Gone Fishin'

Look at the fish Joe and I caught in the Mekong River in Thailand. What's that you say? You didn't know Joe and I went to Asia. Well, we did. As you can clearly see, that's Joe on the right and me on the left. It is actually the world's largest catfish ever recorded at nine feet in length and 646 lbs. We're awesome!!!

Madden in Lynn

I went out to Lynn last night to check out Bobby's new place. Actually, I shouldn't say Bobby's place, but rather his girlfriend Twyla's place. Anyway, she made some chicken parmesan for us despite the fact that she is a vegetarian and it was damn good to boot. While she was whipping up the food Bobby and I played Madden '06 for the first time. The game is awesome, as expected, but there were some new things for us to get used to. It was quite intimidating at first, but we managed, and Bobby shellacked me with the Lions. I used the Bills to no avail. This brings me to the newest, most dramatic feature in this game: QB vision. EA Sports has managed to make the game even more realistic with this feature, which is a highlighted cone that emanates from the QB, which you have to guide towards the receiver you want to throw to. As most of you know, some QBs have better vision than others, Peyton Manning being the epitome (I met him in New Orleans with a picture to prove it). Here's a little picture to show what the QB vision looks like on the screen.



Well, after dinner, Bobby and I played again, but in this round it was my time to shine. I was the Patriots and he was the Falcons. Vick had a pathetic vision cone, but could still run like the wind. However, to my surprise, Tom Brady's vision cone spanned basically the entire width of the field. It was sweet. It made throwing the ball a lot easier than it was before with the Bills. Ah, the little things in life. Overall, the food was great, the game was sweet, and Bobby and Twyla's pad was looking good. It's a damn shame that I won't be able to do this sort of stuff more often since I'm moving. Typical.

Movin' on up

Well, it's that time of year again. The dreaded moving days of August. Always a terrible experience, but the North End of Boston seems to want to make it as horrible as possible. It's not enough that all of the stairways in this neighborhood are about as wide as an airplane aisle, but my move out day happens to land on St. Anthony's Feast weekend. To bring you all up to speed, the North End has a feast every weekend of the summer, which seems to make it virtually impossible to navigate. Let me cite an example: there is a 4-way intersection right around the corner from my apartment, which has 3 one-way streets going away from the intersection and one two-way street. Thus meaning that you would have to pull a U-turn on the only two-way street in order to go down that particular street. It's just plain stupid. Anyway, I believe my street will be open, so that's good. Then again, there will most likely be a plethora of people that will be walking around for us to try and avoid. I figure to have Karl and Joe helping me, so maybe one of us can block while the others carry the goods. Hell, I'll just drop everything from my porch two stories up directly into the trailer. That should work just fine.

On a more enjoyable note, I recently bought some Nike Frees. You know, the shoes that have the sole that can fold over on itself because it is sliced into roughly 1 inch segments. Hard to explain, but anyone who has seen them knows what I'm talking about. Anyway, they are super light and really comfortable. I figured they would help motivate me to run when I can't play hoops. Well, so far it's worked. I've gone jogging a couple times simply for the fact that I had some new shoes. It's funny how much commercialism affects my actions. I'm such a sucker for marketing. It's pathetic, but I know you're all in the same boat. College roomie, Nick, used to buy anything he saw on TV. I don't know if he still does, but it wouldn't surprise me if he had a storage unit filled with all the useless crap he's accumulated over the years. Set it and forget it, Nick. Just put it on the ol' credit card. I mean, it's chump change compared to the debt that's been racked up to pay for medical school.

Finally, it turns out that my move is also going to be affected by a few other schedule conflicts. The good thing is that they all revolve around the same subject: fantasy football. I am in three leagues again this year and I am amazingly unprepared. I have pretty much no idea where anyone is playing, what type of offense they're in, whether there are any injuries, or when bye weeks are. Needless to say, I have a lot to research over the next couple days considering I spend a good $150 or so to be in these leagues. Maybe I'll just light this money on fire and call it a day. Nah. . .I'm sure someone could use my contribution to buy another consumer good that will be obsolete in a couple of months.

Gambling Machine

My local boys (Bobby, Honan, and Nate Dogg) and I try to play some Texas Hold 'Em every Wednesday, but as of lately, it has been very sporadic. However, we were able to manage to get it together last night and man am I glad that we did. I actually pulled off my first victory with this crew for a whopping $40. I was worried there for a little while, since Bobby started to come back strong about an hour and a half in. I'd have to say that last night was the best game we have had so far. Everybody had the lead at one point in the night and we played for about 4 hours. I especially enjoyed it after going "all in" and beating Bobby's three-of-a-kind Kings with a full house of Jacks and 7s, where the last Jack turned up in the river. I was super excited after that hand. It was like something out of Rounders (and I was Matt Damon). Also of note was my 4-of-a-kind Jacks earlier in the night. Best hand I've ever seen, let alone actually had myself!!!

