Caught In The Whirlwind
Jason
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Roller Coaster Concert Ride
01261 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
If you may recall, my last blog post mentioned the fact that Wassy and I were going to attempt to head out to Albany to catch a TSO concert on Sunday, but we were worried about a stomach bug that was going around. As it turns out, we were both fine to go to the show.
Then we (I) was worried about the weather as we were supposed to get some really nasty winter weather about when we were going to be driving out. So we ended up leaving at 11am (for a 3pm show, 1.5 hour drive in good weather giving us plenty of buffer time). The plan was to go eat lunch at place that we ate at before when we went to see Dream Theater in Albany (Jackbit and Joltz, an "australian" sandwich place), then head to the show, then to Chili's afterwords.
The title of this post contains the words roller coaster because that's exactly what yesterday was. The drive up was nice…no weather problems at all. We got to Jackbit and Joltz to find they had closed, but we weren't too worried about that as we has 2.5 hours thereabouts to find somewhere to eat. We ended up chosing a KFC that was of questionable quality (especially their Dr. Pepper), but at that point it was just adding to the experience.
We had an awful lot of time before the show, so we headed out to Crossgates Mall to wander a bit. Wassy stopped by the Apple store and played around with the new multi-touch touchpads on the MacBook Pros in Photoshop CS4. She was sufficiently wowed by it. It did look really neat. We also discovered that there's an IMAX theater in albany. Which made us wonder why we drive to Rochester for our IMAX movies (it takes about twice as long to get there than it does to get to Albany).
After wandering for a while, we headed back out to the show where we hit a really huge snag in the form of INSANE traffic. I-787 was a parking lot so we ducked out at an exit and tried to navigate the streets of Albany to get to the parking garage. This was extremely slow going. Tensions and frustrations were rising and it was starting to look like we wouldn't be able to make the show in time. I eventually navigated down some side streets with the use of the GPS to attempt to circumvent most of the gridlock and we ended up in sight of the venue just before 3pm, still stuck in traffic. I told Wassy that she should hop out and head in because it might be a while before I find a parking spot and she hadn't seen the show before, so she went in and I was left to get to the garage. we were there late enough where I had to park on the garage roof.
By the time I got there it was after 3pm. I didn't want to wait for the elevator down so I sprinted down 6 flights of stairs and all the way across the parking lot building and the length of the times union center to where I could get in. As it turned out there were having some issues with one of the lighting pieces and that delayed the start of the show, so we were able to catch the whole thing. After the horribleness that was the ride in, the show was totally awesome.
I've said before, and I'll say it again. If you have not gone to see TSO, you need to go. Because nobody does a show like these guys. Case in point:
See?? Wassy took some very aweome pictures during the show so that's where all these images are coming from. As per usual, the lighting was set up on movable trusses that reconfigured themselves as the show went along depending on the song. They added a lot more uses of laser and pyro through the entire show and it was really nice. The new string master (female violinist, first name is Anna…but I'm blanking on her last name) was running around the stage and really getting into it and rocking out. At points she slid across the floor on her knees and bent over backwards to play on her back, and one time she took center stage and bent over backwards while still playing. She's very very nimble.
The first half of the show was the normal Christmas Eve and Other Stories set, which is enjoyable enough. It kinda lulls in the middle due to the presence, chiefly, of the song Old City Bar. it grinds the momentum of the show to a halt. We were in the PERFECT seats for First Snow. We It was "snowing" all around us and the lasers flashing off the falling snow was awesome.
The second half of the show was much more high energy and they threw in a lot of songs that they don't normally do which is nice for people who have gone to the show year in and year out. I really prefer the second half of the show to the first every year and this year was no exception. The new songs from Night Castle were good too, and I'm looking forward to that album. 2009 is looking to be a good year for music.
