May 2004

Been a while since I slept for less than 4 hours. Should be easier with a half day but I still have to drive down to Maryland right after work. Maybe I can convince Alex to drive while Dia and I sleep. Yeah, thanks buddy for taking the train all the way from Boston, would you mind terribly if… [snore]. I’ll make it home alright, I just don’t know what kind of condition I’ll be in when I arrive.

The Day After Tomorrow probably could have waited a few more tomorrows now that I think about it. But who am I to turn down a night of fun, especially when it’s somewhat organized by one Sgt. O’Connell? If only we had looked a little closer and seen that it wasn’t actually in the IMAX theater. It looks like they’re set up there for some screenings, it’s just that last night’s midnight time slot wasn’t one of them. Fortunately, our meal at Bahama Breeze beforehand made it a worthwhile outing. I was the only one to overdo it with the girly drinks though Ali had one or two herself, but Sean, Jason, Tim and Lara were still in a pretty laid back state as we dined on island cuisine for two hours. I ate more than I have in three months, consuming a bowl of chicken avacado soup, shrimp appetizer, and the calypso linguine, and once we made our way to the deck I decided to cram the Bananas Supreme down my throat too. Matt and Melissa were supposed to join us around 9:30 p.m. but they didn’t make it until 11:00. And dia met us at the theater just before the movie started, bleating her mantra, “Worst idea ever.” I was too full to care.

I can spend a few words on what I care about now, however. Matt also won’t be making it down for Memorial Day, which is making me start to think that Matt’s lack of time for me has actually very little to do with the “lack of notice” he uses as his chief excuse. I gave him a month of lead time for the Memorial Day party and everyone knows where we are on Wednesdays. Even with the Orlando trip we’ve got planned, not to mention booked, he started — alright, since you’re probably reading this Matt — you started making excuses for that too. Drive to Florida? Why waste 16 hours driving when we can spend our time more wisely? There was also a comment about having to take our shoes off at the airport, and a weak argument against driving in traffic from Tampa to Orlando that somehow supported driving from Philadelphia to Orlando instead. I sure hope it’s just a minor case of cold feet, because I’m looking forward to spending a week in Florida with some of my best friends. Matt, I’d rather eat the price of the tickets and have you along than get your money for the tickets only to have you bail on us. If it’s about your budding relationship with Melissa, then I hope your friends can fill that void for a week. I can’t stress enough how much I fun I have when you’re around and I hope you’re as excited about the trip as the rest of us are. Maybe I’m reading into last night too much, what do I know? I’m tired as hell.

Awful, bloody awful.

We are the sorriest bunch of losers that ever lost. Without Sean we are nothing. And although I had fun talking with our small group of six at our spacious 11-person table, the defeat of our terribly funny team name, “If there’s no grass on the field, play in the mud” was too much to bear. Geof came up with it as a back up a few weeks ago and now we blew it. It got two comments from the quiz guy but not enough crowd reaction to win. And with only 30 points we needed that to boost our morale. Totally lame.

I checked the memorial day party RSVPs, and the kindly souls who called ahead were Tomas and Kelly, Rob and Bridget, and Nathan. Everybody else better get callin’ and thinkin’ about what they be bringin’. The exceptions are Pat and Andy who had extenuating invitation circumstances and some home friends whose address I didn’t have. I hope the call-ahead numbers start climbing soon.

The next event is Tim’s birthday, the planning for which was initiated by Rob. He knows only that the plans are Super Secret so he can keep the day free (Tom’s idea) for whatever we have planned. Ross was the voice of reason during our planning session. From there the invitations were sent out. Let the bitching begin.

Finally, the Orlando trip has been booked. The six of us have our hotel rooms at the Walt Disney World Hilton, our plan tickets were only $168 round-trip after taxes, and we’re all flying out of BWI together. The excitement is mounting.

I get me one of these!
It’s got that skin-flap thing going on that made me wonder at first if I needed stitches. Thankfully, it wasn’t that deep.

I tried doing things a little differently this year for the annual picnic. I sent out actual invitations this time (albeit pretty late) and ran everything by the book. Everyone’s responsible for their own accommodations and transportation, and I asked that everyone RSVP with my parents so they can keep their numbers straight. It’s nice of us all to be invited, the least we can do is bring some side dishes like everyone else.

