This can only lead to trouble.

Courtesy of XKCD

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.

This ties in perfectly.

From Coronado... Witchy!

Wood type: birch Length: 9 inches Core: Kelpie Hair get your own wand!

Birch:
With the exception of the mysterious elder, the Birch is the earliest of the forest trees. Though they make beautiful, smooth wands with a nice sheen if polished, birch is nevertheless known for it's 'flaky' qualities. The bearer of this wand could not be more different, in fact those who find a Birch wand has chosen them tend to be some of the most logical thinkers or strategists. These wands excel at driving out evil spirits, and for Purification spells. They are also very good for spells involving structures, support, shielding, warding, and cleansing.
Birch's personality is Happy
Element: Air

Kelpie Hair:
Kelpie hair comes from the mane of a Kelpie, a water demon commonly found in Britton and Ireland, who often takes the shape of a horse. The most famous Kelpie is referred to by Muggles as the Loch Ness monster. Kelpie's are adaptable creatures, and thus the wand is a good core for most types of magic, but especially water magic.

Go faster!

I ran my first Autocross this weekend. It's a type of car racing where you drive a course that's laid out in big parking lot and it's against the clock. I came in second to last, but for being my first time and the fact that a lot of the other guys are more experienced and have set up their cars specifically for this, I think I did alright.

It was a pretty fun day, but I was pretty wiped out by the end. I also got a little burned in the sun. I definately want to go race again, but all the races this year conflict with previously planned events. Oh well, there's always next year.

Dogs and more dogs

This last week I was watching Sydney and Bentley for my mom, as she was teaching knitting over by K-Zoo. Things went mostly ok, aside from my lack of sleep with 3 dogs hogging the bed. I did have one incident with the Skipper though.

Friday I decided to take the boys down to 12 Mile to check out Cruisefest (Berkley's cruise event) and everything was fine until some guy walked by with a Chow. Skippy started going nuts and somehow slipped out of my grip and started going after this guy's dog. The guy was trying to kick Skip away and ended up getting tripped and falling down. I tried to apologize but the guy was being a jerk. I then took the dogs home.

Mom picked them up on Saturday. We had dinner and later that night I went to see "last tourist" with Austin. The band has my freshman year roommate and one of my co-workers from the bike shop in it. They were pretty good, but who really surprised me was "Deastro" which is really just one guy playing drums and his laptop, but he fuckin' rocks.

Edit: I totally forgot to include my buggy adventures on Sunday. I was going over to John's to move the last of my stuff that had been living in his garage, and when I went outside I got stung by a wasp. The wasps had made a nest in the siding of my house at the corner of my side door frame. I stopped by ACO to get Wasp/Hornet Killer and freaking sprayed the hell out of them and the nest. Well, somehow a bunch of them managed to get inside my house and at one point Skippy started pawing at his nose and kind of snorting. I looked to see what was going on and somehow he had inhaled one of the wasps into his nose. I pulled it out and killed it the rest of the way and Skip went about his business like nothing had happened. I guess he hadn't gotten stung by some lucky happenstance. Nothing says devotion to you pet like removing dangerous pests from their orifices.

I'm like a photographer and stuff.

So, apparently some of my photos are good enough for online travel guides. It's almost like I'm a professional photographer except I'm not getting paid.

Home and Abroad, a travel website which is using my photo of the Ala Wai golf course.


Schmap, a online travel guide, which is using my photo of Kama'ole Beach.

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.

I need to play more...

Seeing this reminded me I should break out the GameCube again.



Courtesy of XKCD

Shut up, Dawn!

Weekend was movie-tastic.

Backing up to Thursday, when I got home, I ended up actually going down to Cityfest to see Weird Al. He put on a pretty good show, much longer than I expected.

Friday, Dan and I went out to Novi to have dinner at Happy Sushi with Jenn and Jenn's friend (Work)Andy. After dinner, Dan and I went to Royal Oak to catch the midnight showing of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling (The Sing-a-long). We got there probably more than an hour early, but the show was nearly sold out, so it was probably better that we had. The show was a lot of fun, there were props, and karaoke lyrics for the songs, and lots of yelling "Shut up, Dawn!" whenever she said, well, pretty much anything.