Anyway, not much else going on. I gotta start packing stuff up in my apartment, so I'm not looking forward to that. On the plus side of life, the auxiliary fan in my car is up and running. I brought it in and had it fixed on Monday. Turns out it was just a fuse, but it was one of the fuses that is under the dashboard, so it's a little harder to access. My dad and I definitely could have done the work, but we weren't sure that was what the problem was, so I just handed it over to the pros. Well, I hope Bryan and Trav collect on their bets with Jake. In your face, you tall blonde bastard!!! And, I'm out. . .

Foxwoods, gambling, and the clientele

Thursday afternoon I received an email from Joe asking me if I wanted to go down to Foxwoods (the Indian casino in Connecticut) with him. Now, if you know Joe, you would know that gambling is not really his thing. The reason he asked me to go was because his buddy, Timbo (now known strictly as either The Bo or Mr. Bo . . . stupid story, don't ask) , was going down there for a $1500 poker seminar called Poker Boot Camp and wanted some friends to go. So Joe decided that I was the right man for the job in helping him provide moral support to The Bo. To say the least, we weren't particularly great at the whole support role thing.

Anyway, Friday night we got down into the casino at about 11:30pm. Previously, we had ordered a $50 bottle of Seagram's 7 and enjoyed that with Sierra Mist (they didn't have 7-Up) in the hotel room. We were feeling pretty good. Enough booze in the system to calm the nerves. I bought $100 worth of chips at the blackjack table and won $75 in about 10 minutes, so that was good. From there, we proceeded over to the Caribbean Stud Poker tables where Timbo's parents' friends, Ken and JoAnn, were playing. Ken was a friggin' character to put it mildly. He was wasted when we met him and he paused on his girlfriend's name for about 10 seconds when he went to introduce me. Apparently, JoAnn is one of three of this guy's girlfriends so that was interesting. A true player indeed. Anyway, I would go on to get up about $200, and to end the night up $100. Not bad. I was content and was able to sleep well on the floor that night while Kenny Boy cuddled up with JoAnn on one bed and Timbo and Joe in the other. Awesome.

Saturday morning, Timbo, had to get up at 7:30am. We went to bed at 4:30am. Not a good way to start boot camp. Ken and JoAnn got up about an hour later and made more noise than a chimney fire. (Joe, what does a chimney fire sound like?) Joe and I slept in until about 10:30am and went to enjoy a $12 all-you-can-eat brunch. Joe and I only went through once. Probably didn't get our money's worth, but, needless to say, there were people there who did. Oh yes, they were definitely balancing out there losses to the casino from the night before. Which brings me to my final topic.

Now, I try not to pick on people too much . . . bad karma. I had Nick and Justin as roommates, and for any of you who know them, you know that they made you laugh about things that you definitely felt you shouldn't be laughing about. Jake, Bryan, and Trav, you know what I'm talking about. Nick is one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet, but his humor can be a bit distasteful sometimes. That's why I love him. But the people at Foxwood's are quite the crowd. It's hard to not be in awe when observing these creatures in their preferred environment. I would say that 80% of the people are uneducated to an astounding level. Now I could be wrong, but the smoke drenched atmosphere of the world's largest casino seems to make everybody look bad. Most of the people are nice when you get to talking, but they just don't seem to be part of my demographic. They all have the mentality that if they stick to gambling long enough, they'll eventually hit it BIG. As anybody reading this knows, that's a mathematical nightmare. Oh well, to each his own. I just hope their enjoying themselves, but something tells me a lot of them leave Foxwoods pretty miserable.

Although, on the other hand, I have a certain respect for these risk takers. I sometimes wish I could be a little more risky and not so damn conservative with my own life. I mean, look at me. Keri is in Cali and I'm still here in Boston waiting for my company to get the transfer through so I can move out there. Why am I being such a pussy? Pardon my language, but I definitely think I need to "up the ante" a little bit here. Maybe my weekend at Foxwoods will give me a little jumpstart. One can only hope. I digress.

Joe and I, basically, walked around all day Saturday "people watching." I lost $50 really fast early in the day, so I took a break. Timbo met us for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. That turned out to be a good time. You all know how I like to eat. I'd say 80% of my life is planned around my next meal, but that's another story.