Tomas and Kelly are the only exceptions, since I didn’t have their addresses to send them an actual invitation and Tomas was nice enough to offer his Dance Dance Revolution setup for the party. I even offered them the spare bed in my room at the Comfort Suites. They’re still on their own for transportation since I’m heading down Friday afternoon, but they RSVP’d so I guess they found some.

This RSVP thing has turned my day into a guessing game though. I called my mom and she told me that four people have responded. One of them was Tomas +1, but the other three are a mystery. I rattled off a list of names and none of them rang a bell for her. I know Andy and Alex didn’t call her since they never received their invitations, and one of them was a girl replying for her +2. Of course, my mom could also be completely nuts and simply didn’t recognize the names I gave her and mixed around some other info. I’ll know tonight, but right now it’s driving me crazy.

Either way, it’s beginning to sound like there will be a pretty good turnout: Chris, Lisa, Al, Mary, Hager, Maria, little Alice, Andy and his brother, Dre, Mooly, Alex, Tomas and Kelly, and Pat, plus whoever these mystery replies were. I forsee a great day of DDR, boardgames, kickball, volleyball, swimming and drinking.

The pictures have been up for a while and pretty much lay out the events of Jason’s bachelor party, but there are a few odds ‘n’ ends that weren’t shown.

The drive to Montreal is an arduous one. Fortunately, we had speedy drivers for the job (Tim, Kon, and myself) to make up for our traffic delays and got there in just over seven hours including three pitstops and dinner at some place called Papa’s. Since we left around 6:30 p.m. our drive was condusive to using the BetaBrite. We were able to offend people over most of I-87, and with two wingmen it made it a lot more interesting. The two highlights were getting high-beamed for five miles, and messing around with a Volkswagon who was speeding right alongside us yet wouldn’t take the lead. On the way home, the customs guy took notice of the sign and guessed that we used it to piss off other drivers, but didn’t say much more than that.

The only speeding ticket came on the way home after I decided I was tired of being the third car and tried to claim a spot in the middle. I mailed in my guilty plea this morning and I won’t know how much the fine is until the town of Bolton Landing contacts me. The drive seemed a lot longer without the initial road trip excitement, anticipation of 12 hours of drinking, or the ability to annoy other cars, but it was exciting in other ways. For instance, passing through customs, slipping through a random checkpoint with search dogs, and getting pulled over for a speeding ticket when you have something in the car you’d rather not have found. The other great time-passer was the usage of walkie talkies that gave the drivers something to do when our passengers were asleep or too busy to talk to us.

The actual event was pretty simple: we drank. We started by watching the Flyers’ game 4 victory at the Peel Pub, a basement bar where we were able to forget it was daytime and get pretty trashed on gallon+ pitchers. We stumbled upstairs onto the street at 6 p.m. and made our way back to the hotel room to drink some more while we waited for Pete to arrive and for Luke to get back from his errand. We then went from bar to room to karaoke bar to “bar” to bar to bar/bar for various stages of intoxication. There isn’t much more to it than that.

There were a few tall tales born that evening. Pete and Tim sang a pretty good rendition of a song I never heard before and still don’t know. I was told I became fixated on my Roadway hat at some point because I thought I had lost it. Pete and Ian wandered off and waited for an hour in line for pizza. Ross and Sean got into a heated wrestling match and tore down the curtains in the process; fortunately, Jason and I were able to rehang them (however precariously) in the morning. Ross wandered up the main drag a few dozen blocks in an attempt to sober up. And Luke was nearly murdered during his errand to a nearby bluff.

C’est tout.

Work has been totally crazy lately, so crazy that when I got a chance to write this weekend I was so taken aback by suddenly having nothing to do that it’s exactly what I did. Instead, I watched television most of the weekend, breaking only to see the godawful Troy, play mini golf with Tim and Dia, and watch the Flyers’ game at Kon’s new house.