Saturday, I went to Noble Fish for some shopping of Japanese food items. Yummm... delicious udon. Austin came over later for dinner, where I grilled up some hamburgers left over from camping. Austin left to see Buffy with Jordan, and I ended up staying home and watching TV.

Sunday, I mowed the lawn and then went to join my parents at IKEA. I bought some big soup bowls and another bin for returnables. It was a while later at home that I realized that my A/C had quit working. It started to get really warm in my house. Eventually I joined Dan in air-conditioned comfort at the movie theater where we watched Transformers. It was, um, very Michael Bay-y. It was kind of a mess, though the effects were pretty cool.

I've got a call into the HVAC company, hopefully they'll be out today to fix my A/C. In the meantime, I'll just be sweating.

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.

Master of Magnetism

Lots of computer based news today. The biggest bit of that is I finally bought a new Mac. I kind of went almost all the way out and bought a MacBook Pro. I got the lowest end model, but that still runs ~$2000, so thankfully I was able to work the student discount angle, which reduced the price by $200.

It's definitely the fastest computer I've ever owned, but we'll see how well if fares at the LAN party... I mean super cool party with a bunch of awesome guys doing really neat stuff, that's totally not nerdy at all.

What finally spurred this was the fact that they just released these new, faster ones, they had a sweet rebate deal going on when you bought a computer and an iPod, and I also got a bunch of offers for 0% balance transfers until next summer.

Oh yeah, that's another thing, I got the 30Gb iPod with Video too. I have to send in the rebate for that though.

For my old computer, I just bought off the Subaru forum a DVD burner (it had a DVD reader, and an external CDRW) and installed that yesterday, and also decided to put in the refurb hard drive I got on a warranty return. Well the DVD burner went in fine, but when I fired up the computer, the refurb hard drive started making some really nasty noises and then did the "click of death". So the refurb hard drive is dead, and I have to sent that back, and hopefully they'll send me a new one.

All of my files are still on the old computer and when I wanted to sync up my iPod, I kept getting all sorts of freezes and what not, so I ended up doing a lot of troubleshooting of the USB hub and swapping ports for the cables and I've eventually gotten it to sync at full speed. Those kinds of issues are why I wish the latest iPods still were FireWire capable.

With the new computer I should have a few less of those issues, as it has built-in USB 2.0, and should play nice with the new iPod. So happy with the new laptop. It has the nice MagSafe connector where if you kick the cord, it will detach instead of dragging the whole computer to floor. The power of magnets. Awesome.

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.

The Ultimate T-shirt

That's ultimate as in final. I have reached the end of my experiment. By my tally, I have 102 t-shirts. I was happy that I broke the one hundred mark.



Click on the picture to see the rest.

Lawn, lawn time ago

Well, I missed the Comic-Con this last weekend. I could have gone, but my dad came over on Saturday and we tilled and raked and graded and moved dirt and put down grass seed and fertilizer behind my garage and under my tree in front, so that hopefully I can have grass instead of dirt.

OMG, The Office last Thursday was hilarious. That was one of things we discussed while at the Necto on Friday night for Beckie's birthday. I drank quite a bit and went way off the diet at Denny's later. I also forgot to communicate to Beckie that Jessica might need a ride. Originally I was going to ride with Beckie and Austin, and Jim and Jennifer were also going to come, filling the car, but they were delayed and ended up driving separately. The Necto was quite fun though.

Saturday there was the aforementioned yard work and then later, I went to Westland to a party for Matt's sister Sarah (who are people that know Jordan and co.)and that was amusing. There were a lot of Jesus Christ songs, but not in the way you'd normally think.

My dad brought me a magnetic dart board. I have to try it out sometime soon.

Sunday I went to Meijer and bought a weed trimmer. It cost them $4.89, because I had a variety of gift cards and bottle deposit slips. Then I had to stop by Julon's to let out Max for Jessica and then went to Sam's Club. I was driving the Saturn most of the weekend to save gas. My parents picked me and the dog up to visit my sister, 'cause she's moving and needed boxes and moving help.

This post is really all over the place, but it doesn't really matter much. It's been a scattered day.