Happy Black Friday everyone..

Long time no blog.. I have been having some issues with my work laptop over the last few weeks, it started when I got home from Duluth. Apparently I got some sort of virus while using the in flight wi-fi. The laptop was running real slow all of a sudden and I went into the services running and saw two CTFMON.exe, I ended them both and ran a scan which found nothing.. I ended up having to run a FULL virus scan (including looking inside all zip files) before it finally found a SpyWare. Ok, lesson learned, is it really that important to have internet on the flight? I don't think so, and if I do that again in the future I will be jacking my security settings before hand.

Spyware - gone.. PC back to normal for a day or two before it just locks up, wtf!! I go to move mouse, bring up task manager, anything and realize that the laptop is REAL hot.. I turn it off and feel bottom which could probably cook an egg.. Turn it back on and it runs.. I was in the airport on the way to Brazil when this happened the first time so not much I can do.. Get to Brazil and find out the IT guy there will not take my laptop apart but suggests I wait till I get back to corporate, in the meantime I grab a little metal frame which will hold the laptop up and make it not overheat as much. Get back to corporate and after a day of fighting with India and our IT group I finally get a local IT guy who cleans out the fans which had collected MASSIVE dust bunnies.

Overheating - gone.. So, you know how when things run hot it can have adverse effects on the long term life of your parts? Well, although the laptop has no more dust bunnies it still is overheating? Bad mother board? Probably, I have an appointment with IT to bring it on Monday because of the holiday weekend. What to do in the meantime? My friend happens to have an extra Dell D630 which he brings over and we swap the hard drive..

Overheating II - gone.. Now to relax and resume normal PC operation.. Not so fast, overheating PC = crashed operating system.. Hard booting crashed operating system = corrupt files! My laptop is going to need to be re-imaged because anytime I load things like Chrome, Java, Flash the PC hangs. Not that overheating kind of hang, but the operating system dying kind of hang. Well, I uninstall Chrome and re-install to try and fix the issue.. Now it only does it when I close Chrome.. Switch to IE.. Same problem.. Ugh.. Back to re-image idea.. Well, as you may or may not know I've been wanting to replace my work laptop with a lighter smaller netbook. As it turns out Radio Shack has the Acer Netbook I want on sale for $250 on Black Friday.. 5am journey to the store yields favorable results amid the crazy shoppers..

So, I wake up on Black Friday at 5am, throw some clothes on and head over to the Shack.. They open at 5:30 and can't really be that busy right? I know it's Black Friday, but they are Radio Shack not Walmart. Speaking of Walmart, I drove by them and found their parking lot and all the nearby parking lots filled! On to Radio Shack, I got there around 5:15 and there was a pretty decent sized mob hovering around the door. By the time the store opened I would say there were just under 50 people waiting, they were shaking the doors and yelling for the Shack employees to let them in early.. When the doors were finally opened at 5:30 much pushing and shoving ensued, luckily for me I was standing near some big dudes and followed them as they pushed their way through. This little maneuver made me the 2nd person to the counter and the 2nd person to get a Netbook. They only had three which I knew going into it so I feel pretty lucky..

One of the deciding factors to me buying this Netbook was that, although it came with Vista, it got a free upgrade to Windows 7. So, first thing I do is go to Acer's website and register for my free upgrade only to find out that this netbook is NOT eligible for the upgrade! I call Acer customer service who informs me that:

1 - the website does indeed say the AO751h is eligible for the upgrade but only if

2 - the netbook came pre-loaded with Vista Home Premium and that

3 - this netbook came with Vista Home Basic and therefore

4 - it is not eligible

Odd, ok.. Do any of the AO751h configurations come with Vista Home Premium? No! That is not a valid operating system choice for this netbook! What are your valid choices you ask? XP Home and Vista Home Basic. You really have to love false advertising! Oh, and even if it was eligible for the upgrade I found out that I would have gotten Windows 7 Starter which is not even a full version of Windows 7!

Well, there are some amazing deals on Windows 7 right now, you can get Home Premium for $29.99 if you're a student or an educator at a university. The only thing you need is a .edu email address.. If you have a .edu look it up because I can't imagine you will get a better deal.. Oh, well, maybe.. Worcester State College is selling Windows 7 Professional for $39.99! Speaking of .edu, I really think EMC should have .edu email addresses for people who work in education. The Microsoft deal will work for both students and teachers but I can't prove I'm a teacher.. Either a .edu or some form of EMCU ID, I'll be bringing this up next time I'm at work.

Next time I'll be at work will be Dec 23rd.. I have an ass-ton of vacation left for the year so I am (as of last Wednesday) on vacation. I'll be heading down to Florida in a few days (probably leaving on Thursday) and will return around the 19th. I do actually return to work on Dec 21st but I will be teaching a TTT via Centra at 5am on the 21st and 22nd so I won't be going into the office.

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So, short story long is I'm typing this blog on my brand new Acer Netbook which is at the moment running Vista but will be upgraded to Windows 7 later today.

Anything else happen? Well.. Last I blogged I was heading out to the Galeria and to meet Luana. The Galeria was indeed open when I got there and pretty crowded since everyone was getting off early on Thursday for the long weekend (Friday was a holiday in Brazil). I wondered around the mall for a few hours and was a bit disappointed honestly, the last time I was in Sao Paulo the mall seemed to have more diversity.. What I mean by that is, more stuff from more bands.. This time it seemed that most stores had the same stuff, if not the same stuff it was different stuff for the same bands. Not only did they all seem to have the same bands, but those bands were almost all American bands, they didn't even have any Tuatha De Dannan shirts or dvds this time. I was really hoping for a bootleg concert DVD of theirs and I was trying to find Jessie one of their shirts. Another disappointing thing was the prices.. You may remember that KISS recently released a WalMart exclusive CD (Sonic Boom), they had that CD for over $100! Yes, I mean the "$" sign not the "R$".

After a few hours there I walked over to Augusta St to meet Luana. We meet and went to get some food, I was wanting something healthy since I had not eaten much greens since I was in Brazil so we went to a mall that was up the street. The mall was just like an American mall and we went up into the food court which had things like Subway and Starbucks. She suggested one place which had really good salads and I got a salad/steak combo meal, the steak was ok but the salad was indeed really good. After dinner we walked down to the club she had to do sound check at and after I walked her to the subway before catching a taxi back to the hotel. She is a very nice girl and it's a shame we didn't have more of an opportunity to hang out..

Brazil taxes imports up to 70% depending on the item. They do this to encourage people to buy Brazilian which I guess I understand, but why tax imports when there is no Brazilian counterpart? To make the rich richer right? Only reason I can think of..

Friday I checked out and went to work to hang out with Paulo a bit, we went to a mall for lunch because it was the only thing nearby that was open. We ended up eating at a sushi restaurant which is always a good thing.. It was very good sushi and I was amazed that everyone there, even the little kids, were using chopsticks! I guess it's really just North Americans that can't figure out how to use chopsticks.. After lunch we went to a few stores and looked at TVs, laptops and DVD/Blue Ray discs. I am amazed at how much electronics in general cost in Brazil and I really think they need to relax that stupid import tax on things like TVs and computers. US and Japanese car companies build cars in Brazil and are still taxed with the import tax because they are not Brazilian companies.. I was sorta surprised that some of the mall stores were cheaper than the galeria on heavy metal CDs & DVDs, and I'm not talking a little cheaper either. Paulo convinced me to buy City of Gods on DVD, I have not watched it yet but he says it's quite possibly the best movie ever made in Brazil.

After lunch Paulo took a few calls and then had to leave for a few sites. I hung out a bit more at work and then left for the airport. They say you want to get to the airport early right, well not too early in Brazil.. I arrived around 7pm for my 11pm flight and found out the Continental ticket counter was still closed, there was a big line waiting, I asked the lady where the "elite" line was and was pointed to a MUCH smaller line. In line I met a really cool guy from PA, we ended up chatting for a long time and after we finally got through security we went and got some food together. Turns out he was on the same flight, and not only the same flight but the same row of seats! Certainly made the trip back more enjoyable.

