Oh My Liver 2: The District is Drunk

I'm a little late posting this, but that's because of the staggering amount of alcohol I consumed on my weekend trip to Washington D.C., our Nation's Capitol.

I flew out on Friday, and Dan was nice enough to drive me to the airport. I bought him lunch.

The flight down was easy enough and DannyC came to meet me at the airport. We rode the Metro to his apartment and then headed out to the bar he had chosen for the birthday debauchery. It was this tiny bar in Arlington, that we basically took over. DannyC is a hasher (it's a drinking club that has a running problem, as he likes to say) and he know as lot of people through this club and they are drinkers. We had food at the bar, but the pitchers were flowing and there was karaoke, and shots, and more pitchers, and a birthday cake that ended getting smeared all over. All in all, a great time. DannyC got sick, and thankfully one of his friends drove us home, because I had no idea where we were and would not have been able to tell the cab where to go.

The next day we ended up sleeping in until 2PM. Dan was still drunk. We headed into Adams Morgan (a DC neighborhood) to have some lun...din..brea.. food. There was a party later that evening so mostly we just rested the rest of the day, as I had no need to do anything touristy, and Dan was just trying to recover from his hangover.

The party we went to was at some other hashers house. They were having a "Trim My Bush" party, where people brought ornaments to put on their tree, usually of an adult nature. I didn't drink quite as much, but did talk to some very interesting people.

Sunday we just kind of bummer around and watched part of the marathon of John and Kate + Eight that was on TLC. Dan rode with me back to the airport where he saw me off.

The weather was kind of crummy so the flight back was kind of slow and bumpy, and I had the misfortune of being seated next to a Welsh Christian evangelist of some sort who tried to talk to me about Jesus and Hell. I was not amused. Once I sprinted off the plane, I waited for my luggage. It was at this point, I really wished I had a small carry-on-able suitcase for weekend trips. I waited for over an hour before my bag finally showed up, shortly after I went to the luggage service office. Lani picked me up and I went to my parent's house to pick up Skippy, who had been staying there. I didn't end up getting home until after 11, at which point I decided against meeting up with Austin and company at The Deuce.

Continuing the drunken theme, I went to Augie's with Beckie and Ryan on Monday to celebrate Ryan's getting sworn in. $2 Molsons, $5 pizzas and $0.30 wings.

Tuesday was my normal Suby meet out in Novi at BW3s. More beers.

Wednesday was the Juno movie preview at the Maple Art. After the movie we went to the Redcoat for food and once again, beer.

None of that helps the cold I picked up any. Ugh.

Oh, my liver.

What a long weekend.

Wednesday night I went out with Tess and Dan. We bar crawled from O'Flaherty's to Excalibur Park down to the good 'ole Tap Room. I drank many gin and tonics and then to finish off the night, Dan got him and I Irish Car Bombs. That was the finishing touch. Tess drove us to Linda's though along the way we had to make a stop, and after some food, I got my car and went home.

Thanksgiving, I went to my parents and deep-fried the turkey. I also made stuffing and Alton Brown's green bean casserole. Dinner was delicious.

Friday I decided to completely skip all the Black Friday madness and sat home, at turkey sandwiches and watch a whole bunch of TV. Dan came over eventually and we sat through the ridiculousness of Star Trek Voyager's mirror world episodes. I ended up crashing kind of early.

Saturday I went to Drew and Erin's wedding. It was in Harrison Twp or something... far on the east side. I went to the ceremony and then there was about 4 hours to kill until the reception so I followed the wedding party bus to a bar where we stayed for a while before I went to pick up Jessica. The reception was at MacRay Harbor, though I missed the turn the first time and had to turn around. Dinner was good, salmon and some sort of chicken. Jenn stole someone else's dessert mousse. There was dancing. I drank a lot of gin and tonics, at least a dozen. I think I danced off the liquor though. After the reception wound down we headed out to Ferndale to meet up with Beckie, Jackie and Dave, and Sarah at the Post. I had kind of forgotten how ass-y it was there. There was this super-drunk chick who kept trying to get people to dance. We were still in our formal wear, so it was a little weird being in the bar. After that I drove Jessica home.

