11.28.2005

Thanksgiving Roundup

I had a great turkey day. I spent the weekend in upstate New York in Northville with Carolyn's Dad. He lives in Adirondack Park.

We started off the extended weekend with 7 inches of snow during the early morning hours of Thursday. Snow on Thanksgiving is awesome. After going and playing outside in the new snow with Sonar and Triskit (puppies!!!), I proceeded to eat an awesome Thanksgiving meal prepared by Silvia. Mmmm...

Then Carolyn and I went out for a hike, but turned around quickly and decided to error on the side of caution when we found the forests were full of drunken deer hunters. Instead we took the puppies on a walk and then made a fire. I kept getting a little too close to the fire and my shoes would start on fire. They seem to be ok except that the glue seems that holds the soles on has stopped working. I going to try and glue them back together later.

After the fire we made some pizzas from scratch. Mine was garlic, mushroom, and onion pizza that was heavy on the sauce and light on the cheese. It was so good. I found out the trick is to have a pizza stone. If any of you make pizzas very often I recommend getting one of these stones. These pizzas had some of the best crust I've ever had, and certainly the best homemade pizza crust I've ever had.

During the weekend we went to see the movie Rent. I was very surprised at how much I enjoyed it. If you're in the mood for a musical I'd recommend it. Carolyn has seen it on Broadway and listened to the soundtrack about a bazillion times so she was singing along during a few of the songs. She wasn't the only one either; the girl behind us was also singing along.

The rest of the weekend was spent eating, playing games, watching movies, playing outside, eating, and we even managed to squeeze a little Dance Dance Revolution (see the picture with Carolyn and her mom). Did I mention eating?

Stupid Camera Memory Card

I forgot to take my memory card to on my vacation to upstate New York this weekend. I thought my problem would be easily solved by buying a cheap $15 128 MB memory card at the local drug store. I just got back to and am ranting about the defective SanDisk memory card I got. I got lots of bazaar image corruption when I download the images to my computer. I've tried doing a low level format of the card and that didn't fix the problem. I guess I'm just tossing the card. The thing that really bums me out is that most of the pictures I took this weekend are garbage. Oh well... Some of them pictures are sort of funny so I've included a few examples of bad ones.

11.23.2005

Merry Turkey Day

I’m off to upstate New York. I plan on eating until I can’t fit anymore in my esophagus on Thursday. Then on Friday I’m going to hike to the top of a mountain (weather permitting) to burn those calories off.

Check out this tasty pie I made. Well I hope it’s tasty. We’ll find out tomorrow.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

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11.20.2005

Weekend of geocaching

I did a lot of geocaching this weekend. I thought I’d share this picture we took while geocaching. This was the first time Lauri was out geocaching. While she didn’t seem to be a huge fan of the geocaching she sure liked taking pictures. I think she took pictures at are rate of about 60 an hour. Jeez, and I thought I took a lot of pictures...

New Snowboard

I just got a new snowboard, bindings, and boots. It is all higher end Burton stuff. Before I got my new board I was excited to go snowboarding, and now I can hardly stand it. Snowboarding is without a doubt my favorite winter time sport.

I’ve got a season pass to Wachusett Mountain. I also usually go up to Vermont/New Hampshire/Maine a few times each winter. In addition to that a few of my friends and I usually go out west once a year. This year it’s looking more and more like we’ll be going to Whistler. Of course I’ll post here about any cool trips I take.

11.17.2005

Donate Blood

They were hounding me for the O negitive blood I have again. While I was donating they told me they are in critical need for blood. Go sign up to donate at the Red Cross web site today!

11.14.2005

Verdi’s Requiem Mass

A group of six of us (mostly guys from work) got to together to go and see Verdi’s Requiem Mass by the Cantata Singers at the New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. This was a very pinky event(think about the British drinking tea). The reason we got together for this was because Brian, a colleague from work who double majored in Computer Science and Music was performing in the choir.

I’ve never been to anything like this. Even so it was enjoyable. It wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I liked it enough that I will probably go again. In my opinion it was spectacularly performed; and nearly anything that is put together this well, even when it’s not my cup of tea, is enjoyable. I guess I’m a little more forgiving than the Boston Globe which Brian said gave them a good review for their performance, but not spectacular. I guess I’m just not cultured enough...

11.12.2005

Purgatory Chasm

I went to Purgatory Chasm State Reservation today. It’s only about 30 minutes from my home. Some folks at work were talking about it and I said it sounds like a cool place I should check it out. Cool place indeed!

Purgatory Chasm is about a quarter mile long with granite walls rising about 70 feet high. There were a lot of families with little kids jumping from rock to rock. Seeing them do it made it look like so much fun I just had to try it. After shoving them out of my way I had a blast doing it. Ok I didn’t really push the little tigers out of my way, but it was fun. I also did some cave exploring, but since I forgot to bring a flashlight I couldn’t do too much exploring. I also grabbed a geocache in the area while I was there.

On the way out, we saw a bunch of police and medics attending a youngster that had broken his ankle. So a word to the wise while it is fun jumping around on rocks like a monkey you need to be careful.

Peace out.

11.06.2005

Abandoned Train Tunnel

Eric, Carolyn, and I went to go do the Central Mass Railroad geocache. We really didn’t know what to expect, but it turned out to involve a very cool abandoned train tunnel. This place was totally worth a visit if you’re in the area.

Making Power Bars

I made some protein bars with Carolyn. We originally saw Alton Brown make these on his Good Eats TV show. We then got the recipe from their website.

Getting all the ingredients from the store took longer than actually making these bars. Personally I think they taste ok.. I can see myself making them again though because I know they sure are healthy for me.

11.04.2005

The Lion King

I went to the Broadway’s award winning musical The Lion King at the Providence Performing Arts Center. It was probably the best show I've ever seen.

The show followed the Disney movie's plot fairly closely but a few jokes were added in for the more mature crowd. As I expected the acting was superb. It really amazes me when I see little kids playing parts nearly perfectly. The energy level of all the actors was amazing.

My favorite part of the show was definitely the costumes. They had costumes for all the animals from the movie in amazing detail (the four person elephant may have been my favorite costume). Even though the costumes for all the animals were unique they all had small details that made them similar and tied the entire stage together.

All in all it was a very impressive show and I'd recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to see the show.