Before I get off the topic of the show, I just wanted to add this final picture from the grand finale. THIS is how you end a show:
Now for the down slide of the roller coaster. The show ran late, due to the lighting issue, so as we were leaving the, next show people were coming in, which caused havoc with the parking garage. We got back to the car just in time to have everything stop moving. Since we were at the top of the parking garage, we basically had to wait for everyone else to get out before we could even start moving. I suspect there was some sort of gridlock situation that was encountered as well because nothing moved on the roof for at least an hour after the show. Eventually we decided to leave the car parked and see if we could find someplace to eat while we waited for the congestion to work out. We wandered around for about 30-40 minutes and couldn't find anything that was either open or any good. so we went back to the car to determine that nothing had moved . Period. Half hour of nothing moving at all. It was…horrible. Eventually they started directing traffic to get people out but it was about 2 hours after the show ended before we finally made it to Chili's.
This part of the roller coaster ride was where it finally started to go up again. We had a really nice dinner and Wassy really enjoyed her margaritas. Not so good waitress, but we got our food and it was good. The car ride home was fun as well except for the part where we got stuck behind a snow plow for about 4 miles. But after all the stop and go traffic of the day, I was happy to just be moving.
So overall not the major relaxing day that we had both hoped we'd have, but the concert was awesome, the stuff before and after was good. The traffic kinda canceled it all out though. Next year: Going to a show in a city that isn't playing 2 shows in 1 day. Going to a show with a parking lot instead of a parking garage. Not going to the Times Union Center again.
Looooooong….Weeeeeeek….
01265 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
This week has been mostly boring so far, so I haven't been posting much. Been trying to scrape together stuff to talk about. It's basically just a long slog between Thanksgiving and the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert coming up on Sunday.
However, there's a couple things worth mentioning. I recieved Chrono Trigger DS through Gamefly on Monday which I've been playing. It's one of those classic games that I never got around to playing so I'm enjoying going through it for the first time. It's very neat. About 6 hours in at the moment and I don't think I've ever played anything quite like it before.
Speaking of TSO, my friend Jay has gotten sick with a stomach bug and Wassy is doing everything she can to pevent herself from getting it…because doing so will seriously endanger the trip out to albany for the concert Sunday. So far so good I think, but I don't want to say anything else for fear of jinxing it. (EDIT: It seems she is sick this morning 
)
Which leads me to the reason why she stopped by here briefly last night for a cup of green tea. She had been tormenting me with the thought of a little gift that she had gotten me for a couple days and I was originally going to go over to their place to hang out on Wednesday, but since Jay got sick I wanted to stay away just in case. So she dropped by last night to give my my gift, which was a little penguin soap dispenser that's very cool and cute…although I feel a little bad shoving the spout into it's brain to get at the soapy goodness inside. It goes perfect in my penguin themed bathroom. Very very nice.
So that's the week so far…couple more days of boring to go.
Vacation Is Over
01267 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
The rest of my five day vacation has now come and gone and I'm back at work today. Sigh. Between coming back to work after a long vacation and the fact that the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert is only a week away…this week is going to be ultra slow.
Not much of anything happened on Friday, so I'll skip to Saturday when Wassy came over because she needed a change of scenery and a place to work with less distractions (most of them cat related). We also did some Rock Band too, for breaks. I did a lot of cleaning in the kitchen while she was around and got it looking pretty much as clean as I've ever gotten in. And then we had dinner and tea and it's now not so clean anymore. So hard to keep the kitchen in good condition…
And Sunday was a lot of hanging out. There was a winter storm blowing through the area making things a little icky so I didn't venture out much except for my usual sunday grocery shopping and laundry doing. Other than that I hung around the house. I was approaching that period of time where you've been on vacation for long enough where you've run out of things that really hold your attention, so I really didn't do much of anything sunday night that could be considered noteworthy other than playing a couple games of Worms on the Xbox 360 with a friend of mine over Xbox Live. And watching a lot more episodes of The Office which is a very fine show.
Onwards to one long…long week…
Too…Much…Food
01271 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Thanksgiving was yesterday, and I spent the day mostly over at my parents hanging out with the family.
I arrived a little bit before 9 for the traditional putting up of the christmas tree thanksgiving morning. We were a bit worried that my parent's dog would try to eat the tree, but she actually seemed to be ok with it for the most part. The tree was put up without much incident. I didn't even have to take it apart and put it back together again because I screwed up which is something I normally do. Usually after it's all done somebody says "Hey, that looks a little weird" and it turns out I screwed up one branch somewhere in the middle requiring me to take the whole thing apart to fix it. But no problems this year!