Sunday, my parents came over and we got the rest of my leaves out to the curb. Later, Austin and Kevin came over and we went up to the Mt. Chalet II (A.K.A The Deuce) for $1.50 Labatts. Kevin said they might run out of beer if we didn't get there soon. I though he was kidding. He was not. Dan showed up a bit later. We managed to kill off their keg of Labatts. Then we went to the Coney.

I am teh tired this morning/afternoon. I need a vacation from my weekends. Unfortunately, next weekend doesn't look to be much easier.

Skippy's got a license to drive

Well, not really. I got Skippy's Berkley dog license on Friday, so he's registered finally.

Weekend was pretty busy, though. Friday was the meeting of the eating club, and then the adventures Saturday... ugh.

So, Saturday I went up to Ann Arbor to watch the game with some fraternity brothers, one of whose Bachelor party it was that day/night. I was a bit late setting out, having gotten a haircut. I eventually trekked to the bar where they were watching the game, and unfortunately sitting close to many OSU fans. The game sucked. At least I got drunk.

After the game we went to a tailgate to catch up with everyone else (drink some more) and then headed to the hotel where the guys were spending the night. I desperately needed to go to the bathroom while on our trip, and we briefly stopped at a McDonalds where I rid myself of the many beers I'd already consumed.
After a brief rest at the hotel(where we had a few more beers), we headed out to dinner (drinking) and after dinner, the "New" Mitch's, which was much like the old Mitch's even carrying over much of the furniture. It was kind of strange, because people were playing flip-cup, quarters and beer-pong in the bar. Way more hardcore than when I was school. I got involved in some flip-cup, and that was enough to get me really hammered. Eventually we left the bar and ended up at the hotel, where I ended up spending the night. Thankfully John had been able to go let Skippy out during the day, so he wasn't too upset when I finally got home around 9am.

One cool thing, when I went to my Mom's for dinner, she let me test drive her new Toyota Prius. It's pretty cool, but kind of strange the way it starts and stops and there's no key, just a push button. It's nice.

From the misty shores of Terre Haute

It's Monday, and we're back. Dan, Beckie and I trekked down to Terre Haute to visit Jessica and celebrate her birthday.

I have these observations. Terre Haute is far. Indiana is weird. Trivial Pursuit takes forever.

We watched Ants, a late 70s horror movie, which was not scary nor terrifying nor any of the other adjectives used to describe it on the box. As suspected, I looked it up and it was a TV movie, Suzanne Somers (at the time not even the top billed star) was probably just starting/started Three's Company, and most everybody else were has-beens or nobodies. It was pretty terrible, saved only by the prodigious drinking we did whenever somebody said "ants" or we saw ants.

Still, we had a good time. It was good to see Jessica.

Riding the cougar!

Well, sorry I haven't posted in a while. There have been interesting things going on, but mostly I've kind of forget to blog about them.

This weekend, Austin and I went to Napa Valley for the wedding of one of my fraternity brothers, Dan Fanton, or as he is also known, Don Santon.

Austin and I's flight left at 7:20am on Friday, necessitating a drive to his parent's house at 5:00am. I went to bed Thursday night, Austin decided to just stay up and sleep on the plane. We flew Frontier, which I hadn't flown before. Our flight had a layover in Denver, and the first leg was fine, I slept a little, and also watched a couple of episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" on my iPod which I had ripped from the DVDs I borrowed from Austin.

Once we got to Denver, things went a bit awry. Our departure gate was changed, plus we had to truck down most of the concourse to get there in time. Then the seat assignments were all screwy. Thankfully they decided for the hassle they were going to give us free TV. I should also mention that all of Frontier's planes have a picture of an animal on the tail and the that these animals have names. I think we were on Spike the Porcupine for that particular leg. The rest of the flight proved fine, though as is usually the case these days, there wasn't a meal, just a snack (a granola bar).