Speaking of enjoyable, I watched "GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra" and "Julie and Julia" on the plane. GI Joe was much better than I expected, I don't know if it was really a good movie or if it was good because my expectations where so low. Either way, I really enjoyed it and would probably watch it again because it's always tough to watch super special effects movies on the little screen on the plane, not to mention that they probably cut some stuff too to make it more family friendly. Julie and Julia was a cute movie and was very well done, they mixed in just the right amount of Julia's life to let you know what her life was like before she became the TV superstar.

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While we are on the subject of TV superstars and cooking for that matter.. I landed Saturday and we decided to go to Bar Americain (Bobby Flay's restaurant in Mohegan Sun). We're not stupid enough to think the place won't be crazy crowded so we call, and call, and call.. Not once did they answer so we figure we will just go down, how long can the wait be? So, funny story.. They were closed for a Private Party on Saturday night! It was apparently the official opening night with the ribbon cutting ceremony and all.. So, Summer Shack it is.. We had a very nice meal at the Summer Shack and then headed home. During the day on Saturday we were trying to convince Christian and Mara to come down, luckily they didn't since the place was closed! Sunday we made attempt number two, once again we called all day and once again there was no answer. We went down somewhat early and were asked if we had a reservation.. How could we have a reservation when you don't answer the phone? Oh, we have the wrong number? Apparently both Bobby Flay's site and Mohegan Sun's site have the wrong phone number.

They sat us anyway after a very short wait and all the hassle was worth it.. I may have mocked Bobby, well, ok, I mocked him a lot.. I will not mock Bobby anymore, he is truly an Iron Chef. When Fuji TV was looking for the first American Iron Chef they turned to Bobby Flay and he showed how American he was by dis-respecting the kitchen and standing on his cutting board after the battle. I guess I never looked past that one moment. What I should have realized is that they picked him to the be the first and, at the time, only American Iron Chef and they obviously had reason to do so. I have now eaten at most of the Iron Chef restaurants, I have Cora, Batali and Garces left, and Bobby is certainly in the top 3 in my mind. The whole meal costs around $130 which is a pretty good deal when it comes to Iron Chef meals and I highly recommend his restaurant if you ever want to eat Iron Chef quality American food!

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This blog is getting out of hand so I am going to start ending it. Here's the quick week in review.. :)

Monday - Dinner with Holly, we went to dinner by her house and then back to her house where I finally met Brutus! I was about to write a big thing about how Brutus is a really cool dog and how I'm really glad we got along but I really don't want this blog to be 100 pages.. Oh, bah.. Nobody ever said you had to read my blog right? I assume if you're hear it's because you want to hear my ramblings so 10 pages or 100 pages it doesn't matter right?

So, after dinner we went back to her house.. First she let Ruca out, I met Ruca before and we seemed to get along so let's start easy.. Ruca came out and seemed to remember me which was good. We bonded a bit and then I held her leash and gave her a dried bull penis to keep her busy while Holly let Brutus out. Brutus came out and seemed surprised to see someone in the house, he was not upset, just surprised. He turned the corner into the living room and just stopped. Brutus is a much bigger dog then Ruca and I think he is the kind of dog who does not realize how big and strong he is. After some time, tricks and treats Holly brought him over to smell me, after a few minutes he was eating out of my hand. He is very gentle when taking food out of your hand, it could be the most gentle I've ever seen a dog take food from a person actually. After a little while I tried to give him his bull penis but unfortunately Ruca finished hers too quick so now she wanted his too. Brutus was let outside, then put away while Ruca was let out. Then Ruca was put away and Brutus came back out to hang out a bit more, I gave him his bull penis (I really just like saying bull penis) and we got along well. After a bit more he was put away and Ruca let back out with no leash while we played some Wii.

Tuesday - Dinner.. We had our own little Thanksgiving celebration with Turkey Burgers, stuffing, sweet potatoes and egg nog. I made Brazilian pizza with Catipuri, ham, onions and egg. I know, it's not very Thanksgiving, but it was in honor of Sao Paulo.

Wednesday - Played and lost the OOTP World Series.. Caught up on lots of TV..

Thursday - Thanksgiving at my mom's house.. Lots of food, lots of fixing computers and lots of good times..

Friday - Radio Shack (see above) and Joe's birthday party. Joe's party was zombie themed and most of the food was in the shape of brains.. He boarded up his front window and put caution tape up which made the house look really cool from the outside.

Saturday - Anja's birthday party, hung out with Dagmar again.. She is really cool and we need to get her to Tuesday dinners.. Me and Jessie caught up on more TV and played Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. That game is really not very good, the song choices are pretty bad and the sound mixing makes it hard to play. We have to keep reminding ourselves it came out between Guitar Hero III and IV, they obviously rushed it out.. Saturday night Kevin and Sarah came over and we played MULE, troubleshoot his PC (bad video card) and watched most of Red Dwarf Season 1.

Holy today Batman..

--- Diversion of the Day

Ever worry about the security of your shit?

Sometimes you know you're shit is not secure and sometimes you think it is. But remember, even when you think you're shit is secure it may not be.. Well, this morning I made a realization that my shit was certainly not secure.. Apparently the lock on my hotel room door does not work. I am usually really good about jiggling handles when I close doors to make sure they are locked, I guess I had not done that before today. Imagine my surprise when I jiggled the handle and the door opened!

I tried it a few more times just to make sure, but sure as the night is long my door does not lock. I had my iPod in the safe but for the last few days my laptop has been sitting on the desk. Luckily nobody else realized my door does not lock. Tonight I'm going to lock my laptop up in the safe too.

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Last night I went to Paulo's apartment and his wife made a wonderful meal that even had veggies! I had my first helping of veggies since being in Sao Paulo last night.. Palm, broccolli and a passion fruit. I never ate a passion fruit before, what you do it cut the top off and scoop out the insides with a spoon, the insides are like jello. It's very good and I'm glad I got to try it. Speaking of trying it.. I tried the Caracu beer on it's own and it is a very good stout. I also tried a white "mead like" wine called Halberth Niagara. I got some Catipuri in the store and I'm going to bring it home. I hope it stays good on the flight, I'm going to pack it in my luggage but I hope it does not get too warm during the trip.

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Class is over and I'm heading to the Galeria de Rock again. Afterwards I'm going to meet Luana at a rock club to see a local band.

Oh, speaking of the Galeria, if you remember I went to Casas da Mortadella after the Galeria the other night. I forgot to talk about the bathrooms. There is a very steep and very dark staircase that goes upstairs to the bathrooms. The bathrooms doors are so small I had to duck! Also, the bathrooms had no lights except the open window.

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One more thing.. I uploaded pics to Flickr today.. :)

Now that's a beer?!

Last night after going to the Galeria de Rock me and Paulo went to Casa de Mortadela which is a restaurant downtown that serves, what else, mortadela sandwiches. They also have a really good sausage sandwich too. Oh, speaking of the Galeria de Rock.. I looked online and found that the Galeria closes at 8pm, what they failed to mention is that most stores close between 6 and 6:30.. We got there with not much time to look around, most of the stores were either already closed or just about to. I did get a live Blackmore's Night DVD/CD which is PAL and from some crazy region and I got Jessie a Helloween shirt. I saw some amazing Blind Guardian long sleeve shirts but none in my size. Well, Friday is a holiday which means I don't have to teach so I can come back right? No.. The entire Galeria is closed on Friday! I'm going to attempt to go back Thursday after work, hopefully I can get there earlier this time so I can spend more time looking around.

Back to Casa de Mortadela... Are you ready for this?? This is a beer that they serve there, it's actually the reason we went there... It is... Caracu hit with oats, egg, peanuts and powdered guarana. I know it sounds nasty but it was REAL good, it was like a chocolate/coffee milk shake. The only bad part was the end which had all the ground up peanuts floating in it.

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I really need to get my laptop taken apart and cleaned, the heat off it is crazy and it's froze a few times on this trip already from overheating.

Brazilian Pizza.. YUM!

I've been to a lot of different places in the world and I've had some really great pizza but there is little that can compare to Brazilian pizza. What makes it so good? Catipuri! Jessie found a way to make catipuri back home which is to mix muenster and cream cheese, it does a good job of emulating Catipuri but having just had the real thing it does not fit perfectly. It's good, but not the real thing.. Last night I went with Paulo to the pizza place near the hotel and had some amazing pizza. We got one pie split three ways, one was porteguese which is ham, onion, egg and catipuri, the second was bacon and catipuri and the third was mushroom and mozerella. If you ever find yourself in Brazil make sure you get some pizza. We ended up going to dinner later than we wanted because Paulo got stuck in some cases he was working so I didn't get back to the hotel till after 10.

