larissa

Return of the Corn

Posted on by grahams

After

[info]coco_b

returned from South Dakota on Friday around Midnight, we managed to get a few hours of sleep in before piling into Hawkeye and heading down to NJ. 

[info]jerseyboop

was visiting from TN, and I hadn’t seen her in quite awhile (Christmas?).  I also used the opportunity to trade cars with mom for the week and bring the crap I’ve kept in their basement to the new place now that there’s room for it.  It was a really busy 36 hours or whatever…  Saturday night we all went out to Outback to celebrate Father’s Day a little early (since we were all in town at the same time). 

[info]tatyana

was accompanied by Stosh and her “stepkids” (she and Stosh aren’t married, but she lives with him and helps take care of the kids when they are with Stosh).  They are cute kids, but a handful, and totally reminded me why having kids is a bad idea… =)

Anyway, I was in the basement with Mom and Dad, who were helping me spelunk the basement for my stuff, and helping me bring it out to the car.  My dad was bringing out a box to the car when I looked into my plastic Rubbermaid coffin and noticed the infamous can of corn.  I quickly sprung into action, grabbing the can and bringing it out to the car with the intention of hiding it in his car..  Unfortunately, he caught me as I entered the garage, and quickly proclaimed “Damn it!!”  Apparently, he had just put the can in the coffin a few minutes prior..  This was extra special, because this is EXACTLY how this whole can fiasco started almost 10 years ago when I was packing up to move to RIT (in late August or early September 1997).  The ball is back in my court… for now…

On the way back from NJ we stopped over in Manhattan for a few hours to visit with Sara, Dave, Sappha, and Finn…  To save time, I drove directly to their place down by Battery Park, so we could just blast up the FDR when we were done as opposed to taking the PATH back to NJ then driving from there…  The Holland Tunnel was awful, but the TomTom got us there without too much hassle…    Sara made some awesome baked Mac & Cheese, and we caught up for an hour or two before we hit the road…  Mom’s Honda Pilot treated us pretty well, but I really don’t like driving such a big car, especially when I can’t see out the back..  Fortunately I didn’t have to do all that much backing up…

We got back to Watertown around midnight, and we quickly settled in for the final episode of The Sopranos..  What a way to go out, it was everything I could have hoped for…  Exactly the kind of way I had hoped the series would end, I mean, I wasn’t “expecting” how it turned out, but I really hoped many of the “all wrapped up nicely” theories that were floating around leading up to the finale were wrong…  I’ll leave this spoiler free for awhile, but I’ll try and come back to it at some point…

What a Birthday!

Posted on by grahams

On Saturday, I turned 30, and thanks to my lovely girlfriend, my family, and my friends, it was a great weekend!  On Friday we hung out out with friends at

[info]adamfletcher

‘s place…  We played all kinds of board games and snacked on delicious food prepared by Adam..  As board games can be, it was tense at times, but I hope everyone had a good time.. :P 

[info]coco_b

bought me a Cake Batter flavored ice cream cake from J.P. Lick’s which everyone enjoyed, especially me!

Saturday morning, Corinna woke up early and made me brunch!  I usually wake up several hours before her on Saturday’s, and I sure as hell don’t usually get treated to awesome bacon and french toast!  It was really awesome being able to just kick back and relax while someone else did the cooking for a change!   I also opened some gifts and cards I received in the mail..  My parents got me the Talking Heads Brick, which is badass!  I also got another season of South Park from

[info]tatyana

 which rules…  Then, for dinner, Corinna had another ace up her sleeve, taking me to the wonderful Grill 23 for dinner, which was fantastic…  What is better than the gift of meat?  Nothing.    After we got home we enjoyed the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who, and all was right in the world…

Sunday we just hung out and caught Les Ordres with the film club, which was pretty good…  Thanks to everyone for such a great birthday!

Turkey Weekend

Posted on by grahams

and I headed down to Jersey after work on Wednesday.. We waited until 6:30pm or so to avoid traffic, which worked, until we hit torrential rain in New York state. The traffic wasn’t bad, per se, but the rain really slowed us down. We arrived sometime around 11pm, and crashed pretty quickly. Thursday morning I woke up to the turkey preparations, which were already under way. This year, my parents had access to two kitchens, as our neighbors across the street were out of town and we were watching their house. This inspired my mom to pick up two 20lb. birds! This way we were able to feed 16 people with plenty of leftovers! Corinna prepared Alton’s Cranberry Dipping Sauce, which I was always curious about, and was awesome.

