OMG beautiful weekend FTW

What an awesome weekend in every respect! Friday night had some friends over to watch the season premiere of Battlestar Galactica as well as the Webisodes (worst. name. ever.) , , and Audra all came over for snacks, pizza, and drinks. The webisodes were OK, but definitely not up to par. The premiere was good, although it could have been tightened up, as some of the plot points were a little weak. But it definitely set up for an AWESOME season, imho.

Saturday morning, Chuck arrived from NJ for a weekend visit. We parked his car over at Alewife and headed out to Kelly’s Roast Beef for lunch. We did all kinds of things this weekend, including heading out to the MFA, Summer Shack, flew (and not crashing) my helicopter, saw “The Departed” (was amazingly awesome), and a bunch of other stuff. He left yesterday afternoon and got home safely without any trouble. Totally awesome.

Corinna and I watched Four Brothers last night, which was a steaming pile of crap. I expected an enjoyably trashy flick, but it was just terrible. There were about 3 minutes where I actually enjoyed watching it.

Fun in Northern New Jersey

and I headed down to the family estate on Friday after work and dinner. By leaving at 7pm, we were able to miss all the traffic, but by the time we rolled in around 11:30pm I was really tired… We pretty much crashed Friday night, Saturday morning we woke up rather early.. Chuck came over and we both flew our helicopters. We also both crashed our helicopters, and my crash was the most spectacular of my limited pilot career.. I tapped the blades into the ground a little, which usually isn’t a big deal, but this time the spindle sheared off and the blades went flying off in a very exciting fashion. The first few times you crash the helicopter you get disappointed, but you reach a point where you realize it is par for the course. :P

After the heliflopter activity, Dad and I went down to get fitted for our tuxedos for ‘s wedding. Wasn’t too painful, but I can think of better ways to spend that hour or so… :P For dinner we went to the County Seat in Newton to celebrate me (which is this week) and my dad’s birthdays (which was last week). We were trying to pick a place none of us had been before, and while I had gotten confused and the restaurant in my head wasn’t the restaurant we ended up at, it was a good place, and they made a mean burger. That night Chuck, Corinna, and I went to see Inside Man, which was only OK.

We got back into Boston around 4:30pm yesterday and basically turned right back around and headed out to meet with the film club, which was a great time. We caught Thank You For Smoking, which was great.. The group was rather big last night, with 3 new faces, which are always welcome.. The only disadvantage to a big group is that I don’t endup getting to talk to everyone afterwards because the table is so large, but what can you do… :P

Brokeback Mountain Chopper

I had been avoiding Brokeback Mountain because it seemed like it was a gimmick movie. All the press and attention I had heard had been focused on how great it was that it was a gay cowboy movie. But pickin’s for this past weekend’s film club were slim, and I had heard some really good reviews of the film, so I picked it for the club. Turns out it really was a great film.. It was tasteful, not over the top, and just a really well put together film and story. Heath Ledger is as good as everybody says he is, and even Donnie Darko did a good job…

Getting much better at flying the helicopter.. I’m able to hover it for 30 seconds or more without having to touch it down again… Back at work this morning, it’s slow going trying to get back into the swing of things after 11 days of vacation… =)

Christmas Update

I slacked way too long again, so this is going to cover alot of ground.. Sorry if it feels bullet-pointy.

Christmas, as always, was awesome. Dropped off at the airport very early on Friday, and after some shitty poker at Foxwoods, I rolled into Jersey in the late afternoon. Hung out Friday night with the Fam, Saturday we went to the Grandparents’ house to celebrate with them, but had to leave early because had to work until midnight. When we got back , , , and I buckled down for our traditional Christmas movies:

We all managed to stay up until Mom got home from work, and after some last minute wrapping we all retired to our beds. Everyone seemed to wake up around 9:30am or so, and we proceeded to open our gifts. A strange occurrence: We were tearing off wrapping paper when the doorbell rang. I stood up to look through the window, thinking “Who the hell would ring our bell on Christmas morning?” when I saw a mail truck! They were delivering mail on Christmas morning, which was also a sunday, one would presume that they were behind schedule, but I hope that fella got some good overtime pay for that shift. Amusingly enough, he was delivering a package for Larissa that contained gifts for me, so instead of wrapping it she just handed it to me and I ripped open the Amazon box. =)

Dad and my sisters all got different species of iPods, and I didn’t do too badly myself, not only scoring tons of great books and DVDs, but also a Blade CP Micro R/C Helicopter. I’ve operated R/C cars and was way into boats for awhile, but I’ve always wanted a Helicopter. Recently, my boss at Goodrich, Brian, got a Blade CP and all his talk about it re-lit that fire. It’s definitely going to be a long time before I’m comfortable flying it, but I’m already learning how to hover it and getting better at it every time I spin ‘er up. I nicked a set of blades pretty quickly, but I knew going into this that there would be some sacrificial trips to the hobby store when learning to fly.

I chilled at home for a few days, tried to meet up with everyone but there’s never enough time, so I did what I could… I spent the bulk of my time with the Family and Chuck, but also found time to catch up with Johnny, , and Amy.. I hauled ass back to Boston Wednesday afternoon and and came over for some Burnout Revenge and Scotch. Thursday morning I picked up Corinna from the Airport and we just chilled out the rest of the day.

Today we met up with Audra at the Kendall and caught Wolf Creek, a movie that really wanted to be The Texas Chain Saw Massacre but didn’t quite make it. It wasn’t bad, imho, but could have been better. Tonight we watched The Big Lebowski (another Christmas gift) which I hadn’t seen in ages and Corinna had never seen!