After we put the tree up there was a break for lunch and dinner preparation. Had to finish off prepping the turkey and then it was shoved in the oven. There was a little…incident. The recipe we used called for stating the turkey in the oven at 500 degrees for 30 minutes (to get the skin nice and brown) However…when we were doing that the house was starting to fill with smoke. And we set off pretty much all the smoke alarms in the house. My dad wandered in and wanted to see what was wrong. We thought we were doing things wrong, but as it turns out, that's exactly what was supposed to happen, according to Wassy who was my go-to turkey consultant for the day.
The time between lunch and dinner was taken up by decorating the christmas tree and letting the dog sleep on my lap while waiting for the turkey to get done. As evidenced by the picture on the right there.
The turkey ended up being really, really good. Exactly as it should have been, all tender and good tasting. All the rest of the thanksgiving food was good as well, so it turned out being a really nice meal. So nice that I ate way too much. But that seems like what you're supposed to do on Thanksgiving, so that's a good thing!
After we ate, my sister and her husband came over and we played Apples to Apples. And after a fun game of that…there was pie. We were a bit worried about the pie, especially the lemon meringue because when my Mom was moving it from the kitchen counter to the fridge, she tipped it a bit, causing some lemon flavored liquid to run out…which should not have happened. After draining the pie in the sink and putting it in the fridge it looked like everything was ok… But the mysterious pie leakage was never really explained. It ended up being a good pie. Lemon meringue is my favorite pie type.
All and all a very good Thanksgiving I thought. And now I have the remaining 3 days of the long weekend to hang out and get some stuff done around the house. I still need to do a little tidying in my bedroom after getting most of the cleaning done the other day.
QotW: Thanksgiving Tradition
01273 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
What's your favorite Thanksgiving tradition?
My favorite tradition is probably going over to my parents house to put up the christmas tree. I believe I mentioned this last year, but I'm going to mention it again…so deal with it!
Thanksgiving morning traditionally starts with me headed over to my parents house, putting the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV and setting up the artificial (but very good looking) christmas tree that my parents have. It's a bit of a process and takes a little while to do, and my mom argues that we should put the lights on it as we go (a method that I am opposed to) and my dad sits in his chair reading the paper and saying that it's too early to put up a christmas tree.
This year is going to be made a little interesting…because this is the first year that my parents will have had a dog in the house. A very energetic dog. So this could get VERY interesting.
eBaying In My Sleep
01274 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Last night I finally worked up the ambition to list a whole bunch of the games that I have hanging around that I'm not going to play ever again on eBay (shameless self promotion time!) in an effort to declutter a bit and make some extra cash.
It's worth doing, but it just takes so long to compile all the pictures and write a description and it's very much the same thing over and over again. I have a couple more I want to put up tonight. Some leftover magic cards that I never sold the last time I was doing a clearing of my closet and a couple of DVD sets of TV shows just in case somebody's interested in taking them off my hands.
Every time I do this I have thoughts of selling my Wii. I don't really play it much at all and 90% of the games out there for it are crap. But there's still a few things here and there that make me want to keep it around. It's almost the same situation with my PSP. There's very few games I'm interested in getting for it, but those games that I want are really important. So I'll keep the little guy around. I really want to play Star Ocean for example.
Weekendy Goodness
01275 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
It's Monday. So…aside from being back at work, it means it's time for the update on my weekend activities.
Friday evening I found myself over at my parents house where they had invited me over to watch a movie (I Am Legend specifically). Lured by the promise of real, old fashioned popped popcorn, I headed over. After sufficiently tiring out the dog, we started working on the popcorn popping process. Which was…quite an ordeal. I was reading off the instructions on the popcorn, and my mom and dad both had different ways in which they popped popcorn on the stove. Somehow we managed to combine all of these separate methods into something that worked. One quick note about the popcorn: the buttery flavored oil had no actual butter in it. Scary.
I thought the movie was good, but my parents seemed to not enjoy it as much. I didn't think it was awesome, but it was a good mindless sort of fun type movie. I did determine where my lack of bravery comes from as I witnessed my mom nearly covering her eyes at some points and hugging the dog. This proves that the ability to tolerate scary movies is genetic.