Other cool news.. OKC brought back the WTF reports in a way, it's called "the two of us" and it lets you compare answers the other person made public. When I looked at it last night you had to go to each question and select make public, when I looked this morning they added a button that makes all questions public. I'm happy that feature is back because it really helped to see why someone was a high or low match.

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Hoyle sent me a petition to sign to get Dock Ellis' no hitter aired. Dock Ellis pitched a no hitter in 1970 while high off his ass on LSD. Apparently he hit a bunch of batters, including the same guy three times, and walked eight men but in the end managed to complete a no-hitter. I am assuming MLB network has not aired it because of the LSD scandal but I say air it. I for one would love to see it..

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Today I'm going to the Galera de Rock to spend way to much money on metal dvds, cds and shirts. If there is anything you want me to look for drop me a message and I'll see what I can do.

---Diversion of the Day

Afternoon delight..

No, it's not sex.. It's the afternoon snack.. The classes here are all catered, they bring in breakfast around 10am and snack around 3pm.

Their idea of "breakfast" today was ham and catipuri sandwiches with pizza rolls and pastries filled with fruit. Their idea of "snack" today was mini cheese burgers topped with catipuri, twice dipped chocolate strawberries (white chocolate on the inside and dark chocolate on the outside), coconut covered chocolate balls and some unidentified pastry which was tasty.

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Last night I did end up going to Hooters for dinner, I had a burger and fries. The best part of the meal was the hot waitress who was roller skating around the restaurant.

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?

39 Degrees

I woke up this morning and it was 39 degrees in Duluth! I guess it's getting me ready to go back home..

Last night was a quick night, when I got out of work I went over to Dave & Busters.. It had to be the lamest Dave & Busters I've ever seen, they had a very small arcade area and most of those were the stupid "win tickets" games.. I went to Olive Garden for dinner and then over to Barnacles for a drink. The place was empty so I only stayed for one drink and went back to the hotel. I was planning on going back out a bit later but I decided I was tired and stayed in for the rest of the night.

I remember loving Olive Garden's Alfredo sauce but for some reason it was really lack luster last night. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong or maybe it was just a bad night for the chef. I'll give it another shot before I condemn it.. :)

Flight today is early, I'll head home and probably shower before heading over to Future Imperfect. Check in is between 6 and 8 so I should have plenty of time..

---Diversion of the Day
http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/2009-10-06/index.html

Mostly Garbage

Holly just sent me a link to this and I realize I've been slacking on the Diversions.. Anyway, without further ado..

---Diversion of the Day

America's Team, My Ass

I went down into Atlanta yesterday after work. I got down the Lov'n it Live (a raw vegan restaurant just south of Atlanta) around 4:30, my original idea was to kill time around the restaurant before dinner. When I got there I found that there was very little to do so I ate an early dinner. I had Nori Wraps for an appetizer, Mushroom steak for a main course and Pumpkin Pie for dessert. For a beverage I had a fresh veggie drink. It was all very good and I would highly recommend eating there if you're ever in the area.

After dinner I went to Turner Field! I have to say, and not because I'm an anti-Braves fan, the outside of the building is very generic and run down looking. I walked to the front of the stadium and the main gate was open so I went inside. The inside area was really nice and I was actually liking what I saw until.... They have a Statue of Liberty all decked out in Braves clothes!! wtf!! seriously!! How dare they take a NY icon and put Braves clothes on it! I was bitching at the bar about this later in the night and someone made the comment that the Statue of Liberty is an American icon and the Braves are America's Team! Fuck that shit!

Speaking of baseball.. I was wearing my Mets/CitiField shirt yesterday when I went into Barnacles, apparently (and not surprising) Brandon is a Braves fan! I walked in and he started jokingly threatening to smash his beer bottle over my head. We had a great argument but where able to come back together over our hatred of the Yankees. A few new friends, one guy who worked as a salesman for Infinity Auto was trying to convince me that Infinity had a better AWD then Subaru.. The other new friend was a Cubs fan who moved to Georgia, he has been to 21 stadiums in his baseball tour so we ended up talking about what we liked and disliked about different ones.

All in all a great time last night, except for the Yankees winning the World Series..

Down South Karaoke..

Last night I tried to get Jessie an iPod case but neither of the places here had the one she wanted for the size iPod we have. They had them for the iPhone and iTouch but not the regular iPods..

After that failed attempt I started looking for food and started getting real disgusted by the chain restaurants in the area. This area is like two Framinghams worth of stores and chain restaurants all squished together into a few block radius. Anyway, I debated going to the pool house/sports bar but I saw their menu the other day and was not impressed. As I was driving around I saw a sign for Karaoke Extravaganza at a place called Barnacles. Sure, why not..

I got there about 8:30, Karaoke started at 9. My first surprise was that smoking was welcome there! I figure no big deal, it won't be too bad right? Well the place was pretty empty and they sat me at a long bar like table near one of the only other guys in there eating. I had a good view of the massive TVs on the wall and ended up getting in-tranced by the Monster Truck rally they had on. This was one of those dirt tracks that had jumps and smashed up cars, the idea was to drive around the track and do the jumps, etc. You got points for style, how far you got into the track and how long it took you. None of the trucks finished the track but it was a lot of fun to watch. I had a burger which was good and ended up talking to the guy, he as it turns out is a real Georgia boy. You know, when you think of Southern boys you think of him. Our waitress was real cute but looked real young, we ended up calling her over and asking her age and after that she ended up coming back around every once in a while and chatting & hanging out with us.

Karaoke started at 9, but by the time the first person went up to sing it was almost 9:20. All in all I watched 4 people sing. One was real good, one was REAL bad and the other two were just ok. I ended up leaving right around 10 and heading back to the hotel. The smoking got annoying as the night got longer and the place got more crowded. I will probably go there again tonight after dinner to watch some of the game. The Georgia boy (name omitted to protect the innocent) will be there, he goes there most nights on his way home from work for a beer or two, and I know our lovely waitress will be there too.

Oh, I almost forgot. Before going on the failed quest for an iPod case I played a mini-golf place right by the hotel. It's between the hotel and Fry's so I ended up stopping there on the way. You know a course is hard when the guy at the counter tells you to take an extra ball so that if you lose one you don't have to come all way back to the ball counter. It was a 27 hole course, the first 18 were the standard holes, the last 9 were the harder holes. I didn't lose the first ball till hole 24! Let me tell you, there were certainly a few times you could lose the ball. The course had a bunch of holes where you had to jump a river. Ironically the one I lost it on was not that hard, it had a big rock in the way and I tried to bounce of the wall and go past the rock, it didn't bounce off the wall but instead hugged the wall and went out on to the path and up a hill into the trees! The par for the total 27 holes is 61 and I shot a 75 with one hole in one!

Secret Admirer?

Last night I went to Fry's and Micro Center to look at netbooks. I really want to replace my work laptop with an Acer netbook. The new one is $298 at Fry's which is an amazing price, I just don't know if I can justify spending the money on it when I have a working work supplied laptop.

After wandering around a bit I went to Red Lobster for dinner.. You know, when in Georgia eat local food right? I don't know what I was thinking.. After eating lobster in New England a Georgia lobster is not going to cut the mustard as they say. I did really enjoy the crab cake I had as an appetizer but the lobster was tough and not all that tasty.

After dinner I went to the Pool House/Sports bar again and watched the World Series with some of my new friends.. I met two new really cool people last night, I was sitting at the bar when a guy and girl came and sat next to me. They were together and talking about their phones and they dragged me into it. She had just gotten rid of her Storm and replaced it with a new Blackberry. Anyway, we ended up chatting and hanging out for the entire game. She had gotten a beer from a "secret admirer" and a little while later I got up to hit the bathroom and a guy stopped me to ask if she was with me. I said no, but she's married (her husband is in Afganastan). A little while later she got a second one! I don't know if it was from the same person or not but jeez, how come guys never get free drinks from "secret admirers"?

I finally mailed my Son of Sandlar boots back to them today so hopefully I will get them back sooner rather than later.