The only other thing I can lay claim to is helping Dia and Tim coordinate our trip to Orlando. We haven’t actually booked anything yet, but we’re on the brink. At the priciest we’ll end up at the Hilton for $40-something a night, but we’re hoping to put in a good bid to Priceline.com for much less. Pat and Jamie will be flying down from BWI to meet Matt, Tim, Dia and me for a Saturday-Saturday amusement park extravaganza. There will also be some non-amusing stuff to do that will hopefully satisfy Tim as well, and no matter what I can’t picture having anything but a blast.

Well, the photos are up. I forgot my camera so Jason kindly lent me his, and I became the unofficial photographer. I took over a hundred pictures just so I could weed out the lousy ones, and of the 50 I deemed worthy to hang on to I’ve posted the best 20 or so. I avoided the crazy cropping since this bunch were mainly hit or miss, though I think some subtle touch-ups helped a lot.

Ben did it again and bagged us another best team name honor. So joyous was the victory and the anticipation of the award, that I decided to get drunk and shout a lot.

There were nine of us before Jill and Don left, including a rare appearance by Tomas. Even though I lured him there with the promise of needing programming help, perhaps he had enough fun to keep him coming out. Sean paid attention this week instead of playing with his cell phone, but we lost Dia to a car nap after the third round.

I haven’t gotten a journal to write down the questions yet, but I recall being a strong supporter of someone’s answer of Kiev being the capital of Ukraine and coming up with one answer the entire night. Even in the bonus round I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where those damn movie quotes came from. I was saddened to learn that Nathan knew the author of Make Way for Ducklings and I did not, but at least I knew Tim was wrong when he wanted to attribute the New Kids on the Block to a list of erroneous names.

This is my five hundredth post. Sit back and enjoy the bloodbath.

Technically it’s not #500, since I lost an entire month’s worth of entries from last summer when Hager’s box went down. But you can’t complain about free hosting, and in the last year I’ve been doing better now that I’m on a new server. I made the switch to MovableType and never looked back. There are still a few kinks I want to iron out centering mainly around photos, but manually stuffing and sftp-ing my iPhoto output works for now. I forsee linking issues when I try to move my site since I’m not using relative paths; it’s not my fault, though, because my archive pages are located on a different directory level than my main page. I really should try to come to a more permanent solution, but it has to remain on the back burner until my other project is up and running — mobile blogging. I’ve got this great camera phone and I use it all the time. The problem is that the novelty of taking pictures of my friends and assigning them to their incoming calls has worn off, and my free time for blogging has significantly decreased. The perfect solution would be to post my pictures and a short entry from my phone, but my first attempt went roughly enough to discourage me. I have to bug Lisa and others about helping me set this up — and in a way that formats my posts nicely and doesn’t post any extraneous verbage. Basically, I don’t want to have to edit half my posts again later.

Once I get that set up, I’ll be back on the horse as far as documenting my activities is concerned. Taking lots of pictures and writing about the stuff I do is one of the most important ways I combat my fear of aging and death. It forces me to slow down and take a step back. A few years ago I came up with my own motto: that life should be a perfect balance of 50 percent anticipation and 50 percent reflection. When my scale tips one way or the other I either lose track of time as it flies by or dwell on the past until it depresses me. I finally took some pictures this past weekend and in a few days when we’re in Montreal I’ll take some more. I went back to my rafting story and spliced the pictures from that back in, and updated my online album for the first time in months.

Speaking of life, it’s going pretty well. I’m still hovering between 205 and 210 pounds depending on my state of undress. I’ve struck a pretty decent balance between watching what I eat during the week and screaming Chapelle quotes in a drunken stupor on weekends and Wednesdays. After being “too busy” to workout for almost a week thanks to the rafting trip and its preparation, I made it to the gym every afternoon this week. Monday and Tuesday I started weight lifting in earnest and yesterday I ran for the first time since the Nick Pipino run, hurting my left knee in the process. It suddenly occurred to me that after limping with a cane thanks to a sprained right ankle eight years ago, my left knee will give me problems for the rest of my life and I could be taking better care of it. At that moment, however, I powered through the pain and told myself I’d start worrying later. Now it hurts to simply walk on it. I really do need to pick up a knee brace for running and be conscious that I don’t sit with my left leg crossed.