We arrived in Sacramento about 11:00am, where coincidentally one of the other fraternity brothers, Drew and his fiancee, had just arrived on a different flight. We bussed over to the rental car terminal and headed out towards Napa. We had decided we would look for somewhere for lunch on the way. Little did we realize that there is very little between Sacramento and Napa. Drew led the way and twice we had to turn around while off the freeway because we couldn't find a place to eat. We finally found an Applebee's in Davis (home of UC Davis) and stopped there. After lunch we headed off towards our respective hotels. I managed to get off on the wrong exit, but we turned back around and made it eventually to our hotel.

That evening (this being Friday still) we went to the rehearsal dinner. The food was very good, I had the rainbow trout. After the dinner we went to the sportsbar in the hotel and had some drinks before retiring for the night.

Saturday, Austin and I met up with Drew and Erin, and also Adam (another fraternity brothere) and Andi and we headed down to Fairfield (town of my birth) to tour the Anheuser-Busch brewery and the Jelly Belly factory. Both tours we showed up just in time to join the next group. At the brewery they gave us some samples and as none of us had had lunch yet, we got a bit tipsy. After that we went down the block (literally) to the Jelly Belly factory. At the factory store I bought several bags of the "Belly Flops" which are jelly beans that fail the strict quality standards of factory.

After the tours we headed back and looked for a spot for lunch. Once again we were following Drew and he got us all turned around, but eventually we ended up at a Baker's Square, where there were some interesting people. There was a Cajun festival in town, so the couple seated at the table near us were regaled in bib overalls and straw hats.

The wedding was at 6, so Austin and I headed over a bit early to the winery's store to pick up a few things. Oh yeah, the wedding was at the Domaine Chandon winery. The ceremony was out on the lawn and then we went up to the patio for champagne (or rather sparking wine) and appetizers. After that was dinner. There were neverending rolls, where as soon as you ate your roll (or even most of it) they appeared with basket to give you another. There was a salad course, soup course and then the entree. I had the beef tenderloin with carmelized shallot sauce, creamed potatoes, and market vegetables. That was seriously the best beef I have ever had. We also had wine with dinner, red, white or both. Both were very good, though I'm no wine connoisseur. Then there was cake, and dancing and candy and coffee. I was so stuffed from dinner I couldn't have any cake.

When Austin and I got back from the reception, we turned on the TV and "Harold and Kumar" was on, near the end, where they were riding the cheetah. I fell asleep very soon after that.

The next morning there was a good-bye brunch hosted by the maternal grandparents. We packed away the food as we knew there would be nothing on the plane. We managed to make it back to Sacramento in pretty decent time, and I was only one hour over 2 days on the rental car, so it ended up being pretty cheap. I mentioned before that all of Frontiers planes are animal named, and our plane for the trip back to Detroit was Charlie the Cougar. We were Riding the Cougar all the way back to Detroit! What was also funny was our pilot on the second leg was Tom Cruise (or maybe Cruz) but I was tempted to ask the flight attendant if the co-pilot was Anthony Edwards. We got back to Detroit a bit after midnight. Austin's dad picked us up and then we headed home.

I should have some pictures to put up along with the post soonish, but they aren't here with me. All in all, an awesome weekend, it was a lot of fun to catch up with my fraternity brothers. Drew is getting married the weekend of Thanksgiving, so we should all be together then also.

Toast, getting toasty, Chef-ing

Had some lovely turkey BLTs on toast for dinner tonight. I'm also finishing off the last of the "Labor Punch" from the Labor Day/ Jessica's Bon Voyage party. So, that's nice and alco-tastic. I"m also watching Top Chef right now. The tension you could cut with a knife. Haahaa! Also, they keep having these commercials for Bombay Saphire during Top Chef, so I think I'll have a gin and tonic also.

I guess I'll talk a bit about Labor Day Weekend. Friday was drinking at The Berkley Front. Saturday there was Dim Sum and The Bosco. Sunday was the BBQ. The pulled pork turned out really well. The "Labor Punch" also worked surprisingly well. I shredded the second piece of pork and froze most of it. I finished off the remainder of the pork the other day.