It is so nice out here today, 71 degrees and very sunny! I don't know what I'm doing for dinner tonight, I was thinking of wandering around the mall but I may see what else is near by. I am thinking of going into downtown Atlanta on Thursday after class since it will be an early day.

Hate-Lanta Braves?

So, I just got to Duluth GA last night. I flew into Atlanta and was geared up for fist-a-cuffs with some f'n Braves fans, not really - but it sounds good.. The airport here is oddly laid out and very big. I had to take a tram to the baggage claim it was so far away from my terminal. The layout is sorta like this:

........| |....| |....| |....| |....| |

........| |....| |....| |....| |....| |

[]-----| |---| |---| |----| |---| |

........| |....| |....| |....| |....| |

........| |....| |....| |....| |....| |

Each of the | | is a terminal with the dotted line being the connecting point between them. So, if you came in on the 4th terminal back (which I did) you have to walk to the center of the terminal and then up the connection walk or take the tram which runs on the dotted line.

When you get to the square (ticket area, baggage claim and rent-a-car) you pass the rent-a-car area before getting to the bags. I grabbed my bag and came back to the Enterprise counter. I filled out paperwork and then went outside to grab a bus which brought me right to my car. I ended up getting a Kia Spectra, man it's hot! It does not really have any balls but it is comfortable to sit in and the radio has an Aux input so I can listen to my book while driving.

Drove to the hotel and then went out wandering Duluth. Duluth is a shopping mecca, there is a Best Buy, MicroCenter and Fry's all in a matter of a few blocks. There are also tons of places to eat including Red Lobster. Last night I went to a Sushi BBQ place which was a Japanese/Korean restaurant, all the servers spoke Japanese and they had real wasabi and didn't offer me a spoon for my soup! Holly asked me to show her a picture of what real wasabi looked like and I got busy with class so never did.. Here you go Holly, a picture of real wasabi..

After dinner I went to a pool hall/sports bar and watched a bit of the World Series while drinking a Fat Tire. I was shocked at how many people in the place where Yankees fans! Not a Braves fan in site, wtf! I ended up hanging out with a few guys and having a great time but left after the 6th because my tattoo was itching like crazy and I just wanted to get back to the hotel and take my shirt off.

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Saturday me and Jessie went and hung out my dad during the day and my mom at night. During the day we went to Lou Rocs, which is a diner up in Worcester, and then went to Best Buy and Staples to look at netbooks. I want to get one to use instead of my work laptop. I think I've decided on the Acer Aspire One which I can get at Radio Shack for $349.99, it has an 11" screen with 2GB memory and a 260GB hard drive.

I am going to see how cheap they are down here at Fry's and maybe MicroCenter.

At night we hung out at mom's house and watched WC Fields' You Can't Cheat an Honest Man. It's been years since I've seen it and it is still pretty funny after all these years.

----

Class just ended so I'm off for more wanderings..

Biased Announcers

I really don't understand why baseball would allow crazy biased announcers on the World Series. I was watching last night's game, which was a great game, and the announcers were so blatantly rooting for the Yankees it was ridiculous. I felt like I was watching my brother announce a game.. The Phillies came to back in the 7th down by 1 run and the announcers were pretty much like "well, the Yankees only have to worry about the next 3 outs because we talked to Joe before the game and asked him what he thought about using Mariano for 2 innings today, he didn't even blink an eye and said yes. That means only 3 more outs before Mariano time!"

I'm not even a Philly fan and I am so irritated by this I want to call FOX and complain.

Anyway, I just saw this silly video on ESPN.com and figured I wanted to share...

---Diversion of the Day

Tattoo..

So, when last we left out intrepid traveler he was in the San Jose airport about to a "new york style bagel".. I ate it on the plane from San Jose, it was ok but certainly not a "NY Style bagel".. I guess I didn't really expect it to be. The flights home were uneventful but good. Got home, hung out with Dianne, Jessie and Joe on Saturday night.

Yesterday I finally got my tattoo, after years of design and waiting I finally have it. It only took about 2 hours and was not nearly as painful as I thought it would be. Pictures on Flickr. The only part that was real painful was the top of the shoulder by the neck. After the tattoo me and Lynz went and got some dinner at the Courthouse. They were slow and I convinced the waitress to give me potato skins instead of fries! So good!

Tomorrow I have to go to the Brazilian Consulate to finally get my Brazil Visa.. I just found out I may be going to London now as well as Georgia and Brazil.. If that's the case it will be, fly out Sunday to Georgia, leave Georgia on Friday, go to Mythical Journeys Future Imperfect, fly out on Sunday to London, fly home Friday morning and go to WPA Friday night, fly to Brazil on Saturday!

---Diversions of the day

http://www.dorktower.com/images/comics/DorkTower766.gif

BAT FIGHT with Will Ferrell from Will Ferrell

A Day in SF

Class got out before lunch, I changed into my MChat shirt and headed up to SF (that becomes important later). I got to the pier area and to the Alcatraz ticket line right before 1, but by the time I went through the ticket booth I missed the 1:10 boat so I got a ticket on the 2:20. I walked the pier for a bit while I waited and ended up eating a nasty hot dog for lunch because it was the only thing quick in the area.

The boat ride was actually quite enjoyable, I stood up on the 3rd deck in the front. At one point a group of kids were trying to get their picture taken and asked the couple standing next to me who ended up being from London. I ended up chatting with them on the boat and hanging with them a bit on Alcatraz during the Cell Block Audio Tour.

Got off the boat and walked the long way up to the Cell Block, and by long way I mean I walked all over the island before finally making my way to the Cell Block. The island is actually quite beautiful, it had a small town outside the prison that housed the guards, warden and their families. I walked by the old school, post office, shops, etc. Most of them were either ruins, rubble piles or at the very least very run down. The only thing that is in what I would think is usable condition is the actual prison.

When you enter the prison you go in as the inmates did, past the entry point and the showers before getting the audio unit and starting the tour. The audio tour was done by four former inmates and four former guards. Having them do the tour really added to the "realism" of the place, without the audio I can see some people not feeling this place could really be that bad. The cells themselves were so small I don't know if a tall person could actually lay down, there is a small cot, two metal "shelves" (one was a table, the other the chair), a toilet, a sink and two actual shelves above the sink/toilet. I took bunches of pictures and will sort through them before posting to Flickr, I hope I got some good ones but it was pretty dark in there. The audio did a good job of explaining how it felt to be there. It talked about a few escape attempts, one of them involved a prisoner making a "bar spreader" and scaling the bars to open a hole in the area where the guards had guns. It was crazy to hear about that and to have the inmates pointing to the exact bars the guy climbed, etc. The only escape that every actually worked was the one where three prisoners dug out a passage using spoons, the guards on the audio were saying how they think the guys drowned at sea, the inmates were saying they think they made it to Mexico. Nobody will ever know for sure I guess. The tour then brings you into the area where bad prisoners go, they have two stages of bad. The first is an open cell but away from everyone else, those cells were actually bigger than the ones in the normal cell blocks but they were facing the setting sun and the city.. According to the inmates on the tape you could hear the sounds of people laughing and partying from the yacht club which made being in there worse even though you had a bigger cell. The other level of bad was the "hole" which was a room with four steel walls. Apparently it's now a federal law that any solitary confinement had to have at least a light on, it was not back when Alcatraz ran so they would lock people into a four steel walled cell with no light or anything. After the tour I ended up jogging down the island to get to the 4:20 boat.

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Back on the mainland I saw the double decker tour bus getting ready to leave. It was the last tour of the night and I jumped on at the pier which was the first stop. The tour was about two hours long, all in all it was pretty boring. Most of the city is very bland looking and I couldn't get off since it was the last bus of the night which meant the few places that did look really cool (like Haight) I couldn't really go check out. Next time I'm in the area I must go spend some time on Haight street, it was the heart of the hippie movement in the 1960s and still very much looks that way. Looks like it would be an awesome place to kill some time. Speaking of Haight St, I saw Amoeba Music which is sorta like Powell's Bookstore but for music. Unfortunately I couldn't stop.. We went over the Golden Gate bridge and back, it was a nice bridge I guess, we went through some really nice parks I would like to visit and we went by the adult street. The bus didn't go down that street, just by it. Speaking of didn't do, the bus didn't go down to Lombard St which I thought was odd, I figured it would have to drive by at least the bottom of that block. As the bus got more and more empty it ended up just being me and this one girl, we were both on the top as it was getting ready to go over the bridge so we moved downstairs and ended up chatting for the rest of the ride.