On the ride up to Maine I was telling Lex how I don’t see the significance of a new calendar year in terms of rating personal progress. The new year is as arbitrary a milestone as a 500th post. Instead, I said that Labor Day is the date I consider a new year to begin; after all, it marked the start of a new school year since before I can remember. But even that isn’t entirely true. I find myself judging years on a rolling basis, that way I can start over whenever I want and when things are going particularly well I can block it off as a banner year.

And what a great year this has been. In the past 12 months I’ve lost over 50 pounds and cut six minutes off my time for a 5k. I learned to drive standard transmission thanks to Al and Tim, bought a new Honda Element, and used it on separate trips to New Hampshire, Montreal, and Maine. I vacationed in North Carolina and the Bahamas. I’ve made a few new friends, rediscovered some old ones, attended a dozen parties and organized outings that number dozens more. Dia and I brought two new cats into our apartment and Matt made it back from Iraq without getting beheaded. We made the switch from Shufflepuck to Quizo and earned more than our fair share of best team names. I disfigured my body for the first time since getting a nipple ring, balancing it out with a Rudy tattoo on my right shoulder. And so on, and so on. I can’t begin to list the plethora of movies, books, and television shows I’ve consumed.

The best part is that summer isn’t even here yet and there’s plenty of time to do so much more. Before I know it, I’ll be shifting my year to exclude half the things I just mentioned to include an entirely new array of fun shit. Boo to the Yah.

Get it?

Anyway, it’s back! The betabrite system is five by five, and just in time for the trip to Montreal too.

Last night I mounted and tested it in the Element. Tim took the slack out of the power cable today and my dad and sister shipped my old laptop back to me. The only thing left to do is download the command utility for OS X from Apple’s Web site and test that puppy out.

Tim’s white water rafting trip this past weekend was a high-speed tour of New England. The actual time spent on the water was only a few hours but it was by far the best part. Not to discount the time spent lounging around the campground the day before — even though it only got colder after we arrived Friday at 1 p.m., it was peaceful, relaxing, and fattening.

The trip was broken into four legs.

Thursday night we left Levittown at 6:30 p.m., almost an hour after we had planned. Tim’s friend House is apparently a work-excuser (‘w&rk ik-‘skyüz-&r: Noun, 1. One who allows one’s life to be dictated by one’s employer. 2. One who must constantly rationalize absences to friends) and Tim finally had to head over without him. It made things simpler in terms of road trips since we didn’t have to take two cars until we picked up Pete and Lex. There was a lot to stuff into the Element — Tim’s new grill, the 38-gallon cooler, non-refrigerated food, board games, and three people’s worth of clothes, sleeping bags and assorted gadgets — but it fit with even enough room left for the giant fish pillow to tag along. We took I-95 most of the way, and so we sat in traffic on every major segment from the Cross Bronx Expressway north. The main exception was the New Jersey Turnpike, where were we took the closed truck lanes after gassing up and were the the only car in sight almost the entire way to New York. The Connecticut portion of our journey was sponsored by McDonald’s as we didn’t see another type of fast food joint for miles; hunger pains eventually forced us to cave in and eat their dog meat, something I had not done in over a year. We met Pete at his sister’s house shortly after midnight and crashed not long after that.

The next morning we woke up pretty early and took off once Alex arrived. The five of us split into two cars: Pete and Jason with Tim driving my car, and me driving Alex in his Subaru. We averaged between 80-90 mph the entire way to the campsite in Maine. The only exception to this was when I was caught behind a particularly slow someone; I had just about caught up when I saw the orange Element on an exit ramp. Someone mentioned stopping at WalMart at some point, but we weren’t expecting an unscheduled stop so soon and it took a serious effort to not get left behind: rather than slow down, I sped around a car in the slow lane between me and the exit, and so I hit the sharp turn doing about 95 mph. Alex wasn’t too happy with what I was doing to his car, but we figured it was simply another Tim special and followed him through two stoplights and three connected parking lots before stopping. I was on the phone this entire time and wasn’t really paying attention to where we were going, so when we noticed a plain, white, distinctly non-WalMart building and walked over to the other guys to find out where the hell we were, I noticed that my car now had a Maine license plate — we’d followed a different orange Element right off the highway. We sprinted back to Alex’s car and sped back to the highway. I couldn’t get in touch with Tim since I was borrowing his phone to activate my $5/month unlimited roaming. Fortunately, his phone had Jason’s number in it, and they guessed why I was calling right away. They gave us the directions to the WalMart along our route and we caught up with them there. Once we got these final supplies and everyone had a good laugh at my expense, it was smooth sailing for the rest of the morning.