Drinking. Yay.

Weighty Matters

A bit of a diet update here. We had our last weigh-in for the session last Wednesday, and I had met my goal. I lost 31.4 pounds, and I'm down into the 230s... barely, but I'm there. I'm signing up for the next session if my work is still continuing the program and if there's enough people. My next door neighbor actually commented on how much weight I'd lost, which made me feel good.

As for the weekend, things were pretty quiet. Friday was a stay at home night, and Saturday, I went to the DUCF (Detroit Urban Craft Fair)down at the Majestic and checked out the goods, and later went to the DUCF After Party at the Magic Stick. Austin was using my iPod to play music between the bands. One of the bands was Jason and the Hounds From Hell, a side project of the guy from the Von Bondies. I drank a fair amount that night. I had a PBR, a Newcastle, a Stroh's and a Milwaukee's Best. I think I had one other beer, but I can't remember. I ended stopping by White Castle on the way home. It was pretty slow. But delicious.

Damn you, Alberta!

Went to Canada to John's cottage last weekend.

Dan, Jessica and I headed up on Thursday. We stopped at the Duty-Free and I got some beer, Jessica got wine and we declined exchanging any money there, because, as the US dollar sucks right now, the exchange rate they were giving was $1 US = $1 Canadian. Ridiculous. It was later that John told us that apparently more oil had been found in Alberta and that was boosting the Canadian dollar.

We got to the cottage kind of late and in the middle of a pretty good rain storm. Jessica had driven and the rain and fog did little to help her poor night vision. The weather for the rest of the weekend was very nice though. We sat around and drank and had campfires, kayaked out to the beaver dam, went to town, slept, ate, drank some more, ate, read, did crosswords and word searches, and even found the Walmart in Owen Sound. We went to Walmart to get the Canadian version of Harry Potter for John's brother, and also to replace the shampoo that lives at the cottage, which had long passed its expiration date. We unfortunately did not go to The Mall.


As all things must end, we came back on Monday and I picked up Skippy at my parent's although I did make a Sam's Club run to get groceries and Harry Potter while I was on that side of town.

I started reading Harry Potter on Monday night and got through about 280 pages, and then finished it on Tuesday night at about 3:30 in the morning. I am still tired. I really liked it, even for as dark and bloody as it got, it was still kind of uplifting in the end.

Had my WW weigh-in yesterday. I was up almost 2 pounds from the previous week, which I can mostly attribute to the Cottage. I had met my goal the previous week, but slipped back up on the wrong side of it with this last weekend of drinking and snacks. I have to try to be really good this next week so I can make my goal again. I know it's doable, even with Anna's party on Saturday.

So sleepy.

Ridin' in the dirty 'Hoe

Just a note about the title of this post, this last weekend Ryan dubbed Anna's Tahoe, "the 'Hoe", and it stuck. There were many references to the 'Hoe being dirty or stinky or packed full of junk, and even the 'Hoe's rear access being open.

Camping was alot of fun, I'd like to thank Anna, Beckii, Jacque, Sandra for putting up with me for the rest of the weekend after Darcy, then Jackie, Sarah and Ryan left.

I got freakin' burnt up on my back though. We went to the beach Tuesday for a pretty good amount of time. About 4 beers worth. I neglected to put on sunscreen until a while in, and I'm still feeling it.

We did go to the beach on Sunday, but it was pretty cold, so we didn't stay long. Unfortunately for everyone that only stayed until Monday, the weather was much warmer the next couple days. Of course it did rain on the 4th.

I think I ate so much while camping. What was worse for my diet though was probably the amount of drinking I did. One thing I learned though, is that grenadine makes mixed drinks awesome. We also discovered the innovation of the "Sunrise Mimosa".

I think I had a five-day-hangover. I can't wait to go next year!

Oot and aboot

Going to Canada for a couple days. So, no updates until after the Holiday, eh? Should be fun times, drinking and swimming, camping, fires, more drinking and general rowdiness.

Not weekly, but more occasionally.