After dinner, Joe and I went back to the room and watched most of Whatever It Takes. We then both fell asleep only to wake up to The Bo calling us telling us he lost in his tournament in about 30 minutes. Bye bye, $1500. Hey, at least he got a complimentary bag and a deck of cards. When he came up we went back down to the casino. I lost another $75 really quickly and decided to give up on gambling. Joe and I watched Timbo do some gambling and waited for the arrival of Timbo's brother, Matty, and Paul Auger. (Joe, did I spell that right?) When they arrived, Joe and I went back up to the room and drank another bottle of 7 and watched Ray. Good movie. I recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it. The movie finished and it turned out to be after midnight. Damn! We went back down to the casino and hung out for a little bit. Didn't bet at all, but Auger taught me how to play craps. Now that's how you win, but damn does it play fast. Maybe I'll try that the next time I go down there, if I ever go again. However, as I stated before, I'm not much of a gambler, so I don't foresee that happening again before I move (which will hopefully be real soon). I'm comin', Ker!!! Jake, hold the comments on that one.

P.S. Sorry the post is so long. It's Sunday night and I'm a bit retarded.

Lookie what we have here . . .

So my good friend and former roommate, Joe, needed to come down to pick up his car from his girlfriend's apartment out in Brighton yesterday. He gave me a call and we decided to meet up. I thought we were going to grab some eats, but Joe tells me he already ate about two hours ago (this is at about 5:30pm). So we went to the greatest single slice pizza joint in the North End, Ernesto's (not to be confused with the best whole pie pizza joint, which is Regina's) and I grabbed a slice. We decided to go for a little walk around the area and headed over to Government Center and what do we stumble upon here . . . a friggin' Staind concert!!! Yeah, that's right. A full fledged concert by a well-known band sponsored by Ford! Right there, out of the blue. I hadn't heard anything about it, but apparently it is a marketing promotion for Ford named the Fusion Flash Concert series. "Fusion" being the type of car they are promoting and "flash" referring to how quickly the concert is setup. You know, similar to a flash flood. Apparently, Ford is doing this throughout the country at a multitude of cities with big name bands, but they don't really give you much information. They just appear out of nowhere, at least that is what it seemed like to me. Anyway, Joe and I stayed and enjoyed the show. I can't say I'm a huge fan of Staind, but it was a good show nonetheless. The crowd surfers were nuts and there were a lot of girls on guys shoulders, but no flashers. What a pity! Oh well, can't win 'em all. However, I realized at this concert that I need a digital camera in order to post some pics on here. I think that will be my next big purchase. Beware blog viewers. Soon you will have to scroll through pictures of my ugly mug along with the senseless chatter.

P.S. The car is in the lead, but I think it's going down tomorrow or the beginning of next week.

Friggin' cars!!!

I found out recently that I needed a new auxiliary fan for my 1999 Audi A4 1.8T. For all of you who don't know, which is probably all of you besides Max (the other engineer I know), the auxiliary fan is an additional fan that turns on to help cool the engine when you run the AC or the engine gets above a certain temperature. So anyway, I brought it down to the local mechanic only to get a quote of over $1000 ($480 for the part and about $500 something for the "7 or 8 hours" of labor). Lo and behold, I decided against the professional work. Next thing I know I'm getting the part for about $160 on the "Inter-me-net" (as we college edu-ma-cated put it) and putting it in with the help of dear old dad in about 2.5 hours. Damn, we're good!! Ah, but the feel-good-story-of-the-year doesn't end there. Turns out the fan is in and hooked up, but it's not running. So that's where I stand now. I don't even think I need the fan to run for the car to work properly. At this point, it's me against machine and I'll be damned if the machine thinks it's going to win. Well, I'm on my way to "fix" the car. Whether I literally fix it or give it the old college "fix" has yet to be determined, but I'll post again soon with the conclusion to my latest man v. machine struggle.

25 is for suckers!!

Well, I turned 25 yesterday. Quarter century over, just like that. Hey, but now I can rent a car, so I got that going for me. Next birthday to look forward to is 35, when I will be allowed to run for president (barring any Constitutional amendments between now and then that might change the age requirement). It should probably be older anyway, since people live so much longer nowadays, but I digress. . . Anyway, last night I went to Fleming's, the upscale Outback (owned by the same corporation), in Boston with my dad, Jan (stepmother), and my punk sister, Jessica. I got the filet mignon with Bearnaise sauce and it was delicious. I recommend it to any steak lover. Dad had to do the old "send it back" because they overcooked his steak. However, they nailed it the second time, so he didn't starve. I got the chocolate lava cake for free since it was my birthday. It was a battle between Jessica and I to devour as much of it as possible. I think I won. Overall, the day was good and the dinner was better. I should definitely eat like that more often.

First Entry

I have no idea how this is going to go. I intended to post something on my buddy Max's blog and ended creating my own. I figure it will be a good way for everyone to keep track of my doings after my venture out to California. Well, I'm keeping this sucker short and sweet since it is just my test post.