Once at Moxie Outdoor Adventures we quickly settled into eating, drinking, and some games. It was freezing cold by the lake, but we alternated between lounging in the cabin where the heat was cranked up and crowding around our campfire just beyond the porch. By the next morning we had smoked our cigars, filled half a trashcan with empties and cooked enough hamburgers and sausages to make us sick and feed anyone who happened by. We fell asleep one by one and awoke the next morning ready to hit the rapids.

The rafting was as fun as it was cold. Though we were given wetsuits and neoprene shoes, there is only so much they can do on a river where snow still covers the banks. Other than the temperature, it was a beautiful day and perfect for a river ride. There were a few spots where I was afraid I’d fall in the water, but the only mishaps I suffered were a few bloody knuckles and a rash from the Neosporin I put on my tattoo. By the time the bus carried us back to camp that afternoon we were sore and hungry, so clothes and a steak lunch under the warm sun really hit the spot. And after lunch we split.

The third leg of the trip, this time to Alex’s house in Boston, was much like the second. Besides almost breaking 100 mph on the highway, the only other notable event was passing cars on Route 201. Since there were two of us driving, it was easy to have the first car do all the work; once they made it around someone doing a mere 65 mph or so they radioed back to us in the second car when the coast was clear, taking the guesswork out of it. Once we got to Alex’s house, we worked on the rest of the food, beer and cigars. Steve and Gosia even came over to hang out for a little bit, Gosia kindly commenting every few minutes on how great I looked. For yet another night I stayed up until I could barely keep my eyes open, this time watching Jason and Pete play Nintendo.

The next morning we grabbed a quick breakfast and hit the road home. Highlights of the final drive included the first rain of the weekend; one of the weakest crossword puzzles I’ve ever tried (courtesy of Boston’s Weekly Dig newspaper — “Mort” as the answer for the clue “Mindy’s friend”? Give me a break…); lunch with Tim and Jason’s friend Pooch and a note on my car from parking in some old man’s unmarked spot; a frightening baby statue; and a pass through a police checkpoint where where my question “Drugs or people?” got a chuckle.

I can’t remember when I had a road trip that was so much fun. Of course, there’s Jason’s bachelor party this weekend in Montreal.

The first signature blurb was because I was using the web center on Sprint.com (I hope). Otherwise it’s not worth it. I could always go in and edit the posts later on but that’d be a hassle. The other line crediting airblogging.com is something I guess I’ll have to live with until I come up with my own solution. It’s got to be a simple script, right? Also, the time stamp is off by an hour even though I’m pretty sure I have my settings correct.

This is a test of my new remote posting method. If all goes well, there will be pictures from my camera phone of this weekend's rafting trip. If not, I'm going to shoot someone.

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I’ve got an idea I want to try out at Quizo tonight. It might seem like less fun to some people, but to me winning is also fun and we don’t do nearly enough of it. Here it is: We should approach the game with more of a team mentality, namely more structure. All too often we have complaints at the end of a round that someone wasn’t heard or that the minority vote wasn’t considered enough.

To fix this we should try nominating a different team captain each week. One person to have the final say on every disputed question for a night, to decide which round should be jokered, and to help manage the amount of time spent on each question.

Also, there should be a secretary besides the person recording the answers on the official sheet. This person would be in charge of jotting down the questions and suggested responses and maybe who said them, and the final answer. I nominate myself for this role, and I’m guessing I won’t have too many complaints since it sounds like a lot of work. It would be nice to have some help with this every now and then, however, namely if my first idea works out and I get a chance at team captain. The end result will be a journal of every question and answer, popular disputes and blunders, and hopefully a way to track our progress.

Yes, I actually spent time thinking about this. No, I don’t do it often; it just came to me in the shower this morning. And even if it sounds a little organized for a night of drinking and trivia, I think it’ll be worth it when someone’s trying to remember a specific question or argument week later.