Been more than a week since the last update. I really meant to put something up last week, but had a hard time coming up with anything exciting to say.

I still don't really have anything exciting but, for my own record-keeping purposes, here goes.

Saturday before last, I went to LAN party with Austin. We briefly stopped by Gerry's yard sale and then went to Austin's comic shop and Austin's friend's kid's birthday party before returning to Gerry's for the nerding out.

After the LAN party Austin and I went to Jenn's where we went to Gus O'Connor's with her and her friend Jeremy. We ended up drinking quite a bit and slept for a couple hours at Jenn's.

This past weekend, I tried to make Friday night plans with the intention that Dan was going to be home, but he didn't make it back, and basically Friday night ended up with me going to Tess's and watching Catch and Release, which was ok, and in which Kevin Smith totally stole the show.

Saturday I went to Jennifer's Going-Away party. There were a ton of people. I brought Skippy along because Beckie said it would be ok. He was fine until he ate a piece of fried chicken and then tried to eat one of Beckie's aunt's 18 cats. He assures me that he only wanted to play. We had to tie up the Skipper after that. Drank a lot of beer, played a lot of Cornhole (and was pretty dominant with Mike (Beckie's cousin Amy's boyfriend)), ate a bunch, went swimming, had about a dozen jello shots, generally a good party time. Of course on the way home, I was drunk-hungry and had to stop at White Castle for some sliders and chicken rings.

So that was the weekend that was. As for what this week holds, I'm not sure, but Dan is supposed to be back, and beyond that, who knows.

Knocked

I saw Knocked Up this weekend. It was vulgar, crude, heartfelt, touching and hilarious. It really gives all us normal guys the hope that we too can hook-up with drunk hot chicks, get them pregnant and make them fall in love with us. Maybe that wasn't the moral of the movie, but nonetheless, it was really funny. If you loved The 40-Year-Old Virgin, you're likely to like this.

That was Saturday, actually Gerry and Melissa came over and Austin and I and them went to dinner at Pasquale's before the movie. We had a crazy waitress. She was old and feisty. Gerry's friend Josh ended up meeting us at the movie also.

Saturday during the day, my dad came over with Sydney and Bentley, and so the dogs played alot. I was actually watching Scooter this last weekend, as "Mike" was in New Jersey looking for housing. I may have mentioned that before, but I'm too lazy to look at my previous post. He was supposed to be with Beckie for the actual weekend, but she ended having to housesit and catsit for her cousin... or something along those lines.

Friday night Austin, Kevin and I had a few beers at my house and then went over to the Berkley Front. Austin and I had gone for dinner at Rexy's earlier. Rice is so my nemesis.

Memorialness. The wheels come off.

Ah, the looooong weekend. So long. So drunken.

Friday, Austin and I had a couple of beers at the Berkley Front and did some discussin'.

Saturday, I went to Sam's to pick up some supplies for Saturday, and then headed up to Anna's for her birthday barbeque. Once I got there I proceeded to eat too much, drink way too much, sat around the bonfire and generally had a good time. We burned pallets and cardboard and pretty much anything else we could find. I think we drank all the beer in Anna's house. I ended falling asleep on the futon in the basement as there was no way that I was going to drive home after drinking all that beer and the shots. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the futon was supposed to Sarah's bed for the night. I think Beckie tried to wake me about 3AM but I was having none of it. I finally woke up about 8:30AM to drive home. Nobody was up except a couple of the dogs. I had to get home to my dog.

Later on Sunday, I went shopping and stuff. Later, John, Julie, Jessica and Ari showed up for the barbeque. The weather decided to clear up, so it was actually nice by the time I got around to grilling. I just did some hamburgers and a Michigan salad. Everybody ended up leaving around 8 or so, and I called Austin to see what he was up to. We ended up heading over to the WAB for some beers. We would have gotten liquor, but we were sadly informed that they no longer have $1.50 well drinks on Sundays. We could this had been a detriment to their business, as it was definitely not as busy in there as I had remembered it being when there was the special. We didn't stay that late as Austin was heading to Cedar Point in the morning.