Friday was pretty crazy… Corinna and I were planning on traveling into Manhattan to visit her friends Sara and Dave. Corinna decided that she wanted to do something “touristy” in Manhattan, so she plotted out a window shopping route that would take us from the 33rd street PATH station up 5th to 60th St. This wasn’t something that I was terribly interested in, and expressed displeasure, but never really made it clear how little I wanted to do it… When we got there, Corinna witnessed the power of this fully armed and operational battle station. It was a total sea of people, we could barely move, and by the time we hit Rockefeller Center we gave up. We jumped on the subway to head down to Sara and Dave’s (down by the World Trade Center pit). The rest of the night was tons of fun, though, so we were able to erase the bad taste of Black Friday Retail Hell.

Saturday was ‘s birthday, so we mostly celebrated that, going out to the townie bar Tidal Wave to celebrate after cake. It was a really weird bar; They had a football game playing on the big screen and pool tables in the back, but they also had a DJ spinning the worst dance dreck of today. I also, somehow, ended up as DD, so I couldn’t even drink it away. :P

The trip home on Sunday sucked SOOOOOO badly… A normally 4 hour trip took 6.5 hours, and Corinna and I were ready to tear our eyes out by the end of it… I was so freakin’ crabby and just wanted to find somewhere to hide…

Today I had a physical, my first real physical in ages… Apparently I am still inexplicably healthy, although I will have to wait awhile for the cholesterol and other blood tests to come back. My blood pressure was still pretty good at 110/76… Obviously I have to lose some more weight, but my walking to work seems to be helping in that department.

Take me back, Journal, I’m sorry!

Posted on by grahams

I’ve neglected the hell out of my journal lately… Some of that is because nothing is going on… But I have also just been lax, I will try to be better, but… no promises… :)

My sister, came up this weekend for a weekend of frigid Boston fun… We had a few things lined up to do, but we ended up indoors most of the weekend due to the extremely low temperatures.. We hit up Bartley’s, Candlepin Bowling, Pool at Flattop Johnny’s, and the film club. Hopefully she enjoyed herself, and hopefully she will come back when it is warmer out and we won’t be so shut-in.

We caught “Why We Fight” last night, and while it was quite “preaching to the choir-y”, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The discussion after the movie was a bit heated, though, as it tends to get after these political films…

I think I’m finally getting over this cold… I’ve felt good for the past few days, although I am still a little congested, I can at least think, etc. I had my sister bring up a bunch of old CDs because I recently realized that there was a big hole in my email archive from when I was using BeOS. So I got BeOS running on an older machine and restored my old email from backup. I had to go through some hoops to get the BeMail format mail into something Mail.app under OSX could import, but once I figured it out it was a no brainer. It’s amazing what 5 years can do for your knowledge of an OS, it took me quite awhile to get my bearings in BeOS again… I had a little nostalgia, but it is definitely pretty dated by today’s standards.

Jesus *IS* Magic

Posted on by grahams

I finally was able to catch Jesus is Magic last night with the Sunday Night Film Club. As expected, I really enjoyed it.. People have been slagging the musical bits, but I thought they were rather funny. Was a slow night for the club last night, but with the holiday that was expected.

Went home late on Wednesday for Turkey Day and we didn’t really hit any traffic. We were staying in a hotel Wednesday and Thursday night because so many people were home for the holiday that the house was full. My kid sister, , and her boyfriend were leaving town on Friday, so we moved back into the house then. Actually, though, when they left on Friday they were no longer boyfriend/girlfriend, which is crazy. They are now fiancée/fiancée, as Ben proposed to Aimee Thursday morning. I wish I had gotten to see it, but apparently he put on his dress uniform and put on the full-on dog and pony show. Now that I think of it, I didn’t actually see any pictures of the event, I guess I will have to pester my family for them.

I also got to hang out with my other sister, , who is getting all fancy going out to night clubs and stuff. Now I feel even more like the “lame big brother”. =) Mom and Dad are well, and we all gorged on turkey and pie all weekend. and my father had a deathmatch showdown in Battle Pumpkin Pie. Chuck has made some stellar pies for years now, but this was my dad’s first entry into the pie-o-sphere. I could not pick a winner, both pies were fantastic, my dad’s trending a bit more pumpkin-y and Chuck’s a bit more spice-y. Mom waThe turkey was as awesome as always, and this year my parents prepped an extra turkey breast so we had even more leftovers than ever, which ruled.

Friday night I dragged with me and Chuck to a townie bar in Hopatcong where a bunch of people from High School were meeting in lieu of a 10-Year Reunion. They had tried to organize one but interest was low.. But it was good to see a bunch of people who I hadn’t see in a decade, and it was good to see that, at least out of the people that showed, pretty much everyone seemed to be doing well. NJ hasn’t banned smoking in bars yet, so as soon as Corinna and I got back to the house we took showers and changed our clothes. I did a load of laundry that night as I only had the one pair of jeans and they reeked.