Now, if only there were a way to get everyone a seat each week….

I’m still exhausted from this past weekend. I was partly looking forward to coming to work so I could sit and stare at a monitor.

First off, the University City 5k Run.

I completely obliterated my time from last year, shaving off eight minutes. I can’t post everyone’s official times since they haven’t been posted yet, but Papadakis said it best after the race: Everyone was a huge wiener for just showing up and participating. I hear Andy was a little peeved that Ross beat him, Don was too busy helping Kon move to show up, and Tim couldn’t run because of his knee. On the plus side, Tom and Pat ran; Pat came in about a minute ahead of Tom and both crushed my time from last year. Dia stayed with me the entire time, though as we sprinted the last three blocks — passing approximately 15 people — I completely zoned out forgot about her. She wasn’t terribly mad, but I should have been more thoughtful.

The race was a lot harder than I thought it would be, and for all the wrong reasons. I didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before, but even that wasn’t a big deal. I had plenty of time to get to Drexel, but with all that extra time after my supply run I decided to get a few other things out of the way too. I topped off my gas tank, I got my car washed, I stopped by to visit my grandparents. The last one was the killer since I left their place with only 20 minutes before the race was scheduled to start. I drove like a maniac and made it to the corner of 32nd & Market Streets where Dia hopped out to register in the 5 minutes that were left. I luckily found a spot just up on 33rd Street but had to run to the sign-in desk where I learned that I wasn’t pre-registered after all. I had just enough time to fill out the form, jam my keys and ID into my little running-shorts pocket, and pin my number to my shirt before I got behind the starting line and heard the gun go off. I had to skip any kind of stretching and set up my iPod playlist and earphones as I started to run, by which time I was already slightly out of breath.

Afterward, I got yelled at for “cutting in line” when all I wanted to do was keep moving. After practically standing still for 20 seconds or so with my heart pounding like never before, I reached the water table to see the last bottle disappear into someone else’s hands. Eventually I found some other water, but by that time I missed seeing Tom and Pat cross the finish line. We lazed about for a while filling back up with drinks and semi-healthy food before we headed back to the car, where I found a damn parking ticket. Apparently the rules of parking in the city still apply regardless of whether you’re in a 5k or not.

Next, the MS Walk.

Saturday’s stiffness was only exacerbated by Sunday’s 8-mile MS walk. I thought I’d be able to work out some of the kinks in my body, but it only drained me even more; I could feel my knees getting tighter and tighter as we walked. It was for a good cause, though, and I really enjoyed taking an emotionally relaxing walk through Tyler State Park with Tara and her parents, Dave, Dave’s friend Kevin, Pat, Tim, and Dia. Afterward we had exactly four people left for a game of Settlers, and Tara fed us well.

Afterwards, I barely had enough strength to catch a movie with Dia, Matt, Chris and Lisa, and hobbled around work all day today. I still went to the gym and did my morning exercises, but my body’s going to demand time to recuperate real soon.

As I mentioned before, today it felt really nice to sit at work and just work.

Dia and I have been having memory issues of late. It appears to be the beginning of the end for our brains. First instance was discovered when we got back from Tom’s birthday outing Friday night. I had called to Dia as we were leaving to make sure she locked the front door; instead, she did the exact opposite and didn’t even pull it shut all the way. When we arrived at 2 a.m. Saturday morning the door was wide open, probably having been that way for most of the seven hours since we left. I wasn’t so worried that someone would just walk up to our apartment since the community feels generally safe, but I can only imagine for how long Cannoli sat meowing at the screen door, annoying our neighbors for hours on end. If one of the neighbors had stopped by to complain, they would have known that we weren’t there and who knows what could have happened after that.

The other incident was my fault, since I had trouble falling back asleep once I woke up too early Saturday morning. Still tired, I gave up and worked on my 5k playlist instead. Once Dia got up we headed right out to Target to buy some running supplies (water, shorts, replacement headphones, sweatband). Pulling into Sam’s Club about two hours later, for some reason it hit me that I never turned the alarm off. Sure enough, when we got home we could hear the alarm from outside and it had been sounding for close to an hour. Fortunately none of our neighbors were home, but Poor Ravioli and Csoki were cowering under the table.