On Memorial Day, I took the dog for a walk and made a picnic lunch and then headed up to Pine Knob to watch the autocross. I got there just as the third heat ended and the fourth was about to start. I took some pictures of some of the guys I knew racing and also took out my R/C drift car and played around some. When everything was done, a couple of the suby people met up at Mr. B's in Royal Oak, where we had some dinner, and of course, I had another beer.

This all added up to be a not great weekend for me dietwise. I ended up cutting my hair on Sunday. With the haircut, I lost .8 lbs for the week, which probably means there was a net gain in bodyweight.

As for the t-shirts, I ended the experiment, and wore all of my t-shirts, though I think I somehow missed one. I have to check.

This coming weekend, I'm watching Scooter for "Mike", as he's heading to NJ to look at places to live and such things. "Mike" dropped him off last night and I have to find out when I can return him.

Dropping like flies

Well, diet, week 4 has come. I didn't weigh in last week because of my sickness, but this week I weighed in and had lost 8.2 pounds for the last 2 weeks. That's a total of 13.8lbs. I'm in the 250s. Crazy. I weigh less than 2 Austins. It really hasn't been that hard, aside from forgoing a lot of my favorite things, at least sushi is pretty good, relatively.

I'm mostly recovered from my illness. I'm still coughing a bit, but my throat is ok.

Thursday I had to rearrange my garage so I could get the trailer out so my sister could borrow it, then my Dad borrowed my Saturn and Lani's car stayed at my house the weekend so she could use my Dad's truck to tow the trailer. There was also some minor drama with trying to get the lights on the trailer to work.

Dan came home for the weekend. Nice.

Weekend was low-key for the most part. Friday I stayed home and watched TV so I could rest, Saturday, Jessica, Dan, Austin and I went to see Spiderman 3. It was decent but sort of a mess plotwise. Sunday I went with my parents to visit my Grandma for Mother's Day. Lani also came by to drop off the trailer and get her car.

Monday, Dan and I met up with Austin and Beckie at Augie's for dinner and drinks. Augie's also had Guitar Hero set up. We of course played a bit.
Tuesday a big group met up at Xochimilco's for dinner. I had some delicious chicken fajitas. Dan and I split a liter of Margarita. There was a pretty good storm going on all night, and when I got back home, Dan had come along also, we went to watch Veronica Mars, which I had recorded, but about 10 minutes in, the signal cut out, and recovered only in the last 5 minutes. My cable was intermitently out for a couple hours so, internet and TV were all screwy. I ended having to download a torrent of Veronica Mars.

I sent in a hard drive for warranty a couple weeks ago, and I got it back yesterday. I had sent in a 160GB drive and awesomely they sent me back a 250GB drive. I think I'll replace the 120GB drive that's currently in my computer. It's getting pretty full.

In The Great T-Shirt Adventure Quest 2007 news, I loaded in my latest batch of photos, bring the total to 92. I think there are maybe 8 shirts still left in my drawer, so I just might break 100. That would be awesome. I expect to make the animation sometime soon.

Novi, Nachos, Weight Watching, Waiting

After much prodding, goading and peer pressure by my co-workers, I joined Weight Watchers which is being sponsored by work. What's cool is that half the cost of the 13 week program is being paid for by work and if I meet my weight loss goal, I get the other half refunded. The WW program seems pretty simple, and really what it comes down to is portion control and avoiding certain "bad" foods. I'll get to some of the bad ones in a minute.

Friday evening, John came over after being banished from his house because Julie was having a girl's night, and we met up with Austin and Beckie and Beckie's cousin Jennifer at the Little Tree for sushi because it was Jennifer's birthday. There were also quite a few other of Jennifer's friends who came out also, so our party was pretty large and as such we had to wait for-ever for our table. I had a roll and a chili-tuna salad. Tasty. I decided not to go to the bar afterward with everyone.

