl from South Africa and a girl from Danbury CT. The girl from South Africa has been living in the US for 12 years and is almost a citizen. We went in and ended up sitting in the worst table in the house. Of the four seats one of them could sorta see the stage, there was a spot to stand near our table and we could see from there so it was not too bad but with my foot I was only able to stand there for a bit of the show. Dar Williams reminded me alot of Glen in the way she interacts with the crowd, at one point she started playing an older song and stopped after the first verse and chorus, she looked at the crowd and said that she was hoping that she would remember the words while playing it so tonight we get to hear the short version of that song. I thought that was very cute and very Glen-like. The bathrooms were downstairs which sorta sucked for me but I did stand downstairs behind the mixing board for a song which was really the best spot in the house in terms of view of the stage. Dar Williams did a song about the
Milgram Experiment which I had never known about nor had the South African girl, apparently Jessie had so after Dar explained it a bit Jessie answered more questions about it one of which being what age the people were to which Jessie replied college age. The South African girl was confused by this response so I translated it into the Queen's English (university age) for her. There was something else in the evening that I translated for her which prompted her to ask (was going to be a blog title but I never got around to blogging) "are you from America?"..
Phew, this is a long out of control blog isn't it... I wonder how many pages this will be on Lynz's phone? So, Lynz gets my blogs emailed to her gmail account which she can check on her phone, obviously the phone has a small screen so it's funny to see how many pages the longer blogs are on the phone... Hey Lynz, can you post a comment on this one about the length of it... and by "it" I mean the blog... :P
So, Saturday... The plan was for Lynz to come up for lunch at the house and for Jessie to go to Ryan's.. Well, you know what they say about best laid plans... Jessie hurt her neck while we were still lazying around in bed so was in lots of pain and in no condition to go to Ryan's house. That's ok because we believe in rolling with the punches so, onto new plan.. Lynz and I went out for lunch to Bella's and I ended up continuing a conversation I had started with one of those random girls in Putnam about how many people is alot of people to have slept with. The decision was pretty much a non-decision really, there is a mystic formula that takes into account your age, your "active" years, the other person's age, active years and partners which in the end means nothing really.. And honestly does it matter? OK Cupid has a question asking if you feel there is every a point where someone has had too many partners and my answer was and still is simply no. Think about that for a second, when you hear that Gene Simmons has slept with thousands of women everyone stands up and cheers but when you hear rumours that Madonna sleeps with a bunch of people everyone condemn her.. Why not stand up and cheer for her too? I do.. You (and by you I mean anyone) should sleep with as many people as you want... There is nothing wrong with someone who does not want to sleep with many people just as there is nothing wrong with someone who does.. Live and live people... Coexist...
Ok, I really wasn't expecting that rant... Right... So, me and Lynz went out to lunch and Ryan brought over lunch for Jessie. After lunch me and Lynz hung out in the basement and watched some Cheers and chatted... Ryan, Jessie and myself decided to invite Sara and Kevin over and go out to dinner and watch Dr. Horrible (the new Joss Whedon musical staring Neal Patrick Harris). Dinner was at the Thai Place and then back to the house for the movie which was real short.. It was a great movie but it was only 40+ minutes, it was only $9.99 so I don't feel like I paid too much. The songs were awesome and the story was hysterical. Joss does not disappoint.. After Dr. Horrible we started watching 4400. We watched the pilot and then Kevin took a shower, Sara's back was bothering her so while Kevin was in the shower I brought her to the bedroom and gave her one of those back rubs that turns into one of those full body massages (reference above rant :P ).. We ended up getting through almost the whole first season on Saturday night, each episode on the DVDs are extended from the TV show. For example the 2nd season premier episode was 2 hours on TV with commercials and the DVD episode is 2 hours 5 mins and obviously does not have any commercials. Oh, wait, did I just say 2nd season? Now I'm into Sunday...
I am re-reading this blog and realized I meant to mention that mixed the Slippery Slope with Harpoon's Winter Warmer and it was an amazing combination! The giner in the Slippery Slope went perfectly with the cinnamon of the Winter Warmer..
Sunday we woke up and had a slow start to the day.. Me and Ryan ended up watching some TV while Jessie, Sara and Kevin had some problems getting out of bed (again, really, check out that above rant.. :P )... Me and Ryan ate some breakfast stuff around the house and then went out because he needed to do some shopping.. When we got back we watched some more 4400, we watched the last season 1 episode and the first 2 episodes of season 2 before going to Thai Basil in Danielson for some Japanese food.
Wow, I'm almost caught up... Hope you're still with me...
Monday was pretty quiet, I went to work and got all frustrated with the new course that I was given to learn and to teach to the other SAN instructors. Not going to rant about it, but.. It's not a good class in any sense of the word. Hopefully we can get it fixed before it runs for the first time. After work I went shopping for Tuesday night dinner and made the teriyaki sauce so that the pork and tofu could marinate overnight. I have to say having Elizabeth's fridge and oven has been a blessing this last week as I had no room for 5 lbs of marinating pork and package of marinating tofu in my fridge. Matt came over Monday night and we had leftovers for dinner before playing a bunch of Guitar Hero World Tour. Matt sung the first set of 6 songs, I sung the 2nd set of 6 and Jessie sung the 3rd set of 3. Good times had by all... I really can't wait for the drum kit to be sold separately.
Jessie is making her chocolate covered pretzels with candy canes in them again for tonight which is always a good thing..
Anyway, so, onto last night... Yesterday I went to work again (boo work) to work one on one with Josh more. I left work and got home just before 4:30.. I had decided that I was going to cook everything last night so that everyone else would get a break. That means cooking alot of food.. I made teriyaki pork, teriyaki tofu in rice, cauliflower with pancetta and capers, cauliflower with capers, and potatoes with mushrooms and broccollini. Everything went over really well and even Rene ate the pork which surprised the heck out of me since he does not like spicy food and it was a bit spicy. I was asked to post a recipe for my teriyaki so here goes:
1 jar of gluten free soy sauce
1/2 onion
4-5 cloves of garlic
2 hot peppers (I will find out the name next time I'm in stop and shop)
about 1/2 inch slice of ginger root
2-3 tablespoons of agave
put all but agave in food processor, and get it so that there are very little chunks left. Pour into a sauce pan and heat up so that the agave will melt in when you pour it in. Let it simmer for a few minutes till it starts to get a film on the top. Turn off heat and stir.. Done.. :D That number for the agave is a guess, what I do is use a medium sauce pan and pour from the bottle 3 swirls around pan which makes me think it's probably 3 tablespoons, but I don't really know for sure..
We stayed really late last night, we got home around 4:30 this morning so this morning has been a bit lazier than I would like, but at least I finally got a blog posted... :D
Next Thursday (Jan 8th) I'm going to the
2009 Northeast International Auto Show. It's running Thursday - Sunday in Providence but since I am going to Laire that weekend I am planning on going on Thursday..
I don't have time to tag this blog right now.. I will tag it later..