Saturday I went over to my friends, Rock Band in tow, as has become the ritual. Wassy had to do some work, so I played a game of Chess with Jay (well…several games of chess…I had forgotten to turn off the 10 minute per game timer so he ended up losing 2 times in a row before I figured it out). It was an…interesting experience. It seems that Jay has a habit of scheming out loud.
Him: How much do you value your knight?
Me: Very much thank you. I have two of them.
Him: Or do you…?
Me: Yes I do!!! They're both right there on the board!!
And so on. This is the first time we've played when we're in the same room, so I didn't know about this before. It seems he does it all the time. From that moment onward "Or do you…?" or variations of that became the catch phrase of the day. Especially during our scrabble game later in the evening. Speaking of scrabble, we watched the Word Wars documentary (about world champion competitive scrabble) using Netflix while we were hanging out during the afternoon. It was good but the people they chose to focus on were some of the biggest losers and jerks on the planet…There was nobody sympathetic, except for one of the guy's parents who said when asked how he was doing during a scrabble tournament: "I'm kicking ass!"
Sunday was my day of cleaning. Since I finished Fallout 3 on Friday, I have to wait for Gamefly to send me a new game which probably won't actually arrive until after Thanksgiving due to how the mail is this week. So I've decided to spend some time doing a really exhaustive cleaning of my apartment. I got my bedroom mostly cleaned up yesterday and did a lot of living room organizing in the evening. I picked up wall-e on DVD and was watching the commentary while cleaning up my living room.
I also attempted a new dish for dinner. Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo to be specific about it. Making everything from scratch including the sauce. It ended up being pretty good, but I need to adjust a few things with the sauce. I let it thicken a bit too much and I need to add a little more cheese to my next attempt (a side effect of the thickening…didn't want to add too much cheese or it would have been WAY too thick). But there will be a next attempt…oh yes…
This week is going to be a long short week. Short because of having only 2 days of work this week. Long because that's followed by 5 days off, Thanksgiving with the family being one of the days. This week is going to be…very strange.
QotD: Favorite Thanksgiving Recipe
01275 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Thanksgiving is only a few days away. What is your favorite Thanksgiving recipe? Will you be making it this year? Mind sharing?
Mind you, I've never had this recipe over thanksgiving, but… this is quite simply the best turkey recipe I've EVER had. Wassy has made it a couple times in the fast and the turkey comes out so very good.
I believe my Mom is going to try doing our turkey using that method this year as well. And since I'm competent in the kitchen now I've offered to help with anything that needs helping with (considering cooking the big meal is a lot of work). So I may be making part of it. Possibly. Haven't gotten that sorted out yet.
Vox Hunt: YouTube Greatest Hit
01277 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Show us your favorite YouTube video.
Opeth's watershed album didn't come with any lyrics in the CD booklet. So Steve Johnson decided he would fix that and write his own. This is what happens when you try to decipher growled lyrics by ear.
Experiencing The New Experience
01279 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
The New Xbox Experience rocks. Period. Just to recap for those who may not be familiar…microsoft has been working on a huge update to the xbox 360's UI when you're not playing a game. The old one was ok, but it was getting pretty cluttered. So Microsoft designed an update.
It's pretty neat. Very well organized now and a lot quicker to navigate for me. They added something like the Nintendo Wii Mii's in Avatars which I could honestly do without. It feels pretty…gimicky but as long as it's in there I'll use it. The best part of the updates come in when you're looking at the Xbox Live Marketplace (where you can go to buy new games, videos, download game demos, etc). Everything comes up much faster now and they added the ability to jump to a specific title by name instead of having to scroll through the entire list if you wanted to download an item with a name starting with Z.
But the bestest new feature (even beating out the ability to copy game DVDs to the hard drive for faster load times) is the Nexflix Instant Watching support. My netflix account is becoming very, very useful. I use the instant watching feature a ton more now that it's availible mac side and also availible on my TV now. The service is pretty easy to use, really nice quality on my standard def tv at least and is just another awesome reason why I don't regret my 360 purchase one bit.
So the NXE gets 2 thumbs up from me.
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