Saturday, I went shopping, I went to Trader Joe's and bought some foodstuffs and then went to Sam's Club for more stuff. Later I went out to Novi with Austin and Beckie (man, I really need a shorter way to refer to them) to meet up with Jenn to celebrate Jenn being done with classes for the semester. We had drinks (bad) at Jenn's then went to 5th Avenue for more drinks (bad) and then over to Gus O'Connor's for beer (bad) and nachos (even worse). At some point at Gus O'Connor's, Austin's illness of the last couple weeks got the better of him and Beckie drove him back to Jenn's apartment to get some rest. Jenn and I discussed future vacation plans, including the possibility of vacationing together again, what our respective parents would infer by this, and also my apparent lack of picking up on flirting. Eventually Beckie returned and we headed over to The Mixx for another drink (bad). Closing time arrived and we headed back to Jenn's where we recovered for a bit before Beckie drove us home.

Sunday, I was supposed to go to dim sum (bad) with Austin and his family, but he was still too ill to go, so I stayed home and slept some more. Later I went to my parent's house for dinner and went with my dad to get his birthday present, a wheelbarrow. In my family birthday presents for my dad tend to be practical and useful for the rest of the family. In the past, presents for my dad have been various tools, a snowblower, a bbq grill and now a wheelbarrow, which will in all likelyhood be used for a project at my house in the coming weeks. I also stopped by the Mitchell's house to drop off MaryBeth's harddrive and the backup on my portable harddrive.

So, a fairly busy weekend. What I'm really looking forward to is this coming weekend is the Ninja Prom. That should be fun. I've got my ninja costume, but I want to spice it up a little bit. Look for pictures later in this space.

Clipper-de-doo da day!

I shaved today. Now that may not seem like some sort of momentous event, but I have literally not shaved since New Years or possible earlier. I haven't gone clean-shaven or anything, but it was getting warm enough to get rid of the neck beard. Here's some pictures for comparison.

Left is before, Right is after.

I still need to get a haircut. It's just wet in the one picture. Speaking of the pictures, these are also part of series of pictures I've been taking. Basically, I'm taking a picture of myself everyday, wearing a different t-shirt, until I get through my entire collection. It's partially to document the number of t-shirts I own, and also as kind of a strange social experiment.

All That's Green

Ah, St. Patrick's Day. 'Twas a drunken one.

We decided to get to the bar early as to beat the crowds. There was a bit of mis-communication regarding the plan, and we had to return to Austin's place to pick up Dan.

We got to Augie's about 4PM. John and Julie were there, and we commenced with the drinking. There were a lot of fun things happening. A bagpiper came in, and then the liquor girls started coming around. There were Pucker girls giving out hats and t-shirts. Later the Molson girls came around handing out keychains and gloves and bottle cozies.

We drank a lot of Augie Bombs (Razz-Matazz vodka and Red Bull) and Jaeger Bombs and Irish Car Bombs. Beckie and Ryan were drinking "old-man" drinks, like Manhattans and Tom Collins. Jessica showed up a bit later, as did Sarah, who came out after work.

There was a band playing, Rockstar, an '80s Hair-Metal cover band. They were pretty cool.

We ended up leaving about 12:30, and according to our waitress, we were her longest tab, which also ended up being ~$600 for the whole group.

Picture-time!

Ryan with a green twinkle in his eye, or it could just be the Leprechaun Gold.


Beckie displaying her "schwag"


Sarah is too cool for this bar


Jessica and I on our "wedding day"


Austin is from another planet


Sarah and Dan looking ready for some ultraviolence. Either that or some more drinks.


And finally, green beer.

After the bar we reconvened at Austin's and played a bit of drunken Guitar Hero. I went home and stopped by White Castle on the way and got some food. I had a bit of a problem with my change as I had a $20 and exact change and got back some miscellaneous change. I had to wait (and hold up the drive-thru line) while the cashier figured out the discrepancy. I got my correct change eventually and went home, ate my food and went to bed.

Sunday (technically afternoon, but morning to me) I met up with my parents and sister at the DIA for lunch and the Ansel Adams exhibit that's there now. The exhibit was really cool. A lot of the pictures were of the Southwest, where I've lived and done a bunch of traveling with my parents. Beautiful country out there.