Interesting fact: SF has the lowest mean summer temperature of any US city, but it hardly ever gets frost in the winter. It's just a steady 60-70 degrees for most of the year, too cold for me..

Oh, and we passed the building that Godfather was written in. They say that the first ever espresso was served in that building too. I want a fact check on that one.

---

After the tour I decided to get something to eat on the pier, I had seen signs for a place advertising seating area over looking sea lions. Apparently the restaurant is only open for lunch but I did get to see the sea lions. This may be the oddest thing of my trip, I was walking along the pier and a girl stopped me and commented on my shirt. Now, I've had comments in the past like 'cute shirt' or 'hey that's funny', but I've never heard anyone actually say they heard of the comic or let alone something like (I remembered the actual quote last night but now I don't because it's 5am and I'm sitting in the airport) 'Nice shirt, I love monsieur chat'! That's right, a lady in SF is a loyal reader of MChat, I guess Joe's little comic isn't so little anymore.. :)

After my failed attempt to eat near the sea lions I ended up eating at the Crab House. The place was pretty crowded so they put me at the "fireplace" which is a bar seating area with a firepit in the middle. The lady on the left of me was a food critic working for Zagat the lady on the right was Kim from Arkansas who is in SF on business. I was debating the menu and was going to order the Crab Enchilada when the food critic told me that the only thing worth getting was the crab, just the plane old crab, by plane old I mean cooked like New Englanders cook lobster. The butter was not plane however, it was a garlic butter and was so good. Ended up hanging out with Kim for a while and finally headed back to the hotel.

When I got back to the hotel I went to hang out with Ashley, I was pretty exhausted so I only hung out for a few minutes.

Now I'm at the airport and about to get a bagel and get on my flight.

Bella's Website is LIVE!

So, I finally contacted Mike about moving the Bella's URL over to me. I had him change the IP address to point to Steve's new server which is where I will be hosting. A lot of credit goes to Steve who is in the process of upgrading his systems to Windows 7 and took time out of setting things up to setup my website.. :)

I worked with Steve to get everything up and running last night and the URL started pointing there just an hour ago or so. I of course have a bunch of updates I want to make to it, right now I don't have FTP access to that site (it's not setup yet) so I have to send the changes to Steve and he will update when he gets home. Basically I changed the main logo to include "gelateria" and cleaned up some of the images to make them crisper.

Once I have own the URL I will see about setting up a .mobile version of the site. And onto other web news, Allen told the guy who owns the new BBQ place in Putnam that I did his website so I may have another customer. More free food?

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For dinner last night I went to Yo Yo Sushi which is by work, I got a 10% coupon from the hotel and had been wanting sushi so it works.. The place was pretty good, they had a boat moat that you could grab off but I went with a set sashimi meal which was actually quite a bit of food. After dinner and website playing I hung out and chatted with Ashley (the girl who works at the counter at the Residence Inn) and the two guys from Denmark again for a long time before finally heading off to bed.

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Today/Tonight.. Going back to SF to check out Alcatraz and possibly eat at Cafe Gratitude again.

---Diversion of the Day

http://www.bellasbistromarket.com/

1+1=Next Iron Chef

Last night I went to play Mini-Golf in Milpitas at Golf Land USA. They have 3 courses which are rated easy, medium and hard. I left to head up there (about 10 miles) right around 5pm so I was a so glad to have the Prius and all-access to the carpool lane! The traffic was stopped on the highway and I was doing 65 next to them! Anyway, as I got closer I saw a wonderful mountain range.. The way the sun was playing off it was so pretty, I took a crap ton of pics of it to capture the beauty. I posted 2 pics from the drive to Flickr. The Mini-Golf place was right at the base of the mountain range so I took another good pic from the parking lot.

Anyway, so.. Mini-Golf.. I decided I would play both the medium and hard courses. I played the medium one first as a warm-up and shot a 52 on 18 holes, I think I had one hole at 5 but everything else was in the 2-4 range. One thing I thought was really cool, well ok, maybe more than one.. First, the putting area changed colors at points which made a really neat trick of the eye when trying to read the hills. Second, the entire course was covered in "mini-golf carpet". When I say the entire course I mean the whole place, the hills, the walkways, everything. It was like immersing yourself into a mini-golf world.

Onto my second course.. Oh, wait.. I forgot to mention the most supertabular thing about this place! When I grabbed my pencil out of the pencil bin it had LETS GO METS carved into it in orange writing! OK, now on to the second course. Remember this is the "hard" course. I was actually talking to Lynz for most of this course so she can vouch (in a way) for my awesomeness. What, what, can't hear you over the sound of my awesomeness.. :D Right, so.. I actually hit two consecutive Hole-In-Ones! The first one was one of those holes that you just have to hit it up the ramp in the middle and you automatically get a hole in one but the second one was a brutal looking hole. It had a MASSIVE hill in the middle of the green and then at the end had a V right after the hole so if it came down the hill too quick or at the wrong angle it would pass the hole, hit the V and head out into the outskirts of the green! So, continuing on with my amazingness (couldn't use awesomeness, it would have been repetitive), there was one hole that had two choices, picture of it on Flickr, one choice was to go up a real steep hill into the mouth of a tree which presumably would bring the ball near the hole, the other choice was to hit it straight through a really thin passage. I shot the hole twice, once up the tree and once down the passage. Both times I got a 2 on the hole, both times I was right near the hole after the first shot! I can't believe I made it through that thin passage.. Oh, wait, yes I can, because I am that awesome.. ;)

After Mini-Golf I went to the Great Mall to check on yet another Verizon store. I told the stupid guy I had a Z6c World Edition and needed a charger that would work with my international adapters (they slide onto the old charger and won't fit the new one) or I needed new international adapters. He said that they don't make international adapters for my phone and the only one they have them for is the blackberry and that the blackberry charger won't work for my phone because the blackberry is micro-usb and my phone is mini-usb! I really wanted to punch him, why in the hell can't a Verizon rep know that my phone, first of all, does exist and second of all does NOT use the same accessories as the Z6TV! So, after explaining that my phone was indeed micro-usb (which by the way he argued with me about) he pulled out the blackberry charger and it worked! No "unsupported charger" or anything, just straight up charging! So, I want to buy.. Nope.. They don't stock that charger, but he can order me one which will take approx a week to get in. No thanks.. Ordered one on-line and it will be at the house maybe as early as Friday, but no later than Monday.

That guy get's a "random people - douches" tag! Anyway, speaking of the "random people - cool" tag.. I went back to the hotel and spent some time chatting with Ashley, the girl who works the night shift behind the counter, and two of her friends. They are all in college and the one guy is doing a project where he has to come up with original game ideas, Ashley was doing Spanish homework, put those two together and you get... "Language Brawl" Language Brawl is a game idea the three of us came up with.. So, here's the idea.. You're driving down the street and you hit a car, you get out and so does the other driver. The other driver does not speak your language, instead he speaks the language you're trying to learn. As he speaks it shows up on the screen and you have to translate it and answer him, if you don't answer in time he kicks your ass. Figure the beginning levels will have the sentence in your language except maybe one word you have to translate but in the end you could have to translate the whole sentence. We even figure you can do a multi-lingual one (for our European friends who speak many languages) where you hit a car which hits a car and both drivers speak different languages and you have to translate them both in the alloted time.

---

Food TV is doing another "Next Iron Chef", the last time they did one it was to replace Mario Batali who had a contract difficulty with Food TV. So, I was trying to figure out who was leaving this time.. Well, I too can add 1+1 and get 2.. For years now Cat Cora said she would not open a restaurant because she could not juggle her personal life, the show and a restaurant. Apparently she opened a restaurant in Disney World called Kouzzina. So the only question now is, do I go there this year or do I wait till next year and go with Jessie. I have to figure that out soon because if I'm going this year I need to make reservations.

