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.

First of May 2009!

I was going to call this blog First of May but I already have one titled that when I posted the lyrics and video of the song, I went to post it and Blogger yelled at me because it was a repeat name..

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Here we are on the much anticipated First of May... Unfortunately the weather is not the greatest but it's also not horrible out either, I wish we had the weather from the beginning of the week but at least it's not snowing..

This week has been a series of long nights and little sleep and looking forward it looks like I should be able to sleep in on Sunday.. I'm not complaining about the long nights, I just wish I didn't have to get up so early but I guess that's the working mans curse.

Tuesday night we had a pretty big group for dinner and everyone made lots of food. I really have to find out from Sara how to log into the Tuesday night blog, I know she gave me a username/password but I went to the blog today and I don't see a login button.. Anyway, I made a shrimp & rice dish...

1 lb Shrimp sauteed in the wok with a combination of soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and the hot sauce John got Jessie which is "Pain is good batch 37". (I should really measure amounts when I make stuff, but since I didn't I can't say how much of each I used. I can say I didn't use enough of the hot sauce.)
2 packages of steamed Broccolini
2 cups of rice cooked with sushi seasoning in rice cooker.
Mix everything together (including sauce from pan) and serve.

Gwen came this week and brought her son Tim who seems to have gotten along really well with the other kids. Kevin was a no show this week, but Amber made it because she was driving home from Long Island.. We got there really late because I had forgotten to start the rice in the morning and I had to wait around for it to finish. It was really nice out and Lynz brought her dulcimer and Sara broke out her guitar.

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Wednesday night I went over to Willimantic and me, Lynz and Anja went to dinner at Opus. Opus is a really good restaurant that opened recently, they don't have a website which is a major problem because we were the only people there and Lynz says that's normal for them. I took their card and am going to try and get it over to Mike so he can contact them about getting them setup. I got one of their set dinners which was a cauliflower soup, garlic bread in a fondue cheese sauce, a steamed trout and lemon sorbet. Everything was really good, if you're ever in Willimantic I would recommend checking it out, I know I'll be back.. After dinner me and Lynz finally got a chance to sit and talk which we had not been able to do in a long time. I'm so glad the weather is getting warmer, it's been a long winter of no picnics.

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Last night I went to see Spring Awakening with Melissa and Gwen in Boston. It was a good play, the music was excellent and it had some very funny stuff as well as some very serious points and moments. I'm trying to figure out what to say without saying too much (don't want to tell the entire plot). I guess I will just say it's a story about a group of kids coming into and finding their sexuality, the play does a good job of showing what mistakes can be avoided if the parents would educate their kids. One example is: Wendla asks her mom where babies come from and her response is that in order to conceive a child a woman must love her husband with all of her heart. Because of this explanation the girl is surprised when she becomes pregnant from having sex.. I was checking it out on Wiki today and I found out that the play was originally done in Germany in 1891 and was banned there due to the sexually explicit scenes.. It re-appeared a few times over the years (sometimes censored) before being turned into a musical in 2006.

Before the play we ate at Remington's of Boston which is right next to the Colonial Theater. Remington's is upstairs and attached to Dick Doherty's Comedy Club. This was the second time I ate there, the first was with Kaitlyn before Ryan Adams. Me and Gwen both had fish and chips and Melissa got the meat ravioli. They have a Sam Adams beer on tap that was made just for sale in the Boston area called Brick Red which is a very smooth Irish Red Ale.

After the play we ended up going back to Gwen's new apartment which is very nice and very secluded but also not really setup yet. For some stupid reason the GPS thinks that the best way to get to 295 from Franklin is to drive to Woonsocket RI and then take side roads almost all the way back to Franklin before getting on 122. My GPS tried to do the same thing today when I was driving here, it appears that the GPSs (mine and Melissas) think that one of the roads over here is a dead end when in truth it's a thru street. My guess is that the road was extended recently and the GPSs don't know about it yet. When I was driving this morning my GPS said I entered a dead end road and that I should turn around.

---Thought of the Day
Things really don't change do they? Spring Awakening was written in 1891 and deals with issues around parents not talking to their children honestly. It shows that by parents trying to seclude and shelter kids when it comes to sexuality they do nothing but harm them and damn them to make the same mistakes generation after generation! If generation A makes a mistake because their parents didn't talk to them then why does generation A NOT talk to their kids when the roles are reversed? Do they want them to make the same shitty mistakes? Here we are 118 years later and we are still having the same problem... Come on people, it's about time people learned the right thing to do is to inform your kids! It's really not a joke that information is power! Arm your kids with the power to succeed..

---Diversion of the Day (obviously)