Later, Austin and I went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner. I love call ahead seating. I also love steak.

One final note, this weather sucks. Where is spring already?

The resemblance is uncanny...

How is it that I meet people who look so much like me?

Exhibit A

This is from the LAN party Austin and I went to on Saturday. That is Taiki. He's 3/4 Japanese. We played Wolfenstein ET and Unreal Tournament. I also played a bit of Guitar Hero as seen here.

Friday night I went to see 300 with Austin, Beckie, Jim and Jennifer. I was called last minute. We were going to see the an 8:15, but it was sold out so we went to The Shamrock for a beer or two until it was time for the show. The movie was decent. A lot of waxed up dudes in thongs. But it was just like a comic book. Visually awesome.

Thursday night I had dinner with John and then went to see Steve's band play at the Berkley Front.

I just finished watching a new show on F/X called The Riches, which stars Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver. It was pretty good though a lot darker than I expected.

More Hot, More Pot!

The reluctantly triumphant return and subsequent cancellation of The O.C.: Oakland County Berkley Sty-lee!

The last time we heard anything from Berkley Stylee was nearly a year and a half ago, so the "previouslies" have been skipped in the interest of expediency.

(BTW, Those interested can read all those previous episodes by clicking here.)

Except there was this one bit of previouly on The O.C.: Oakland County Berkley Sty-lee, whereupon there was a continuing non-appearance of Hot Blondes, hot redheads, or even hot brunettes.

And now back to the show...

Network Executive: Frankly, we'd forgotten that we still were producing episodes of your show. Bob was supposed to cancel it, but I think he had that heart attack right before he came to see you. Other Bob should have done it, but he ate 3 dozen Jello shots and passed out. So really, the only reason we're airing your show at all is that we ran out of any other programming, and we don't have the rights for Everybody Loves Raymond reruns.

Me: Yeah, I kind of wondered. Seems like I never could find where my show was on the schedule. I just kind of thought my TiVo™-like DVR was acting up.

Network Executive: Yeah, well sorry about that. So seeing as how The O.C. has ended, we're thinking that your show's popularity has had a similar decline. Do you have any juicy storylines? Sweeps just ended, so we sort of blew our wad with all the various pregnancies, drug overdoses, murders, births, lesbian affairs, beastiality and basket-weaving plots.

Me: Well, we had this poker game the other night.

Network Executive: Naw, they just did that the other night on Desperate Housewives. Really, what could Ian have had in his hand that would beat Mike's full house?

Me: Well, there was also Hot Pot. Austin, Beckie and I went to his parent's house for Chinese New Year. There was bowing and stuff.

Network Executive: That's great. The promo guys can put ads on that say "The O.C.: Oakland County Berkley Stylee returns. More Hot! More Pot!"

Me: That's completely missleading.

Network Executive: Kid, that's the just how it works. Now lets see if we can make a sow ear into a glass of spilt milk.

Me: Holy mixed metaphors!

Stay tuned for the possibility of more episodes of The O.C.: Oakland County Berkley Stylee where there may be additional silliness, occasional zaniness and possibly more hot lesbian action. But probably not.

Jello, how are you?

I thought I had something amusing to say about the Oscars, but I guess I don't. Actually I didn't even watch any of them. I did hear that Scorcese finally won, for which I'm glad, as that's probably the only Oscar-winning film I saw last (but really this) year. I'm also glad that Eddie Murphy did not win, because he doesn't deserve an Oscar until he has made enough good films to erase the memory of Pluto Nash, Daddy Day Care, Norbit and any other of his numerous horrible films.

Dan's home this weekend. Yay! Picked him up from the airport Saturday, and we ended up going to the Tap Room. Yesterday was brunch at Julon's. Friday night, Austin and I played "How Many Jello Shots Does It Take?" while playing Guitar Hero, and we both did over 30 jello shots. A word of advice. Doing that many jello shots may make you drunk, but you won't be drunk for long, and really, it just makes you kind of ill.