---Diversion of the Day (watch with sound to truly enjoy)

Where I put my attention creates my experience

I went to Cafe Gratitude last night and they have inspirational paintings around the restaurant. They actually sell posters of them, but apparently not all of them.. The one I loved was in the bathroom, it was a big mural and in the middle was a kid drowning in negative words, around him were positive places and the word choose repeated. Around the kid in the center and before the other places were the words "Where I put my attention creates my experience." I thought it was an amazing piece, but it's one of the few they don't sell posters for. I have emailed the artist asking him if there was a poster or print of it available.

So... I got out of class around 4ish and went straight up to SF. I love the fact that in California they let hybrids drive in the carpool lane. Actually the law has been changed, it used to be *any* hyrbid, now it's only select hybrids. I guess they are not allowing those crazy SUV hybrids which still only get 14-15 MPG in the carpool lane, you have to be above a certain MPG to get access as a solo rider. Well, using the carpool lane it took me about 40 mins to get up to SF. When I left work it was something like 82 degrees, as I was driving with the windows down, it started getting real cold. After a bit I rolled the windows up and looked at the temp gauge in the car, it read in the 50s, I looked up and saw signs for "Candlestick Park - this exit". I was pretty shocked actually, I had heard the stadium was built on the side of a mountain but what I didn't realize is that it *was* built into the side of a mountain. It was a beautiful view of the mountain, bay and stadium (didn't get pics because I wasn't ready for it). By the time I got into SF proper it was back up into the 70s.

First stop - AT&T Park. I don't count this as me being at the stadium for my stadium list, but I had to drive by. I actually parked on the side walk by the stadium, I asked the attendant and he said I could park there since I was only going to take some pics. I walked around the stadium and took some pics (uploaded to Flickr). The stadium is right on the bay and the outfield wall is open to the bay so people walking by can look into the stadium, there are signs asking people to please only stand in "viewing areas" for an inning at a time. You can actually see a good portion of the field from these "viewing areas", they were inside setting up for some concert. Anyway, around the front of the stadium there is a nice steak house built into the stadium. There are no doors into the stadium from the restaurant but I imagine it would be packed on game days, I went in to use the bathroom and there were a few people but not a mob.

Second stop - Lombard St.. There a few theories behind why this street is the way it is. Some of the locals say that the people who lived there didn't want the traffic so they convinced the city to screw with the road. Lombard is a short cut from the Eastern section of the city to the Golden Gate Bridge and they were getting tons of cars driving that way. If that's true it backfired because now people come from all over just to drive down the street. Other stories say that they made the road that way because the incline of the road was too steep and was causing problems with cars going up and not being able to and with cars not stopping as they go down. I don't believe that theory because there are steeper roads in SF and even in the surrounding area and they didn't do it to those. Either way this is one crazy fuck road, you really have to see it and drive it to really get the grasp of it. I stopped at the bottom of the road and took some pics, then I drove around and down it, back around and parked at that top. I walked down and back up and took some cool pics and videos. The best pic I found is one that was taken from a nearby building top, I posted it on my Flickr along with my pics. I also posted videos of people driving on it on my YouTube.

Third stop - Golden Gate Bridge.. Nope.. It was getting very foggy and the traffic was out of control going there so I decided I would go after dinner..

Third stop - Cafe Gratitude.. The restaurant was very pretty, as I stated above I loved the paintings they had. The staff was really nice too, the place was mobbed so I ended up sitting at the bar which worked out well because I got to chat with the guys working while I waited for food. All of the menu items are things like "you are wonderful", "you are insightful", etc. I got a White Bean and Kale Soup which was cooked, a raw Bratwurst which was made of nuts, fennel and had kimchi and a mustard seed sauce wrapped in romaine lettuce. For dessert I had a raw chocolate moose which was so good. I really never understand why people insist milk should go with chocolate to dilute the flavor. Nothing like a good strong raw cacao.

Fourth stop - Golden Gate Bridge.. Nope.. The fog was even worse and I didn't feel like going if I wouldn't really appreciate it. Maybe I'll go back on of the other nights I'm here, if not I'll get there eventually because after all it's just another bridge right..

Fourth stop - Candlestick Park.. On the way home I drove up to Candlestick Park. If you think it was cold at 4:45 you don't know cold. The car said it was in the high 30s! I got out and walked around and took some pics but it was too dark and none of them came out. It is a very pretty area, the stadium is generic but the area around it is very pretty.

Drove back to the hotel and relaxed in the hot tub a bit before bed.

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Oh, going back to yesterday's blog.. Rice-A-Roni.. I was going to post a big long thing about how I doubt Rice-A-Roni is the SF treat. I mean seriously, lets think about who lives in SF.. Gays and Asians. Can you possibly imagine an Asian whipping up some Rice-A-Roni? And as for the gays, I certainly can't see it. SF is probably one of the most "hippie" areas of the country (aside from maybe Portland) and I can't see people who care about food eating tons of Rice-A-Roni.. Anyway, so I was going to post this long blog about that and I decided I would post a little video clip of the old commercials. Well, I did a search for "Rice-A-Roni: The San Fransisco Treat" and the first hit was a blog ranting about the exact thing.. A guy answered that blog with a history lesson about why Rice-A-Roni was indeed the San Fransisco Treat..

The DeDomenico family all enjoyed an old Armenian dish consisting of rice, vermicelli pasta and chicken broth. The rice and pasta were sauteed in butter before the liquid was added, giving the dish its distinctive taste.

In 1958, Vince DeDomenico decided to take this recipe and produce it for sale in grocery stores. He placed the rice and pasta in a box, and added a dry seasoning mix in place of the liquid chicken broth. Because this product was made up of half rice and half pasta, he decided to call it RICE-A-RONI®.

Chicken RICE-A-RONI was first introduced in the Northwestern states in 1958. With it came the first RICE-A-RONI commercial, featuring San Francisco's Cable Cars and the now famous jingle. Created in San Francisco, RICE-A-RONI would soon be known to all as "The San Francisco Treat®!"

The RICE-A-RONI jingle, The San Francisco Treat® slogan, "Saute and Simmer" and scenic San Francisco became familiar to every household in America in the 60's as the product was introduced through television advertising.

Well, I guess I've been told..

All in all.. I think SF is a very nice city, it is easy to drive around, easy to park and pretty to look at.

BTW - I'm reading this blog realizing how much of a "gay hater" I sound like.. For those of you who know me you know I'm the furthest thing from that.. For those of you who accidentally stumbled on my blog, first off "welcome, hope you enjoy my tangents" and secondly I can assure you I'm not a gay or Asian or really an anything hater.. :D Well, ok, maybe I'm an Atlanta Braves hater.. :P

Gut be Gone - At Jack in the Box?

So, yesterday was a fail on the Gut be Gone program. I got out of work and headed over to a local bar called Quarter Note to watch the end of the Yankees / Angels game. I love being in CA and watching baseball games during happy hour that would be night games back east.

I had a Fat Tire (had it on tap).. This is a good point to mention.. After talking with Jessie I decided that doing no alcohol was not necessary for my Gut Be Gone program, and that I should instead just cut back greatly on it. I ended up sitting at the bar with a guy who worked at Cisco and his hot friend. After a bit the girl's friend came in and the four of us got a booth together and chatted till the girls had to go to work.

After the game I went on a failed mission for a new mobile phone charger. Sometimes I love my phone, but it's always a struggle to find accessories, the Verizon store was out of Z6World Edition chargers so they sent me to Microcenter which had a generic Motorola charger. The guy was nice enough to let me try it and it came up as an unsupported charger. Grrr.. I guess I give up now and will just order one online.

After Microcenter I went and got my California treat.. No, not rice-a-roni.. Rice-A-Roni may indeed by the SF treat but I probably won't have any of that in SF either.. My California treat is a Jack in the Box Ultimate Cheeseburger. I was standing in line and came up with a brainstorm, what would make this burger better is if they put it on sourdough bread.. I was sooo right..

I almost died laughing when I saw a sign on the counter for "healthy food options" at Jack in the Box.. Seriously, who are they kidding?

Speaking of SF.. Tonight I'm going there, going to hit Cafe Gratitude which is a big raw restaurant. Have to balance out the Jack in the Box right.. :)

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I updated Flickr and YouTube.. :)

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!

Back on the road - - To Santa Clara CA

Today's rainy cold weather made me glad to be heading out of the North East. Weather in Santa Clara, 70s all week.. I'm glad to be going but glad it's only a week too, it's been a long time since I've been on the road so I'm torn with my sense for adventure and my sense of missing those back home..

Since last I wrote I did lots.. I was just getting ready to go to Laire when last I wrote, Laire was a great time. I even played on Friday night (have not done that since right before my surgery). Friday night was almost a mistake as I pushed myself a lot to far when Naryn went down and I felt the need to run her to get a life spell. After that little incident I had to lean on her to get back to the cabin. While relaxing in the cabin we got ambushed and we almost died, my crazy running speed (almost forgot how fast I can really run) saved my life and Naryn's, unfortunately it was not enough to save Ventrick. I stumbled my way back to the cabin once more and feared I had taken myself out of the weekend with my crazy running.

I woke up on Saturday and was surprisingly fine, so onto another day of hard core combat. Saturday night ended with a big mod in which I kept getting yelled at for breaking the line, I was a bit over zealous to kill things since I was finally able to again.

One of the coolest things about Laire was that Robyn came back.. I ended up hanging out with her most of Saturday going on mods and overseeing her warrior training. Friday night she hung out with me while I was doing the dishes and Saturday night she came with us to Veggie Heaven. I'm making her a shield now that she knows how to use one.. :)

Sunday night me and Jessie went and had dinner with dad so I could fix the speaker wires I put on backwards and to get my new blueray/dvd player.

Monday was another long crazy day, me and Jessie went down to NYC to see Garfunkel and Oates. We parked by the venue (Upright Citizen's Brigade) and walked over to Pure Food and Wine which is a raw vegan restaurant on the other side of Manhattan. Dinner was great and the show was better! We ended sitting center stage right behind Riki's mom, it was very cute to see how flustered she got by having her mom in the audience. If they are ever in your area I recommend seeing them, they are funnier live than they are on their CD/YouTube clips.

Tuesday was my 14 year dating anniversary with Jessie. To celebrate we had Tuesday night dinner at our house.. OK, well to celebrate the anniversary we went to see Garfunkel and Oates but on Tuesday Jessie broke open a bottle of ice wine we have had for years, it was very good and just reminds us both that we miss Montreal. The Tuesday night crowd was very small this week and we ended up having it in the basement. We will continue to have them in the basement till it gets too cold to do so..

Wednesday I went up to see Nurit, she cooked dinner and we hung out and watched Cheers. Thursday I was supposed to go see Stacy but she cancelled at the last minute. In a way I'm glad she did because me and Jessie got a chance to relax and I ended up going to bed before 9! I guess my body finally had enough of the late nights and needed the after Laire rest I was not giving it.

Friday Lynz came over and we walked to Bella's for dinner. The idea was to go to 85 Main for sushi but as we walked we decided we didn't want that. After dinner hung out and watched some Star Trek TNG.

Saturday, yesterday, me and Jessie went to the CT Ren Faire again. It was cold but there was no rain in site which means we got the full show this time. We saw a bunch of shows and ate lunch before leaving. I ended up getting called on stage during the Wheel of Mis-Fortune and got to sit down without a dunking after guessing the word right. :)

After the Ren Faire we went home, napped and met Matt, Sile and her parents for dinner. We were supposed to go to the Courthouse but because of the size of our party the wait was too long so we went to 85 Main. I had a pumpkin bisque with scallops that was ok. The scallops were good but the bisque left a bit to be desired, it was better after adding soy sauce. As an appetizer I got some Tuna sushi and it was really good, pretty big pieces and nicely cut.

I'm boarding in Hartford now.. I will post more later..

new Kiss, old Kiss, bad Kiss

Kiss just released a new CD set this week. They released this as a Walmart exclusive which is the first thing that pisses me off but whatever. I went to Walmart on Tuesday morning to wait in line and get my copy like all the other Kiss fans, yes there were lines.. I cleverly avoided the line in electronics when i saw a few of the CDs sitting on a A-Frame and grabbed one along with the new Madonna DVD and walked to the front registers which had no lines. :)

This CD set has two CDs and one DVD. The first CD is a new CD called Sonic Boom, on first listen I loved the first song then it dropped off dramatically till the last few songs. On second listen I was more forgiving perhaps because I found myself liking most of the songs but my favorites are still the first and last. The CD booklet lists who wrote each song but not who sung them, obviously I can tell the Gene and Paul songs but there was one song sung by someone else, I assume it was Tommy Thayer because I've heard Eric Singer's voice before and it was not that bad.. :)

Speaking of bad voice, Eric did sing Black Diamond on the second CD but did it in his best (it was bad) Peter Criss impersonation.. If you hadn't guessed the second CD was a CD of recorded Kiss hits called Kiss Klassics. The did 15 tracks and for some reason felt the need to include Christine Sixteen in that set. For the most part these songs sounded almost identical to their original versions all the way down to the fade out and fade in at the end of I Love it Loud, they did sound better if only for modern day recording studios. A few of the songs were actually different and mostly in good ways, for example I Was Made for Loving You was done more in line with how they play it live and not in the original disco mold. Forever was a stinker, Paul's voice sounded strained and uninspired. All in all I think Do You Love Me was the best of the re-recordings.

But wait, there's more.. This set comes with a 6 song live DVD that was recorded on the last tour in Buenos Aires. Kiss fans are everywhere and one of my co-workers was talking about getting this CD so I let him borrow mine and then we decided to watch the DVD here on one of the projectors. Wow, was it bad.. I gotta think as a marketing decision this was a major screw up, nobody is going to watch that DVD and then think to themselves 'man I gotta go see these guys'. They were out of tune, out of sync and generally had no life on stage. I have to imagine that they could have found a better night to take the recordings from.

All in all, is the new CD set worth it? Yes.. There are enough good tracks on the first CD to make the $12 paid a value not to mention most of the songs on the 2nd CD were well done and sound fuller than the previous versions. The DVD, just throw it out..

----

If you live anywhere near Hebron CT you need, need, need to get to the CT Ren Faire this year.. They did an amazing job on the fight sequences this year. The story this year is called 'For the Love of Lancelot' and there are four shows throughout the day, five if you include the show at the gates before the faire opens. By the way, if you can you really want to try and get there before the gates open because that show was really good and really sucks you in.

I mentioned the fight sequences were great this year and that's mostly in part to Taryn Bazinet and Colette Marie Crowley who play two French girls who fight as one, they were like watching intense synchronized swimming combat. The final fight had this holy crap amazing sequence that you really just have to see to believe. No, I'm not going to describe it because you need to go see it live!

I was a little disappointed by some of the cast changes and the fact that the sheriff was not around but all in all it was an amazing time.

----

Sunday me and Jessie went to the final Mets game of the year with dad. He bought tickets in the Ceaser's Plaza Club which were right in front of the SNY broadcast booth. Believe it or not the seats were a bit thiner than the seats in the section we want to move to in the Promenade, they were actually thinner than some of the seats on the same level but further away from Home Plate.

When we got to the game they had closed off our normal parking area and let us park in the main lot (usually only for pre-paid parking). Because we were in the main lot we decided to walk over to the Shea Stadium base markers. It was neat standing on the pitchers mound marker and looking around at how small everything looks. Citi-Field was beyond the outfield wall at Shea but yet it looks so close when standing on the mound and even at Home Plate. I guess it looks smaller because now it's all just a parking lot.

It was a really good game. Nelson Figueroa pitched a complete game shutout, first in Citi-Field history. Jessie got a new sweater from Touch and we got a ball autographed by Alyssa Milano. Here is a quote from the label of her sweater.

"to rally for each other

to play fair

to run with abandon

to dance with life

is to Touch"

:)

---

Speaking of Monday.. Lynz come over Monday night with Anja and we watched a great episode of Nova regarding the possibility of life on Mars. You can watch the entire episode here on PBS.

This was especially interesting right now because I just finished reading the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson which is all about Terra-Forming Mars.

Speaking of Terra-Forming.. I'm going to be playing Mythical Journeys: Future Imperfect in November, it's a futuristic LARP that takes place on a newly colonized world. Just finished making my character the other day. Going to use a shot gun so it should be fun and at the very least different.. Come check it out with me..

Tuesday dinner was spent working with Kevin on his costume and on my gun. We had to modify the shells so the bullets go further by drilling holes in the bottom to let more air in. Sarah stole the food show with her soup. Hopefully she will post the recipe either here as a comment or on the Tuesday night dinner blog.

Holly came over last night and I re-made my Tomatillo Salsa tilapia dish, but this time with cod because Price Chopper didn't have any tilapia. It came out good but not as good as it does with tilapia. The salsa was just as good but the end product was a little less then I would have liked it to be.

----

Yay, Laire is tomorrow... Speaking of yay! Garfunkel and Oates are coming to NYC next week, they will be at the Upright Citizen's Brigade on Monday and at the Gotham Comedy Club on Wednesday. Me and Jessie will be going to the Monday show, care to meet us there?

--Diversion of the Day

http://erim.net/misc/GeneSimmons_TerryGross.mp3

Push up - Sit up - Day 3

Just did my day 3.. Here are my day 3 numbers:

Set	Push ups	Sit ups
1	22	12
2	30	15
3	20	11
4
5

Remember that set 5 is supposed to be MAX, they give you minimum numbers for set 5. The minimum numbers were 28 and 15 respectively.

I failed this morning to complete this day.. I am planning on doing sets 4 & 5 later today, I will update this entry when I do them..

Push up - Sit up - Day 2

Just did my day 2.. Here are my day 2 numbers:

Set	Push ups	Sit ups
1	20	15
2	25	12
3	15	9
4	15	9
5	25	10

Remember that set 5 is supposed to be MAX, they give you minimum numbers for set 5. The minimum numbers were 25 and 10 respectively.

I apparently read the wrong column when I started the sit ups, I was only supposed to do 9 in set 1 and I did 15.

Yoga.. It's good for you?

I have lost so much flexibility over the last year, Achilles Tendon surgery will do that, so I decided I would start doing yoga with Jessie and Hoyle. Plus, I figure yoga is also good for my gut-be-gone plan so it's a win all around. Well, I am so not ready for yoga yet. It was nice to get stretched out but my left ankle was so not ready, I ended up sleeping with my soft cast on and even that wasn't enough so I took three Advil before I was able to fall asleep. All day my ankle was killing me too so I ask you... Yoga, it's good for you?

I've been a bit slack the last few months but I think October is going to be my return to blogging. The original idea of this blog was to keep everyone updated of my travels and I haven't been travelling so therefore haven't been blogging. Well, travel is back on. If you don't know I recently stepped down as global lead instructor and am now a regular instructor again, with that demotion I will be teaching more which after all is what I enjoy about my job. So, upcoming trips? Chicago the week of Oct 12th, Santa Clara the week of Oct 19th and Sao Paulo (if my visa gets approved) the week of Nov 16th.

Somewhere in there I want to finally get my tattoo, I'm thinking the week of Oct 26th. I need to talk to the tattoo guy, I will go over there next week and try and set that up. My tattoo design can be found on my flickr site.

---

The semi-monthly update..

Last we left off was Sept 18th and I was just about to go to Jesse and Marie's house for a game night. Game night was fun, I was a bit concerned how the night would go because I had not seen John in a long time and I didn't know who else would be there to hang out with. I was glad to find out my concerns where unfounded because the night went well and me and John even played some games together plus I even got some time to hang out with Lynz upstairs.

I left early because the next day we (me and Jessie) went to King Richard's Faire with Jesse, Marie and Lynz. Lynz's birthday had passed recently so me and Marie bought her an outfit, she got a dear skin shirt, some bracers and a fur cowl. It was pretty funny because when she got the shirt I was talking to the lady at Pterodactly Leather about how I envisioned some type of fur scarf/cowl and she told me that the fur guy sold his booth so I left her shop looking for other options, we were a few feet away and she came running out with some fur she had in her shop and put it over Lynz's shoulders and it was perfect. We went and got food while she sewed it together and put a bone button on it. I love the end result, she did a great job and in very short time. Pictures of Lynz in her outfit can be found on my flickr site. Oh, I love this picture of Jessie and Lynz.. :D

The 20th I went to the Mets game with dad, uncle Larry, Mike, Scott, JM and Katie. We ate at the Acella club which is the restaurant in left field, it was nice but a bit over priced. No matter what you got it was $51, they had a bbq beef brisket sandwich, bbq ribs, a really good salmon dish, a really good scallop dish and a burger on the menu. That's right, $51 for a burger or $51 for scallops! On top of the main dish you also got access to four appetizer stations which had bagels, cheeses, salads, pizza, etc.. It was nice to watch the game while eating but I really didn't feel like I was at the stadium till we left the restaurant. Speaking of Citi-Field, the Mets just announced that they will be lowering the prices of all their season plans next year. I really want to sit in section 424 next year, they have a few extra rows above the regular section which have a few seats per row. Perfect row would be row 8 which has 5 seats in, 3 of those seats are the wider ones which would make it much more comfortable for dad and Mike. I tried to call them and they told me I had to wait, I might try and call them again next week.

Thursday the 24th Holly came up to Putnam, we went to Bella's and watched Planes Trains and Automobiles. It was a good night and it was nice to hang out in my area instead of hers, no nosy neighbors.. :)

The 25th I brought Luna to a new vet to get her checked out, the new vet is holistic only which means that I needed to go to another vet to get her blood work. It was a long stress filled experience, she is overall healthy but has some digestive issues we are addressing with supplements. After the vet I went up to Nurit's house for dinner. The crazy odd thing of the day is that Jessie ended up chatting with a guy on OKC just to find out it was Nurit's room mate! Jessie ended up going to a concert with him that night.. The somewhat odd thing was me, Nurit, Shoshanna and Mike went out to an indian restaurant.. I know, crazy right? Non of the four of us are vegetarians but we all ended up getting vegetarian dishes.. I thought it was odd, screw you if you don't.. :P

Jessie bought a cuff set when we went to King Richard's Faire and we had to go get it so we went down on Sunday. Funny thing, when we got there they were closed! Apparently it poured in Carver so they closed early. Luckily Jessie called the guy and he had the guard bring us to his booth to get it. It was kinda cool to walk around the faire with nobody else there.

After that we went to Julian's in Providence for their Dieu du Ciel beer dinner, I don't know where the menu is right now so I can't put the food list in right now. The food was great and we met up with Ara and Ellis there which was awesome. Ara and Ellis are the couple we met at the Armsby Abby beer dinner. They are a very cool couple who teach at Holy Cross in MA. Julian's is now the 2nd place we had beer dinners with them and the 2nd place that O'hara's Celtic Stout on draft! This time I had one as a pre-game beer. The only way I would have beer this month is if we did another beer dinner with them because it would be silly to go to a beer dinner and not drink..

Monday Lynz and Anja came over and I made hot dogs with bok choi and quinoa for dinner and we watched Episodes 2 and 3 of Star Trek the Next Generation. Tuesday night we had dinner at our house again even though the weather is starting to get cold, Holly and Louie made their Tuesday night debut, Hoyle and Badger brought lots of meat for the grill.

Going to the CT Ren Faire tomorrow, hope to see you all there! If you can't make it tomorrow go another day! There, is that a good ad?

---Diversion of the Day

OMFG!

one hundred push ups - Take 2

You may remember last year before my tendon surgeries I had done the one hundred push up challenge. Well, I am feeling pretty darn fat lately so I am going to do it again. The site has gotten a bit cooler since last time, they now have a tracker and they also have a 200 sit-up program.

Alright well, I did the tests the other day and my push ups came in at 37 which means I skip to week 3 and start at the hardest level of week 3. My sit ups came in at 20 which means I start at the middle level of week 1.

Well, here are my day 1 numbers which I just did now:

Set	Push ups	Sit ups
1	14	9
2	18	9
3	14	6
4	14	6
5	30	20

Remember that set 5 is supposed to be MAX, they give you minimum numbers for set 5. The minimum numbers were 20 and 8 respectively.

What else am I going to do to get rid of my gut? Well, I am feeling inspired by Sara's 30 day challenges (I know, like half a year later) so I am going to go the month of Rock-Tober with no alcohol.

--Diversion of the Day
http://mchat.comicgenesis.com/d/20090925.html

ps - so apparently this site sucks when it comes to putting in tables.. I did an HTML table and it is not showing up correctly so I had to use underscores.. Will look into that more later.

pps - figured it out. :)

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.